DeLillo's Falling Man may disappoint but it is still the best 9/11 novel to date

There isn’t a writer alive who is more talented or more prophetic than Don DeLillo. Even though his most recent novel, Falling Man, published in 2007, (which I completely by coincidence finished reading on September 11th which marks the eight year anniversary of the Horror) falls short of the work he has done in the past, it is still the best work of fiction dealing with the events of 9/11.

Long before “the planes,” DeLillo foretold the rise of terrorism explaining their mindset as “the lethal believer, the person who kills and dies for faith,” aptly depicted the power of mass media and full public viewed death, the seduction of technology and popular culture, institutionalized paranoia, how a crowd can become “violent, history-changing mob,” and the conclusion that “the rules of what is thinkable” has and will change as these things come together.

Having established himself as, in your reviewer’s opinion, the greatest living American writer with his fingers firmly on the pulse of late-date American culture, it is not surprising that DeLillo’s 9/11 novel trumps those of say Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Or as New York Review of Books critic Andrew O'Hagan in his piece, “Racing Against Reality,” writes:

If the twin towers could be said to have stood in wait for the Mohamed Attas of the world, then the Mohamed Attas of the world were standing in wait for Don DeLillo. To have something exist as your subject before it happens is not unprecedented in the world of literature—consider Kafka and the Nazis, Scott Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age—but the meeting of September 11 and Don DeLillo is not so very much a conjunction as a point of arrival.

In other words, no one has been destined to write the definitive 9/11 novel than Don DeLillo, which to date, he has done.

The novel, which spends most of its time following Keith, who survived the attack of the North Tower but lost two friends from his weekly poker game, and his family as he falls deeper and deeper into a state of alienation that eventually leads him to a depression inducing life as a professional poker player in Las Vegas, is another great example of DeLillo’s ability to depict middle-aged male dissociation in traumatic situations heightened by a chaotic domestic environment that steels away the protagonist’s power and confidence. This perhaps especially true in Falling Man as the planes pile it on even thicker by giving Keith an excuse to remain blank with shock.

Also of note are an interesting portrayal of one of the hijackers in the time leading up to American Airlines Flight 11 crashing into the tower and the ongoing image of a performance artist who re-enacts the iconic image of the 9/11 jumper nicknamed “The Falling Man.” These are some of the most attention grabbing sections of the novel and alone make the book worth reading.

Even so, DeLillo’s genius doesn’t manage to completely convey the events or the ways that they have made us crazy as a country in a profoundly accurate way. As New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani, who of course hated it as she does pretty much anyone—Franzen (penned his memoir The Discomfort Zone an “odious self-portrait of the -artist as a young jackass” to which he responded by saying that “the stupidest person in New York City is currently the lead reviewer of fiction for the New York Times”), Foster Wallace (tiresome, whiny), Amis (weak, risible) and most notably Mailer (silly, self-important and at times inadvertently comical) whose fiction I’m not crazy about but nevertheless share in his Kakutani hatred although think it did go overboard at times like when he called her “a one-woman kamikaze” with a “hair up her immortal Japanese ass” and told Rolling Stone that the only reason the Times didn't fire her was because she was “a twofer”, in that she is “Asiatic” and a “feminist” saying that “she is a token” and “deep down, she probably knows it”—that should be considered genuinely innovative, wrote in her review of the novel “perhaps not even enough time has passed for any novelist to grapple convincingly with those actual events, without being eclipsed by the documentary.” This statement proved to be unexpectedly—believe it or not—spot on since even DeLillo fails live up to the real time, live pictures that we all saw on that lovely and terrible day.

9/11 Comics

Approaching the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11^th, reading the first volume of 9-11: Artists Respond feels a little weird. This comic was published in January 2002 but most of the work there in came just after the Horror and as such is for the most part a lot of shock and holy shit type reactions mixed with all that gushy American patriotism that pretty much everybody experienced in those early months. For this reason, I have ended up thinking a lot about my own life around that time and how strange it all was. It was the strangest period of my life, and not just because of 9/11 but these are things I will get into momentarily since, as usual, I am quasi making this about myself instead of the book I am reviewing.

First of all, as mentioned, the majority of the pieces found in the book are just full of gooey American goodness. For example, Marc Rosenthal’s strip asserts that the terrorists didn’t change the world on Sept. 11, 2001, no the world changed when “in the end, the criminal terrorists lost what popular support they had, and became increasingly isolated as the world saw the clear moral choice,” (p. 174). Hmm. With hindsight we see that that is a load of shit that we all believed back then. Iraq, “the game changer,” blew that opportunity to all hell and once again we are fucked. More than ever now probably. And in 20 years, when the orphaned Iraqi children are old enough to get their revenge, then “Holy Terror, Batman!”

Looking back on this time, I remember watching Bush’s big speech on the 20^th and thinking “Wow, I can’t believe I am actually agreeing with things Bush is saying.” That didn’t last long however. The next day, when I went home for the first time after starting my first year of college, my dad, who like me voted for Nader in 2000, expressed his disbelief at the president’s audacity. He also correctly predicted we would go to war with Iraq because of this. I was confused, “What do you mean go to war with Iraq? That doesn’t even make any sense. Why would we go to war with Iraq?”

“Just watch,” he told me. “He snuck Iraq into that speech, didn’t he? Just wait and see.”

The majority of the reactions featured here, however, come even before that infamous time in the weeks following the Horror. That is, most of the strips are initial reactions that record the shock and terror of that single day in history. For example, one Mark Crilley’s reaction focused on that gorgeous day, a day when I talked with people outside, not many days are like that in an Ohio fall where I went to school, when he writes out one of my thoughts from that day, which was “What a beautiful… horrible day,” (181). On that beautiful/horrible day, I myself was sort of going through a meltdown of my own. Just after I watched the second tower fall, I had to trek over to the athletic complex for an 11 a.m. meeting with the football team, after which I was so screwed up I tried to quit but the coach basically wouldn’t let me. I was clearly out of my mind.

But then again, I still am. Not that that has anything to do with 9/11 or anything, just thought I would share.

So, anyway, there were two types of reactions I really liked: (1) the cynical, nihilistic viewpoint that greatly resembles my own, and (2) the over-grown kid who hasn’t progressed with his/her peers into adulthood—which I can also identify with since I am basically just an overgrown kid myself.

In regards to the overgrown kid theme, one by an artist named Scott Morse stood out. In his story titled “3 Second Impact,” we see a goofy, awkward yet endearing little kid, with a Stewie Griffin lemon-head, coming out of his little shell and doing superhero moves throughout his living room. Halfway through his routine though, we are allowed to see the fully grown Morse, sitting and watching his TV on the day of horror, saying that “I still act ten half the time,” (23). What an excellent image here that nicely captures the way I for one felt at the time—wanting to go out there and do something only having no idea what the hell to do and ending up just reading some comfort material by himself.

Of the latter grouping, standing in a class of darkness all by himself, go figure, is Frank Miller. Who in minimalist style among black and white images of a star, a cross, and finally a negative of a tower’s skeleton, writes “I’m sick of flags. I’m sick of God. I’ve seen the power of faith,” (64-65). This bleak little ditty here is sort of what you would have to expect from Miller. But even though it is sort of twisted and nihilistic and self-absorbed and what have you, it is one of my favorite pieces in the collection, for it is understated and rightly depicts the shit I for one remember going through at the time.

And then there is Alan Moore’s piece, the final and longest in the collection., in which he compares al-Qaeda to the typical villain of the comic book genre. In the strip, titled “This is Information,” Moore claims writing super-villains is “embarrassingly easy” (189). With that in mind, in his genius, long before anyone knew anything about the Muslim world, he tells us that only for the truly evil—i.e. those in comic books—“no motive is required,” (190). But there is more to them than that and to defeat them or what have you you have to look at like the heroes in Watchmen or something—no one is all good nor is anyone all evil. Things aren’t always so simple as he eloquently states: “we are all supposedly with the crusaders or the terrorists.” But how can we even make that decision, especially then before anything was known. Even now, after all the shit that has hit the fan, and to quote a ridiculous movie, The Big Lebowski, for a super serious subject, just using “the parlance of our times, man,” so to speak “the goddamn plane has crashed into the mountain,” it seems even harder to choose after all of the evil the crusading has generated all for nothing.

Its depressing looking back over this and seeing all the missed opportunities. Christ, how things got so fucked and the Right used it all to take control. Jesus, fuck. But then again, Moore left it on the note that we all felt and what was really important and what stuck and what really made us feel and what mattered. We weren’t with the crusaders. We weren’t with the terrorists. We were with you. Whoever you are.