u/Future-Slip2217

(Spoilers also for the ending sequences of Gravity's Rainbow)

Sprawling, immense, the book seems to fluctuate so greatly in a way I haven't seen since Gravity's Rainbow. For about the first half everything is simplified, easy to piece together once you understand the structural schtick Delillo does with reverse chronology. Out of nowhere, the structure begins to shift heavily, dates are specified for each event, several characters get isolated per each chapter, the events become more intertwined, then less intertwined, information is sent out in a way that becomes difficult to process as the whole. Then, as we understand the context of Klara Sax and Nick Shay's "affair" and the accidental killing by means of shotgun blast in Shay's hands, it seems to finally stretch the length back to the prologue.

After this, the epilogue, which I believe is the best section of the book and the most impactful thing I have read from Delillo yet. The spreading of new information to tie up remnants of characters, sections from earlier, the future of Nick, and deciding to finish with the painful tale of Edgar and Esmeralda. As Edgar passes, her dissolution into cyberspace, the connections made throughout the text now being scattered to everyone, could have easily been an eyeroll, but Delillo knew how to pack this all together, in the same way Pynchon treated Slothrop's dispersed soul across the planet.

I don't know where I'm going with this, but please share your thoughts and I would love to read and respond. This was an incredibly life-affirming read, a special book, remarkable. The strong sadness that permeates throughout the book intertwined with beautiful moments, things that had me recollecting exact moments of my past, terrors, pain, love, it was unlike much I've read before. Life while living under this oppressive bleakness, fathers disappearing, Zapruder on loop, dismantled loves, but every so often allotting for a Speedy Gonzalez joke that transfers from culture-to-culture as a bit of levity.

Side note: The section with Edgar teaching of Adam and Eve and the kid stating "That's Tarzan and Jane!" was a moment that gave me a tremendous pause. When I was in school, I was reprimanded by my science teacher who asked what an Atom was and I responded "He married Eve!" and I got scolded in front of the entire class. Very bizarre to see something so similar here.

I check the price, expecting maybe $10+, nope, motherfuckers sent that out with a 7¢ decrease. Burn in hell 30 trillion times over.

They ought to call him Donald Duck, on account of his big bill and the fact he's a real quack!

I breezed by the earlier essays, loving every moment of them, even loving the first ten or so pages of Up Simba, but good lord, around the point in time where he's going on and on and brings up wearing a leather jacket because he's convinced Rolling Stone is still the cool-guy publication I had to stop. Did this essay work for anyone else? I get that a decent chunk is to show how miserably dull the act of following a politician around can be, deciphering the hierarchy of each minute strand of outer-proximity figures, but in its dissection of this severely dull behavior, it simply just made up for a severely dull read for me.

Obviously it was cheap, but I am a bit bummed. Will have to re-glue a book for the first time, I'm not certain I could read it in its current state.

Read this one about half a year ago and I resented having to go back to it day after day, for such a slim book it took ages to complete and I felt absolutely nothing by the time I finished it, stopped my seemingly blossoming Delillo journey in its tracks. Since then, I can't seem to stop thinking about the book. At first, weeks after I finished it, I would refer back to it ironically, "Imagine if you will, the dullest book ever written," but a couple months later I've been deconstructing the plot in my head over and over. In this time I've been attempting to figure out A. why this book was even published to begin with, it seems he doesn't have much to say on any thematic element despite the book being completely tied to themes rather than plot, and B. why I can't let go of this stupid book and why I think about it relentlessly. Would love to hear other people chime in, perhaps you've gone through these same motions.