Americana by Don DeLillo
Published 1971 · 125,287 words · about 12 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Satire & Humor, Modernist & Experimental Fiction
How hard is Americana to read?
Americana scores 65 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 55 out of 100
- DeLillo mixes advertising slang, network jargon, film references and a few literary and theological terms in elegant sentences. It is richer than The Great Gatsby but clearer than Lolita.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- Long cumulative sentences in the descriptive passages sit beside clipped corporate dialogue and quick exchanges. It is more demanding than Gatsby but far less than Faulkner.
- Abstraction: 60 out of 100
- Concrete scenes of offices, parties and road carry ideas about image, media and American identity, voiced in speeches like Sullivan's Black Knife monologue. Closer to Gatsby's social observation with more explicit philosophy.
- Information density: 62 out of 100
- Dozens of named colleagues, rumors, film references and brand names pile up in the office chapters, along with several time frames. It is denser than Gatsby but flows easily.
- Narrative indirection: 68 out of 100
- David narrates, lies and performs, so readers must separate his pose from what he feels, as with Humbert in Lolita but less extreme. The island frame adds distance.
- Symbolic density: 68 out of 100
- Burt Lancaster as religion, the doors in the mind, the Trotsky memos, Sullivan's Cocoon and her labelled doors all carry meaning. Gatsby's green light is a good comparison, but DeLillo uses more motifs.
- Ironic distance: 75 out of 100
- Binky, Weede and Warburton's scenes are satire throughout, and David's own lies and jokes hold the reader at arm's length. Closer to the irony of Catch-22 and Lolita than to sincerity.
- Resolution withholding: 60 out of 100
- The text shown gives no final resolution and David's search for self stays open. The frame of reruns suggests no neat closure, a little like The Great Gatsby's open meaning.
- Structural complexity: 68 out of 100
- Office satire, flashbacks to marriage, prep school and college, and the road trip are interleaved, with a framing island and film cues. It is more fragmented than Gatsby, less than Midnight's Children.
How Americana is regarded
Americana holds a literary regard score of 64 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.