It has been almost six years since the fall of the Twin Towers and the literary world, as well as the world at large, continues to respond to and grapple with the repercussions of the attacks. Don DeLillo, a New Yorker himself, contributes with the publication of his novel "Falling Man." The prominence of the attacks in the fictive literature that has appeared after September 11 is multifarious, but DeLillo's novel does not shy from keeping the fall of the World Trade Center as an ever-present shadow in his readers' minds.
The title itself refers to the captured image of a man jumping from one of the upper floors of the North Tower. In the novel, a performance artist in New York mimics the fall supported by a safety harness in unexpected areas of the city, acting as an eerie and frequent reminder of the tragedy. His appearances are jarring and on the verge of grotesque, but the artist's actions cannot be written off as malicious. A focus of "Falling Man" is the ways in which humans internalize an event of such magnitude as the terrorist attacks and DeLillo makes the reader question whether any reaction can be judged as illegitimate.
In the aftermath of the attacks, Keith Neudecker, an employee at the World Trade Center, inadvertently winds up injured and dazed at the door of his estranged wife, Lianne. The time that Keith and Lianne spend together trying to reacquaint themselves with their previous intimacy is emblematic of a pervasive need to re-establish a sense of normalcy in the face of tragedy.
However, DeLillo's work is full of complexities, and he is not one to allow his story to rely on the tenuous rehabilitation of a dying marriage. Keith discovers that he has wound up with someone else's briefcase and his discovery leads to a sexual encounter with the owner. Their memories of the confused escape from the building are chilling, and it is clear that it is not their attraction to one another on an individual level that leads to sexual intimacy. Their encounters are neither torrid nor particularly comforting to either of them; theirs is not a love affair and DeLillo defies any expectations of what one imagines will provide people with solace.
Interspersed with the lives of the New Yorkers is DeLillo's rendering of the life of Hammad, a terrorist involved in the plane hijackings. DeLillo does not condemn him with his prose, but neither does he proceed gently. His imaginings of this man's life and thoughts are pervaded by Hammad's deep-seated disgust with being. DeLillo does not stray from his deliberate, direct use of language and these segments make the novel more disturbing and oppressive, as does the description of the tumbling towers that arrives in the final pages.
The cast of characters in "Falling Man" is substantial; with so many reactions and internalizations available for exploration through one character, the number works to detract from the impact.
Earlier this year, "The New Yorker" ran a short story that later became a piece of DeLillo's novel, and the effect of the story was somehow more haunting than the book itself. The concern of the abbreviated version was the reaction of Keith and Lianne's young son, Justin, to the fall of the towers. Lianne notices that he and his friends have taken to surreptitiously watching the sky through binoculars and she eventually discovers that they are surveying the skies for planes. What might once have been a youthful pastime, like looking for faces in the clouds, is now a grave vigilance. The extent to which the world has changed comes thundering home with this obliteration of innocence, a feeling that is rooted in the novel, but which strikes one differently when dispersed and drawn out as it is through a variety of lenses.