Two views on Don DeLillo’s new book Cosmopolis
– John Updike in The New Yorker:
In a land of chunky, garish, anxiousto-please books, Don DeLillo?s thirteenth novel, ?Cosmopolis? (Scribner; $25), is physically cool, as sleek and silver-touched and palely pure as a white stretch limo, which is in fact the action?s main venue.
– Laura Miller in the New York Observer:
His newest novel, Cosmopolis, alas, is all what happened? Is the book supposed to be serious? Funny? A parody of Mr. DeLillo?s own writing, with its pompous pronouncements (“Money has lost its narrative quality the way painting did ?. Money is talking to itself”), the apocalyptic posturing, surreal crowd scenes and brainy, numbed-out yet studly protagonist? It?s distressingly hard to tell. Nevertheless, this is a deeply silly book, and it?s hard to imagine that that could be intentional.
I almost picked this book up in my most recent wanderings at Barnes and Noble but I just couldn’t take the plot seriously. Instead I picked up The Afterword.
I can remember how excited I was about Underworld after reading the first chapter — an excitement that was gradually, but inexorably, squeezed out of me as I took on the rest of the novel.