Don DeLillo’s “Falling Man” – A Book Review
My second book review:
If there was ever an author who seemed suited to the challenge of making sense of September 11th, it would be Don DeLillo. DeLillo is, after all, one of the most important authors of the last 30 years, named one of the four best living American novelists by eminent critic Harold Bloom, and the themes of his best work-the inevitability of death, the power of mass media, the significance of terrorism-seem even more relevant after 9/11. DeLillo’s latest novel, Falling Man, is his entry into the burgeoning genre of the “9/11 novel,” and, though it feels off-key in places, is one of the most beautiful and insightful depictions of the seminal event of our generation, digging beneath the surface of emotions and politics to show how 9/11 relates to our most basic human condition.
Falling Man is not just the story of September 11th (though it begins and ends there), but the days, weeks and months after it. The novel begins with Keith Neudecker fleeing the World Trade Center and arriving at the door of his estranged wife, Lianne, covered in dust and blood. Keith and Lianne are driven into an uneasy reconciliation, and most of the novel concerns their attempts to make sense of their relationship and the events of 9/11. Keith does it by becoming a professional poker player (two members of his weekly poker game died in the World Trade Center), while Lianne engrosses herself in running an Alzheimer’s support group and her ailing mother. Keith’s and Lianne’s narratives provide the bulk of the novel, but just as important is the third plot strain, in which DeLillo traces Hammad, one of the hijackers, from the training camps of Afghanistan to the cockpit of one of the planes that slams into the World Trade Center, providing a surreal counterpoint to Keith’s and Lianne’s domestic struggles.
The title comes not from the famous photograph of the same name showing a man leaping from the burning towers, but from a performance artist who appears in DeLillo’s New York soon after 9/11 who suspends himself from buildings in the pose from the photograph using only a small harness. Although he is a minor character, the Falling Man and his dangerous performance art is the thematic center of the novel, bringing together the book’s two biggest concerns: the collision of art and “the real world,” and the fear of death. Art pervades every corner of the book-Lianne’s mother is a former art professor, her lover is an art dealer, and Lianne’s Alzheimer’s group is centered around writing-and after 9/11, art and the real world become increasingly blurred: “Everything seemed to mean something,” thinks one character. The fear of death and its inevitability is an old theme for DeLillo, and one that crops up frequently in Falling Man, especially as the years wear on and memories of dead friends become more painful. Ritual becomes the main force to ward off death in Falling Man; whenever their thoughts turn toward mortality, characters find comfort in habit and routine: counting toes, smoking, going to church. But, as the last chapter suggests as it returns to the World Trade Center on 9/11, death is still inevitable, no matter how much we try to cloak it in art or ritual.
Despite its thematic loftiness, Falling Man is slightly flawed. The writing, for example, is uneven; the marital tensions of Keith and Lianne are tedious and not as well written as DeLillo’s best. The apocalyptic surrealism of the World Trade Center and Falling Man sequences more than make up for the novel’s dull moments, with passages like this one rivaling the best moments in White Noise: “The only light was vestigal now, the light of what comes after, carried in the residue of smashed matter, in the ash ruins of what was various and human, hovering in the air above.” In all, Falling Man is a brilliant and beautiful take on 9/11, and an excellent contribution to DeLillo’s already impressive body of work.
