Reading Rainbow: Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo

I'm way behind for reasons that I don't really care to get into right now and which are only partly due to a weird TV binge that I'm on. I've got a sizable backlog of posts to get to, so some of these upcoming posts will be brief. That, of course, bears no weight on the random post from somebody like word mule, who has a Prick Tunes post coming tomorrow at noon. This will be a brief one.

I quite like Don DeLillo. I positively loved Underworld and White Noise. I liked Falling Man. Cosmopolis was a different story.

Cosmopolis felt like a novel from a bygone era. I suppose much of the reason for that was the author's intent, but that doesn't really make this novel feel any antiquated or played out. Frankly, Cosmopolis felt like a lesser version of Martin Amis's Money or a more recently penned version of Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho or Jay McInerney's Bright Lights Big City. Yes, the latter two writers couldn't hold DeLillo's jock, but that doesn't make Cosmopolis feel any less irrelevant.

Perhaps more importantly, Eric Packer, the lead character who I'll refrain from labeling a protagonist or anti-hero because frankly I don't know what to or care enough to call him anything. His story is one that never engages. DeLillo never draws the reader into Packer in any way, never gives any insight to the character, never imbues him with enough character or pathos or gravitas to ever make one give a fuck about him. Things happen to him and he does things, but they are simply a series of events that bear little in the way of importance to the reader.

Cosmopolis could very well have gone over my head. That doesn't change the fact that I didn't care for it at all.