从书中描述的万人宗教集体结婚、球场上暴动的球迷、天安门广场示威的民众……我们可以体验到，现代世界是个集体陷入狂热的时代，也是个集体陷入危险的时代。

唐．德里罗以《毛二世》点出了人类疯狂偶像崇拜、集体狂热的危机。本书以故事主角，一位越隐匿便越引起热烈追随的作家角色为隐喻，写出追随者的盲目，以及被追随者的焦虑与不安。在唐．德里罗独特的幽默对白与惊人的情节推动下，一幅幅属於现今人类的荒诞景象活现眼前，让人不禁惊觉：当我们随著心中那至高无上的梦想和信仰而转动时，会不会突然有一天，梦和信仰会突然变成毫不留情把我们毁灭的巨兽？

《毛二世》的书名，它乃取材自普普艺术家安迪．沃荷的同名丝印画。据本书“导读”介绍，安迪．沃荷的艺术，是透过摄影复制的风格，将艺术作品以商品复制的形式瓦解其独特性。画家将毛泽东、玛丽莲．梦露，甚或可口可乐罐装图画以这种复制的方式呈现，一方面用商业颠覆了艺术，另方面也等於用庸俗颠覆了政治的拟神圣性。

而唐．德里罗采用毛泽东的这幅丝印画题目为书名，可以想像得到他是要把毛泽东这种偶像式的人物，透过反讽、嘲謔、复制等方式，将他的偶像性抹除，使它成为历史过程中的一则笑谈。有书评认为，《毛二世》从书名开始，即显露出作者那种“涂抹”的后现代风格。“涂抹”是把从前过度渲染，因而盖住别的页面的油彩抹消抹掉，其他被盖掉的才可重见天日。

但如果我们深入去读《毛二世》，即可发现唐．德里罗做为当今后现代主义的写作大师，他其实并没有如此狭窄，而且有关毛泽东这个题材只不过是书中的一部分而已。当代美国主要文学理论家之一──杜克大学教授林特济查（Frank Lentricchia）乃是唐．德里罗权威学者，他即指出，如果读者只是想在他的作品裡寻找容易辨认的道德中心，那就一定会觉得很受挫折，因为他的作品实在太易读太难懂了。

现在的时代变了，个人主义的作家时代噎结束，代之而起的乃是集体主义的群眾疯狂甚至恐怖主义。本书藉著霍梅尼死亡时群众疯狂的场景画面、毛泽东发动群众的盛大场景，以及黎巴嫩那个绑架人质的毛派小组织头目的表现，呈现出另一个宏大历史的走向：现在的历史这个钟摆，已往群众这边摆动。群众不只是人多，群众是一种意识，恐怖主义的绑架人质，只不过封闭群众型国家的一种微型预演而已。唐．德里罗在《毛二世》里，一方面讨论个人主义的没落及边缘化，另方面则谈到集体主义这边被操弄的群众疯狂开始兴起，他为什么从早年开始就一直关心「艺术」和「恐怖」这两个问题，并对这两个问题保留了两个档案夹，他的心情之沉重已不言自明。

美国的文学评论家这样评述唐．德里罗的作品：他是对这个让我们快乐不起来的世界做著文化解剖，而同时这个解剖家又对语言中的句子和词汇深深爱好，当他在描述不同的声音时显露出极大的睿智，并且有真正的蓬勃活力。他的作品除了实况的景象外，还有一种文学的愉悦感。因此作品最后的视野是既可怕又具有美感的。“他的作品代表了美国文学上的一种罕有成就。小说家的想像和文化批判有了完美的混合。”

[原题]讽喻人类疯狂偶像崇拜的经典力作《毛二世》

[小说情节简介]

A reclusive novelist named Bill Gray works endlessly on a novel which he chooses to not finish. He has chosen a lifestyle secluded from the outside world in order to try to keep his writing pure. He, along with his assistant Scott, believes that something is lost once a mass audience reads the work. Scott would prefer Bill didn't publish the book for fear that the mass-production of the work will destroy the "real" Bill. Bill has a dalliance with Scott's partner Karen Janney, a former member of the Unification Church who is married to Kim Jo Pak in a Unification Church Blessing ceremony in the prologue of the book.

Bill, who lives as a complete recluse, accedes to be photographed by a New York photographer named Brita who is documenting writers. In dialogue with Brita and others, Bill laments that novelists are quickly becoming obsolete in an age where terrorism has supplanted art as the "raids on consciousness" that jolt and transform culture at large. Gray disappears without a word and secretly decides to accept an opportunity from his former editor Charles to travel to London to publicly speak on the behalf of a Swiss writer held hostage in war-torn Beirut.

Meanwhile Karen ends up living in Brita's New York apartment and spends most of her time in the homeless slums of Tompkins Square Park. In London, Bill is introduced to George Haddad, a representative of the Maoist group responsible for kidnapping the writer. Bill decides to go to Lebanon himself and negotiate the release of the writer. Cutting himself off from Charles, he flees to Cyprus where he awaits a ship that will take him to Lebanon.

In Cyprus, Bill is hit by a car and suffers a lacerated liver which, exacerbated by his heavy drinking, kills him in his sleep while en route to Beirut. In the epilogue, Brita goes to Beirut to photograph Abu Rashid, the terrorist responsible for the kidnapping. The fate of the hostage is never revealed, though the implication is grim. The plot unfolds with DeLillo's customary shifts of time, setting, and character.

[中译本简介和节录]

 [关于作家的写作风格的批评]

Critics of DeLillo argue that his novels are overly stylized and intellectually shallow. Bruce Bawer famously condemned DeLillo's novels insisting they weren't actually novels at all but "tracts, designed to batter us, again and again, with a single idea: that life in America today is boring, benumbing, dehumanized...It's better, DeLillo seems to say in one novel after another, to be a marauding murderous maniac – and therefore a human – than to sit still for America as it is, with its air conditioners, assembly lines, television sets, supermarkets, synthetic fabrics, and credit cards."[72] George Will proclaimed the study of Lee Harvey Oswald in Libra as "sandbox existentialism" and "an act of literary vandalism and bad citizenship."[72] DeLillo responded "I don't take it seriously, but being called a 'bad citizen' is a compliment to a novelist, at least to my mind. That's exactly what we ought to do. We ought to be bad citizens. We ought to, in the sense that we're writing against what power represents, and often what government represents, and what the corporation dictates, and what consumer consciousness has come to mean. In that sense, if we're bad citizens, we're doing our job."[72] In the same interview DeLillo rejected Will's claim that DeLillo blames America for Lee Harvey Oswald, countering that he instead blamed America for George Will. DeLillo also figured prominently[clarification needed] in B. R. Myers's critique of recent American literary fiction, A Reader's Manifesto.