hollasan's review
3.0
How important is plot to you on a scale of 1 to 5?
If you answered anything other than 1, don't read this book.
If you answered anything other than 1, don't read this book.
njw13's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
grgrhnt's review
4.0
Conclusions can be diminishing. A sprawling epic comes down to a single point at the end. While this age-old way of storytelling does have its merits, it often undermines the experience that the story has to offer. Great Jones Street is about the experience, all the way. The conclusion is itself a part of the experience. A meditation on fame and its aftereffects on the celebrity once they become numb to all the extravaganza and the idol-worship. Some say that the book is a musical satire. That could only be the case if a slight exaggeration of modern music's shallowness can be called a called a satire.
We meet Bucky Wunderlick, a music god, at a time when the shallowness of his life dawns on him. He retreats to his girlfriend's apartment in Great Jones Street and whiles away the day looking out the window and sleeping the chairs and waiting on something he doesn't even understand he is waiting on. He comes to believe that all the things he had done had no meaning to them. He's trying to get out such a reality where meaningless things are being done all the while the world is trying hard to retain its superstar musician. He doesn't budge. Strange people walk into his life and he gets embroiled in a major drug deal. Nothing matters to him. He isn't interested. And at the end, he's back to what he was at the beginning.
Bucky's crisis is too big to overcome. Anybody who feels like they have exhausted all the meaning they can get from one thing, immediately look to other things. Bucky doesn't to that. For somebody so out of it, central involvement in a major drug deal should excite them back to life. That does not happen to Bucky. He's still looking for meaningfulness in things and he seems to be operating on the notion that nothing really is meaningless. But there is a momentary glimmer of hope. He unconsciously gets to the conclusion that there really is no need for meaning. If you keep doing things, meaning will be found. With this hope, he tries to venture back into the music scene with some early works of spontaneous nonsense. But nothing changes, he still feels the same way as the time of his reinduction into the world approaches. So, he gives in, goes back to the life at Great Jones Street and waits for all the plots to unravel. He wants to be free of all burdens, all people. In the end, after suffering or just going through an impairment of his greatest asset, he recovers back to full health. But the world doesn't know that. He chooses to keep on being an impaired person of no use all the while letting the world obsess over him.
Great Jones Street is the beginning of DeLillo's exploration of paranoia. He delivers its epitome in his big book Underworld. With dream-like prose and dialogue that doesn't really sound like real dialogue all the while retaining all the mannerisms and intonations of real speech of real people, Great Jones Street offers a lyrical story which might seem inconclusive in the beginning, but once the story is finished and seen in all of its entirety, no other end seems appropriate.
We meet Bucky Wunderlick, a music god, at a time when the shallowness of his life dawns on him. He retreats to his girlfriend's apartment in Great Jones Street and whiles away the day looking out the window and sleeping the chairs and waiting on something he doesn't even understand he is waiting on. He comes to believe that all the things he had done had no meaning to them. He's trying to get out such a reality where meaningless things are being done all the while the world is trying hard to retain its superstar musician. He doesn't budge. Strange people walk into his life and he gets embroiled in a major drug deal. Nothing matters to him. He isn't interested. And at the end, he's back to what he was at the beginning.
Bucky's crisis is too big to overcome. Anybody who feels like they have exhausted all the meaning they can get from one thing, immediately look to other things. Bucky doesn't to that. For somebody so out of it, central involvement in a major drug deal should excite them back to life. That does not happen to Bucky. He's still looking for meaningfulness in things and he seems to be operating on the notion that nothing really is meaningless. But there is a momentary glimmer of hope. He unconsciously gets to the conclusion that there really is no need for meaning. If you keep doing things, meaning will be found. With this hope, he tries to venture back into the music scene with some early works of spontaneous nonsense. But nothing changes, he still feels the same way as the time of his reinduction into the world approaches. So, he gives in, goes back to the life at Great Jones Street and waits for all the plots to unravel. He wants to be free of all burdens, all people. In the end, after suffering or just going through an impairment of his greatest asset, he recovers back to full health. But the world doesn't know that. He chooses to keep on being an impaired person of no use all the while letting the world obsess over him.
Great Jones Street is the beginning of DeLillo's exploration of paranoia. He delivers its epitome in his big book Underworld. With dream-like prose and dialogue that doesn't really sound like real dialogue all the while retaining all the mannerisms and intonations of real speech of real people, Great Jones Street offers a lyrical story which might seem inconclusive in the beginning, but once the story is finished and seen in all of its entirety, no other end seems appropriate.
katepowellshine's review
3.0
So often DeLillo just leaves me cold. Our protagonist is not only physically cut off, he's emotionally absent, and it might be good literature but I don't care for it.
luckypluto's review against another edition
3.0
Don DeLillo is regarded as one of the greatest living American writers, so naturally I had to check out his work. Great Jones Street was unusual, to say the least. It’s one of those books that make it difficult to answer the question, “What is it about?’ Sure, it has a plot, but “what it’s about” is really tangential to the happenings of the book themselves. Ostensibly it’s about art and its meaning, a subject near and dear to my heart.
The book doesn’t have much action and is told mostly through dialogue. The dialogue is sharp and witty, but I would’ve preferred more action—the story is told through long-winded expositions by the characters. At the same time, the characters are striking and unique, and the prose is dense (which I like), and the book is a real page-turner, despite the lack of any real action.
Great Jones Street has compelled me to check out other DeLillo works.
The book doesn’t have much action and is told mostly through dialogue. The dialogue is sharp and witty, but I would’ve preferred more action—the story is told through long-winded expositions by the characters. At the same time, the characters are striking and unique, and the prose is dense (which I like), and the book is a real page-turner, despite the lack of any real action.
Great Jones Street has compelled me to check out other DeLillo works.
kirstiecat's review against another edition
3.0
This one really deserves 3 1/2 stars and I'm also grading it somewhat relatively to Don DeLillo's other novels and it does pale a bit in comparison. The main premise of this is that a big rock star lead singer gets bogged down within the realm of the mass consciousness and retreats unexpectantly and suddenly to the realm of the private. However, instead of his mountain hideout, he actually goes to an apt. in NYC. Some of this is my speculation but I think DeLillo was making some pretty accurate statements about one's anonymity in this city and the potential, like a single frail molecule, to dissolve. As expected, he meets some shady characters and gets roped into a really wretched drug ring. Throughout all of the chaos of the novel, the main character stays assuredly calm and doesn't seem to manifest any great fear of death or torture, which is atypical of most protagonists put in this position. The weakness in terms of that is you don't get a sense of him as a main character and he comes off as having a real flat affect. The strengths of this book by far are within the descriptions of NYC and not within the details of his characters. Also, although I thought I would really like this plot as I'm into music, I ended up not caring for it nearly as much as Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet. If you are looking for a DeLillo novel to start with, I wouldn't recommend this one as much as his classic White Noise, though I really liked Mao II much better.
stewreads's review against another edition
2.0
Absolutely could not get into this one. I like the premise - sort of - but everything just felt so inconsequential. And the dialogue, which I usually love with DeLillo, fell extremely flat here. Very disappointed.