After the fall.(Falling Man)(Book review)

Falling Man, by Don DeLillo (Scribner, 256 pp., $26)

IN 1945, Theodor Adorno famously said that "after Auschwitz, writing poetry is barbaric." But the poets kept on writing, and the Holocaust itself became a fixture of the literary scene. In the immediate wake of 9/11, many artists--poets, filmmakers, novelists--were similarly skeptical of the ability of art to respond to such an event, as well as the appropriateness of trying to do so. Yet in the years since, those concerns seem to have been lost, as that day has spawned numerous movies, poems, paintings, and novels. Indeed, we have seen the birth of a new creative niche: 9/11 art.

This is hardly surprising. For those looking to make their mark as Serious, Important Artists, 9/11, with its incumbent spectacle and political upheaval, as well as its guaranteed emotional wallop, makes for an attractive subject. Don DeLillo's new novel, Falling Man, which begins in the burning wreckage of the towers and circles back to end with the impact of the first plane, might appear to be just another entry in this burgeoning subgenre. But despite the showy set-pieces with which it opens and closes, Falling Man is not really a novel about the destruction of the World Trade Center and the way it rocked America and the world. No, DeLillo, ever the modernist, has taken the meta path: He doesn't so much examine 9/11 itself as explore our fraught and fearful reactions to it--our art, our relationships, our thoughts, and their utter inadequacy in the face of catastrophe and evil.

The book opens with the protagonist, Keith Neudecker, staggering away from the wreckage of the towers, outrunning walls of black ash and picking glass out of his wounds. He heads uptown to the apartment of his estranged wife, Lianne, with whom he has a son. The rest of the novel largely concerns the quick rekindling of their relationship and its slow disintegration over the next few years, as Keith takes to spending weeks away from home having affairs and living the life of a professional gambler. Lianne, a freelance book editor, passes time by teaching a writing course to people in the early stages of Alzheimer's, talking art with her art-historian mother, thinking endlessly about Islam and terrorism, and conversing about the state of the world with an old lover who appears to have a history as a radical left-wing European terrorist. And, every so often, she catches a glimpse of a performance artist who calls himself the Falling Man, suspending himself in a suit and tie above the streets of the city, upside down, an eerie living replica of those who leapt from the top floors of the burning towers.

Other threads appear and disappear, but there's no narrative to speak of, just imagistic fragments of post-9/11 existence. Like the lives of its two central characters, the narrative--indeed, the entire idea of narrative--has been shattered. Many scenes appear out of order, and the book constantly returns to 9/11: Keith's dazed escape and walk out of downtown, Lianne's helpless worrying from her midtown apartment. Whatever they do afterwards--gamble, sleep around, attend anti-war rallies--seems futile, a desperate attempt to regain something that, like the memories of Lianne's class of Alzheimer's-afflicted writers, is permanently lost. These are lives in pieces, blown apart by the fall of the towers, unable to put it all back together and get beyond that morning.

It's a picture of ...