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Mao II: A Novel Kindle Edition
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"One of the most intelligent, grimly funny voices to comment on life in present-day America" (The New York Times), Don DeLillo presents an extraordinary new novel about words and images, novelists and terrorists, the mass mind and the arch-individualist. At the heart of the book is Bill Gray, a famous reclusive writer who escapes the failed novel he has been working on for many years and enters the world of political violence, a nightscape of Semtex explosives and hostages locked in basement rooms. Bill's dangerous passage leaves two people stranded: his brilliant, fixated assistant, Scott, and the strange young woman who is Scott's lover--and Bill's.
Mao II is a masterpiece of contemporary fiction. In Delillo's canon, I rate it better than White Noise and on par with his massive opus, Underworld. Despite Mao II's relative brevity, the denseness of ideas contained within are staggering. This was easily one of the best books of the 1990's, if not the last quarter century. Right up there with Mason & Dixon, American Pastoral, and a few select other masterworks.
While the novel is composed of characters who appear, for the most part, throughout the story, the book is structured more as a series of vingettes. Delillo deals with many themes, but the primary one, I think, is the struggle between the individual and the 'masses' in contemporary society. In this regard, he traverses the same terrain as Marcuse in "One Dimensional Man" and Canetti in "The Power of Crowds". And, he does it on a global scale: touching upon everything from a Moonie wedding, to the rise of the Ayatollah in Iran, Chairman Mao in China, and of course, contemporary American society.
Other themes are: the power of images, terrorism and the narrative power of terrorists (this is 9 years before 9/11), the role of the artist (writer, photographer, etc), true belief, teachers and apprentices, and censorship, state and otherwise. All this woven together concisely with his meticulously sculpted sentences. I often pick up this book and randomly re-read various chapters; in this fashion, I've probably read the entire book 5 times.
Lastly, I've debated with friends whether Delillo's vision in Mao II is a bleak one or a hopeful one. Like the old "Lady and the Tiger" fable, it probably comes down to who you are more than any clear answer from him.
Mao II is a masterpiece of contemporary fiction. In Delillo's canon, I rate it better than White Noise and on par with his massive opus, Underworld. Despite Mao II's relative brevity, the denseness of ideas contained within are staggering. This was easily one of the best books of the 1990's, if not the last quarter century. Right up there with Mason & Dixon, American Pastoral, and a few select other masterworks.
While the novel is composed of characters who appear, for the most part, throughout the story, the book is structured more as a series of vingettes. Delillo deals with many themes, but the primary one, I think, is the struggle between the individual and the 'masses' in contemporary society. In this regard, he traverses the same terrain as Marcuse in "One Dimensional Man" and Canetti in "The Power of Crowds". And, he does it on a global scale: touching upon everything from a Moonie wedding, to the rise of the Ayatollah in Iran, Chairman Mao in China, and of course, contemporary American society.
Other themes are: the power of images, terrorism and the narrative power of terrorists (this is 9 years before 9/11), the role of the artist (writer, photographer, etc), true belief, teachers and apprentices, and censorship, state and otherwise. All this woven together concisely with his meticulously sculpted sentences. I often pick up this book and randomly re-read various chapters; in this fashion, I've probably read the entire book 5 times.
Lastly, I've debated with friends whether Delillo's vision in Mao II is a bleak one or a hopeful one. Like the old "Lady and the Tiger" fable, it probably comes down to who you are more than any clear answer from him.
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