Reviews for Players

The average rating for Players based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-08-04 00:00:00 Lynn Smith Many modern novels could quite easily be edited into stories that happened a hundred years ago. In other words they're essentially about personal relationships which take place in confined spaces and much of the background and even foreground detail is little more than shading. They have little to say about the forces of history. This could never be said about any of DeLillo's novels. His way of composing story is often to work inwards from the the exterior world. Environment - perhaps one should call it datasphere these days - often has as much, if not more, character than the characters themselves. JG Ballard is probably his British equivalent. He's always interested in the forces of history in the making. Always has a vision of where the world is going and is probably more prescient about the unseen forces that shape our lives than any other novelist I know. He also writes about alienation almost as well as Kafka. This is a very early novel of his and the only one I hadn't read. It's about the ennui of a New York stockbroker and his wife and the appetite for violence that ensues. It bears most of his trademarks. He can take what in embryo is an exciting plot - in this case the plan to bomb the brokerage - and rinse it clean of all the manipulative cheap tricks beloved by authors of commercial fiction. DeLillo wants us to think rather than feel. Which is why he's sometimes classified as a cold writer. Not one of his best novels but better than some of his more recent efforts.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-03-11 00:00:00 John Gruber 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."