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!