Somewhat disappointing, very uneven stories. This is the first collection of DeLillo's short fiction, and the stories therefore traverse his entire writing career. Reading these stories, one thing I noted was the persistence of DeLillo's brand of dialogue, a dialogue characterized by the characters speaking right past each other. You see it early, in the 1983 story "Human Moments in World War III:

"We have a deviate, Tomahawk."
"We copy. There's a voice."
"We have gross oscillation here."
"There's some interference. I have gone redundant but I'm not sure it's helping"
"We are clearing an outframe to locate source."
"Thank you, Colorado."

ln the very clever 2010 story "Hammer and Sickle", the TV in a prison for financial criminals is tuned in to a stock market show hosted by two girls, ages 10 and 12:

"All of Europe is looking south. What do they see?"
"They see Greece."
"They see fiscal instability, enormous debt burden, possible default."
"Crisis is a Greek word."
"Is Greece hiding its public debt?"
"Is the crisis spreading at lightning speed to the rest of the southern tier, to the Euro zone in general, to emerging markets everywhere?"

And so on. What's interesting here is that DeLillo has taken his paranoid government/military rhetoric and transferreed it to the financial world. Very timely, to be sure, but also just a little bit tired. The times have changed around DeLillo, but he has remained absolutely fixed. I guess one could say he is consistent, but I'm not sure that's a compliment when referred to a literary artist.