One of my pandemic silver linings has been re-establishing a regular reading habit. I plan on recapping my reading in these short overviews, with quick summary information and quotes for anyone looking for their next book.

Published: 1971

Read: March 2021

Publisher Summary: At twenty-eight, David Bell is the American Dream come true. He has fought his way to the top, surviving office purges and scandals to become a top television executive. David’s world is made up of the images that flicker across America’s screens, the fantasies that enthrall America’s imagination. When, at the height of his success, the dream (and the dream-making) become a nightmare, David sets out to rediscover reality. Camera in hand, he journeys across the country in a mad and moving attempt to capture and to impose a pattern on America’s—and his own—past, present, and future.

Genre: Literature

Rating: 6.5/10

Opening Sentence: Then we came to the end of another dull and lurid year.

Eric’s Two Cents: DeLillo’s debut novel showcases his immense and immediate talent, even as many parts careen wildly off the road. Reading the book now, decades after first publication, helps to highlight how ahead DeLillo was of his broader time, both in style and theme. His focus on memetic, pop-culture infused imagery; the gradual yet relentless creep of mass communications and what it does to us; the desire for something more. The writing itself is electric and still feels very modern.

Who Should Read This?

• People who lived through the late 1960s/early 1970s
• DeLillo completists and fiction writers
• People who have never experienced AM talk radio

Notable Quotables (may include spoilers)

• It was a party and we didn’t want to talk to each other. The whole point was to separate for the evening and find exciting people to talk to and then at the very end to meet again and tell each other how terrible it had been and how glad we were to be together again.
• She slipped her right foot out of her shoe and then, with exquisite nonchalance, tucked her leg way up behind her against the wall so that it disappeared, storklike, behind the shroud of her trenchcoat. She remained that way, on one leg, a cryptic shoe moored beneath her. Whether on purpose or not, Sullivan always made me feel totally inadequate. I was drawn to her, terribly.
• A young man was down on one knee in the middle of the lobby, photographing the photograph. I stood behind him for a moment and the effect was unforgettable. Time and distance were annihilated and it seemed that the children were smiling and waving at him. Such is the prestige of the camera, its almost religious authority, its hypnotic power to command reverence from subject and bystander alike, that I stood absolutely motionless until the young man snapped the picture. It was as though I feared that any small movement on my part might distract one of those bandaged children and possibly ruin the photograph.
• “I have to get out of here, Sully.”
  “David?”
  “I no longer control the doors. Words blow in and out. I can hear them perfectly, with astounding clarity, but I can’t believe they’re coming from my mouth. I think it’s time to leave.”
  “Nothing will be solved out there, you know. It’s just telephone poles stringing together the cities. Those distances out there will only confuse you.”
• Women, here’s a remarkable new way to give junior and sis the kind of nutrition they need for those growing-up years. Kill your husband and feed him to the kids. You’d love that, wouldn’t you? All that melting butterflesh. All the animosities in your soul washed away by his flavor-rich enzymes. What subtle gravies you could conjure with those executive haunches. Enough and more again for all the saucepans of Bloomingdale’s. Sweet waves of acidic backwash. Alfresco would be nice. Save the uglies for junior. To make him brave. Garnish with parsley.
• Later that day I trotted halfway across town in the rain in order to do some work at the library. At night I sat alone in the front of the camper, listening to insects. I felt an urge to leave that place, to go roaring onto a long straight expressway into the West; to forget the film and what it was beginning to mean to me; to face mountains and deserts; to smash my likeness, prism of all my images, and become finally a man who lives by his own power and smell.
• “I jumped a guy on a bike once. He was pedaling along outside a village. It was known to be hostile. I dropped down behind him, way behind him, and followed him up the road a bit, flying real low. When I was about a hundred meters behind him, I laid my fire all around him. He busted like a teacup. You see, there’s a primal joy to hitting a thing in motion. It’s one of the oldest pleasures there is. Something moves, boom, you wing it. Beast, bird or human, the thing to do is knock it down. It’s primal, Davy. It’s basic to the origin of the species. I’m learning to live with it.”
• “Slice-of-life commercials usually deal with the more depressing areas of life – odors, sores, old age, ugliness, pain. Fortunately the image is big enough to absorb the anti-image. Not that I object to the anti-image in principle. It has its possibilities; the time may not be far off when we tire of the dream. But the anti-image is being presented much too literally. The old themes. The stereotyped dialogue. It needs a touch of horror, some mad laughter from the graveyard. One of these days some smart copywriter will perceive the true inner mystery of America and develop an offshoot to the slice-of-life. The slice-of-death.”
• We are what we remember. The past is here, inside this black clock, more devious than night or fog, determining how we see and what we touch at this irreplaceable instant in time.
• “The camera appreciates your willingness to appear before it under such difficult circumstances.”