
Don DeLillo deserves the Nobel - samclemens
https://www.bookforum.com/print/2701/why-don-delillo-deserves-the-nobel-23926
======
christophergs
A favourite DeLillo quote from an old interview:

> I ask him what attracted him to writing, whether he studied literature or
> was stirred by certain authors or books. "No, no," he says, "I didn't do
> anything. I don't have an explanation, I don't know why I wanted to write. I
> did some short stories at that time, but very infrequently. I quit my job
> just to quit. I didn't quit my job to write fiction. I just didn't want to
> work anymore. I think more than writers, the major influences on me have
> been European movies, and jazz, and Abstract Expressionism."

Source: [https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/19/magazine/dangerous-don-
de...](https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/19/magazine/dangerous-don-delillo.html)

And yeah, he should get the Nobel.

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briga
There are many writers who deserved the Nobel prize but never received it.
Joyce, Kafka, Borges, Proust, Tolstoy, to name a few. The prize has been so
consistently politicized over the years that it's hard to see it as a measure
of much of anything other than how much a bunch of Swedish academics happen to
like that author.

If it were up to me I might pick Thomas Pynchon or Cormac McCarthy over
DeLillo for a Nobel prize, but there are many other worthy non-American
candidates

~~~
PunchTornado
How many Nobel prizes have been so far? 120 or something like that. For more
than a century of literature. By definition there will be great writers left
out.

It is nobody's fault or bias.

~~~
edjrage
I don't know, maybe _it is_ someone's fault if a system with arbitrarily
defined rules expressly made for awarding those who deserve recognition
doesn't award all those who deserve recognition?

~~~
gowld
Nobel Prize is just some dude who wanted to do something nice with money he
made selling dynamite. There's no reason to imbue it with responsibility for
picking which authors deserve to be immortalized.

~~~
edjrage
Sure, it may be too much to say it's someone's "fault". My point is just that
even the people who give Nobel prizes probably agree that the aforementioned
authors deserve getting something at least very similar to it, they just
didn't get it because of some fake scarcity that implies someone else deserved
it "more". So although no one has any obligation to change the tradition, it
might be a good idea to do so.

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dpau
There is no better time to read DeLillo's "White Noise" and learn about "The
Airborne Toxic Event".

~~~
mbrock
That book mentions a baby whose first word is “Toyota.”

Probably somewhere in the world a baby’s first word will be “Corona.”

~~~
freepor
My sons first multisyllabic word was “OK Google.” 15 seconds later the Google
Home was unplugged and it’s still sitting on the mantel unplugged two years
later.

~~~
dpau
ha! but maybe not too surprising given the origin of the word googol

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lqet
Without expecting anything or even knowing DeLillo, I bought a cheap faulty
copy of "Libra" a few years at a train station bookshop. It is a brilliant
novel for reasons I am not nearly eloquent enough to describe, and I very much
doubt that the point DeLillo wanted to make could be phrased in less than the
novel's 400 pages (which I think is true for most (if not all) great novels
and the main reason why I was always extremely sceptical of anything
resembling the classic "write down what the book is about" exercise in
school).

~~~
run2arun
I had the exact same experience with DeLillo. The opening scenes with the boy
travelling in trains with his face glued to the window as the train "smashed
through the darkness" got me since I used to travel by suburban trains a lot.
From there, a portrait of a man emerges that's the opposite of the usual
biography. Biographies tend to be portraits drawn with a strong hand, dark
pencil, clearly outlined, full of details and colors and leave no ambiguity.
If intimate moments are at one end of the spectrum and their consequences are
the far other end, DeLillo moves between the two like only a true craftsman
can.

Of course, there is a gimmick in the book. I didn't realize that at first. I
don't remember at what point and like usual gimmicks it hits you and you react
as you realize whose story this is.

As an engineer, I live in a world full of definitions and determinate actions
and consequences. Literature is what I have access to that constantly reminds
me that there is more that meets the eye and truths are relative. Don
DeLillo's literature ranks right up there.

~~~
krelian
>As an engineer, I live in a world full of definitions and determinate actions
and consequences. Literature is what I have access to that constantly reminds
me that there is more that meets the eye and truths are relative

It's a truth I dreadfully came to realize over the last few years. Not about
literature, although that is a great way to figure it out and enforce the
sensation, but about the world. Ideas, things that I took for granted for so
long with my scientific and data nurtured mind no longer have the same hold.
Like a glacier that forever seemed eternal they are now melting but not have
not yet melted completely, I cannot see what's behind the glacier. That's were
the dread comes in.

~~~
itronitron
You might want to read 'The Crying of Lot 49' by Thomas Pynchon, or not. It's
a fairly short book.

~~~
krelian
Thanks. I've been meaning to start reading Pynchon for a while now. This gives
him another boost in the proverbial ladder.

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kevinventullo
I have never read DeLillo, but reading this makes me think not that he
deserves a Nobel prize, but that the author of the article should stop holding
the Nobel prize in such high regard. It's like being outraged that your
favorite film didn't win an Oscar.

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qubex
The first DeLillo book I ever read was _Ratner’s Star_ , inspired by the many
quotations Clifford Pickover interspersed throughout his mid- to late-nineties
works.

One such quote haunts me to this very day: “ _No definition of ‘science’ can
be complete without a reference to ‘terror’._ ”

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irremediable
Is anyone here a DeLillo fan? Seems like a natural place for me to ask for
recommendations.

If I loved White Noise but didn't get much from Underworld, which DeLillo book
would be best to read next?

~~~
QuesnayJr
Every book before Underworld is more like White Noise than they are like
Underworld. Libra is probably the best one. If you like (American) football,
then "End Zone" is good.

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Nimitz14
I enjoy reading something that is written by someone passionate about the
topic, and I enjoyed this perspective, but I disagree based on my admittedly
limited experience with DD.

I've read white noise and zero-k, and found both underwhelming. To be fair, I
read these after having read most of DFW work - which I find far superior -
which probably spoilt it for me. I didn't find the prose good enough to make
up for the lack of a story. Nor the themes that interesting or well explored.

~~~
pavlov
Based on the same limited exposure to DeLillo, I'd agree with you.

"Zero-K" was so boring, I dropped it maybe 75% way through. In general I enjoy
both genre and "literary" novels, but Zero-K felt deliberately anodyne:
meandering minimalist pseudo-scifi optimized for the sensibilities of the "New
Yorker" readership.

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brofallon
As someone who loves to read but has no formal background in Literature, I'm
very intrigued by the ways in which people rank authors so as to find the one
most deserving of some award. The article provides a handful of criteria,
including things like "striking and realized style", "consistency of
excellence".. how are these measured? Can reasonable people disagree? I don't
mean to say that it's all arbitrary. I have this feeling that it's not, but at
the same time it's impossible to directly quantify or measure in a manner
persuasive to everyone. I have no idea if Delillo is deserving or not, but the
discussions sounding who is and who is not, what criteria are used, and how
authors are measured against those criteria are the most fascinating part to
me.

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seanhunter
These sorts of debates are silly. "Gravity's Rainbow" deserved the Pulitzer.
Even the Pulitzer committee thought so. Yet it didn't get it.

Awards are not really a meaningful way of recognizing the merit of any kind of
artistic endeavour. Sometimes they get it right, but often they do not.

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
I'd heard GR was so great, tried to read it, abandoned it just a few pages in.
Having watched too many award winning/artistically acclaimed films too, I now
know to stay away from them. Seems they're more about the critics getting one
up on someone than is it actually worth spending time on.

~~~
seanhunter
It's amazing but a pretty tough intro to Pynchon. If you're going to read him
I would recommend "The Crying of Lot 49" (a fun short novel) or "Slow Learner"
(A set of short stories). "Inherent Vice" would maybe be a fun one to start
with too.

It's not for everyone in any case. One of my best friends jokes about the fact
that every time I say I like a book, for a while she would buy it, read a
chapter, hate it and not read any more.

~~~
currymj
there's a few points where people tend to give up on it. i myself stopped
reading it twice at the giant cocaine adenoid, and again when the man chases
the harmonica into the toilet. never finished it.

------
crispinb
The opening scene of Underworld, enacting a baseball match, is some of the
most electrifying writing I've experienced (& I dislike spectator sports, and
know zip about baseball).

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dominotw
> Do you find it as obvious as I do that Don DeLillo richly deserves to
> receive the Nobel Prize

> The inner workings of the Swedish Academy are opaque,

Huh? How do we know its obvious if we don't know what the criteria is.

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dondawest
I completely disagree. I think Don Delillo has an unbelievably cool writing
style (especially how he only writes one paragraph per page and makes sure his
words LOOK AESTHETIC in addition to conveying meaning). But DeLillo has
essentially zero significance in American culture.

No millennials read or connect with his work, and only very few boomers do. I
find Delillo’s work largely hostile to readers that don’t share his exact
super-wide frame of references and age.

I like DeLillo but the idea of giving him a Nobel is an absolute joke, save
the Nobel for artists who actually influence other artists and cultures.
DeLillo just doesn’t have much influence and his highly verbose style is
transparently hostile.

~~~
perseusmandate
I suppose you think Olga Tokarczuk or Svetlana Alexievich are more popular
with millennials?

David Foster Wallace and Harold Bloom both have called Delillo one of the
greatest living authors. I and quite a few other people I know in my age range
(mid-20s) have enjoyed him without sensing his work is irrelevant to our
demographic. Even his denser works like Underworld read like a 'pageturner'
relative to his contemporaries like Pynchon or even Wallace. Let alone other
writers in the canon like Dostoyevsky.

My criticism would honestly be that his writing is overly stylized and lacking
in nuance. He inherits the hyperbolic, poetic quality of McCarthy but often
applies it to the mundane and the result sometimes feels overwrought and
overdramatized vs realistic. Zero K specifically felt like a fan fiction
version of William Gibson's non sci-fi stuff like Zero History. And most of
what he is trying to convey he just says outright in a 3rd person omniscient
voice.

I actually think he is very culturally relevant and influential but I sense
that if you were to evaluate his writing through the lens of academic
comparative literature like the Nobel Prize committee (not the standard
literature should be held to imo) it would fall short of most other laureats,
Bob Dylan notwithstanding

~~~
dondawest
> My criticism would honestly be that his writing is overly stylized and
> lacking in nuance. He inherits the hyperbolic, poetic quality of McCarthy
> but often applies it to the mundane and the result sometimes feels
> overwrought and overdramatized vs realistic.

Could not agree more.

Bob Dylan and DFW deserve Nobels, IMO. Both of those guys have fans of all
generations.

I feel like DeLillo is a “writer’s writer.” People like DFW applaud him, as
you point out.

I just don’t agree that DeLillo has anywhere near the amount of influence as,
say, DFW.

I’m frequently amazed how large and diverse DFW’s fan group is.

DeLillo seems to only appeal to writers. His work is very obscure, even within
educated niches.

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PunchTornado
Another American white man receiving the Nobel for literature? <\- This will
be the headlines in the Guardian. Why not pick African or Asian writers who
don't write in English and aren't famous?

My point is that no matter who the Committee in Sweden choses, there will be
people writing how stupid that decision was.

~~~
dang
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