A novel set in New York beginning September 11 is not easy to write and manage, but FALLING MAN (London: Picador, 2007), DeLillo manages to show how everything has changed since then in the perception of sense present and future, in daily life, interpersonal relationships.
The events are reported, by a method closer to modern to late modern, through streams of consciousness of the characters and meaningful dialogue. Keith, who survived the collapse of the Twin Towers, a new instinct linked to specific emotional event, went home to his wife Lianne, from which is divided and which starts with an attempt at reconciliation, there is a child, Justine A child who believes that the towers are still standing and that a terrorist named Bill Lawton (Bin Laden so he thinks it is called) will produce other acts of terrorism. Action continues for some years. Parallel to the history of this family is that of Lianne's mother Nina (an intellectual expert visual arts), and her lover Martin. At the end of each section of the novel, always through streams of consciousness, is the figure of those who caused the collapse of the towers, with thoughts and reflections reported as sensations experienced from within, trying also to understand the events that corner .
The opening scene and the final shooting with circularity: the day of the in principle with Keith walking out of the towers in the ruins and broken everyday contemporary ("a Breakfast Special sign" in pieces, p. 3; looks of "members from the taichi group from the park nearby," p. 4), the conclusion by reconstructing the impact of the airplane against the first tower, the reactions of the protagonist, the wounds, the tragedies surrounding the exit open, free fall of an individual or Throw fell from a window.
The image of the fall, shooting several times in the narrative (and even read metaphorically compared to the current human civilization) has however, except in the above case, that of a tightrope, David Janiak, who let fall from heights in vacuum and was actually called "Falling Man": free flights, planned to draw attention, ending up in a vacuum which is where we live.
The case has a weight and appears in various ways, especially in the passion of Keith for the poker game to which he devoted himself not for money but for mental interest: as an allegory of political parties, strategy and chance, which characterize the conflict has arisen in relation to terrorism, a sense of risk to which Keith is granted after September 11, while Lianne looking for safety: "She wanted to be safe in the world and he did not" (p. 216).
It is understandable that dominates the foolishness: "I Know That Most lives make no sense. I mean in this country, What Makes Sense?" (P. 215).
Humanity is proposed as a value in itself, although not prone to write in a rhetorical tone and sentiment. Lianne deals with a group of Alzheimer's patients. Marion and Nina express moments of solidarity. Keith and his wife try to understand each other, as if the disputes that characterized an earlier stage of their existence no longer necessary and whether they could do without. You rediscover the aggregations of the family, to defense against the outside world: "We need to stay together, keep the family going [...]. Times Like These, the family is Necessary" (p. 214).
Self-reflexive references to the function of narrative interspersed the narrative of events and biographies of the characters. What ultimately this story? "What we carry. This is the story in the end" (p. 91).
On a scape, DeLillo positions compared to 11 September should be read in the text in the Ruins of the Future, in which ideas are enucleated within the company and capital markets in a situation in which "terror's response is A Narrative That Has Been Developing over the years, only now becoming inescapable, "and the assumption that the future away, every moment of everyday routine dissipates, terror can arise at any time:
"We like to think that America invented the future. We are comfortable with the future, intimate with it. But there are disturbances now, in large and small ways, a chain of reconsiderations. Where we live, how we travel, what we think about when we look at our children. For many people, the event has changed the grain of the most routine moment.
We may find that the ruin of the towers is implicit in other things. The new Palm Pilot at a fingertip's reach, the stretch limousine parked outside the hotel, the midtown skyscraper under construction, carrying the name of a major investment bank - all haunted in a way by what has happened, less assured in their authority, in the prerogatives they offer.
There is fear of other kinds of terrorism, the prospect that biological and chemical weapons will contaminate the air we breathe and the water we drink. There wasn't much concern about this after earlier terrorist acts. This time we are trying to name the future, not in our normally hopeful way, but guided by dread.
What has already happened is sufficient to affect the air around us, psychologically. We are all breathing the fumes of lower Manhattan, where traces of the dead are everywhere, in the soft breeze off the river, on rooftops and windows, in our hair and on our clothes".
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