31 May, 2001: Running Dog
Don DeLillo has written an acknowledged masterpiece examining the culture of paranoia in post-war America. It's funny and thoughtful and haunting. Unfortunately, it's also White Noise, and I just read Running Dog. The novel isn't bad, as such -- although Don DeLillo ranks only slightly ahead of J.G. Ballard on my "I Never, Ever Want to Read Sex Scenes by These Authors" list; he's possibly the least erotic writer to ever write a novel featuring a randy politician boffing a nubile young reporter, and that's a lot of potboiler competition to face down -- but I didn't feel that there was a single note in this book (with the possible exception of the sex scenes; Underworld handled sex with both more grace and more discretion) that DeLillo hadn't hit elsewhere and to better effect. Throw Mao II and Libra (my favorite DeLillo book) in a blender with a dash of White Noise and a pinch of Ratner's Star. The plot features a reporter (for Running Dog, a sort of radical-politics Rolling Stone settling into graceful middle age) stumbling across a BCCI-slash-Ollie-North-ish conspiracy, while investigating said politician's hidden collection of pornographic art. It all felt tawdry and meaningless and overly plotted, which may, I suppose, have been DeLillo's point. But I don't think so. And oh, those shudder-worthy sex scenes.