Mao II, by Don DeLillo: **7/8

My only previous experience reading DeLillo was with his Underworld, one of my favorite books, so I was very excited to read another of his creations. I'm not going to say that it disappointed me, even though I didn't love it, but it was not as exciting for me as Underworld was, nor was it even close. But it was clearly the same writer, with his gift for analyzing and describing the mundane in our society, working with interesting ideas in an unusual fashion. It's just that in this case it didn't add up to a great story for me. It's much much much shorter than Underworld, and I think that's part of the difference, though it seems clear to me that DeLillo is doing exactly what he wants with this book.

More than almost every other book I've read lately, this work feels like modern fiction in the way that the music that I write is modern music - somewhat abstract connections between things that can't completely be explained, ideas left incomplete, situations explored and then dropped, connections between people (or sounds) noted but not explored. I think the reason that this approach worked better for me with Underworld than it did here is that more of these connections had time to be explored and pondered over. In this book, because of its brevity, these abstract connections don't have time to sit in my brain and develop. In that sense it really does remind me of my own work, because the timing and duration is everything. I've learned that the musical language I use determines the time necessary for the piece. Certain kinds of ideas simply need to resonate in the brain for a while to have any effect. And it seems to me that DeLillo is a guy that can use some time to sit in your brain. Because of the experimentation and abstraction, I feel badly not giving this book a higher rating simply based on the fact that DeLillo is trying to do something more, something different. I just think that he didn't completely get the pacing correct.

QUOTES:
pg. 40: "Sick and dying people with nowhere to live and there are bigger and bigger towers all the time, fantastic buildings with all that rentable space. Am I exaggerating?"

pg. 41: "She was sure she already had what she'd come for but a hundred times in her life she thought she had the cluster of shots she wanted and then found better work deep in the contact sheets. She liked working past the feeling of this is it. Important to keep going, obliterate the sure thing and come upon a moment of stealthy blessing."
(summer 2003)

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