Showing posts with label Great Jones Street. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Great Jones Street. Show all posts

Saturday, January 4, 2025

DeLillo's Tale of the Hidden Rock Star

 


Similar in some respects to the film Performance in general idea, Don DeLillo's 1973 novel Great Jones Street is a story of what happens of what happens to the fan base and the larger culture when a revered rock star goes into seclusion. The musician /prophet/poet/stand-in savior is Bucky Wunderlick, a prematurely sainted scribe whose music and lyrics have been scrutinized by fans, critics, philosophers for hints of what the future holds for the world that, evidently, wanted a respite from being the millennial hero. Doubtlessly inspired by the speculative weirdness that ensued after Dylan's famed motorcycle accident and subsequent retreat from public view, DeLillo gets across the idea through satire, parody, monologues, sample song lyrics, odd-ball projections that a media created savior' absence creates another kind of presence, a mystical state of collective speculation which vaguely yet insistently maintains that the personality that gives purpose to millions of lives is not gone but still here, doing their work, to return with something greater, grander, better than what we already have. It's a wildly funny novel, and DeLillo's prose manages the hard job of being dead pan and yet rhythmically lyric.