Reviews
“DeLillo has achieved a precision and economy of language here that any writer would envy.�David Ignatius, Washington Post Book World, "Haunting… DeLillo slows down the whole culture, all of our repertoire of artifacts, words, and gestures."-Greil Marcus, "The most haunting of what might be seen, some years on, as the last book of a trilogy'. DeLillo slows down the whole culture, all of our repertoire of artifacts, words, and gestures; he slows down the whole country, its past, its future, its suspended present, and the notion that we might ever get out of it."-Greil Marcus, Barnes & Noble Review, “A splendid, fierce novel by a deep practitioner of the form&. Enlivening, challenging, harrowing and beautiful.�Matthew Sharpe, Los Angeles Times, “DeLillo is, without any doubt or qualification, one of the most influential, brilliant, gifted and insightful of American novelists. There are sentences in this book that are breathtaking.�Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star, “A novel of ideas about how language, film and art alter what we think of as reality. It's for readers ready to slow down and savor the words. It's for those who would watch not just Psycho , but ponder the meanings of ‘24 Hour Psycho’.�Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today, "DeLillo has achieved a precision and economy of language here that any writer would envy."-David Ignatius, Washington Post Book World, "A splendid, fierce novel by a deep practitioner of the form…. Enlivening, challenging, harrowing and beautiful."-Matthew Sharpe, Los Angeles Times, "If Underworld was DeLillo’s extravagant funeral for the twentieth century, Point Omega is the farewell party for the last decade.... DeLillo has &. written the first important novel of the year."--Michael Miller, New York Observer, "If Underworld was DeLillo's extravagant funeral for the twentieth century, Point Omega is the farewell party for the last decade.... DeLillo has …. written the first important novel of the year."--Michael Miller, New York Observer, "A novel of ideas - about how language, film and art alter what we think of as reality. It's for readers ready to slow down and savor the words. It's for those who would watch not just Psycho , but ponder the meanings of '24 Hour Psycho'."-Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today, "DeLillo is, without any doubt or qualification, one of the most influential, brilliant, gifted and insightful of American novelists. There are sentences in this book that are breathtaking."-Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star
Synopsis
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..