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'Falling Man': The day it all came down
In DeLillo's fictional take on 9/11, it's society that seems to be collapsing.
from the May 29, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Convinced that her husband perished in the towers, Lianne is as traumatized as Keith. We learn in the weaker, latter section of the novel that three years later, she still can't bring herself to ride the subway. There's some solace in their tentative reunion, though they're like patients recovering from major surgery, physically and emotionally fragile, with uncertain prognoses.
Keith emerges from the wreckage with a stranger's briefcase. When he finds its owner, a black divorcée, they connect tenuously over their shared trauma and fall into a brief affair.
But mainly, "Falling Man" is about disconnections.
Lianne, a manuscript editor, leads Alzheimer's patients in a writing group in East Harlem. She grieves as their minds gradually "slide away from the adhesive friction that makes an individual possible."
She also copes with her failing mother, a retired university professor, whose shady German lover rants about America's arrogance and consequent irrelevance.
Keith, despite "what he'd lately taken to be the truth in his life, that it was meant to be lived seriously and responsibly, not snatched in clumsy fistfuls," anesthetizes himself with full-time poker-playing, mostly on the road. Their son restricts his speech to monosyllables and scans the skies anxiously for "Bill Lawton" – bin Laden.
DeLillo's characters are so emotionally remote, it's hard to engage with them. They often see themselves as if they're in a movie – even when kissing in a taxi.
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