Falling Man, the 14th novel by Don DeLillo, author of White Noise and Underworld, reveals slices of life following 9/11 with all the grace of a falling corpse. Beginning, and ending, with lawyer Keith Neudecker emerging from the crumbling World Trade Center nearly unharmed, it is far from a typical post-disaster novel.
Keith has watched friends die and feared for his life, but he is more or less unharmed, though not necessarily unaffected. Falling Man begins with the impression that it is nonsense, though it — thankfully — doesn’t end the same way. It is less an examination of the destruction following the events of 9/11 than a look at the phoenix that can rise from the ashes of devastation. Rather than being destroyed by the attack, Keith is reborn, using the destruction as a means of recreating his own life. He finds himself returning to his estranged wife Lianne and, though shadows loom over him, he discovers a life far more fulfilling than his old one.
Within the varied story lines, Falling Man is less an examination of events as they stand and more an almost abstract look at the behind-the-scenes invocations of life. Many characters reflect on the inherent deeper meanings behind the everyday, striving to find and apply them in a way that is far from abstract. Children speak only in monosyllables to express themselves, and then not at all. A performance artist has a purpose that his audience can’t understand. And when Lianne looks at the still-life paintings on her mother’s walls, she always sees the twin towers. Showing that the meta physical can arise from the mundane, Falling Man is both thought-provoking and, upon reflection, pretty damn weird.
Mired in the poetry of daily life, Falling Man is by no means the epitome of the post-9/11 novel and is unlikely to give hope to a nation brought to its knees by an act of terrorism. Told with twisting chronology and disproportionate examinations, it is to the last a Don DeLillo novel, well-written, thought-provoking and full of unsettling imagery. It both respects and questions the nature of disaster and its resonances.