Well, I can now say I’ve read a novel by Don DeLillo. I don’t know, guys. I just didn’t get it. It seemed…stupid.
Exhausted and disillusioned by fame, rock star Bucky Wunderlick holes up in a girlfriend’s apartment in the Bowery, in the days before all seediness was priced right out of Manhattan. His girlfriend eventually shows up with two packages – a crazy amazing new drug that everyone wants to be the first to market, and the elusive ‘Mountain Tapes’ that Bucky recorded in seclusion, and which everyone wants to distribute. Various factions (Bucky’s former band mate, the corporate behemoth that manages him, an anarchic commune, and some sort of violent gang) all descend on Bucky’s apartment, after one or both of the packages. Bucky weathers all of this with equanimity, thinking about going back on tour, or killing himself, or murdering someone. This is supposedly about the overall vibe of the time (late sixties). Or something.
Okay, but first of all: a rock God named ‘Bucky?’ Bucky is the name of a cartoon beaver. Not a rock star. And what the hell was this book about, anyway? And I really don’t need to read any fictional song lyrics, particularly not two entire chapters full of them, and what the fuck – reproducing the copyright info? Seriously?
I didn’t get it, and would have to read it a second time to say anything intelligent about it, and although it’s a short novel, I have no interest in doing that. I will read another DeLillo someday, though, as I did not give him a fair shake this time through, and people freaking love him, so there must be something there. I should probably read White Noise.
And I will say, the writing in Great Jones Street is really good, even if it doesn’t outline anything I can really grab ahold of; and many of the minor characters are fantastic (I would have enjoyed a novel centered on any one of them), even if I can’t see their purpose in the narrative. Also, there are passages like this:
Americans pursue loneliness in various ways. For me, Great Jones Street was a time of prayerful fatigue. I became a half-saint, practiced in visions, informed by a sense of bodily economy, but deficient in true pain. I was preoccupied with conserving myself for some unknown ordeal to come and did not make work by engaging in dialogues, or taking more than the minimum number of steps to get from place to place, or urinating unnecessarily.
Yes.
