Novel about 9/11 is said to be ‘melancholic’… go figure

By M&C News May 16, 2007, 15:23 GMT

The defining moment of turn-of-the-21st-century America is perfectly portrayed in National Book Award winner Don DeLillo\'s Falling Man. The book takes its title from the electrifying photograph of the man who jumped or fell from the North Tower on 9/11. It also refers to a performance artist who recreates the picture. The artist straps himself into a harness and in high visibility areas jumps from an elevated structure, ...more

With a name like Falling Man, mixed with that of the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings, one would think to know what the reference is pointing to. But actually, the title refers to an outrageous performance artist who appears in the book as a secondary character.
 
Don DeLillo, the author of the work Falling Man, ends his novel with the image of a shirt coming down out of the sky, falling from the twin towers, "arms waving like nothing in this life." Critics are calling this book not one of his best works, and the imagery perhaps a bit too obvious. Many say some of his better books include Underworld, about Cold War paranoia, or Libra, inspired by President Kennedy's assassination.

The main character in Falling Man is a lawyer who walks away from the towers a survivor, but is yet detached from everything around him as he willingly moves back with his wife and son, of whom he left two years prior to the event. As for the description, DeLillo offers, "The dead were everywhere, in the air, in the rubble, on rooftops nearby, in the breezes that carried from the river. They were settled in ash and drizzled on windows all along the streets, in his hair and on his clothes."

Critics are also saying that DeLillo is less successful imagining the thoughts of the terrorists, but despite the obvious scenes and average description, one would hope after reading this novel, a reader will come away with something deeper than the mere, “Yes, 9/11 was bad.”

Published by Scribner, the novel finishes at 256 pages.