- Audio Cassette
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio; Unabridged edition (April 1 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0743528484
- ISBN-13: 978-0743528481
- Product Dimensions: 18.4 x 10.5 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 154 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,300,217 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Cosmopolis is Don DeLillo's 13th novel. His reputation as one of the most provocative and innovative of American writers is assured, thanks to such books as Underworld and Americana, but this new outing is as likely to challenge the author's legion of admirers as much as it will exhilarate them--and there's nothing wrong with that.
DeLillo's protagonist this time is a well-heeled American, Eric Packer, who sets out one eventful day for a haircut. Gazing through the windows of his white limousine (and availing himself of its state-of-the-art technology), this self-made millionaire takes in the spectacle of financiers being murdered, the funeral of a rapper and some violent anti-globalisation protests. As we come to know DeLillo's anti-hero, we realise that Eric Packer is by no means the most ingratiating of individuals. Cheating on his new wife, he specialises in using people in a cynical and exploitative way. And as this self-serving captain of industry takes an ever-more dangerous journey through a bizarrely rendered New York, it's inevitable that comparisons with Tom Wolfe's classic Bonfire of the Vanities will spring to mind. Resemblances of plot aside, however, the book is a very different animal. Wolfe's narrative had the epic spread of a latter-day War and Peace, whereas DeLillo sharpens and condenses his prose in Cosmopolis to produce an altogether more concise novel.
There are two ways to approach Cosmopolis: as a rudely pointed dissection of the American Dream, or as a surreal, symbolic (and disturbing) road trip. This is not a comforting book, but a bracing and caustic one. --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
For a book about a 28-year-old new-economy billionaire with a "frozen heart," Patton adopts a distant, machine-like narrative tone that has all the warmth of the computer HAL in Stanley Kubrick's 2001. It's a fitting approach, as the asset manager at the novel's center, Eric Packer, is hardly an avaricious tycoon, but rather an insular and literate egotist who seems more given to detached, philosophical reveries on everyday trivialities than to serious business analysis. That, too, fits, as this novel from DeLillo (Underworld; White Noise) takes place entirely in one day as Packer's life unravels while he's driven across Manhattan to get a haircut. He remains aloof both to listeners and to those around him, and Patton's understated reading imbues the proceedings with the subtle edginess of a mild drug. That's not to say that things are completely monotone, though; Patton also deftly portrays characters ranging from Packer's gruff, paranoid head of security to his aging Italian barber, one of the few characters who seem truly human. But the book is really an extended meditation, and while Patton's pitch may be perfect, the recording isn't for everyone.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting but tough to follow the plot.,
This review is from: Cosmopolis: A Novel (Paperback)
I read this book over a year ago and it was very well written but I often found it hard to follow the plot. A lot of stuff is happening around Eric Packer and often I felt like it had no point and was not sure what was going on. Overall, I liked the book but it was not a book you picked up for a casual read, you really had to be paying attention to the entire scene. Interesting to see what the movie will be like.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Simple, it isn't a novel,
By "moritzbenedikt" (genova Italy) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Cosmopolis: A Novel (Hardcover)
As a novel it fails in every possible way: plot, characterization, dialogue etc.If you consider Cosmopolis a prose poem it works a lot better. DeLillo should have gone all the way and write directly in verse. Cosmopolis could have been compared to The Dunciad, The Age of Anxiety, the 'dramatic monologues' of Robert Browning, The Vanity of Human Wishes, The Prelude, Byron. In poetry the greatest possible meaning has to be expressed in the smallest possible space, and I think it works (to a point) in Cosmopolis. The dialogues don't have to be naturalistic - just meaningful. The characters don't be to well rounded - they are just human types. The plot doesn't have to hang togheter - it has to illustrate the morality of the story. The writing of DeLillo, in this way, is quite beatiful and his description of the effects that ridicolous wealth and power can have on people (both the rich, the hangers-on, the others) feels right. And I don't really think that Cosmopolis is dated. A lot of things have changed after 9/11: among them not the lives of people like Eric Packer. Frankly I don't understand people who thinks that people like him are uninteresting or not important. Rich and powerful people are always interesting and important and no, they don't have to be sympathetic or human to command obedience, respect and even affection. Of course, a real novel would have been better. Underworld is much better and important. Cosmopolis is an interesting attempt.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
A bad DeLillo is still better than a good Anybody,
By zorkie1966 "zorkie1966" (Johnson City, TN USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Cosmopolis: A Novel (Hardcover)
I guess I was lucky in that I began with Mao II and White Noise and went from there. So I know what DeLillo is capable of. I was giddy to read this new one. But, like other reviewers, I was reminded of Brett Easton Ellis, even from the title (which reminded me of "Glamorama"). And that made me nervous right away.The worst part about this novel is that it's completely contrived. We never get the feeling these characters are truly alive, only that DeLillo is trying to tell us something via their interaction. The coincidental meetings with the wife (you'll see) are a perfect example. But there are others. If we're just going to ride around in a limo, slowly, without any solid plot to hang our hat on, then anyone who happens to stop in for a chat will appear to have been shoved into that limo by the author. But for the good news: it's DeLillo. A fix for the addict. His dialogue is sharp, funny and truncated, as always. Some of the passages are pure poetry (the section about the kids dancing at a rave in a burnt-out building is sublime). We know about DeLillo's apocalyptic obsessions, which were firmly in place long before 9/11, and this is more of the same. Or is it? He never mentions terrorism, but he's got a two-bit gang of thugs flinging rats around the city in demonstrations against capitalism. And there are threats on the protagonist's life. And it takes place in New York City. NYC is the cosmopolis of the title, the "city of the world," a stage that shows a microcosm of the terror in store for all mankind. So this is good old prescient DeLillo, warbling, and the sound of it will stand up to anything being written today. Don't get this if you've never read any Don DeLillo--you'll probably be turned off. Mao II and White Noise are both great starting points, but even some of the earlier stuff that DD has since scorned (Americana, End Zone, Great Jones Street) would be a better beginning.
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