Running Dog

Rating:
Summary: Gritty, Precise, Enigmatic
Review: For me, the great pleasures of DeLillo are his absolute narrative control and his precise descriptiveness. Here's a quick example, with the character Selvy on the southwestern desert: "That day was like this one. A morning of startling brightness. Clarity without distracting glare. The sky was saturated with light. Everything was color." At the same time, DeLillo's narratives are sometimes about characters on meaningless quests-think "Mao II" or "Players". Read this book. But don't expect any edifying or enlightening commentary on life as it is lived, unless you are paranoid.

Rating:
Summary: sorely disappointed
Review: i just finished running dog by don delillo. i was promised "the lurid elements of the thriller--espionage, assassination, pornography--into a work of art that captures the fevered shades of the latter-day American psyche."

well, i got those elements, but i was missing cohesion, plot and character development. i'm disappointed and feel like i wasted a lot of time, during which i racked my brain trying to figure out who any of the characters were and what the hell they were doing -- forget about their motivations. i expected it all to pull together in the end, and i thought that if i just paid enough attention i would get a riveting denouement and payback. no such luck!

i loved white noise, but this one is a bummer!

Rating:
Summary: sorely disappointed
Review: Running Dog is essentially a witty and sarodnic spy/intrigue/romance. DeLillo in a bar room brawl with Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, Charles Willeford and Larry Flynt. It's like punk rock DeLillo. Filled with porn, sex, violence, apathy, lecherous men and empowered women and DeLillo's Hitler fixation, manifested here less incidentaly than in White Noise. For my money its the least indulgent and most readable and fun novel of DeLillo's ouevre. All Of Chuck Palahniuk's work is a sort of cross between Running Dog and Vonnegut's Sirens Of Titan and Cat's Cradle. If you like Palahniuk, then Running Dog will offer you a great bridge to step up to DeLillo. For those who were turned off to DeLillo after yawning through Underworld and its hype, then Running Dog will be a revelation. If you don't agree with Penguin Books and have a hard time considering White Noise to be one of the greatest books of the 20th Century, up there with Ulysses, The Big Sleep and Madame Bovary, (Don't worry-neither do I) take it from me- You'll love Running Dog. I won't bother giving you a plot summary because do you really need me to reiterate what the publisher and Amazon says above? Alrighty then. Running Dog's a lot of fun!

Rating:
Summary: My Favorite DeLillo Novel!
Review: Running Dog is essentially a witty and sarodnic spy/intrigue/romance. DeLillo in a bar room brawl with Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, Charles Willeford and Larry Flynt. It's like punk rock DeLillo. Filled with porn, sex, violence, apathy, lecherous men and empowered women and DeLillo's Hitler fixation, manifested here less incidentaly than in White Noise. For my money its the least indulgent and most readable and fun novel of DeLillo's ouevre. All Of Chuck Palahniuk's work is a sort of cross between Running Dog and Vonnegut's Sirens Of Titan and Cat's Cradle. If you like Palahniuk, then Running Dog will offer you a great bridge to step up to DeLillo. For those who were turned off to DeLillo after yawning through Underworld and its hype, then Running Dog will be a revelation. If you don't agree with Penguin Books and have a hard time considering White Noise to be one of the greatest books of the 20th Century, up there with Ulysses, The Big Sleep and Madame Bovary, (Don't worry-neither do I) take it from me- You'll love Running Dog. I won't bother giving you a plot summary because do you really need me to reiterate what the publisher and Amazon says above? Alrighty then. Running Dog's a lot of fun!

Rating:
Summary: I started it, so I had to finish it...
Review: You ever start reading a book and the only reason you finished it was because you started it. For me, that was this book.

The description says that DeLillo transforms the lurid elements of the thriller--espionage, assassination, pornography--into a work of art that captures the fevered shades of the latter-day American psyche. There was no lurid elements what-so-ever. I could hand this book to my 6 year old with clear conscience that he would not read anything that wasn't age appropriate.

I found DeLillo's writing style tedious at best. Here's a good example:

Its Times Square Saturday night. Everybody's in costume. Cowboys, bikers, drag queens, punk rockers, decoy cops, Moonies, gypsies, Salvation Army regulars, Process evangelists in dark capes, skinhead Krishna chanters in saffron robes and tennis sneakers. Glitter and trash everywhere. Hot pants, blond wigs, slouch hats, sliver boots. Late-season heat blasts. Waves of humid air pour over the crowds...

It seems to me that he's trying to be too hip, too trendy. There was no character development. The character that appears most interesting dies in the first chapter and we're never given the whole story behind it.