I cannot say enough about DeLillo. Apparently, Osteen feels the same way. I would characterize the book as 'critical'. Not just abstractly critical, like 'this is some literary criticism'. But fully critical, like 'there are some extremely serious things happening, happened, will happen. And we need to talk, have talked, about them at a very serious level'. By serious I mean what DeLillo means when he says it took him a few books written to realize how serious we have to be about writing. Serious as in life-and-death struggle. There is nothing more important than life. The closer to consciousness things get, the more meaningful they are. We like to dive in to the flow of DeLillo-dreaming and let it wash over us as we bathe in it and drink it's revealing purity of intention/reality.

We're taking about DeLillo! For this we do not want un-inspire-ing people around. People who think his characters all talk the same, or his books aren't very emotion-causing. We simply want people like us, who-like-us, we want people, like I mean people whose visual resolution is high. Who can really see. Who are fully awake to what death has to take away. Yes, we'll be dead soon. Before then, please do not make me feel like I'm wasting my time. With the things you might say.

American Magic and Dread--a fairly suggestive title. Because DeLillo is american. That doesn't mean limited. It means the center, the solar furnace of the elements with which he designs life-forms, happens to be here, the richest nation ever, the nation at the swirling epic-center of the riskiest, most audacious project to control nature that people-kind has ever known. We're talking about total destruction, nukes on hair-trigger alert, never-ending. So, the apocalypse hasn't happened yet. Like the big media's haven't documented the literal hell-on-earth that is existence for most of the souls who live, animals trapped in the plot of human exploitation and abuse. Apparently DeLillo eats hamburgers. Maybe he's researching. He feels he needs to taste death in order to write books filled with torturers. Maybe he just doesn't care. Whatever the case, I'm not going to police his thoughts--I won't refuse to read him until he goes vegan. Zappa was a murderer. He smoked cigarettes. (Killing yourself is murder just as bad as killing someone else). And I listen to him whole-heartedly.

Smith says "Too much truth is a prescription for failure". He was talking about why DeLillo was not read as much as his total perfection of intelligent artistry called for with respect to size of readership. So, lots of people bought Underworld. But how many people read it? It's nice to imagine that there are multitudes of souls out there "real" enough to appreciate DeLillo. After all, if I can see his text's "burning light", why can't others? As Smith also says, "There is no such thing as a leaf--there are only leaves".

Osteen's work is the full deal. When reading it, I'll quit, becuase it's too good to read. Meaning, I can only integrate so much goodness at any one time. Sometimes I max out, and have to save stimuli for later. It's about how dense text is. How much meaning happens per alphabetic character. There has to be a limit. We know that DeLillo has flirted with this limit. Osteen does what he does fairly well. It may be wrong to say that fiction is better than criticism. Platonic. Ideals and whatnot. They're just things for different modes of you. Modes can be pretty demanding. Often I will be fully unable to deal w text. But like now i'll be textual. Lines will be life. Writing/reading will do it for me. I'll have things to say, I'll be willing to listen to writers' sayings. The question is, does Osteen do justice to D? Meaning D(eLillo) is so twisted and godly and surprising and new--does Osteen come close to whatever in the world kind of things we should be telling each other about D? With this book, do we reach conditions of remembrance of D-text that are equal more or less to the conditions we can reach in our own private ruminations? Does O let us trip? What is the quality of his dream-logic? Does he bring us down, or trip us out? Does he like it? Can he make his book sing? How far can he take us? Is it worth it, walking along with him for some of the times of our lives? With the things he might say? Text is drug. Is the drug mind-expanding? Is the book informational? Do we learn more reading it than we'd learn never reading it? In short, should we read American Magic and Dread? I wouldn't know. As Rilke says, "All critical intention is beyond me".

I just want to you to acquire some sensations feelings and thoughts. I care for you, because if I were you, I'd be you. I'd do what you're doing. I know you want to come and join in song. I know life is not long. It all depends, on how you'll make it through, the things you do, whether true, or too few. Please, give us a chance. Let us tell you things. Do not turn away--our song is not very long. You've come this far. Choose life, and not death. This may be a (difficult) problem. Or it may be effortless, like true love sometimes is. Only you can tell what's true. You shall decide what to let live. No matter what you do, the end will just be you. The life of love, it may take us far. Make your life reach the magic of love itself.

The author has worked as a palaeontologist at the natural History Museum in London for 13 yrs (at time of publication), so you should feel reassured that it is authoratative.

As the best info books have, it includes a glossary and index.

A companion volume on T-Rex is the same high quality.