Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
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| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
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Tuesday, October 05, 2004 The Pitch: It's like New Jack City meets Joe Versus the Volcano! It's actually not like New Jack City meets Joe Versus the Volcano; I'm just pissed off that my throat has started hurting today. It reminds me of how it hurt when I got sick the other week when Edi went to New York. It feels exactly like that, and that is the absolute last thing I want. The only thing worse than getting sick this week would be getting sick next week when we're on the cruise. So I've blown my nose three million times today, scowling the whole time. I cannot tell you how pissed I'll be if this doesn't go away soon.This isn't the cheerful set-up I wanted for my entry of Katamari Damarcy, so let me talk about Delillo's Americana. It was, like many Delillo books, inspiring and depressing although not for the usual reasons. Americana is inspiring because it's Delillo's first novel and it's not great. It's got a lot of rough spots. A killer first section leads to an interminable second section which transitions to a dull third section with some fancy-ass writing throughout. It gives a certain amount of hope to wannabes like myself because it seems so fragile, so vulnerable, so new. But it's depressing because, unlike other Delillo books, it tries to be less elliptical, more straightforward in its goals. Americana sets its sights on all the traditional goals of the novel--it tells you more about its characters, it tries to explain its protagonist, it points to the dots it would like you to connect, it ambitiously tries to catch the spirit of the times--and it is precisely in these areas where it wins its dullest victories. The jump from Americana to End Zone is as inspiring a novelistic leap as I can think of because it shows a writer able to cut away almost all of his previous book's weaknesses and leave only the strengths. Americana is depressing because it points to either a failure in Delillo to embrace the strengths of the traditional novel, or the failure of the traditional novel to embrace Delillo's strengths. I can't imagine returning to work on the book in front of me without it feeling similarly hackneyed and ludicrous when dealing with the things like, oh, I dunno, character and plot and themes and stuff. I've gone so long without writing anything that I'm really scared about November. Delillo's Americana adds to those fears: if his first novel is better than anything I'm going to be able to write, and it's still a big old mess, what can I look forward to producing? posted by Jeff Lester | 5:50 PM | |
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