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interest. Connections to Saussure, Barthes, Marx, Derrida, et al. reinforce the strength of this book.
Comparisons of DeLillo and Baudrillard tend to focus on both writers' fascination with consumer ideology. Schuster's sophisticated reading develops this to point out the nuances in Baudrillard's canon and to investigate in particular his notion of “ambivalence,” which is Baudrillard's term for the manner in which commodification may be resisted. Within consumer culture, subjects seek to advance their social standing by accumulating and displaying signs of affluence; ambivalence fractures this by allowing for loss. Schuster suggests that Baudrillard cites terrorism and art as potential forms of ambivalence, both favorite topics in DeLillo's work. He illustrates why Baudrillard sees acts of terror as the most likely way to implement social change and why DeLillo chooses art as the truly radical force which has the potential to remake, if not entirely overthrow, consumerism. Schuster locates DeLillo's difference in his belief that rather than sabotaging consumer culture, terror ultimately reinforces it.
Consumer ideology ensures that its subjects base their personal worth, their status, and their identity on the objects they own, buy, use, and consume, and the knowledge they possess. As Schuster points out, these facile, purchased identities ensure that humans, too, become commodities, replaceable subjects prone to decay and degeneration. This text displays the way in which DeLillo's work examines the effects of this phenomenon on interpersonal relationships together with the inevitable creation of a social hierarchy based upon prestigious possessions—Eric Packer's huge apartment in Cosmopolis is an obvious example. What might appear to otherwise be an insignificant, random object—to again reference Cosmopolis, a shark tank, or borzoi pen—is invested with value, hence encouraging consumers to amass quantities of material goods and surround themselves with objects they often do not need or even want, but instead think they ought to have. Schuster investigates the implications of overthrowing such a system and its artificial confines and wonders whether such a response would force contact with an elusive “reality.”