Valparaiso: A Play

Valparaiso: A Play
by Don DeLillo

Valparaiso: A Play
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Book Summary Information

Author: Don DeLillo
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2000-06-13
ISBN: 0684865688
Number of pages: 112
Publisher: Scribner

Book Reviews of Valparaiso: A Play

Book Review: A little touch of the zeitgeist that I can easily live without
Summary: 1 Stars

What a dud. Oh well. I hate most stage-plays anyway. As all the other reviewers have already said, VALPARAISO is about the mediacrization of everyday life. And it's typical DeLillo. Populated by cartoon characters who spout nonstop DeLilloisms.

Michael Majeski mentions a colleague with an "unnamed rare disease". Which harks back to a character in AMERICANA with "some blood thing". I'm convinced that Don is terrified of anything that remains unnamed & vague. Which explains why a schoolteachter in UNDERWORLD name-checks all the parts of a shoe. It's the schoolteacher's way of comforting Nick Shay. As if to say: life is a big fat mystery but it's not a total mystery.

There's a few good lines: "Moon-faced men and women with yearnings of epic dimension. I tell them I brush my teeth with Close-Up." And: "I sometimes think I'm clinically self-absorbed. A condition that ought to be covered by health insurance."

Don's assonance addiction is one of Planet Earth's major annoyances. It's every bit as unendurable as Bob Dylan's rhyme-addiction. VALPARAISO is chockful of phrases like "heaving mediocrity" and "slobber of the body" and "shuttle buggies" and "nuance of human sharing". If those sort of artsy-fartsy poetical sound-effects are your idea of fine quality entertainment, then you'll like VALPARAISO.

Summary of Valparaiso: A Play

A man sets out on an ordinary business trip to Valparaiso, Indiana. It turns out to be a mock-heroic journey toward identity and transcendence.

This is Don DeLillo's second play, and it is funny, sharp, and deep-reaching. Its characters tend to have needs and desires shaped by the forces of broadcast technology.

This is the way we talk to each other today. This is the way we tell each other things, in public, before listening millions, that we don't dare to say privately.

Nothing is allowed to be unseen. Nothing remains unsaid. And everything melts repeatedly into something else, as if driven by the finger on the TV remote.

This is also a play that makes obsessive poetry out of the language of routine airline announcements and the flow of endless information.

Valparaiso has been performed by the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.

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