A novel by Don DeLillo
Published by Houghton Mifflin, 1973, 265 pages. Jacket photograph
by Jill Krementz.
British first edition published by Deutsch, 1974.
Paperbacks issued by Pocket, 1974 (cover
image), later by Penguin (cover
image).
No dedication.
What it's about:
The story of Bucky Wunderlick, a rock star who goes underground.
Here's the original dust jacket
copy.
First line:
"Fame requires every kind of excess."
What it's really about:
In 1979, when asked about how he came to write about a rock star,
DeLillo said: "It's a game at the far edge. It's an extreme
situation. I think rock is a music of loneliness and isolation....
A man with a half-shattered mind, alone in a rented room. Noise,
electricity, excess, Vietnam--all these things are tied together
in Great Jones Street, and a certain tension is drawn out
of the hero's silence, his withdrawal. Bucky Wunderlick's music
moves from political involvement to extreme self-awareness to
childlike babbling."
To DeCurtis he said: "Certainly there is very little about rock music in Great Jones Street, although the hero is a musician. The interesting thing about that particular character is that he seems to be at a crossroad between murder and suicide. For me, that defines the period between 1965 and 1975, say, and I thought it was best exemplified in a rock-music star."
Critical Reaction:
Nelson Algren wrote quite a good summary of the novel in his positive
review in the LA Times, though the general reaction to this book
was that it was a step back for DeLillo. As the NYT daily review
put it, "No, Mr. DeLillo is human after all." One complaint
was that it is quite hard to effectively satirize the world of
rock music, and rock lyrics. Several reviewers felt that the characters
did not hold up. Generally everyone recognized DeLillo's gifts
with language, however.