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Ratner's Star

by Don DeLillo

3.41 · rating details · 486 ratings · 35 reviews

One of DeLillo's first novels, Ratner's Star follows Billy, the genius adolescent, who is recruited to live in obscurity, underground, as he tries to help a panel of estranged, demented, and yet lovable scientists communicate with beings from outer space. It is a mix of quirky humor, science, mathematical theories, as well as the complex emotional distance and sadness peop...more

Paperback, 448 pages

Published August 12th 1980 by Vintage (first published 1976)

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Sep 02, 2007

Aaron rated it

· review of another edition

My reactions to this novel can be put rather succinctly. If David Foster Wallace is indeed a fan of Don Delillo, this is the novel he has stolen from most. If Don Delillo is indeed a fan of Thomas Pynchon, this is the novel that Pynchon most directly inspired. But regardless of its influences or the work it later inspired, because those things are speculatory, it is certainly true that this novel, Delillo's fourth, is his first great novel.

The novel centers around child math prodigy...moreMy reactions to this novel can be put rather succinctly. If David Foster Wallace is indeed a fan of Don Delillo, this is the novel he has stolen from most. If Don Delillo is indeed a fan of Thomas Pynchon, this is the novel that Pynchon most directly inspired. But regardless of its influences or the work it later inspired, because those things are speculatory, it is certainly true that this novel, Delillo's fourth, is his first great novel.

The novel centers around child math prodigy Billy Terwilliger. At fourteen years old, Billy has already won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work with "zorgs" (as near as I can figure, Delillo made this term up) and now lives a life of quiet seclusion at a mathematics academy for genius teenagers. He is called, somewhat against his will, to a remote laboratory (named Field Experiment Number One) to decipher a string of code believed to have come from a newly discovered planet coined Ratner's Star.

This is a wildly funny novel with sequences of surrealistic absurdity and populated with bizarre characters. There's Henrik Endor, who, before Billy, failed to break the code and now lives in a hole, spending his days digging and feeding on larvae. There's Orang Mohole, the acknowledged kingpin of alternate physics, who subsists on strange green pills and vicarious threesomes. There's Shazar Lazarus Ratner, a renowned astronomer turned mystic so diseased that he now lives in a plastic bubble so that oxygen cannot kill him. There's Elux Troxl, the entrepeneur, who, alongside his oddly-perverted sidekick Grbk, deals in leased computer time, chain letters, and bat guano. There's Cheops Feeley, who annually awards a prize to the mathematician whose new ideas holds the highest "madness content." There's also Chester Greylag Dent, ninety-two-years old and ending his days in a secret submarine somewhere off the shore of Europe.

It's hard saying what purpose this novel is intended to serve, what point Delillo is trying to make. But it seems obvious that there is something to be said here about the stupidity of science, the differences between thinking analytically, thinking logically, and thinking superstitiously. And, despite its humor, there is an overwhelming sense of attempting to understand the complex emotional distance and sadness people feel when they truly are more brilliant than the people around them.

This is as close to a five star novel as I have read in a while. Distinctly Delillo, it shows definite strides in the direction of becoming the novelist he will eventually become.(less)

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Aug 29, 2011

Greg rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

According to Wikipedia this is Don DeLillo's favorite of his novels. It's not mine. I think that I missed something in the book, like DeLillo was doing something that I didn't quite catch, or I caught but I wasn't that impressed by it. I'm not sure what I'm saying.

This is DeLillo's first 'big' novel. I haven't read Underworld yet, but from the books of his I've read I think I like him best when his books are compact. I think it's possible (this could change as I read the rest of h...moreAccording to Wikipedia this is Don DeLillo's favorite of his novels. It's not mine. I think that I missed something in the book, like DeLillo was doing something that I didn't quite catch, or I caught but I wasn't that impressed by it. I'm not sure what I'm saying.

This is DeLillo's first 'big' novel. I haven't read Underworld yet, but from the books of his I've read I think I like him best when his books are compact. I think it's possible (this could change as I read the rest of his works) that Point Omega might be my favorite of his works. It's short but it's tight and beautiful. Every word in the book counts, unlike in most of my reviews. The writing in Ratner's Star has the 'DeLillo' sparseness to it (usually) but the plot or the narrative is too sprawling. The narrative sort of reminded me of something that Gaddis might have tried to do (and the characters have a very Gaddis quality to them, and the way especially in the final section of the book that action and characters will shift for no discernible way made me think of the de-centering that Gaddis is such a master at in his 'big' novels), but (I hate to say this), at times many of the scenes felt like skits. As if there were some funny things DeLillo thought he could have scientists do so he made an absurd or slapstick chapter to put them in. Each chapter might have a continuing theme or message he's trying to convey but I never felt like he was successfully getting that message across. It was as if he were being too blunt about what he wanted to say but vague in the details. He wasn't leaving enough table scraps around for the reader (me) to put together the story myself, but what was being given was kind of, yeah, so?

I'm having a hard time writing this. A lot of my criticisms are things I normally like in novels. It's too big, it's too sprawling, there isn't enough of a center, it's too silly at times, it's not clear enough... if anyone were to say that Infinite Jest or JR were any of these things I'd be ready to jump at the books defense and say, yeah they are but that's all part of the book, it all has to be there. But for this novel I thought that all of these things I'm normally a 'meta-fiction' nerd in loving just weren't working right. It's like this book is a really nice looking car and you want to love it but a lot of stuff in the engine is just not firing off right so you've got this nice looking car that is sputtering down the road being trailed by a noxious black cloud (an Airborne Toxic Event?) and limping along with two nice tires and two donuts. If I was told what the book was about, and how it was presented and all of that I'd be jumping up and down in joy wanting to read it, but somewhere in the execution the book failed for me.

What saved the book was DeLillo's dialogue. I love the staccato overly stylized way he writes dialogue. It's very artificial, but overly stylized things have to be, right? Even though it's not flashy at all, the way his characters speak reminded me of the violence in a (good Hong Kong) John Woo movie. So totally fake, but beautiful in its construction and execution. I'm not sure why I kept thinking about John Woo movies while reading this book but I think the analogy holds at least a little bit.

Two DFW related notes. I'm convinced that DFW is paying homage to DeLillo in Infinite Jest. Out of the early novels of his I've read so far, this one has the least explicit things that DFW returns to in Infinite Jest, but there is a fictional event called The MIT Language Riots that appear in both works, and the recurring question of "Explain please" I think is used quite often by a character in a DFW work, but I can't remember if it was in Infinite Jest or another work, or obviously what character uses this.

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Jul 05, 2010

Holly rated it

· review of another edition

Earth has received an apparent message from a planet circulating Ratner's Star, and a brilliant mathematical boy is called in to decipher the message. Commentary on science and astronomy and a study on brilliant minds and how they relate (?)

Despite the interesting premise, this book was torture to read. The ideas expressed are as vast and disconnected as the characters created to portray them. The characters were not integrated into the plot - not only did you (slowly and painstaking...more

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Nov 02, 2011

Claitte rated it

· review of another edition

Tout au long de cette lecture souvent interrompue j'ai oscillé entre l'ennui, le désir de savoir où tout cela allait mener, la perplexité devant tant de dialogues incongrus (que j'ai mis sur le compte du génie supposé de chaque personnage), l'incertitude de ne pas finalement être menée en bateau... J'attendais une trame logique et élaborée, un processus complexe qui justifierait cette prose (à la limite de l')absurde.

C'est en bout de cette fastidieuse course que j'ai peut-être eu ma ré...more

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Jan 04, 2012

Angelo Ricci added it · review of another edition

Mi domando spesso se, nella scrittura di DeLillo, la trama rappresenti uno strumento, un mezzo, un escamotage, un lasciapassare per aprire visioni nascoste. C’è una sottile linea, spesso frazionata, ma non per questo meno decisa, nella struttura della sua narrazione. L’andare a ritroso di Underworld che, come la traiettoria di una palla da baseball, compie continui svisamenti temporali. La scrittura documentata di Libra, a metà strada tra una docufiction e la trilogia americana di Ellroy. I soli...moreMi domando spesso se, nella scrittura di DeLillo, la trama rappresenti uno strumento, un mezzo, un escamotage, un lasciapassare per aprire visioni nascoste. C’è una sottile linea, spesso frazionata, ma non per questo meno decisa, nella struttura della sua narrazione. L’andare a ritroso di Underworld che, come la traiettoria di una palla da baseball, compie continui svisamenti temporali. La scrittura documentata di Libra, a metà strada tra una docufiction e la trilogia americana di Ellroy. I soliloqui densi di tragicità nascosta di Cosmopolis che, da soli, svelano una vita metropolitana definitivamente sfuggita al tentativo di classificazione compiuto dai minimalisti. L’apparizione di un linguaggio assassino che svela la forza terribile della parola, ne I nomi. Le immagini statiche di performances e di installazioni artistiche che dominano L’uomo che cade e, in parte, anche quella struttura teologica che è Punto Omega. Le figure di personaggi che incarnano, nella loro verbosità, i deliri di una cultura pop e underground che, come un fiume carsico, appare e ricompare nella vita americana, come in Rumore Bianco e Running dog, fino ad arrivare, con Great Jones Street al suo limite estremo, dove la vita e la morte collimano e collidono.
La stella di Ratner presenta, come un catalogo programmatico di personali ossessioni, tutte quelle costruzioni semantiche e simboliche che DeLillo vede ergersi nel paesaggio di un’America che, al di sotto di una crosta labile di apparente solidità, nasconde afflati di tragedia onirica. La figura del quattordicenne genio della matematica apre tutto un mondo di normale e condivisa follia dove, ancora una volta, è il linguaggio (questa volta quello matematico) a trasfigurarsi in codice indecifrabile, paradigma della nostra schiavitù verso la parola. Torme di scienziati che sembrano preda delle loro più ataviche follie, persi in una eterna costruzione di codici e di teoremi, personaggi secondari (autisti e personale di servizio) che si esprimono per mezzo di una afasia meccanica, e che rimandano a certi simulacri di phildickiana memoria.
Il tutto posizionato in un deserto assolato che ricorda le immagini californiane della miglior cinematografia noir e underground degli anni Settanta. Deserto nel quale, primogenitura di tutte le strutture e installazioni che faranno da sfondo al divenire linguistico dei personaggi dei suoi futuri romanzi, si erge il cicloide, edificio perfetto e insondabile che forse, come il monolito kubrickiano, rappresenta, ancora una volta, l'angosciosa e inquietante ostensione del Nulla.
http://nottedinebbiainpianura.blogspot.c...(less)

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Nov 27, 2009

Adam Sanders rated it

· review of another edition

Not really a review. Just joined goodreads and want to take some notes on some of the parts of books I read. Especially someone like Delillo.

This is interesting so far. I can really see some of the other themes that Delillo explored in later books "Underworld" and "The Names".

Really amusing so far have been the one guys 500 page dissertation on the "meaning" of Science. Also the part where Billy asked Una to see her tits. Page 43 2 cha...more

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Feb 06, 2010

Richard rated it

LATEST ATTEMPT (aka, attempt #3);

I WANT to like this book, would love to dig into a novel that takes place in a science think tank with odd characters, but I would liken this book more to some poor Kafka, and as listless as DeLillo's novel The Names. There is an intriguing mystery here, and like a Kafka K-named character, Twilling meets only further distraction and obstruction as he tries to decode a mysterious space message, but unlike Kafka, the distractions and obstructions becom...moreLATEST ATTEMPT (aka, attempt #3);

I WANT to like this book, would love to dig into a novel that takes place in a science think tank with odd characters, but I would liken this book more to some poor Kafka, and as listless as DeLillo's novel The Names. There is an intriguing mystery here, and like a Kafka K-named character, Twilling meets only further distraction and obstruction as he tries to decode a mysterious space message, but unlike Kafka, the distractions and obstructions become too redundant, and steadily lacking interest. Like The Names, the characters mainly in play just don't keep up enough intrigue to make the 400+ pages worth the consistent effort.

************************

I must admit that this book, even after two stabs at it, didn't thrill me the way other DeLillo novels can, and I did feel as though I were reading something more by Thomas Pynchon. Many of DeLillo's finest work seems to work on the exploration and twisting of its own metaphor, but filtered through extraordinary but still accessible characters, people who feel both rooted in and confused by the complexities of the world behind them. Ratner's Star seems to want to delve in such a way, but through a situation far more absurdist.

Billy Twilling is a young math Nobel laureate who is pulled into a think tank that bombards him on all sides with eccentrics, from fellow mathematicians to the custodians. Yet many of these characters become redundant through their lack of introduction and propensity for monologue. Many moments of the book read like Kafka and Michio Kaku co-writing an episode of _Dragnet_. Twilling's main job is to decipher a coded message received from outer space, but of course his progress is hindered and his job outright disregarded by many in Field Experiment One. Eventually, the book breaks down in plotline and form itself when Twilling is pulled underground into a new project that is off the charts.

There are many delights in this book--Twilling himself is a wonderfully concise and hilariously unhumorous boy. DeLillo shows his skill at even comic timing on the page. The scenes with a mathematic precurser who has banished himself to a hole in the ground and the meeting of the esteemed Ratner himself during a torch ceremony are wonderful, yet I didn't find the book as a whole challenging with its exploration of metaphor as DeLillo does in later books. There is a wide expanse of characters, but the ecentricities become the focus of the book, not the crucial ideas, and the eccentricities become a little formulaic at times, even in their seeming randomness.
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Jan 10, 2009

Daved rated it

· review of another edition

Math + fiction, how can you go wrong? This book starts out well as the main character is enlisted to decode an enigmatic radio transmission received from space. This takes place in a futuristic compound centered around Space Brain--a super computer that is mapping the universe. The protagonist, an insanely gifted child mathematician, encounters an odd assortment of scientists and academics and there are some interesting thoughts around the relation of math, science, and culture. From here, t...more

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Mar 24, 2009

Lara Bell rated it

· review of another edition

Totally tedious. Made me regret that I can't stop reading a book once I start it. Put me to sleep after 3 pages every night. It's that kind of pretentious, look how smart I am, off-kilter writing that a college math freshman would probably spooge over. The beginning is fun and sucked me in enough that I waded through to the end for the somewhat predictable payoff.
I guess if you like math give it a try...

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Jan 06, 2012

Patrick Wensink rated it

I am a huge Delillo fan.

I was looking forward to RATNER'S for many years. Sadly, though, this is his weakest book. It was a case of Delillo being too deep in his own cleverness. The writing was crisp and stunning throughout, but the characters just kept flooding in without any of them mattering or doing much or giving me a reason to care.

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Mar 20, 2011

Barry rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: delillo

quitting Ranter's Star at page 81, it should be called Repetitive's Bore and the only interesting thing about it is how all the attempts at humor come off as tedious and the endless science-jargon monologues are comical, fuck you DeLillo you completely suck

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Sep 27, 2009

Timon Karnezos rated it

· review of another edition

Weird, unpleasant imagery, confusing plot, and yet I can't forget it, so there's that going for it, I guess. I kept hoping this would become more classic Delillo but it tended to get more and more Pynchon-y as it wrapped up.

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Mar 06, 2009

Brent Legault rated it

· review of another edition

Reading this has been like panning for gold in a mud-riven creek bed. There were a few flakes of value but not even enough of them to buy a new mule. And my brain now feels like it could use a thorough hosing or beer bath.

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Jan 04, 2009

Aaron rated it

· review of another edition

My first DeLillo. Despite rave reviews for him, I found the story flat. It grabbed me initially, but it didn't conclude well.

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Mar 25, 2010

Charlie rated it

· review of another edition

i only read a third of it. incredibly irritating in every conceivable way. wtf? i really liked White Noise.

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Nov 19, 2010

Jonny Ross rated it

· review of another edition

A smart, funny, satirical version of Ender's Game, with a pubescent Cary Grant as its protagonist.

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Oct 19, 2010

Justin rated it

· review of another edition

It's a very smart book that's frequently very funny. The first 3/4 of it were pretty great, but then it hit a long skid with a change in tone and structure until the relatively strong ending.

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Jan 05, 2010

J S rated it

Delillo does his best Pynchon impersonation here, and it is really, really good.

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Aug 10, 2008

tim rated it

· review of another edition

There is plentiful evidence of DeLillo's brilliance strewn throughout these pages, but for the most part the going is laboriously slow. In the imaginative conclusion, math and science are revealed to be just as much a creation of the human mind as mysticism and language, where no single one of these approaches is any more able than another to objectively answer the question: "What is the universe as it exists beyond the human brain?"

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Jun 23, 2011

Mike rated it

I'm giving this two stars but only because I am not smart enough to understand it. This takes a good knowledge of mathematics, science, Kabbalah and other forms of mysticism. I'm pretty sure it's a masterpiece, if you understand those things...

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Aug 02, 2008

Ashton rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: people who overanalyze literature so they can tell me what it means.

Shelves: science-fiction

first half: a clever (though definitely off-kilter) satire of the scientific community peppered with allusions to philosophy. Also, it's pretty funny.

second half: digresses into an incomprehensible vortex of weirdness, leaving all possible insights or coherence buried under piles of bat guano ... literally.

The entire second part seems oddly extraneous, or maybe I'm just not intelligent enough to grasp it.

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Jun 20, 2008

Mike marked it as abandoned · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-drama-poetry, z-read-in-2008

I made it about one-third of the way through this before I chucked it. It was very amusing in parts, but overall, the shtick was getting kind of tiresome and wasn't compelling me to turn the pages anymore. Maybe I'll pick this up again in the future and try it again since my only two goodreads friends who've read it both liked it enough to give it 4 stars.

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Jul 21, 2007

Monica rated it

· review of another edition

The first half was super-fun. I particularly love Delillo's style of dialogue, and the first half of this novel is just a succession of conversations with increasingly bizarre characters. The middle, however, when he stopped introducing characters, got a bit slow and dark for me. I think the more science you know, the more fun this would be to read, as well.

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Dec 06, 2008

Patrick added it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: mathematicians

This book is either way over my head, just plain sucks, or is (probably) a combination of the two. Just the same, I'd probably leaf through it again, if only to come up with a more argumentative stance as to why I think it's awful.

Oddly, I get this book mixed up in my head with the movie The Fly II. I guess they do sort of share some similarities.

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Jan 01, 2012

Ray rated it

· review of another edition

I cannot recommend this book more highly. Idiosyncratic like all DeLillo's book, this novel has an almost dickensian scope and is funny as heck. If you like DeLillo, you'll love this. If you don't, you'll hate it. But no matter what, the language is amazing.

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Nov 03, 2007

Rustam rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: people with some patience

One of the first Delillo novels, where I actually considered not finishing at two or three points. Very slap-sticky if you can geek out on the math/science commentary. It read kind of like a Kubrick movie.

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Mar 24, 2008

Quarronaut rated it

· review of another edition

Erudite, ambitious, and frequently hilarious, though altogether static. One of the strangest books I'll probably ever read, Menippean satire for Ivy League math departments.

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Mar 06, 2007

Jon rated it

Recommends it for: Those in whom the two brain halves are at peace

Ratner's Star is a clever bit of science fiction, a powerful observation of mathematical pursuits and, as always with Delillo full of wide ranging human insights. Very enjoyable.

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Dec 17, 2009

Gordon rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Fans of Thomas Pynchon

A hilarious satire of the pure mathematics and the vague line between theoretical science and pseudo-science.

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Oct 12, 2010

Bob rated it

· review of another edition

Would recommend to DD fans. Difficult at times (well, it's DeLillo!). Slyly funny.

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About Don DeLillo

Don DeLillo is an American author best known for his novels, which paint detailed portraits of American life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He currently lives outside of New York City.

Among the most influential American writers of the past decades, DeLillo has received, among author awards, a National Book Award (White Noise, 1985), a PEN/Faulkner Award (Mao II, 1991), and ...more

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