Point Omega by Don DeLillo

Simon & Schuster, February 2009

This is literature.

   Don DeLillo's latest offering, Point Omega, is perhaps the best thing he's written since White Noise, and certainly one of the most thought provoking works that you are likely to read this year. DeLillo has always been a master of weaving seemingly disparate subjects into the same tapestry, but in this weird and haunting tale he has exceeded his own high standard, and achieved a personal best.

   The story follows the experimental filmmaker Jim Finley as he visits Richard Elster at his desert retreat somewhere east of San Diego. Finley is attempting to convince Elster, a former Defense Department advisor, to make a movie about his time with the Department during the second Iraq War. As the two men sit under the stars getting to know each other, the conversation slides easily back and forth between what was really going on in the War Room and what might really be going on with all of us as a species.   Why do we seem to be bent on self-destruction? Why do we seem to repeat the same histories over and over? Why do we ask for advice and then ignore it?

Hours turn into days, and days turn into weeks as the reluctant Elster warms to his guest. When the two of them are eventually joined by Elster's twenty-something daughter Jessica, on vacation from a mysterious relationship, the conversations become even more revealing.

   What makes this book great? Is it the interesting and hard questions that it asks in its brief one hundred and seventeen pages? Somewhat. Is it DeLillo's masterfully compelling and understated prose? Sure - readers cannot help appreciating evocative descriptions like:

   "I flew to San Diego, rented a car and drove east into mountains that seemed to rise out of turns in the road, late summer thunderheads building, and then down through brown hills past rock-slide warnings and leaning clusters of spiny stalks and finally off the paved road and onto a primitive trail, lost for a time in the hazy scrawl of Elster's penciled map."

   Is it the character development? Indisputably. The author says only what needs to be said to paint vivid, sympathetic portraits of his cast, with great emotional effect.
   But what really gives this novel permanent value is its excellence of form. The story in the desert, which makes up the vast majority of the book, is framed by two short chapters involving an art installation and a fourth, more mysterious character's reaction to it. The way that DeLillo relates this character's realizations in the art exhibit to the realizations of the characters in the main plot is ingenious, and completely changes the meaning and timbre of the novel itself.

Like a great movie, Point Omega must be viewed twice; not because the first try fails to satisfy, but because the second does so even more. At the end of the first reading readers will likely find themselves completely surprised and staring off into space while their minds cast about, grasping for yet deeper and deeper meaning. Upon reading the story over again from the beginning, they will find themselves astounded by the artistry and aplomb with which these two inextricably interwoven tales are told. Themes and ideas reflect back on themselves like a hall of mirrors, leaving readers unable to escape sometimes frightening conclusions about themselves and the world in which they live.
   Everything about the telling of this story makes it better. The title makes it better. The artwork on the dust jacket makes it better. The acknowledgements make it better. Nothing in this works seems to be haphazard; nothing here seems to happen by mistake - which is difficult to accomplish without sounding the least bit contrived.
   Once in a while you read a book that reminds you how good writing can be, and what a difference there is between well-crafted, thoughtful and provocative art, and just plain old pulp fiction. This is literature.

http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/fiction/fr/point-omega.htm