by Marco Fiori

Created on: April 10, 2009

September 11th 2001 The day the world's innocence died. Globalised capital, telecommunications and freedom all came under attack. Falling Man is Don DeLillo's most recent novel dealing with the personal aftermath that accompanied the wider horror. In typical DeLillo fashion, he weaves a tale of individual suffering and urban reduction. Terror retakes the top spot in the metropolitan space while humankind is left to pick up the pieces.

Underworld, DeLillo's entry into the postmodern canon, laid the groundwork for Falling Man. It concerns itself with Cold-War terror, the burgeoning US economy and the beginning of the Telematics revolution. DeLillo has been writing towards an event like 9/11 his whole career, and when he finally gets to it in Falling Man, he successfully avoids it.

We have the expected literary exploration of the event itself, but it is often subdued in tone and even overlooked for a focus on human relationships. The protagonist Keith walks out from the ash and fire into the domestic void, a space to be filled by his ex-wife. While Lianne comes to terms with Keith's reappearance, her son Justin scours the skies for more planes.

We under no circumstances escape the event, but never come fully head to head with it. We have the expected depiction of life inside the towers, but it seems saturated by twenty-four hour news representation. DeLillo works his magic, bringing Hyperreality to the fray, something that is enough to satisfy his postmodern followers. Baudrillard's comments on mass media also get used as we see the defection of meaning through television images.

Keith on the other hand is caught between a battle for reunification with his ex-wife, and a new found love interest, (thanks to walking out of the towers with the wrong briefcase). We have our own falling man, a cross section of a millennium family life in the wake of the attack, and a city isolated by terror. It is the DeLillo charm we have come to expect from the author so prevalent in novels White Noise, Cosmopolis and
Mao II.

It may not be DeLillo's most competent work, but it is undeniably what he has been writing towards all these years. Throw in some subjective characterisation of the actual terrorists, (through their formation, training and eventual enaction of plans) and you have got a text that does everything you would expect. It silences the critics, post Cosmopolis, and reaffirms the belief that DeLillo is one of the most engaging novelists writing today.

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