RE: Fallende Männer - Don DeLillo und 9/11

[John BAILEY]

Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 asked whether it's possible to say anything intelligent about a massacre. DeLillo's Falling Man is a pretty disappointing answer. 

To me it came across as saying "that event must have really been traumatic" followed by a blank stare. Maybe a shrug.

Would be great to see someone trying to find a new form that would allow us to think 9/11 through, the way Vonnegut, Pynchon and the like kinda re-invented the novel in the 60s and 70s.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of Dave Monroe
Sent: Wednesday, 16 May 2007 6:35 PM
To: Pynchon List
Cc: Tim Grair; jameskrivitz at wi.rr.com; Judith Turner; turnerswake at prodigy.net; Sean McNally
Subject: Fallende Männer - Don DeLillo und 9/11

Fallende Männer - Don DeLillo und 9/11

Amerika und die Welt warten auf den gültigen Roman über den 11.
September. Bisher vergeblich, obwohl sich etliche Schriftsteller daran versuchten. Jetzt legt auch Groß-Autor Don DeLillo, Experte für Bedrohung, Terror und Paranoia, ein Buch vor: "Falling Man"....

http://www.welt.de/kultur/article872189/Fallende_Maenner_-_Don_DeLillo_und_911.html

Die Welt 15.05.2007

After Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, John Updike and Ian McEwan, now Don DeLillo has brough out a 9/11 novel, and for a somewhat resigned Wieland Freund, the question is not so much whether but how "Falling Man" would disappoint. For Freund the book is bogged down in theses.
"As if to say 'Look, us too!' DeLillo drags a leftist terrorist onto the stage, with the best intentions he has a certain Omar H. suffer from Alzheimer's and the final emotive scene, when an abandoned briefcase is passed from person to person in the stairwell of the toppling tower, was undoubtedly written hand on heart. In moments like this the novel disappoints, precisely because it is so determined not to disappoint anyone."

http://www.signandsight.com/intodaysfeuilletons/1345.html

Is that SUPPOSED to sound like Sein und Zeit (Heidegger)?  Hm ...


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