Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman Ever to Play in the National Hockey League - Cleo Birdwell (better known as Don DeLillo) (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1980)
Apparently DeLillo has pretty much disowned this book, omitting it from official bibliographies and blocking its republication. (As a result, this book was tough to track down in a library.) I'm not entirely sure why. I mean, it's not great literature, but it brings in much of the absurdity that I found in White Noise (and one of the same characters, for that matter).
But I didn't read it because of DeLillo. In fact, if I remember correctly, I heard about the book well before I found out Birdwell was a pseudonym. You know me, I'm a sucker for hockey books. And for complaining about how unrealistic they are. And this one offers ample opportunity.
Cleo is a rookie for the Rangers. And the first woman to play in the NHL. So she gets a lot of attention, naturally. But apparently she is like Taylor Hall or something, the rate at which she seems to score. And speaking of scoring, there is plenty of that off the ice. It seems like everyone circling the team eventually succumbs to the belief that sex with her will ... I don't know, do something. And despite assertions that make her seem sorta meh about most, if not all these men, she is usually a willing participant. In some of the weirdest sex scenes I've read in a while.
And then there is the former player who shares her apartment, a man suffering from some bizarre affliction and whose search (aided by Cleo) ends with him spending months asleep in a machine. The way in which this whole scenario is normalized is what I remember best about DeLillo from past forays into his work. And it hints at something deeper than "Cleo plays hockey and has lots of sex." But I just couldn't get my finger on it.
Showing posts with label DeLillo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DeLillo. Show all posts
Monday, December 05, 2011
Monday, May 31, 2010
Airborne Toxic Event
White Noise - Don DeLillo (1985, Viking Penguin)
At some point while reading, I started a mental list of "Things this book reminded me of," but because I didn't write it down, I now only remember Catch-22. This is disappointing, b/c I was planning to arrange this whole post around this list.
Instead, I'll have to talk about my vague sense of dis-ease while reading. I have to figure it was carefully cultivated. The talk of death and emergencies, the constant hum of non sequitur from background televisions or radio, the terribly sophisticated contentiousness of the children, and the regular interspersion of brand names... ugh, I feel a little uncomfortable again just thinking of it all.
[Sorry, just took a break to have dinner and also to randomly watch this video of my '07 Ducks]
Okay, in short. Dude invented the field of Hitler studies, which he teaches at a Midwest college. On his fifth marriage to a woman who has also had several. Many many children from all the various pairings - some live with them, others don't but make appearances. Then there's an "airborne toxic event" that forces the family to evacuate, and also prompts a couple of my favorite moments of the book. In one, Gladney tries to reassure his family that things'll be fine b/c this sort of thing happens to poor people of color, not to college professors. In another, an organization charged with planning simulations of emergency response is attempting to respond to the real thing, in order to practice for their real work of simulations. (The later simulation is also kind of awesome.) Gladney ends up exposed to the toxins, which spins off into how both he and his wife respond to the threat of death.
Among the points of interest were Gladney's assertion early in the novel that "all plots tend to move deathward," which he isn't even sure he believes but which he revisits again and again; the ridiculous discussions Gladney has with a fellow teacher, the last of which poses the question of "how does a person say good-bye to himself;" and the need of non-believers for believers to exist somewhere out there.
So in the end you end up with a satire, of a world that doesn't feel dangerous or meaningless per se, but which is deeply discomfiting. It's funny, but somehow not humorous. It's also strangely dated. None of DeLillo's themes have been rendered irrelevant by the trends of the last 25 years, and yet they feel so worn, as though we've already grown weary of them. Too many readers have followed in DeLillo's footsteps, perhaps, so what may be legitimately original is sadly no longer so for me.
At some point while reading, I started a mental list of "Things this book reminded me of," but because I didn't write it down, I now only remember Catch-22. This is disappointing, b/c I was planning to arrange this whole post around this list.
Instead, I'll have to talk about my vague sense of dis-ease while reading. I have to figure it was carefully cultivated. The talk of death and emergencies, the constant hum of non sequitur from background televisions or radio, the terribly sophisticated contentiousness of the children, and the regular interspersion of brand names... ugh, I feel a little uncomfortable again just thinking of it all.
[Sorry, just took a break to have dinner and also to randomly watch this video of my '07 Ducks]
Okay, in short. Dude invented the field of Hitler studies, which he teaches at a Midwest college. On his fifth marriage to a woman who has also had several. Many many children from all the various pairings - some live with them, others don't but make appearances. Then there's an "airborne toxic event" that forces the family to evacuate, and also prompts a couple of my favorite moments of the book. In one, Gladney tries to reassure his family that things'll be fine b/c this sort of thing happens to poor people of color, not to college professors. In another, an organization charged with planning simulations of emergency response is attempting to respond to the real thing, in order to practice for their real work of simulations. (The later simulation is also kind of awesome.) Gladney ends up exposed to the toxins, which spins off into how both he and his wife respond to the threat of death.
Among the points of interest were Gladney's assertion early in the novel that "all plots tend to move deathward," which he isn't even sure he believes but which he revisits again and again; the ridiculous discussions Gladney has with a fellow teacher, the last of which poses the question of "how does a person say good-bye to himself;" and the need of non-believers for believers to exist somewhere out there.
So in the end you end up with a satire, of a world that doesn't feel dangerous or meaningless per se, but which is deeply discomfiting. It's funny, but somehow not humorous. It's also strangely dated. None of DeLillo's themes have been rendered irrelevant by the trends of the last 25 years, and yet they feel so worn, as though we've already grown weary of them. Too many readers have followed in DeLillo's footsteps, perhaps, so what may be legitimately original is sadly no longer so for me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
