I don't know how he keeps getting away with it...

I've read all of the so-called "great" DeLillo novels and then some and what I've come to realise is that even the one's that I wouldn't call great are still really really good - it surely has something to do with the rhythmic precision? or maybe the melodic intonation and repeated motifs? the wildly unrealistic dialogue coupled with every character being hyper-astute?

I don't know what it is but it's there on almost every page, especially so in this book which I would gladly admit isn't Don's finest work, not even a top 5 for him but it's still one I'm sure I'll remember forever fondly.

So what's the difference between Zero K and say, White Noise? I think the DeLillo factor is a little bit overdone in this book, maybe the Thing That He Does shouldn't be on every page because at times it feels a little bit heavy-handed and possibly detracts from the times when it could have been more penetrating had the narrator not expounded on reading Gombrowicz in the original and wanting to be the kind of person who reads Gombrowicz in the original, and then muttering Gombrowicz, Witold Gombrowicz to himself the whole previous page.

Zero K is about language and what it means to be alive largely in the temporal sense; we have a protagonist who we want to call pretentious but who, like Don, gets away with it because a lot of his dispositions and interactions are quite endearing (the definition shtick is what I felt gave the novel it's breath). The plot of the book is almost secondary to the themes and ideas that DeLillo explores which, again, feels like it shouldn't work but somehow almost always does with trademark lexical architectonic.