Falling Man

Don DeLillo’s new novel about 9/11 is out. It’s been 30 years since the publication of Players, the first of DeLillo’s works to deal with the the psychology, organization and aftermath of terrorism; among that novel’s more ominous tones, the central character, Pammie, works at the World Trade Center, where she writes brochures for a firm known as Grief Management Counseling. If you’ve read anything else by DeLillo — especially Underworld or Mao II — you’ve pretty much been waiting for six years to see what he might do with the subject of 9/11.

The initial reviews of Falling Man are predictably mixed. Michiko Kakutani calls it “tired and brittle,” while Laura Frost and Sven Birkerts offer more positive accounts.

Now, I’ll read the book no matter what, because I would read — and maybe even enjoy — Don DeLillo’s grocery list. I wasn’t overwhelmed by Cosmopolis, and I thought The Body Artist was crap, but as far as I’m concerned, when you write a book like White Noise, you get a lifetime benefit-of-the-doubt pass.

(As an aside, when my wife and I got hitched a few years ago, I was hoping the ceremony might include a reading of “The Mystery at the Middle of Ordinary Life,” DeLillo’s three-minute “playlet” about marriage; this was not the last artistic battle I’ve lost, and we oped for a pretty cool cummings poem instead. Still, the DeLillo piece would’ve been priceless….)