Don DeLillo

The first one I read was Underworld and its still my favourite. The beauty of it is from what I can remember you can just read a few pages at a time, theres no real plot. Plus its great value for money.

Hopefully somebody else whos read a few will come along and let you know.

Edit If you want a short one to start with read The Body Artist.

Cosmopolis is good and fairly short, it gives a reasonable over view of some of his more post-modern work. Mao II is another like that.

Underworld is a fantastic book, but if you want something shorter then White Noise is good as well.

I have no issues with length. Once I start a book I eventually finish it. Now that I've heard your praise on Underworld, I may pick it up, but I was hesitant at first because I'd hate to read shit spread out through hundreds of pages.

I've heard good things about White Noise.

As in introduction to DeLillo, I would probably suggest "White Noise," since it's accessible, an average length, and wonderfully written. "Underworld" is great, and I strongly recommend it as well. But to start (and maybe it's because this is what I started with), I'd go with "White Noise."

Just my two cents.

Me too! Underworld was the first Delillo I read and it enthralled and absorbed me completely. I highly recommend it.

just sayin'

http://chuckpalahniuk.net/recommended/author/don-delillo

Human Moments in World War III...It's short, only a story, really, but it's by far one of the best amalgamations of words I have ever read.

It's a first person story told by an astronaut in orbit around the earth, and what he experiences while witnessing WWIII take place below.

It satisfies every childlike curiosity, every muted desire, whatever there is in him of the scientist, the poet, the primitive seer, the watcher of fire and shooting stars, whatever obsessions eat at the night side of his mind, whatever sweet and dreamy yearnings he has ever felt for nameless places faraway, whatever earth sense he possesses, the neural pulse of some wilder awareness, a sympathy for beasts, whatever belief in an immanent vital force, the Lord of Creation, whatever secret harboring of the idea of human oneness, whatever wishfulness and simplehearted hope, whatever of too much and not enough, all at once and little by little, whatever burning urge to escape responsibility and routine, escape his own overspecialization, the circumscribed and inward spiraling self, whatever remnants of his boyish longing to fly, his dreams of strange spaces and eerie heights, his fantasies of happy death, whatever indolent and sybaritic leanings, lotus-eater, smoker of grasses and herbs, blue-eyed gazer into space--all these are satisfied, all collected and massed in that living body, the sight he sees from the window.

Why why why why WHY WHY WHY has nobody mentioned Libra yet?

I havent read it yet.

Why why why why WHY WHY WHY has nobody mentioned Libra yet?

Yes, I was wondering that myself, but, hands down Underworld is my favorite DeLillo. It's just great, but White Noise and Mao II are probably more accessible.

Mao II might be more accessible than Underworld in terms of length, but overall I wouldn't say that it was more accessible. From what I remember Mao II is more progressive and post-modern, whereas Underworld is a straight up American epic. Although having said that it's been an awful long time since I read MII, perhaps I ought to go back and re-read it.

I've only read white noise, but I've been meaning to check out some of his others. Has anyone read Falling Man? What about Great Jones Street? I think that might be my next Delillo venture.

But anyway, I loved White Noise. I thought it was hilarious.

I have to re-read White Noise. It kind of pissed me off the first time.

**************SPOILERS****************

Elvis/Hitler-I don't know German- My son's a smartass, why don't I smack him? - AAAAHHHHHH A BIG SCARY CLOUD MONSTER! - OMG I'M DYING! - My wife's a drug addict and shady science guy fucked her, I'mma kill him! - !BANG! WAIT OMG DON'T DIE! NUNS HELP HIM!!! - God don't care, stupid!!

WTF, man? LUL LUL LUL.

You're right on those bits at least.

Yeah, I didn't really pay attention, and somewhere in part 2 I got bored and just started skimming.

I read White Noise and Americana. Two of the most boring pointless books I've ever read. I think i even read a third one of his to keep giving him another chance but I can't even remember the title of it.
Even still, I got Underworld I'm going to go through one of these days because I won't let myself believe that everyone here would recommend such a boring writer. He's got to have something worth reading!

LIBRA!

I think I'm going to hit up Half Priced books for whatever they have that he did (which I believe isn't much).

End Zone is an often overlooked book of his. It's one of his earlier books and it's short.
"End Zone is no mere football novel any more than Catch-22 was a book about airplanes." -Philadelphia Inquirer
That's the review that made me give it a try.

I ended up getting Libra. The premise fascinated me. I'll come back later with first impressions.

Wells?

i always heard Delillo was a dreadful bore. I read the Body Artist, though, and liked it well enough. It's only about 100 pages, though. And they're those pages that're really like half pages. Kind of hard to be bored by something so short.

Started with UNDERWORLD, amazing. WHITE NOISE equally good. Can't seem to be able to find AMERICANA though.

Americana is good is you already know you really like DeLillo. It's as rambling as White Noise but unpolished, so some parts are dragged out in less awesome ways. I'd say half of it's really good, the other half needed editing/removal.

So if you loved White Nose...do it.

Just got back from a trip to Vegas, and read most of Libra. I'll finish it today, but I've gotten far enough to have an opinion.
It seems I've been reading a lot of historical fiction lately, and I'm not quite sure I'd throw Libra into that genre, but the plot is nothing less than fascinating. However, some parts were terribly slow, but I never really found myself hopelessly flipping towards the end of a chapter to count how many pages I had left before taking a breather. So, I've had slower reads. I'd recommend it in a discussion, but it's not suck-its-dick-off good, yet, at least. Endings go a long way with me, and if Libra catches me by surprise, I'll check back.

I will say this though, the book was good enough for me to want to check out something else by DeLillo, eventually. Maybe Underworld next time.

I maintain that Mao II is one of his best, better than Libra, but few seem to agree with me on this.

Just picked up Mao II, starting it right now.

Look it...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jul/27/david-cronenberg-don-delillo-...

David Cronenberg's next film looks set to be an adaptation of the Don DeLillo novel Cosmopolis, about a multibillionaire fund manager who spends a long day trying to get across Manhattan in a swanky stretch limo and ends up losing everything.

ALSO

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139658/

Libra and Underworld have also been optioned but haven't gone anywhere yet.

Oh wow, Ritt. I'm going to go ahead and call it right now: End Zone cannot be made into a movie. I know, I know, everyone says this about every adaptation ever, but seriously. If you focus on the plot action, without all the narrator's thought and whatnot, it's pretty much going to be a football movie, with a couple really funny scenes. Plus, the overriding conceit will probably just seem silly when it's done visually, I think.

anybody here read that one book he did about the Hitler porno? i think it was called Running Dog or something.

I just want to know if its any good.

It's on my list but I'll tell you I bet it's not even about a Hitler porno as much as it's a crazy deep metaphor for Western civilized living and human existence, swirling ice cubes in a glass of brandy while talking about death type shit...Incase, you just want Hitler sex.

Hitler Porno is just the MaGuffin!

I gave The Names a second try and am just about finishing it up. There's something about his prose that's so...ADHD like. In the middle of a narration or dialogue, sometimes, I find myself stopping to be like, "Wait, What does this even have to do with...?" or, "What was even the point of that, really?" but it's okay because the boring protagonist who spent his whole life questioning the deepest meaning of everything about anything while wondering why chicks think he's so weird always ends up doing something outrageous at the end and you're left going, "Ah, Americanism."

I still want to read it one day.