[perseusmandate]

I suppose you think Olga Tokarczuk or Svetlana Alexievich are more popular with millennials?

David Foster Wallace and Harold Bloom both have called Delillo one of the greatest living authors. I and quite a few other people I know in my age range (mid-20s) have enjoyed him without sensing his work is irrelevant to our demographic. Even his denser works like Underworld read like a 'pageturner' relative to his contemporaries like Pynchon or even Wallace. Let alone other writers in the canon like Dostoyevsky.

My criticism would honestly be that his writing is overly stylized and lacking in nuance. He inherits the hyperbolic, poetic quality of McCarthy but often applies it to the mundane and the result sometimes feels overwrought and overdramatized vs realistic. Zero K specifically felt like a fan fiction version of William Gibson's non sci-fi stuff like Zero History. And most of what he is trying to convey he just says outright in a 3rd person omniscient voice.

I actually think he is very culturally relevant and influential but I sense that if you were to evaluate his writing through the lens of academic comparative literature like the Nobel Prize committee (not the standard literature should be held to imo) it would fall short of most other laureats, Bob Dylan notwithstanding

[dondawest]

> My criticism would honestly be that his writing is overly stylized and lacking in nuance. He inherits the hyperbolic, poetic quality of McCarthy but often applies it to the mundane and the result sometimes feels overwrought and overdramatized vs realistic.

Could not agree more.

Bob Dylan and DFW deserve Nobels, IMO. Both of those guys have fans of all generations.

I feel like DeLillo is a “writer’s writer.” People like DFW applaud him, as you point out.

I just don’t agree that DeLillo has anywhere near the amount of influence as, say, DFW.

I’m frequently amazed how large and diverse DFW’s fan group is.

DeLillo seems to only appeal to writers. His work is very obscure, even within educated niches.