I read this book as a friend recommended it to me. It was intriguing to me because of the idea of post modern/ contemporary literature, which
was something I had never learnt about till I read this book. Thanks to my friend, Alex.
The story is bizarre. It took me some
time to get into this book. I had to re-read some parts. Anyway, the grotesque
element is the fact that it is giving me a feeling of dystopia. If I could summarize this book in one phrase, it is probably "A denial of death".
It is about a man named Jack Gladney, a professor in
Hitler studies, who is in the fourth marriage with Babette. Their kids from
their previous marriages are weird, brilliantly smart and precocious. The story
is divided into three sections. The first section is slow, this is the part I had to re-read
several times just because I lost track, also this book is a tough-read. But the main bulk of the story
lies in the second and the third parts, in which the story develops more, from
the point of airborne toxic event as
Jack
got exposed to the air for a few minutes and then he's constantly
obsessed
in his mind about his own death. It is an incessant battle. His fear of
death shuts him to accept many ideas too, for example when his son's
friend would like to challenge death with snakes, he could not try to
accept it at all. Lots
of conversations in this novel I think are very philosophical, and the plot is a
little bit unsettling. For example Jack and Heinrich's talk about rain, or the
philosophical talk between Jack and his doctor. It jumps from one character's
development to another, then there are bizarre conversations between Jack and his friend, Murray, Jack on Hitler
and Murray on Elvis Presley, which make this novel comical in its own way.
This book is very futuristic,
given that it was actually written long time ago, and therefore the consistency
that links it to the modern world today is uncanny - people who rely heavily on
technology, all the white noise (air-con, television, fan, telephone), swayed
away people on what has become more important in their lives. Furthermore, this
technology should have helped humans in terms of death, yet, in this book, Jack
and his wife are constantly in fear of death. They are pushed to the surface,
the discussion about who will die first between him and his wife is intense,
the death itself has become the central theme in this book. It makes this man
inside Jack introspective but obsessive with death.
The book is also dramatized
satirically about how the modern society keep focusing on consumerism, with
references like the way people spend
loads of their time in the supermarkets, mocking that it is all futile. Technology is useless.
The ending, however, is
predictable, and so I don't really like the ending, or maybe that's the way Don
Delillo wanted to play with the plot, making it confusing and completely
predictable.
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