Americana (Penguin Modern Classics)
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Product Description
Product Description
Prosperous, good-looking and empty inside, 28-year-old advertising executive David Bell appears on the surface to have everything. But he is a man on the brink of losing his sanity. Trapped in a Manhattan office with soulless sycophants as his only company, he makes an abrupt decision to leave New York for America's mid-west. His plan: to film the small-town lives of ordinary people and make contact with the true heart of his homeland. But as Bell puts his films together in his hotel room, he grows increasingly convinced that there is no heart to find. Modern America has become a land that has reached the end of its reel...
About the Author
The author of thirteen novels, five plays, and numerous short stories, Don DeLillo was born in 1936. Americana (1971), his first novel, announced the arrival of a major literary talent, and the novels that followed confirmed his reputation as one of the most distinctive and compelling voices in late-twentieth-century American fiction. DeLillo's comic gifts come to the fore in White Noise (1985), which won the National Book Award, and Underworld (1997), with its vivid portraits of actor Jackie Gleason and standup comedian Lenny Bruce.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Then we came to the end of another dull and lurid year. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Then we came to the end of another dull and lurid year. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I can see why some of the reviews have less than I think are the required 5 stars for this book. It is awash with word wonder. Fantastic rolling prose, odd segments of remembrance and brilliantly crafted dialogue. I suppose if you are thinking it's going to be a straight forward novel, and that's what you know and love, then you may find this a bit strange. I've only read one other of his books(Libra) before this, and that too I thought was superb, with a very poetic, individual style,so to find this title having even more of that feeling of literary hypnotism, I was blown away. I love Bret Easton Ellis, and Kerouac, so this was simply awesome as far as I'm concerned.One of my all time favourites.If you have to have neatly tied up slightly melancholic novels of redemption, or coming of age, you'll probably hate it, but having said that...give a go anyway.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The American Dream has always meant different things to different people but between the late 1950s and late 1970s there was a general consensus of healthy disillusionment with the nature and value of success and prosperity. Don DeLillo's impressive first novel Americana is one of many (as well as plays and films) of that era that reflected that disillusionment.
Egotistical TV executive David Bell feels trapped in a world of turgid mediocrity, of endless meetings and uninspired projects. So what does he do? He does what all bored Americans did back then; he goes on a road trip across the country. He takes with him a 16 mm camera and begins filming the sordid underbelly of small town America in an attempt to try and understand the soul of a country that he has already decided is lost. Beautifully written if a little verbose at times it manages at the same time to be both interesting from a historical perspective and to feel dated.
Egotistical TV executive David Bell feels trapped in a world of turgid mediocrity, of endless meetings and uninspired projects. So what does he do? He does what all bored Americans did back then; he goes on a road trip across the country. He takes with him a 16 mm camera and begins filming the sordid underbelly of small town America in an attempt to try and understand the soul of a country that he has already decided is lost. Beautifully written if a little verbose at times it manages at the same time to be both interesting from a historical perspective and to feel dated.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This, Don DeLilo's first book, written in 1971 is a mixed bag and certainly stretches credibility to be considered a classic. The very loose story concerns David Bell a handsome 28 year old television executive who sets out West to make a film about Native Americans but instead shoots his own abstract film in a small town.
The writing is, in places exceptional and there are numerous sections of highly creative and imaginative text however overall the book comes across as dated and pretentious. The characters are not developed and there is no real warmth for the central character who comes across as arrogant and self-adoring.
As a beatnikish exploration of 1960's America there are valid observations and the humour evident throughout.
Read, but expect less than perhaps the publicity offers.
The writing is, in places exceptional and there are numerous sections of highly creative and imaginative text however overall the book comes across as dated and pretentious. The characters are not developed and there is no real warmth for the central character who comes across as arrogant and self-adoring.
As a beatnikish exploration of 1960's America there are valid observations and the humour evident throughout.
Read, but expect less than perhaps the publicity offers.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
a curate's egg
Having read quite a few of his other novels, and this being presented as a modern classic, I was hoping for great things. I was really disappointed though. Read more
Published on 28 Mar 2007 by fifi-m
Penguin Modern Classics reissue DeLillo's debut novel..
Originally published in 1971, 'Americana' was the debut novel by Don DeLillo, kickstarting a career that has included such key novels as 'Running Dog',... Read more
Published on 10 Mar 2006 by Jason Parkes
Fine debut showed the way for bigger, better novels
DeLillo's debut novel is an unpolished, incomplete text that is as flawed as it is brilliant. It lacks cohesion and the plot is notoriously derivative, offering nothing new. Read more
Published on 14 May 2002 by "petebrooksbank"
Good Delillo but not great Delillo
Has a rather dated feel-written in the early 70s and is replete with observations,phraseology,mores of that period. Read more
Published on 13 Feb 2001
White Noise?
A strange novel. The first hundred pages detailing the minutiae of office life including tedious office meetings and the bizzare but highly literate memos of the mysterious... Read more
Published on 11 Nov 2000
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