"There's an Empty Space Where America Used to Be"

[Dave Monroe]

On 9/11/13, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> "There's an Empty Space Where America Used to Be": Art and Terrorism
> in Thomas Pynchon's "Against the Day" (2006) and Don DeLillo's
> "Falling Man" (2007)
>
> http://www.academia.edu/886476/_Theres_an_Empty_Space_Where_America_Used_to_Be_Art_and_Terrorism_in_Thomas_Pynchons_Against_the_Day_2006_and_Don_DeLillos_Falling_Man_2007_

If, as Amy J. Elias argues, “allusion is the presenting of the
unpresentable without presentation . . ., reference that defers
reference” (Elias 2001, 60), then Against the Day is one of the most
convincing contributions to post-9/11 fiction published to date.8

[...]

8 Curiously, DeLillo seems to recognize it too. In Falling Man Lianne
is asked to edit a book by
a “retired aeronautical engineer. We call him the Unaflyer. He doesn’t
live in a remote cabin with his bomb-making chemicals and his college
yearbooks but he’s been working obsessively for fifteen or sixteen
years” (DeLillo 2007, 139). We know that Pynchon worked for a period
in Seattle with the Boeing Corporation as “Engineering Aide” and we
can reasonably presume that the gestation for Against the Day was
extremely long. Even the character of the “Falling Man” resembles
Pynchon in his reticence to talk to the media; the narrator argues in
Falling Man that “he said nothing about it [its art] when questioned
by reporters after one of his arrests. He said nothing when asked
whether anyone close to him had been lost in the attacks. He had no
comments to make to the media on any subject” (DeLillo 2007, 222).

http://www.academia.edu/886476/_Theres_an_Empty_Space_Where_America_Used_to_Be_Art_and_Terrorism_in_Thomas_Pynchons_Against_the_Day_2006_and_Don_DeLillos_Falling_Man_2007_

"Plots, Pilgrimage, and the Politics of Genre in Against the Day."
by Amy J. Elias

http://www.academia.edu/1610070/_Plots_Pilgrimage_and_the_Politics_of_Genre_in_Against_the_Day._

Pynchon's Against the Day: A Corrupted Pilgrim's Guide
Edited by Jeffrey Severs and Christopher Leise

http://www2.lib.udel.edu/udpress/pynchon.htm