Don Delillo and Mao II

Why the novel?

The title of this book comes from an Andy Warhol reproduction that was featured on the cover of my book. DeLillo repeatedly comes back to Mao, a man who manipulated the masses like none before. The book looks at the devotion of the masses. It starts with the scene of a mass wedding in New York and finishes with another wedding on the streets of Beruit.

Throughout the book different characters get caught up with the difficulties of their particular situation. They try to balance themselves with the masses and would seem to fail in doing this as nobody comes out of DeLillo's book as a clear winner or hero. In it's emotion, this book seems carefully planned out. Perhaps even too carefully. In it's plot, however, the book seems very careless.

Three questions for this book

1: What is Mao's relation to this Book?
2: Is there a place for love in humanity?
3: Has the meaning of this book changed with the increase of global terrorism?

My thoughts and answers.

1. Mao was really good at manipulating the masses. The man had as much sense for symbolic acts and charisma as Gandhi and Hitler. If you look at all the manipulating, launching of revolutions, and subsequently relaunching of those revolutions to cleanse the first, you must respect the man regardless of the motives. As for the book, it's partly about people trying to influence the masses with such success as Chairman Mao.

2. DeLillo seems to mock the classical sense of love with his introduction on marriage and later descriptions of sex and the relationships between the principal characters in the book. However, he still includes a genuine need of humanity for brother/sisterhood and ends the book with a wedding celebration that seems honest unless you count the symbolism of the old battered tank as getting in the way.

The book is full of problems. It's full of the problems that people have when they don't communicate well, and people are communicating poorly throughout the novel. If you're looking for love in humanity, you'll find a hunger for it in Mao II. Maybe I only read this in the introduction, but I hear Delillo saying that there's a new world order. That there's a new order of media and mob mentality. For me, this is at odds with humanity. That's Delillo's style, conflict at every level. On page 73 there's dinner table talk about Bill's new novel:

He knows. It's a master collapse. It's a failure so deep it places suspicion on the great early work. People will look at the great early work in a new way, searching for signs of weakness and muddle.
The book appears. I'm going to do it. Sooner than anyone thinks.
Scott was looking at Brita.
He knows I'm right. He just hates it when we agree. His words in my mouth. It drives him crazy. But I'm only trying to secure his rightful place.
Bill was looking for something to knock over, a thing, a suitable object he might swat off the table and break into pieces.
I think we need a pet in this household, Karen said.
Scott wiped the bread crumbs off the edge of the table into his hand.
I'm only saying what he deep down wants me to say.
Karen looked at Brita.
They changed seats and Karen sat close to Bill, pushing her chair against his.
Now do we want a dog or a cat? she said in someone else's voice.
Bill went for the butter dish, backhanding it across the table.
The lid hit Scott in the face.
This made Bill angrier and he tried to get up and start smashing in earnest.

3. In the Beruit section and with Bill's earlier discussion on terrorism while in Athens, we see that Delillo is really trying to open up a debate. An interesting bit of the discussion between George and Bill is on page 163:

The killing is going to happen. Mass killing asserts itself always. Great death, unnumbered dead, this is never more than a question of time and place. The leader only interprets the forces.
The point of every closed state is now you know how to hide your dead. This is the setup. You predict many dead if your vision of truth isn't realized. Then you kill them. Then you hide the fact of the killing and the bodies themselves. This is why the closed state was invented. And it begins with a single hostage, doesn't it? The hostage is the miniaturized form. The first tentative rehearsal for mass terror.

Mao II was published in 1991 and written even earlier. Two things have developed since the book was written. Terrorism has gone from kidnapping to mass killing. At the same time notions like Mao's China have been left in the past, maybe for good. Certainly symbolic acts are important like they never have been before, but at the same time, they will appeal to the minority rather than the majority.