I wish that I had written this blog two weeks ago when I had finished reading Point Omega over a cold weekend. I read it in two sittings, just to make it last a little longer, but this short novel could easily be read in one. My experience with DeLillo’s work is limited in my having read only one other: White Noise, which I found on the bedside table of my then college-aged English major daughter several years ago. Intrigued as I was then, when Point Omega arrived at Lemuria, I watched it from afar on the shelf in front of me for a few days before I made the move to pick it up and then the decision to take it home with me. That was a very good decision! How to write about this extremely complex work of fiction poses quite a challenge.
First, for a little background information: DeLillo, the author of fifteen novels and three plays, won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize, as well as many other smaller awards. He also won the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ William Dean Howells Medal for his 1997 novel Underworld.
The initial thing to know about this novel is that the action which appears at the surface is secondary to what the book is “really” about , in my opinion. Then, another thing to consider is the element of what “really” happens, action wise, versus what is happening in the mind of the protagonist, which is not to say that the subconscious is secondary at all. In fact, it could be argued that the subconscious just might be the protagonist!
Before you, reader, stop reading this blog, I should move ahead before this all becomes way too esoteric. So, let me begin with the surface action which most Americans will be familiar with–the Alfred Hitchcock movie sensation “Psycho”. For those of us who wither and cringe at the idea of watching a horror movie, even a cult classic horror movie, all the way through, then even reading about someone else watching “Psycho” would send chills up my arm! The shower scene has been permanently fixed in our collective consciousness. Now, imagine a slow motion version of the movie with a protagonist going to a venue to watch it over and over and over, especially that scene. Just ponder for a moment why anyone would want to do that! Maybe it is understandable if I tell you that the protagonist is a filmmaker himself. So, this is the opening of Point Omega. Actually, in this opening scene, DeLillo references the real life/slow motion version of “Psycho” in Douglas Gordan’s film project exhibited in 2006 at New York’s MoMA (Museum of Modern Art). The film scene ran non-stop for a full day and a night. In Point Omega, the narrator/protagonist also watches and comments on other interested patrons moving in and out of the film room. This allusion to other characters yields great importance later on in the novel.
Flash forward……..the filmmaker, protagonist Jim Finley, goes to the desert to talk a brilliant governmental war consultant into agreeing to a documentary about his work with war planners. Days and nights pass where little dialogue occurs and the two men, who barely know each other, become ensconced in watching desert life from a backyard deck. Every now and then the filmmaker tries a different angle to try to persuade scholar Richard Elster into being filmed as a one man show. The slow paced motion, simple sentences, and sparse language which Delillo uses expertly in this part of the novel mimic the lack of action.
Enter the scholar’s daughter, a mysterious twenty-year-old from New York who arrives for a visit which is preplanned by her mother in order to get the young girl’s troubled mind off a bad relationship. Equally withdrawn, much like her father, the now threesome watch the desert together. She disappears! Questions, hopes, then fears surface. A futile search begins! Heartache surrounding the unknown ensues. The scholar and the filmmaker sadly return to civilization.
So, now, you, reader, know the “surface action”. I won’t tell you the underlying action. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself. I can say that there is a conflict among time, perception of time, and the imagination. For those of you who read In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien back in 1994, you’ll be reminded. Suffice it to say that the old adage, “Things will seem as though they are and yet they are not” will work quite well here. Isn’t it always true that appearance versus reality is the true question about human nature or for those who study it either in life or in literature?
See Kelly’s Blog on Point Omega.
-Nan
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