Did New York Magazine think it was starting a meme when it ranked Delillo works? Well, it’s quacking like a meme. Ed Park picked it up first with his excellent take. His ranking goes, from best to less-best:
The Names
Amazons
Americana
Ratner’s Star
White Noise
—-
“Pafko at the Wall”
Running Dog
Great Jones Street
—-
Underworld
End Zone
Mao II
Libra
Players
—
Game Six (screenplay), Three Plays, Valparaiso, The Day Room, Love-Lies-Bleeding
—-
Cosmopolis
The Body Artist
What is it about Delillo readers that makes us completists? And shame on not-quite-completist me for being clueless, until this moment, about Amazons. Anyway, my take on the works of Don Delillo:
THE BEST
Underworld. So superb, after he’d been away so long. The first 50 pages — prologue, “Pafko at the Wall,” what-have-you — stunning. The polished, complete version of what he’d been working on in bits and pieces for years, all in one great novel.
Ratner’s Star. Science fiction with a protagonist whose name is ripped from Joyce. Brilliant men retreat to holes, eat worms, contemplate the screaming beauty of math and the stars. Did I mention it’s funny? Each time I force this book on someone I regret it, because it never comes back. I buy it again and again.
Great Jones Street. I love rock and roll. I love that Delillo’s imagined Jim Morrison could just as easily be Kurt Cobain or the next generation of rock star desperate for anonymity. I love that I have a first edition hardback of this, dust jacket and all.
EXCELLENT
Libra. History and truth. Delillo steps into the middle of the morass of conflicting Kennedy assassination accounts and tells a fiction that somehow trumps them all.
The Names. Not fun, by any stretch. While Delillo’s writing is often, at some level, about language, here he runs headlong at language with fiction, which is sort of like trying to peer at your own retina. Time for me to revisit it — maybe, now that I’ve dosed on semiotics and deconstructionism, it won’t be so impenetrable.
VERY GOOD
Mao II and The Players. These have gone vague, but at least they were kind of romp-ish. Fame and belief and terrorism and sex, if I recall.
Americana. Delillo’s first book is massive, funny, wicked, smart and also cumbersome, awkwardly paced and untrimmed. It’s the author as novice, and a fabulous way to see some of his artifice exposed. It feels like he’s trying to do Underworld but hasn’t quite developed the chops. Yet.
End Zone and Running Dog. Consumed in a fit of Delillo fandom, went down easy.
The Body Artist. Beautiful and full of pain and mourning. Almost undoes itself with silence (it’s a very slight book). An inexpressible grief.
ALAS
Cosmopolis. Ouch. Strangely cringeworthy.
WHY DO PEOPLE KNOW THIS BOOK? I’LL TELL YOU WHY.
White Noise. Oh, is the narrator a college professor? Who puts it on their syllabi? That’s right: college professors! It’s not the narcissim alone, it’s that there are so many others they might pick. So the students read it, and there you go: they think Delillo writes about college professors. Grumble.
And on to Falling Man. Since Mao II, I’ve bought each new Delillo in hardcover, and I don’t see any reason to stop. I like what I’ve read so far.
But as the bookstores around here are closed this time of night, I’ve gotten The Names down off the shelf.
Wow, if Cosmopolis and The Body Artist are really worse than Valparaiso, they’re going to stay in mint condition on my shelves.
I think Pafko at the Wall, as originally published, is the best thing I’ve ever read. I think Underworld as a whole, with Pafko as the prologue is incredible, but don’t think DD was able to keep up the brilliance he set up with those first 50 or so pages.
And Pinky, find Amazons, I think you’d enjoy reading about Cleo Birdwell, the first woman to play in the NHL.