Just started this work of "contemporary fiction."

I don't remember why I bought it, it was a used copy sitting on my shelf. I have to say that the first 20 pages or so were tough to get through. The family was just too unbelievable. On the back I see that this book is "one of DeLillo's funniest novels." It's definitely sarcastic, but that doesn't make a family with genius 11 year olds any more believable or normal.

Anyways, I'm only partway in, and I've grown to enjoy the tone. There are some great gems of sentences and paragraphs, worth framing on the wall.

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2006/9/21

I finished this a while back so thought I should wrap up a comment on it.

It wasn't all that good. There was quite a bit of "witty", interesting dialog. I guess some reviewers mistook witty for funny, because I never once actually laughed. The end was flat and predictable, I was left without much of anything to really think about after an onslaught of one-liners and meandering dialog. Maybe that was the real point of the book. To create a literary version of the mind-numbing crush of late 20th century media. If so, a brilliant success.