DeLillo, Don. Falling Man

DeLillo, Don. Falling Man. New York: Scribner, 2007

In New York after 9/11, brief but horrible images of people throwing themselves from windows high up in the World Trade Centre towers struck deep into people's minds to linger there. In DeLillo's superb novel about the days after 9/11, a performance artist repeatedly scales high places and hangs himself by harness from one leg, the other crooked in the manner of the falling man captured in an iconic photograph as he plunges to his death.

      Children are observed staring at the sky through binoculars, whispering about being watchful for the evil "Bill Lawton," their childish misunderstanding of the news of "Bin Laden" whose planes may well come again to wreak havoc.

      For Westerners, making sense of the carnage of September 11, 2001 is a near-impossible task. This confusion is masterfully portrayed through one family, an estranged couple, Keith and Lianne and their young son Justin. Keith is one of the lucky ones who escaped down a stairwell and walked away before the towers collapsed. Keith is physically injured—superficially—and ends up going back to his home where his wife and son accept him back, although never sure again who this man who was husband and father is now. A "survivor." 

      Through their struggles to gain a new footing, one can easily conclude that every person still walking the earth in the Western world today is a "survivor" of 9/11.

      Most Americans, I venture to guess, suffer mild to severe PTSD over 9/11.

      I marked pages 46ff as typical of the struggle to understand why men would kill themselves for the sake of killing many others, others who had done them no harm on any personal level. Nina—Lianne's mother—and her boyfriend Martin are talking:

"It's sheer panic. They attack out of panic."

"This much, yes, it may be true. Because they think the world is a disease. This world, this society, ours. A disease that's spreading," he said.

"There are no goals they can hope to achieve. they're not liberating a people or casting out a dictator. Kill the innocent, only that."

"They strike a blow to this country's dominance. They achieve this, to show how a great power can be vulnerable. A power that interferes, that occupies (p. 46)."

Who of us hasn't been in such a conversation?

      In several chapters, DeLillo takes us into the possible minds of some of the 9/11 suicide terrorists. In a conversation between a leader, Amir, and Hammad, a dutiful follower who longs for sacrificial death like a hungry man longs for food, Amir says:

" . . . there simply are no others. The others [those who will die] exist only to the degree that they fill the role we have designed for them. This is their function as others. Those who will die have no claim to their lives outside the useful fact of their dying."

Hammad was impressed by this. It sounded like philosophy (p. 176)."

In other words, the 3,000+ who died in the twin towers were born only for the purpose of dying in the demonstration that the terrorists had planned for them. In the eyes of fate, the terrorists were born to kill— the victims were born to fulfill the role of being killed on September 11, 2001.

      But the terrorists victory over the powerful USA was much, much more than the reducing of their numbers by 3,000 and their assets by several billions of dollars. And this "more" is really what DeLillo's novel so excruciatingly, personally lays out. For instance, survivor Kevin gives himself over to the gambling circuit, in effect dismissing the search for meaning in the actual world in order to preoccupy himself with odds that make sense. What refuge does one seek in a world where being born, killing and being killed is part of some horrendous joke of the gods, looking down and laughing at the futility of our small minds attempting to make meaning like children searching the skies for the evil Bill Lawton?

      Again, it's in the dialogue among Martin, Nina and Lianne that we hear echoes of our own thoughts as we ponder the meaning of Allah ordering this atrocity to be done and God allowing it to happen:

"But we can't forget God. They [the terrorists] invoke God constantly. This is their oldest source, their oldest word. Yes, there's something else but it's not history or economics. It's what men feel. It's the thing that happens among men, the blood that happens when an idea begins to travel, whatever's behind it, whatever blind force or blunt force or violent need. How convenient it is to find a system of belief that justifies these feelings and these killings."

"But the system doesn't justify this. Islam renounces this," he said.

"If you call it God, then it's God. God is whatever God allows (p. 112)."

Enslavement, loss and military defeat in the Old Testament are generally explained as consequences of sin, i.e. God allowing setbacks—or causing them—in order to set people back on a right course. Some have speculated—and DeLillo's novel suggests—that the 9/11 attack was a consequence of America's imperialist sins in the world. With or without naming God as complicit in this tragic development, the possibility that America brought and is bringing retribution down on its own head is not novel to the novel, but for America—who has repeatedly shown herself to be incapable of learning from even the most obvious lessons—this presents just one more pair of unmatched socks in its PTSD suitcase. If it's true, then there is no hope. 9/11 might be repeated endlessly until the whole country descends into a state of collective dementia.

      Which brings us to Lianne's occupation. She works as facilitator to a support group for persons living with early-onset dementia and, with her, we watch her subjects' descent into their final, meaningless worlds, their decline a poignant parallel to that of the characters suffering primarily from post 9/11 syndrome.

      I only recently paid attention to DeLillo on the recommendation of a friend. His White Noise is a novel I was aware of but hadn't gotten around to reading. Reviews of White Noise range from glowing to acerbic with few between. The range may be accounted for by the fact that some will invariably evaluate the quality of the process that produced a work of art while others will judge on the basis of taste for—or against—the subject matter. I tend to judge using a few simple criteria: 1) did the reading absorb me? 2) did the reading effect a mood change in me that lingered? and 3) did the reading raise important and ponderable questions? For me, a book that lacks artistic skill can never answer on the basis of these criteria; to be both moving and motivating, a piece of art must be at least so skillfully done that the brush strokes don't attract attention.

      Falling Man passes the test for me. DeLillo's prose is uncomplicated but rhythmic, sparse when it needs to be and imagistic and evocative by turn. The characters walk off the page and defy the reader to forget them. DeLillo has great command of the power in the merest gesture or word when its well chosen, well placed. Take page 58, where Keith and another survivor are snapshotted in the process of cigarette lighting and smoke blowing; the act flashbacking both the characters and us to the haunting images of smoke billowing from the twin towers.

      Most of us probably don't need to be reminded that 9/11 constituted a sea change in the history of civilization. Most of us remember what we were doing when we first heard. 3,000 people have died in natural disasters, sinking ships, battles, etc. many times in history, but this was different. This opened the door to possible nightmares to come, both for nations and for individuals, the latter so poignantly illustrated by the falling man acrobat/artist and young Justin combing the skies with binoculars in expectation of the return of the evil Bill Lawton.

      Two thumbs up!

The End of Faith - Sam Harris

Harris, Sam. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005

“As a [North American] culture, we have clearly outgrown our tolerance for the deliberate torture and murder of innocents. We would do well to realize that much of the world has not (144).”

Sam Harris penned these two sentences before ISIS and the brutality that characterizes their determination to carve out a caliphate in Syria and Iraq through horrible acts of genocide and forced conversion. Had he written it today, he might well have added a chapter right after his most pointed one condemning  Muslim faith as a predictable generator of exactly what we're seeing in the Middle East.

      But this book is not primarily a denunciation of aspects of Islamic faith; it points to the danger represented historically and presently by the clinging to indemonstrable and irrational religious beliefs. By far the heaviest concentration of criticism is for the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and the most dangerous belief in all three—according to Harris—is the conviction that there is a life after death and that all persons will be judged by God and rewarded or punished for who they are, what they profess and what they do. 

     The bloodshed that has historically ensued from the exercise of religious dogmas is not difficult to research and demonstrate and Harris makes copious references to examples like the holocaust, the inquisitions, even the My Lai massacres, events that would not have been the horrors they were except for the under-girding of centuries of insupportable beliefs.

      Highly relevant to Harris' thesis is the observation that history is kinetic, religious holy books are static. Something as simple as the rethinking of the Biblical creation narrative in the light of modern archaeology, anthropology, etc., can bring faith up against a brick wall unless it has some resiliency, and the possibility of revising ancient understandings with the acquisition of new knowledge is made enormously more difficult by the presence of holy books that are considered to be inerrant, god-breathed and infallible. It's a conundrum that Abrahamic religions share and according to Harris, the very fact that people literally believe what is written—even if it was meant to be symbolic or metaphoric—represents enormous danger both to believers and to the world at large.

      Strident believers of all stripes will obviously find Harris offensive; I imagine many throwing it out after the first few pages: “Once a person believes—really believes—that certain ideas can lead to eternal happiness, or to its antithesis, he cannot tolerate the possibility that the people he loves might be led astray by the blandishments of unbelievers. Certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one (13).” He goes on to assert that whether one's religious views are liberal or conservative, a tacit understanding reigns that beliefs about an afterlife (for instance) are not criticized— in fact, not even discussed. This, to Harris, demonstrates the irrational nature of religious faith as well as its tenacious hold on orthodoxy.

      Obviously, a distinction needs to be made between those who unconditionally believe—in the inerrancy of the book, for instance—those who harbour some doubt and those who claim to be believers but don't participate in an appreciable way in religious activity or discussion. Harris takes a swipe at liberal believers as being enablers to fundamentalist atrocity by being politely silent, a criticism that I, personally, need to give some thought. Fundamentalism in North America has drawn hugely damaging lines in the sand on questions like homosexuality, reproductive rights, stem cell research to cite just a few examples; moderate Christians like me have been milksops when it comes to challenging people who are essentially members of our tribe, as it were. An even better case is made for the tepid response among moderate Muslims to the atrocities of Al Qaeda and other jihadist terrorist groups.

      ISIS has opened a whole new chapter in East/West relations and has encouraged us to think again about our response to the wanton murdering of innocents on the basis of their ethnicity, faith or whatever marks them as “not one of us:” infidels, in their terms. To Harris, the actions of jihadists follow naturally from literal belief in the irrational, brutal pronouncements so overwhelmingly evident in the Koran. He cites fully 5 pages of references from the Koran that can be seen to predict and—for more moderate Muslims—excuse certain atrocities. “Let not the unbelievers think that We prolong their days for their own good. We give them respite only so that they may commit more grievous sins. Shameful punishment awaits them – 3:178 (120)” 

     Similarly, Christians and Jews can find handy excuses for atrocities like the Spanish inquisition in their scriptures: “If it is proved and confirmed that such a hateful thing (leading fellow believers into idolatry) has taken place among you, you must put the inhabitants of that town to the sword; you must lay it under the curse of destruction—the town and everything in it – Deuteronomy 13: 12-16 (82).” Who can deny that in Christian and Jewish circles today, Biblically-inspired belief in chosenness and 'Godly' manifest destiny still plays a role in Palestine/Israel, making conflict resolution more than difficult? Who hasn't noticed that the current genocidal warfare being carried out by ISIS bears remarkable similarities to the conquest of Palestine by Joshua? (See Joshua Chapter 8, for instance.)

      Faith moderates under the influence of new knowledge and the passage of time. Most Christians with whom I dialogue don't take the beards, stonings and take-no-prisoners admonitions in parts of the Old Testament as prescriptive for them. At the same time, many of our teachers and preachers are bending over backwards to justify the inclusion of barbarous or absurd texts in our holy book by “contextualizing” them or shining the flashlight of the New Testament upon them. 

     Nevertheless, there remains in the Bible—a book that declares God to be a loving God—the suggestion that since he has counselled genocide, torture and destruction in defence of his people in the past, he might do so again. Who can safely predict that if ISIS grows and expands, the powers of the day in the West won't retreat to this understanding of God, this belief in the efficacy of righteous slaughter, only this time with weapons of mass destruction and not with swords and clubs?

      Warring faiths. Abraham's children butchering each other . . . again.

      The End of Faith was a New York Times best seller. I suspect that Sam Harris did very well financially on it and that many have read it. I'm curious about the way it was and is being read by both conservative and moderate Christians. 

     Some, of course, would proclaim that without an abiding, unquestioned faith in the reality of God as revealed in their particular holy book—as well as in the prospect of everlasting life—religion and even human life and consciousness are rendered utterly meaningless. 

     Those who see God and the book as the source and foundation of right and wrong, of ethics and morality might argue that without such beliefs, the world would quickly descend into bloodshed and chaos. 

     In his book, Can we be Good Without God, Robert Buckman proposes that “it might be a better world if we all believe whatever we wish, but behave as if there was no suprahuman deity to sort out our problems for us (Buckman: 264).” To that, many would undoubtedly say, “Don't hold your breath.”

      There is much to ponder in Harris' book. Reason vs. faith as opposed to faith in dialogue with reason, for instance. About one thing Harris is undoubtedly correct—if my experience is typical: Strident belief by its very nature pours cold water on dialogue, debate and a willingness to adapt.

      Harris sums up his central thesis in the afterword:

“Needless to say, my argument against religious faith is not an argument for the blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. The problem I raise in the book is none other than the problem of dogma itself—of which every religion has more than its fair share. I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable (231).”