BOOKS
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Warhol for his painting "Mao II," Delillo finds yet another kind of
symbol for the degradation and death inflicted by crowds. Behind
Warhol's repeated images of Mao, a multitude consisting of the same
face over and over, Delillo sees not only a deadening uniformity in the
nature of the picture itself, but the consumerist commercialism that mis–
takes cynical kitsch for genuine art.
Delillo has chosen to present these quite woolly ideas in spare and
sketchy set-pieces, punctuated with aphorism, rather than through sub–
stantially dramatized experience. Most of what he appears to be saying
we have
to
work out for ourselves, because he makes little effort
to
en–
act his gnomic aper<;:us through the lived experience of his characters. Of
course aphorism has been a hallmark of Delillo's fiction from the
beginning. As someone in his first novel,
Americal/a,
remarks, "I have
reached the point where the coining of aphorism seems a very worthy
substitute for good company or madness," which is a pretty pompous
aphorism in itself. But since aphorism cannot by definition serve as a
ubstitute for character or incident, in
Mao II
this rhetorical device
unintentionally becomes a
parody
of thought.
Parody, along with pastiche, is an important element of postmod–
ernism, and that slippery term turns up often in discussions of Delillo's
work which link him to such similarly labeled novelists as Thomas Pyn–
chon. But Delillo's literary temperament is not at all like that reflected
in
Gravity's Rail/VOW.
Pynchon turns the world upside-down in a manic
extravaganza of technological irreality and farce, but Delillo is much too
somber for such antic gamesmanship. His comic gestures always have a
shivery edge. And for all that his novels are stuffed with kooks, killers,
conspirators, he insists that his books are realistic portrayals of the way
things are right now. As he told an interviewer, "I've always had a
grounding in the real world, whatever esoteric flights 1 might indulge in
from time to time." And, far from being in perfect tune with the time, as
postmodernists like to see themselves, DeLillo fervently believes, as he re–
marked to a journalist years ago, "The writer is working against the age,
and so he feels some satisfaction in not being widely read. He is dimin–
ished by an audience."
Though some of DeLillo's admirers have tried to find a consistent
political position in his novels, they can't ignore his own insistence that
"I don't have a political theory or doctrine that I'm espousing ... I
don't have a program." His novels are unquestionably arresting, written
with powerful, scary eloquence, and drawn from an exceptionally well–
stocked mind. Yet he most certainly does have fiercely critical opinions
and attitudes about American society and culture that have unmistakable
political implications, and they are the taproot of his work. Out of the
