Product Description

It is an April day in the year 2000 and an era is about to end. The booming times of market optimism -- when the culture boiled with money and corporations seemed more vital and influential than governments -- are poised to crash. Eric Packer, a billionaire asset manager at age twenty-eight, emerges from his penthouse triplex and settles into his lavishly customized white stretch limousine. Today he is a man with two missions: to pursue a cataclysmic bet against the yen and to get a haircut across town. Stalled in traffic by a presidential motorcade, a music idol's funeral, and a violent political demonstration, Eric receives a string of visitors -- experts on security, technology, currency, finance, and a few sexual partners -- as the limo sputters toward an increasingly uncertain future.

Cosmopolis, Don DeLillo's thirteenth novel, is both intimate and global, a vivid and moving account of the spectacular downfall of one man, and of an era.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #230531 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From Publishers Weekly
DeLillo skates through a day in the life of a brilliant and precocious New Economy billionaire in this monotone 13th novel, a study in big money and affectlessness. As one character remarks, 28-year-old Eric Packer "wants to be one civilization ahead of this one." But on an April day in the year 2000, Eric's fortune and life fall apart. The story tracks him as he traverses Manhattan in his stretch limo. His goal: a haircut at Anthony's, his father's old barber. But on this day his driver has to navigate a presidential visit, an attack by anarchists and a rapper's funeral. Meanwhile, the yen is mounting, destroying Eric's bet against it. The catastrophe liberates Eric's destructive instinct-he shoots another character and increases his bet. Mostly, the action consists of sequences in the back of the limo (where he stages meetings with his doctor, various corporate officers and a New Economy guru) interrupted by various pit stops. He lunches with his wife of 22 days, Elise Shifrin. He has sex with two women, his art consultant and a bodyguard. He is hit in the face with a pie by a protester. He knows he is being stalked, and the novel stages a final convergence between the ex-tycoon and his stalker. DeLillo practically invented the predominant vernacular of the late '90s (the irony, the close reading of consumer goods, the mock complexity of technobabble) in White Noise, but he seems surprisingly disengaged here. His spotlighted New Economy icon, Eric, doesn't work, either as a genius financier (he is all about gadgetry, not exchange-there's no love of the deal in his "frozen heart") or a thinker. The threats posed by the contingencies that he faces cannot lever him out of his recalcitrant one-dimensionality. DeLillo is surely an American master, but this time out, he is doodling.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Unlike his sprawling masterpiece, Underworld, DeLillo's 13th novel is short and tightly focused, indeed almost claustrophobic. Most of the action takes place inside a "prousted" (cork-lined) stretch limo, as the reclusive financial wizard Eric Packer is chauffeured across Manhattan for a haircut. Thanks to a presidential visit, antiglobalization demonstrations, and a celebrity funeral, this journey takes up most of the day. Stuck in traffic, Packer anxiously monitors the value of the yen on the limo's computer. Using the car as his office, he summons advisors from nearby shops and restaurants. His physician gives him a rubber-gloved physical exam in the back seat as Packer discusses imminent financial ruin with his broker and angry crowds block the streets. This work most closely resembles The Body Artist in its brevity and straightforward narrative flow. However, the earlier novel was written in an uncharacteristically warm, poetic style, promising a new direction for this important writer, while Cosmopolis reverts to the standard DeLillo boilerplate, perceptive and funny but also brittle and cold. This, coupled with the book's dated 1990s sensibility, makes Cosmopolis a step backward rather than an artistic advance.
Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
It's April in the year 2000 in the cosmopolis of New York. A day of epic gridlock due to a visit by the president and a violent antiglobalization protest. A good day to leave the white stretch limo at the curb, but assets manager Eric Packer, 28, buff, ruthless, and obscenely wealthy, insists on being driven across town to get a haircut. His chief of security objects: there's a credible threat against his life. But this only encourages Packer, who likes to rule his domain from his high-tech chariot, where his employees crawl in to make their reports, where myriad screens carry the ceaseless data stream of the currency markets, where a doctor performs his daily check-up. Quasi-mystic Packer is obsessed, on this fateful day, with the yen, strangely aroused by graphic coverage of the murders of other major financial players, and keenly aware that he has the power to pitch the entire monetary system into chaos. Packer is, in short, a monster--a man who has lost his soul in an accelerated world without heart. And DeLillo, master novelist and seer, tells the surreal, electrifying story of this dehumanized moneyman in English scrubbed so clean and assembled so exquisitely it seems like a new language. By turns breathtakingly poetic and devastatingly witty, his descriptions of today's urban reality--extravagantly kinetic Times Square financial displays (information as "pure spectacle") presided over by gigantic billboards of the "underwear gods"--make the present seem like a forbidding, to-be-avoided future. "We need a new theory of time," muses one of Packer's advisors. No, suggests DeLillo, we need to reclaim life. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Great Prose but Pretty Dry
I should profess that I have never read a novel by Don DeLillo before diving into "Cosmopolis." Sure, I have heard of "White Noise," "Underworld," and "Libra" before, but decided to start with this new, short novel about a billionaire stock tycoon and his trip through the wilds of New York City. DeLillo seems to possess many fans in the literary world, rabid readers who devour everything this guy decides to pass off on the public. I usually see him associated with people like Pynchon or Gaddis, post-modern writers who create sprawling works of endless complexity and dubious quality. Since my experiences with the post-modern genre are slight at best, all I have to go on is my experiences with this book.

The plot seems simple enough. Eric Packer, a twenty eight year old Wall Street whiz, decides he wants to get a haircut. Moreover, he sets out on his excursion in a giant, cork lined white limousine with his bodyguards, advisors, doctors, and drivers in tow. Along the way, Packer undergoes a physical examination of a most personal nature, runs into his new wife at various places, witnesses an anarchist protest, gets attacked with a cream pie, becomes emotional about a rapper's funeral, and discovers someone is stalking him with a view to causing serious injury. There is little that ties these events and encounters together, as even the quest for a haircut often drops into the background when Packer bogs down in New York City traffic. Surrounded by computers and an endless flow of information, the billionaire spends most of his time waxing philosophic about the state of the world, the state of his mind, and the state of his attempt to make a killing off the Japanese yen. Ultimately, that is all this novel seems to do: throw out endless noodlings about the emptiness of life in the high tech, over stimulated information age.

DeLillo's writing style is the best thing going for "Cosmopolis." Infused with deep cynicism and a measurable detachment, it still crackles with crisp, short sentences that convey much with little ado. The problem comes when the language puts too much out there, when the reader starts to bog down under the endless litany of Packer's mental ramblings. Although this book is extremely short and can be finished in a day, it still seems too long at times. If there is any point to this tale, or at least where the point seems to assume clarity, it is when Packer and his "advisor on theory" discuss the meaning of the ticker boards with their endless scroll of information and the implications of self-immolating oneself to protest capitalism. Eric's accumulation of information threatens to overwhelm his existence because all he possesses is random bits of information. He cannot seem to tie it all together into any relevant meaning other than making money. There seems to be a germ of hope for him towards the end of the story, but most of the book is merely cerebral gymnastics.

The message of "Cosmopolis," about a man who has everything but wilts under his own inflated ego and goes off on a rampage, is definitely familiar. Bret Easton Ellis did something similar in "American Psycho," and he did it better. Eric Packer and Patrick Bateman are blood brothers, albeit relatives separated by about twenty years. When will these Wall Street archetypes' meltdowns have finality to them? Probably when the capitalist system finally collapses. In the meantime, we have people like Ellis and DeLillo dutifully reporting the carnage of undreamt of riches on the souls of humanity.

Many people out there are quite knowledgeable about DeLillo's body of work and the philosophy that powers them. I can draw no firm conclusions about this author from reading just one of his books. But I strongly suggest thinking twice before plunging into "Cosmopolis." It takes too much effort for too little return.

could have been so much better
After a year passed since I read The Body Artist, I started anticipating what Don DeLillo would write next. While I found The Body Artist to be somewhat of a disappointment, this is still the writer who thrilled me with White Noise and The Names. This is the man who wrote the incredibly beautiful prologue to Underworld. DeLillo can flat out Write.

The basic plot of Cosmopolis follows Eric Packer, a 28 year old billionaire, as he crosses New York City (pre 9/11) in his limo to get a haircut. Such a simple trip takes all day since the President is in town and there is marches, riots and a funeral. At the same time, Packer is told that someone is out to kill him. Confused? Don't worry, DeLillo uses plot as a device to enable him to riff on aspects of society and while the characters do not sound like real people, it is the characters the provide the interest and pacing of the narrative. In Cosmopolis, DeLillo takes on high finance and the lives of the ultra-rich. DeLillo's view is very comic and deeply scathing as he reveals how shallow these lives really are.

As talented as Don DeLillo is as a writer, this was not a very engaging novel. While plot and character are merely devices for DeLillo (instead of being the point), in a better novel this is not a problem and would barely be noticeable. The fact is that all of the characters sound the same and given a different name would be identical to the other characters. There is very little distinction between characters. This is not unusual for DeLillo, but again, in a better novel I wouldn't be thinking about that.

Cosmopolis is a step back in the right direction for DeLillo (after the awful novel The Body Artist), but would still only fall in the middle of his body of work. This is a middle tier novel from a top tier talent.

Another curveball from DeLillo ponders modern life
Don DeLillo has changed gears yet again for his latest novel. After dazzling everyone with his opulent epic "Underworld" and slowing down to the speed of a crawl with its follow-up "The Body Artist" he once again moves his exploration of American culture to another avenue with "Cosmopolis."

The story, set in New York before 9/11, is classic DeLillo (in the same vein as "White Noise") as he follows a twentysomething financial guru through his day with his ultimate goal being, getting a hair cut. While his speculation and investments in the Yen spiral up and down he meets with his advisors, his proctologist, his estranged wife and a few lovers. This story is a day in the life of a pseudo-dot.com anointed billionaire on the edge of losing everything to the eventual disintegration of the tech bubble.

The language is exciting, but simplistic and very dry. The characters (other than the protagonist) are a little thin, but this is not a character study. It is a moment in time of the greatest economic boom in our country's history, prior to the most tragic and uncertain moment in our history.

This novel could very well be the last definitive statement on pre-9/11 life in the United States, while at the same time encompasing the fear and uncertainty that inevitably laid ahead.