New Details on Point Omega

[rich]

fyi--

Writing about conspiracy theory in Libra, government cover-ups in White Noise,
the Cold War in Underworld, and 9/11 in Falling Man, “DeLillo’s books have been
weirdly prophetic about twenty-first century America” (The New York
Times Book Review).
Now, in Point Omega, he takes on the secret strategists in America’s
war machine.

In the middle of a desert “somewhere south of nowhere,” to a forlorn
house made of metal and
clapboard, a secret war advisor has gone in search of space and time.
Richard Elster, seventy-three, was a scholar—an outsider—when he was
called to a meeting with government war planners.
They asked Elster to conceptualize their efforts—to form an
intellectual framework for their troop deployments, counterinsurgency,
orders for rendition.
For two years he read their classified documents and attended secret
meetings. He was
to map the reality these men were trying to create. “Bulk and
swagger,” he called it.
At the end of his service, Elster retreats to the desert, where he is
joined by a filmmaker intent
on documenting his experience. Jim Finley wants to make a one-take
film, Elster its single character—“Just a man against a wall.”
The two men sit on the deck, drinking and talking. Finley makes the
case for his film. Weeks
go by. And then Elster’s daughter Jessie visits—an “otherworldly”
woman from New York—who dramatically alters the dynamic of the story.
When a devastating event follows, all the men’s talk, the accumulated
meaning of conversation and connection, is thrown into question.
What is left is loss, fierce and incomprehensible.

on pg. 5 here:

http://www.simonandschuster.biz/extras/pdfs/catalogs/Spring2010/Scribner-Spring-2010-Catalog.pdf