Mao II was an extremely difficult novel for me to get into. Before opening the novel to begin reading, I was excited. I was ready to step away from the Anthology for the remainder of the semester and invest my time into another novel. The first chapter immediately gave me a change of heart. I will openly admit that it was, up to this point, the first novel I could not complete. I was bored and continued asking myself, "What's the point?" and "does DeLillo even know what he wanted to write about?" Perhaps I'm close-minded, arrogant, ignorant and unwilling to accept that there may in fact be a point to the novel, however, I'm too over-come with boredom to concentrate on the bigger picture. I am hoping that in the future, I can grow-up a bit, as this is the only conclusion I can come to, and begin to appreciate the novel. At this point though, I will remain confused, a little stubborn, and biased against DeLillo.
Despite the above information, White Noise is on my summer reading list, so I am giving DeLillo another chance, I just hope it's worth it.
Oops... I liked it... and I read your post anyway. I'm sad you're so frustrated with it, but I hope you enjoy White Noise. I'm excited to hear your reaction to another of DeLillo's novels. I may have to pick up my own copy of White Noise!
ReplyDeleteI don't think I liked the novel much. I didn't not like it either, exactly, but it couldn't hold my attention. I also must confess to not having finished this one and some areas I just blatantly skimmed. There was so much going on and things didn't feel like they tied together in places, so much so that I couldn't find the point either. Of course, that might be because I didn't finish it and did skim parts. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteFurther, I didn't really care about any of the characters. Without that interest in them (whether liking or disliking them), it is hard for me to care about a novel as a whole.