Don DeLillo (1936 - )

1. Don DeLillo (1936 - )

2. Don DeLillo (1936 - ) White Noise (1985)

3. Don DeLillo (1936 - ) White Noise (1985) Underworld (1997)

4. Don DeLillo (1936 - ) White Noise (1985) Underworld (1997) Cosmopolis (2003)

5. New York Times, April 13, 2003 “Though Don DeLillo gives his characters names, he might as well just assign them serial numbers. The barely corporeal cerebral entities that populate the pages of ''Cosmopolis,'' a novel about the alleged insanity of Nasdaq-era hypercapitalism, aren't so much people as walking topic headings.”

6. New York Times, April 13, 2003 “Though Don DeLillo gives his characters names, he might as well just assign them serial numbers. The barely corporeal cerebral entities that populate the pages of ''Cosmopolis,'' a novel about the alleged insanity of Nasdaq-era hypercapitalism, aren't so much people as walking topic headings.”

7. New York Times, April 13, 2003 “Though Don DeLillo gives his characters names, he might as well just assign them serial numbers. The barely corporeal cerebral entities that populate the pages of ''Cosmopolis,'' a novel about the alleged insanity of Nasdaq-era hypercapitalism, aren't so much people as walking topic headings.” “Beware the novel of ideas, particularly when the ideas come first and all the novel stuff (like the story) comes second.” –Walter Kim

8. New York Times, April 13, 2003 “Though Don DeLillo gives his characters names, he might as well just assign them serial numbers. The barely corporeal cerebral entities that populate the pages of ''Cosmopolis,'' a novel about the alleged insanity of Nasdaq-era hypercapitalism, aren't so much people as walking topic headings.” “Beware the novel of ideas, particularly when the ideas come first and all the novel stuff (like the story) comes second.” –Walter Kim

9. The Guardian, June 14, 2012 “DeLillo's highly charged language, when parcelled up into film dialogue, is cumbersome and self-conscious without the original speck of deadpan drollery. It is possible to read Cosmopolis as a premonition of the economic crash we now know all about, but really it looks like an exercise in zeitgeist-connoisseurship that appears obtuse, self-indulgent and fatally shallow.” –Peter Bradshaw

10. The Guardian, June 14, 2012 “DeLillo's highly charged language, when parcelled up into film dialogue, is cumbersome and self-conscious without the original speck of deadpan drollery. It is possible to read Cosmopolis as a premonition of the economic crash we now know all about, but really it looks like an exercise in zeitgeist-connoisseurship that appears obtuse, self-indulgent and fatally shallow.” –Peter Bradshaw

11. Los Angeles Review of Books The democratic idealism of a left movement dedicated to raising the consciousness of the masses to their own real interests and persuading peoplethat capitalism can be sort of, you know, excessive and unkind is exposed as foolishly ineffectual. All opposition to the techno-capitalist nexus in Cosmopolis is reduced to loud but merely cathartic protest, symbolic gesture, and at its outer reaches, literal martyrdom, assassination and terror. It’s all impotence and despair. History’s done. Techno-capitalism won.” --Cornel Bonca

12. Los Angeles Review of Books The democratic idealism of a left movement dedicated to raising the consciousness of the masses to their own real interests and persuading peoplethat capitalism can be sort of, you know, excessive and unkindis exposed as foolishly ineffectual. All opposition to the techno-capitalist nexus in Cosmopolis is reduced to loud but merely cathartic protest, symbolic gesture, and at its outer reaches, literal martyrdom, assassination and terror. It’s all impotence and despair. History’s done. Techno-capitalism won.” --Cornel Bonca

13. New Yorker, August 27, 2012 We can feel DeLillo’s loathing for the dematerialized world of financial manipulation; he makes Eric a kind of science-fiction metaphor of a human being, and Cronenberg cast the right man for a living cyborg. – David Denby

14. New Yorker, August 27, 2012 We can feel DeLillo’sloathing for the dematerialized world of financial manipulation; he makes Eric a kind of science-fiction metaphor of a human being, and Cronenberg cast the right man for a living cyborg. – David Denby

15. New Yorker Cronenberg has retained much of DeLillo’s dialogue, which is, by turns, clipped and expansive and idea-studded—a kind of postmodernist exposition of how money functions in cyberspace. And he has come up with an equivalent to DeLillo’s curt and cool equipoise—a style of filmmaking that is classically measured and calm, without an extra shot or cut.

16. New Yorker Cronenberg has retained much of DeLillo’s dialogue, which is, by turns, clipped and expansive and idea-studded—a kind of postmodernist exposition of how money functions in cyberspace. And he has come up with an equivalent to DeLillo’s curt and cool equipoise—a style of filmmaking that is classically measured and calm, without an extra shot or cut.

17. Cosmopolis Problems: • Novel of ideas

18. Cosmopolis Problems: • Novel of ideas • Relation to capitalism before and after dot.combubble

19. Cosmopolis Problems: • Novel of ideas • Relation to capitalism before and after dot.com bubble • Anticipating financial crisis

20. The machine age is over: “He took out his hand organizer and poked a note to himself about the anachronistic quality of the word skyscraper. No recent structure ought to bear this word. It belonged to the olden soul of awe, to the arrowed towers that were a narrative long before he was born” (9).

21. The machine age is over: “He took out his hand organizer and poked a note to himself about the anachronistic quality of the word skyscraper. No recent structure ought to bear this word. It belonged to the olden soul of awe, to the arrowed towers that were a narrative long before he was born” (9). “Why do we still have airports?” (22)

22. “They [the bank towers] looked empty from here . He liked that idea. They were made to be the last tall things, made empty, designed to hasten the future. They were the end of the outside world. They weren’t here, exactly. They were in the future, a time beyond geography and touchable money and the people who stack and count it. (36)

23. rats Epigraph: “A rat became the unit of currency” Zbigniew Herbert (Polish poet and essayist)

24. Parker and Chin “There’s a poem I read in which a rat becomes the unit of currency.” “Yes. That would be interesting,” Chin said. “Yes. That would impact the world economy.” “The name alone. Better than the dong or the kwacha.” “The name says everything.” “Yes. The rat,” Chin said. “ Yes. The rat closed lower today against the euro.” (23)

25. Electronic display: “A RAT BECAME THE UNIT OF CURRENCY” (96) Following: A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING THE WORLD—THE SPECTER OF CAPITALISM

26. Protest “Even with the beatings and gassings, the jolt of explosives, even in the assault on the investment bank, he thought there was something theatrical about the protest, ingratiating, even, in the parachutes and skateboards, the styrofoam rat, in the tactical coup of reprogramming the stock tickers with poetry and Karl Marx” (99).

27. Protest “Even with the beatings and gassings, the jolt of explosives, even in the assault on the investment bank, he thought there was something theatrical about the protest, ingratiating, even, in the parachutes and skateboards, the styrofoam rat, in the tactical coup of reprogramming the stock tickers with poetry and Karl Marx” (99).

28. Protest performance 1 [first clip: 01:41 ]

29. Protest performance 1 [first clip: 01:41 ] Protest performance 2 [second clip: 58:39]

30. Protest performance 1 [first clip: 01:41 ] Protest performance 2 [second clip: 58:39] Security performance [01:41]

31. Digital sublime “He studied the figural diagrams that brought organic patterns into play, birdwing and chambered shell. It was shallow thinking to maintain that numbers and charts were the cold compression of unruly human energies, every sort of yearning and midnight sweat reduced to lucid units in the financial markets. In fact data itself was soulful and glowing, a dynamic aspect of the life process. This was the eloquence of alphabets and numeric systems, now fully realized in electronic form, in the zero-oneness of the world, the digital imperative that defined every breath of the planet’s living billions. (24)

32. Digital sublime “He studied the figural diagrams that brought organic patterns into play, birdwing and chambered shell. It was shallow thinking to maintain that numbers and charts were the cold compression of unruly human energies, every sort of yearning and midnight sweat reduced to lucid units in the financial markets. In fact data itself was soulful and glowing, a dynamic aspect of the life process. This was the eloquence of alphabets and numeric systems, now fully realized in electronic form, in the zero-oneness of the world, the digital imperative that defined every breath of the planet’s living billions. (24)

33. Adam Smith (1723 – 1790)

34. Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) Professor of Logic, moral philosophy Theory of Moral Sentiments (1859) Sympathy Self-interest Market (competition) Division of labor Invisible hand

35. Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) System of perfect liberty, hampered by Monopolies Guilds Import dues and taxes

36. Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) Role of the government Defense Justice Infrastructure Education

37. Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790)

38. Benjamin Franklin (06 – 1790)The Art of Virtue

39. Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790)The Art of Virtue Frugality: “Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e. waste nothing.” Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions” (83)

40. Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790) Life writing (autobiography): creation of self Mode of life, including values and habits (culture) These values are geared towards increase in wealth They are realized by calculation, a form of book keeping (his method).

41. Max Weber (1862 – 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere

42. Max Weber (1862 – 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere Greed

43. Max Weber (1862 – 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere Greed (self-interest) Capitalist adventurers (irrational speculation)

44. Max Weber (1862 – 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere Greed (self-interest) Capitalist adventurers (irrational speculation) War expenditures

45. Max Weber (1862 – 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere BUT

46. Max Weber (1862 – 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere BUT It becomes a dominant system in Christian countries

47. Max Weber (1862 – 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere BUT It becomes a dominant system in Christian countries AND It thrives in Protestant countries as well as Protestant areas of multi-confessional countries more than in Catholic ones

48. What is worldly asceticism? Benjamin Franklin: frugality and industry This mean: Limits on consumption. Cradle of modern economic man. Work as ascetic practice, not means to an end. Work as calling (vocation). Fixed calling (Luther) justification for division of labor.

49. Herman Melville (1819 – 1891)

50. PilviTakala, The Trainee (2008) Deloitte: audit, consulting, financial advisory, risk management firm Takala was just Just sitting there, without a computer Spending all day in elevator