Players Book

She remembered what had been bothering her, the vague presence. Her life. She hated her life. It was a minor thing, though, a small bother. She tended to forget about it. When she recalled what it was that had been on her mind, she felt satisfied at having remembered and relieved that it was nothing worse. Typically brilliant writing that deconstructs a modern, upwardly mobile couple's lack of engagement with the world and themselves. DeLillo is a master of the postmodern form, or should that be lack of form? New forms; the author is ingenious at creating new ways to look at life and that skill is certainly highlighted here. Less successful: the publisher's attempt to market this as some sort of "urban thriller" - surely DeLillo had a good chuckle over that.



Typical lack of heart, soul, and emotional resonance as well, but then this is early DeLillo, so perhaps unsurprising. Unfortunately, uninteresting characters are often uninteresting to read about. I did enjoy the couple's ongoing contemplation of their own supposed complexity. And I particularly enjoyed the prologue (and, essentially, a summation of the novel), which portrays a group of upwardly mobiles briefly contemplating a movie about a terrorist massacre of various members of the bourgeoisie, and then quickly growing restless and bored. Less enjoyable: parallel narratives that appear to explore the husband and wife's separate attempts to break out of their norms, but ultimately only reify uninteresting gender norms, i.e. man = action and woman = emotion. That said, DeLillo's thesis - how lack of affect and lack of a subjective perspective will often result in a lack of effect and a dehumanizing "objectivity" - was occasionally compelling. "Your view of our unit is a special perception. An interpretation, really. You see a certain cross-section from a certain angle."