Cosmopolis - Don Dellilo

Cosmopolis tells the story of a day in the life of New York multi-billionaire as he travels across Manhattan to get a hair cut. It's a surreal story, the life of Eric Amber is truly bizarre, and the events he encounters along the way are also just as odd.

Eric Ambler is a self made multi billionaire in his late twenties. He is a true prodigy, and learned how to play the financial markets to make his fortune. He relishes in his wealth, living in a luxury apartment with forty something rooms, with a shark tank and everything. He spends much of this novel in his limo, which has a chandelier, marble floors and many many screens for Eric to keep an eye on the markets, exchange rates, the news and himself. On this particular day, he is losing millions, possibly billions, since the Yen is rising in value (the book does explain how this works, though it isn't important to the story). Eric decides today he is going to get a haircut, and while travelling cross New York he runs into, among other things, an anti-capitalist riot, the President passing through town, a funeral for a rapper and also his new wife, by chance quite a few times. New York is a playground for Eric, stopping for food often, stopping in the apartments of women he knows throughout the city, going to parties and taking in the sights. He spends the whole time thinking about himself, and in every conversation he tries to talk as if he is some kind of oracle, or a pool of infinite wisdom, but really much of what he says is trite nonsense.

Eric is a bit of a mess. He is having a bit of an identity crisis, and thinking about radically changing his life. He makes a few moves towards this - some of them drastic, but really through the book he is slowly starting to take a different perspective on his life, and thinking about how he wants his future to be. Not in a romantic, sentimental way - it is much more nihilistic than that. The book reaches a climax, which is satisfying, but not anything really special.

I think a lot of people will read this and find it reminds them of American Psycho. A narcissistic young, extremely wealthy man in New York City. It is very reminiscent of that book, and the attack on capitalism and yuppie culture is here too, the only thing missing is the violence. It seems pretty clear where Don got his inspiration for this novel.

Overall, I didn't really love this book. There was a theme of anti-cosumerism and anti-capitalism that I liked, but other than that there was little I really enjoyed. Consumer culture is something Don has written about before - notably in his masterpiece White Noise. This story has a similar feel to White Noise - it's a strange world the characters live in, where they accept the bizarre events without awe or wonder, but it seems to be lacking the spark that made White Noise the modern classic it is. Check this book out if you're looking for a quirky story, and you've already read White Noise and American Psycho.