Don't you really want to read this book, sure you do? Bill Gray in Mao II says:
"Do you know why I believe in the novel? It's a democratic shout. Anybody can write a great novel, one great novel, almost any amateur off the street. I believe this, George. Some nameless drudge, some desperado with barely a nurtured dream can sit down and find his voice and luck out and do it. Something so angelic it makes your jaw hang open. The spray of talent, the spray of ideas. One thing unlike another, one voice unlike the next. Ambiguities, contradictions, whispers, hints. And this is what you want to destroy."
If you read Franzen's The Corrections you need to read DeLillo's Underworld and then perhaps MaoII.
DeLillo, interestingly, when talking about writers says,
"I write to find out how much I know. The act of writing for me is a concentrated form of thought.",
and
"Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals."
DeLillo's books are widely available.
