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Product Description
From Amazon.co.uk
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.
Chronique amazon.fr
Au reste, dans l'effervescence de New York, tout le monde croise tout le monde, Indiens et Pakistanais, latinos et Chinois, anarchistes et chauffeurs de taxi sikhs. Point de hasard au titre du livre choisi par Don Delillo, dans un amas de petites choses, de courses exaltées par les flambées des cours pour son personnage principal, jusqu'à la confrontation fatale avec un exclu, brimé, brisé, licencié, auparavant analyste de devises. C'est là un formidable tourbillon de fin de XXe siècle aux apparences économiques et sociales et en fin de compte humain, terriblement humain. --Céline Darner --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
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:
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.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Yen is not just a unit of currency.,
By A DC Reader "rehjr" (WASHINGTON, DC USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Cosmopolis: A Novel (Hardcover)
The dismissive reviews I read of Cosmopolis made me hesitate to buy it. After reading a library copy, I bought Cosmopolis to read a second time. I figure buying the book is the best vote cast in its favor.Cosmopolis is not a facile entertainment. It requires work on the reader's part. Delillo is exploring territory that, by its nature, eludes description. The mind has well-evolved strategies for perceiving and reacting to the world; non-rational strategies largely inaccessible to waking consciousness; strategies that worked for millennia, now effectively shunted aside and concealed from view - even while they operate continuously in clandestine ways. How do you view or talk about this hidden stuff? You can't name it because language by nature is rational and this, by its nature, is not. Delillo gives us a metaphor. Cosmopolis. It is incongruous. It doesn't match our world or its usual fictionalized portraits. The reader tries to fit the world s/he knows with the metaphor - it can't be done, it's incongruous. But in trying, the reader starts to sense an opening into something that is neither our world nor its metaphor Cosmopolis, something rising out of the tension between them. The book is an exploration into the tension between the normal surface of things and an animating underworld we know is there but hardly know. Reading, rereading Cosmopolis, thinking about it is like opening a door in the mind that leads to rooms not often visited.
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