The Silence: A Novel | 
panI did not enjoy this book. I picked it our one of our bookstore book clubs because the premise is a good one- on Super Bowl Sunday, technology stops. No computers, no tvs, just silence. The book starts on an airplane, which was promising, and then spends most of it's time in an apartment with 5 very pretentious people. I usually like unlikeable characters, but this was just not my jam at all. Sigh. At least the discussion of the book was good!
so-soMaybe this book is brilliant and it is just over my head. For an apocalyptic story it is really boring, possibly because we've already been there. No need to get philosophical about it-- we just hoarded the toilet paper. I guess it was supposed to leave you feeling detached?
Does it bother you when books are set in a “future” that didn‘t happen?
This entire “novel” (hardback short story) is set over the course of one day — a futuristic Super Bowl Sunday 2022 between the Titans and Seahawks. That outcome is looking increasingly unlikely today. Do we care?
panI don‘t know what I expected going into this but it wasn‘t this. The plot had me interested as power and internet have gone out. Your living in the world without them. How would you cope? What would you do? It intrigued me when I first read the synopsis, but the story was just meh for me and kinda all over the board. You follow a group of people in the apartment and what there doing after everything goes off. That‘s it.Just wasn‘t for me
so-soIt‘s not the premise of our entire digital and electronic lives suddenly blinking out to total, inalterable black that I find hard to believe, it‘s the utter lack of heart whatsoever in this brief speculative fiction from Don Delillo (that and who goes straight from a trans-Atlantic flight to a friend‘s Super Bowl party??).
so-soEvery time I read something new from Don DeLillo, it is even shorter, and even more about death. I guess he's winding down. This novella about the end of the world through five people in Manhattan feels more like a play, lots of bizarre scenes and philosophizing in ways people only behave in literature.
He does have some beautiful rhythms. The writing‘s just all so dark now, I don‘t have the patience. He‘s like some cranky Cassandra.
p. 93. “Cryptocurrencies, microplastics. The dangers at every level. Eat, drink, invest. Breathe, inhale, draw oxygen into the lungs. Walk, run, stand. And now in the purest snow from the alpine wilderness, from the arctic wasteland.”
panPissed off on p 1 just from the font. Who decided to inflict some bastard cousin of “Typewriter” on us all? WWIII during Super Bowl LVI. Repetition of ordinary phrases like incantations & that DeLillo fascination with words as objects. Like ZERO K: tech & doom & end of the world. Yes, Don, mortality—the blank screen—is scary, especially as you creep into your 80s, but the empty doom? We love your beautiful sentences & miss your humanity, Don. 2020
pickDystopian!😳On Super Bowl Sunday 2022 the world has suddenly “powered down.” Written prior to Covid 19 it still has something in common with our current times..like a line from a Tom Petty song, “The waiting is the hardest part.”only 116 pages actually!Impressive and made me anxious,like I need more of that.
A new DeLillo! even though it‘s only 128 pages a cause for celebration!Supported my local indie!Shown with their 40th anniversary bookmark from 2014 . I find this philosophy series by Princeton University Press enjoyable & applicable to modern life ,🤔guess that is the point.😀
