Reading Rainbow: Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo

I'm way behind for reasons that I don't really care to get into right now and which are only partly due to a weird TV binge that I'm on. I've got a sizable backlog of posts to get to, so some of these upcoming posts will be brief. That, of course, bears no weight on the random post from somebody like word mule, who has a Prick Tunes post coming tomorrow at noon. This will be a brief one.

I quite like Don DeLillo. I positively loved Underworld and White Noise. I liked Falling Man. Cosmopolis was a different story.

Cosmopolis felt like a novel from a bygone era. I suppose much of the reason for that was the author's intent, but that doesn't really make this novel feel any antiquated or played out. Frankly, Cosmopolis felt like a lesser version of Martin Amis's Money or a more recently penned version of Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho or Jay McInerney's Bright Lights Big City. Yes, the latter two writers couldn't hold DeLillo's jock, but that doesn't make Cosmopolis feel any less irrelevant.

Perhaps more importantly, Eric Packer, the lead character who I'll refrain from labeling a protagonist or anti-hero because frankly I don't know what to or care enough to call him anything. His story is one that never engages. DeLillo never draws the reader into Packer in any way, never gives any insight to the character, never imbues him with enough character or pathos or gravitas to ever make one give a fuck about him. Things happen to him and he does things, but they are simply a series of events that bear little in the way of importance to the reader.

Cosmopolis could very well have gone over my head. That doesn't change the fact that I didn't care for it at all.

Reading Rainbow: Falling Man by Don DeLillo

It has been months, it seems, since I last finished a book. While I don't necessarily have a lot to say on this one, I will briefly talk about it.

While probably not as good as White Noise or Underworld, DeLillo's 9/11 novel dives into the malaise that followed the attack. Told in a fractured way, the short sections within the chapters aptly reflect the lives that were broken.

The book focuses on husband and wife that living separately at the time of the attack, who were then thrown back together by the forces at work. Upon getting back together, both were largely withdrawn, Lianne craving an order and stability to her life (read: safety), and Keith wandering through the haze having been permanently detached by his survival of the attack of the first tower.

As Keith meanders through his new existence, first in New York and later in Las Vegas, Lianne tries to put together the puzzle that is her returned husband. All the while, their son, Justin, undertakes the habit of speaking monosyllabically and enlists his friends to watch the sky for "Bill Lawton". Needless to say, this family finds themselves struggling to put their lives back in order.

Perhaps the most affective passage in the book is its coda, "In the Hudson Corridor". The section begins with a terrorist sitting on the plane--having helped secure it for their purpose--awaiting his fate. The path of this terrorist towards this point had been outlined in previous stand alone chapters, and his involvement with the terrorists seemed to arise from chance as much as anything else. As the plane crashes into the tower, the point of view switches over to Keith and follows his escape from the tower. It is here that DeLillo's prose reaches its greatest height within Falling Man and approaches the standard set by Underworld.