Don Delillo: POINT OMEGA

This is Don Delillo’s latest, released in February 2010. This is my first Delillo. So, I don’t have any idea about what other people who have previously read some Delillo novels commenting about the difference between the writing styles the author used in this novel and that which he used in his other novels. What I find out about the novel is its lean prose that’s compact. Did I find it hard? Maybe, in some instances; however, the overall experience is gratifying. There is an aspect of this short novel that reminds of Michael Antonioni’s L’Avventura. If you’ve seen the film and read this book, you’ll know what I mean.

Synopsis (from the back cover):

In Point Omega, Don Delillo looks into the mind and heart of a "defense intellectual," one of the men involved in the management of the country's war machine. Richard Elster was a scholar — an outsider — when he was called to a meeting with government war planners, asked to apply "ideas and principles to such matters as troop deployment and counterinsurgency." We see Elster at the end of his service. He has retreated to the desert, "somewhere south of nowhere," in search of space and geologic time. There he is joined by a filmmaker, Jim Finley, intent on documenting his experience. Finley wants to persuade Elster to make a one-take film, Elster its single character — "Just a man and a wall."Weeks later, Elster's daughter Jessica visits — an "otherworldly" woman from New York, who dramatically alters the dynamic of the story. The three of them talk, train their binoculars on the landscape and build an odd, tender intimacy, something like a family. Then a devastating event throws everything into question. In this compact and powerful novel, it is finally a lingering human mystery that haunts the landscape of desert and mind.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

{23 August 2010}