Comments on: Crosstown Static: Listening to Don DeLillo’s ‘Cosmopolis’

By: sue

sue — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 09:45:30 +0000

can y please tell me more about Cosmopolis as a novel of sounds?? it would be great if you provide me with theories or books on that,the sooner, the better.
!!!!.thank you

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:50:03 +0000

Not having read the book, I have to say I am struck by the presence of not only sound, but a particular kind of sound in your quotes: an explosive, tensile, rapid motion through the air. Some of this clearly comes from the subject matter and DeLillo’s style, but it seems that this style of description—where noise is a palpable stretching of air—is particularly well-suited to sound, drawing attention to its physicality and the fact of its vibration. I might be inclined to call it an “urban” attitude toward sound that is predominantly hostile (where descriptions of limpid silence would seem “pastoral”), but given the lines from DeLillo that pull nature back into the mix that doesn’t seem to work. It would be interesting to compare this with the other books you mention—to see if DeLillo does similar work for visuality and so on.

By: Tobias

Tobias — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 17:14:29 +0000

Great article, Marc! I picked up Cosmopolis on a whim in a used books store in Vienna in 2006 – having just finished Murakami’s “Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” – and only set out to read it much later, and with longer breaks between sessions. (As a non-native speaker I’m not fast enough a reader to rush through something like this in one session). However, reading your careful observations I realize that while I appreciated the great language used to descibe the “meaning” especially of data as a living thing of its own, reading the book in chunks made it harder to see these kinds of overarching concerns. If I had the time I’d be tempted to grab the book from the shelves and, with your observations in mind, give it another go. :)