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A review by wmbogart
Americana by Don DeLillo
"[The television commercial] moves him from first person consciousness to third person. In this country there is a universal third person, the man we all want to be. Advertising has discovered this man. It uses him to express the possibilities open to the consumer. To consume in America is not to buy; it is to dream. Advertising is the suggestion that the dream of entering the third person singular might possibly be fulfilled."
I have reached the point where the coining of aphorisms seems a very worthy substitute for good company or madness.
“Interesting,” I said.
“What do you think it means?”
“Very interesting.”
“Thanks a lot.”
DeLillo's funniest novel? Maybe his most "entertaining" at some base level? I don't meant to imply that it is slight or trivial. It isn't. With Americana he surveys the many preoccupations that would serve as a through-line in his work - language, commerce, systems, the image, ritual, community, (im-)personal relations, academia, the self at a distance, etc. Only in comparison to something like Underworld would this feel like a breezy, enjoyable novel.
Disclaimer - I think almost every DeLillo novel is funny. You gotta laugh at the crushing absurdity of systems and at the interconnectedness of things both terrifying and trivial. Maybe. What else can you do?