Falling Man

It seems fitting that of the books I've read in 2009, only two were audio books and both of them were 9/11 novels. I say fitting because I don't feel the same connection to an audio book that I do to a tangible book. I can't dog ear a page or highlight a paragraph. When I want to write my impressions about it, I can't go back and skim through to remember the names of characters or to refresh my memory.

The events of 9/11 feel like that to me too. Although volumes have been written about it and the video events recorded that day are readily available online, the thoughts and emotions in those moments of realization and in the days, months and years afterward are more difficult to reconstruct with accuracy. Naturally, we can all recount where we were and what we were doing that Tuesday morning and most of us would say we have a vivid recollection of what we felt at that horrific moment when it became clear what was happening. I have my doubts that our memories are as lucid as we'd like to think they are. The very act of remembering something slightly alters it each time we remember and so regardless of how confident we are in the veracity of those thoughts and feelings, we unconsciously change them.

And as the news coverage in the minutes, hours, days and weeks consumed us, it seems to me that the task of trying to comprehend what it all meant was a private process. We craved information but were at a loss as to what to do with it. We talked about what had happened and what may happen, but I don't think many of us were able to verbalize what it might mean.

Fortunately, there are plenty of reviews and blog posts about Falling Man by Don DeLillo to help aid my memory about the book. It was not long, but the appearance of simplicity was deceptive and it's not surprising that this story of a handful of characters left me with no real comfort or answers. What book could?

The story begins after the first tower has collapsed and DeLillo's opening sentence approaches perfection:

"It was not a street anymore but a world, a time and space of falling ash and near night."

Keith Neudecker, a 39-year old lawyer has escaped the building with minor injuries and walks to the home of his estranged wife, Lianne. He arrives carrying a briefcase he'd picked up on the stairway on his way out of the tower. Several days afterward, Keith locates the woman who owns the briefcase and returns it to her. The shared experience of having been in the tower makes a physical affair inevitable, although the sex seems almost a necessary excuse for them to continue talking about it.

Lianne is an editor, but also leads a workshop to help sufferers of early stage Alzheimer's to chronicle their lives. As time passes, the participants begin to dwindle as their memories disappear.

Keith and Lianne's young son Justin exhibits troubling behavior "after the planes" and engages in secretive behavior with two neighbor children that includes staring out the window with binoculars, looking for more planes and whispering about "Bill Lawton".

The instinct Keith initially follows back to his family opens up the possibility of reconciliation. Their failed marriage has fractured under the weight of their dwindling ability to communicate, but the events of 9/11 spin them apart further, now in new, still separate directions.

The book is divided into three sections and at the end of each, we enter the life of one of the hijackers and follow him on his path from indoctrination into a terrorist cell to the moment of impact. Because the story flashes back and forth in time, the interjection of Hammad's story serves to further disorient. Hammad's final dedication to Jihad provides a disturbing counterbalance for Lianne's private longing for the possibility of God.

The "Falling Man" is a performance artist who appears at random locations around New York City. Dressed in a suit and tie, he "falls" from the ledges of tall buildings, horrifying bystanders. His performances end as he dangles upside-down in a safety harness in emulation of the horrific, iconic photograph depicting one of the hundreds who fell or jumped to his death, rather than be consumed by fire and smoke.

The Falling Man's performances elicit public shock and outrage and eventually even debate on an academic panel as to the appropriateness of 9/11 "art". This loose thread that weaves through the novel begs questions about the timing and appropriateness of the novel itself. After years of writing fiction that came eerily close to predicting the terrorist attacks and the subsequent conspiracy theories that followed, it is interesting to note that none of the usual stylistic flourishes in DeLillo's larger works are present. There are no big messages, no analysis or commentary on much at all about the factual aspects of the event. The characters are detached from each other and from themselves. There is a numbness that pervades all of them and although they remain together, Keith and Lianna are even less connected after 9/11 than they were before.

Published in 2007, Falling Man made me recognize some realities about the impact of 9/11 on my own life. On that September day I was married to another man, living in another city and I was, I now understand, a different person. It took nearly this long to make a connection.

For more complete synopsis and analysis, see the reviews at The New York Times Book Review,
The Quarterly Conversation, The Guardian and The Village Voice.

Next up: Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles

Inherent Vice

One of the benefits of being a selective reader is that I like and often love almost every book I read. It pains me to say anything negative about any book, but I do want to talk about this one. Of the books I've over the last few months, I least enjoyed Inherent Vice. See, I can't even come out and say I didn't like it.

I should make a couple of points before I explain my problems with it.

Inherent Vice is the first Thomas Pynchon I've read. From the standpoint of accessibility, it was a great place to start. Based on my subsequent reading of Gravity's Rainbow and after talking to Pynchon fans, I'm certain this book is more straightforward than any of the others. And it's only fair to note that because the author's work has been so celebrated, my expectations were unusually high. And finally, Inherent Vice is a detective novel. Millions of people adore them, but they've just never been my thing.

Pynchon has a number of distinctive quirks. I've only read two of his books, but I'm betting these affectations are in all seven. His characters all have oddball names, he sprinkles fictional lyrics throughout the narratives and his sense of humor is kind of corny. Some readers adore this about his work. I find it a little goofy, bordering on irritating.

There are other qualities about his writing that I like a lot. His work is frequently described as encyclopedic. I was overwhelmed and amazed by the variety and sheer volume of cultural, scientific, mathematical, historical, cinematic, literary and religious references in Gravity's Rainbow. Although Inherent Vice is nowhere near as ambitious, it is full of cultural and political references that firmly place the story in 1970. In both works, the blend of both real and imagined musicians, actors, songs and other touchstones has the interesting side effect of almost, but never quite grounding you.

Because he's spinning so many plates, it's easy to overlook the fact that Pynchon is an exceptional prose writer. Unfortunately, there were far more examples of great writing in Gravity's Rainbow, but now and then, something in this book made me stop to read it again:

"He crept along till he finally found another car to settle in behind. After a while in his rearview mirror he saw somebody else fall in behind him. He was in a convoy of unknown size, each car keeping the one ahead in taillight range, like a caravan in a desert of perception, gathered awhile for safety in getting across a patch of blindness. It was one of the few things he'd ever seen anybody in this town, except hippies, do for free."

I won't take the time to run through the storyline. You can find many fine pieces from actual book reviewers to get the synopsis. For the most part, it follows the kind of arc you'd expect for a detective story, although it bogs down a bit in the middle. I confess that I spent a great deal of time losing focus, not really knowing what was going on or what the point of introducing yet more characters into the mix was, all the while feeling like I must have gotten high without knowing it. The main character's constant dope smoking is infectious. And unlike Gravity's Rainbow, the story does come to a resolution that's satisfying enough.

How do I feel about Pynchon? He's brilliant. This book was a miss for me, but I look forward to going back to the beginning and reading more of him.

Next up: Falling Man by Don DeLillo

Death in Venice

Thomas Mann published Death in Venice just prior to the start of World War I. At 73 pages, the novella doesn't waste a word. It's infused with signs and symbols rooted in Freudian psychology and Greek mythology.

This story is about the artist and art and the balance (or imbalance) between intellect and passion.

It begins:

"Gustave Aschenbach -- or von Aschenbach, as he had been known officially since his fiftieth birthday -- had set out alone from his house in Prince Regent Street, Munich, for an extended walk. It was a spring afternoon in that year of grace 19__, when Europe sat upon the anxious seat beneath a menace that hung over its head for months."

Aschenbach is a widower and highly respected literary figure from a conservative Prussian family. He places great value on hard work and concentration and considers the defeat of passion necessary to the creation of art. He values dignity. While on his walk he has a strange encounter with a disturbing, red haired man and almost immediately decides he'd like to take a trip. He tells himself that a change would be good for his work.

In the first of several dream sequences that occur throughout the story, Aschenbach fantasizes about a tropical marshland, the decaying, primeval, steaming landscape clearly representing suppressed passion and desire. He wakes and reverts to his normal cautious, dignified restraint and takes two weeks to carefully plan his trip.

He leaves the cold, intellectual, restrained northern European environment and travels south to Venice where the climate fosters unrestrained passion and decadence.

Soon after he checks into his hotel on the beach, he sees a fourteen year old Polish boy who is vacationing with his sisters, mother and a governess. Aschenbach finds Tadzio beautiful. At first he believes (or wants to believe) that his attraction to Tadzio is purely aesthetic. He's on holiday to write and arranges to work on the beach where he's also able to watch Tadzio all day long.

A strange antiseptic smell begins to pervade the city. To avoid alarming the tourists, the Venetians are keeping the reason quiet and claim it's merely a precaution. The German language newspapers provide no clues as to what's happening. The tourists are warned to avoid shellfish and fresh fruits and vegetables and as the days pass, vacationers begin to leave and there are fewer people on the streets.

Aschenbach makes plans to move on, but when he finds that his baggage has been misdirected to the wrong city he's ecstatic at the thought that he'll have to stay while it's retrieved. This is his point of no return. Aschenbach's admiration for Tadzio evolves to undeniable desire and lust. Aschenbach can no longer concentrate to work and becomes obsessed with the boy, planning his days to follow Tadzio and watch him from a distance.

Soon the smell of death is everywhere and a local finally reveals there's a cholera outbreak. Aschenbach no longer cares about the death and disease in Venice and fantasizes that perhaps everyone will die and leave him to spend time alone with Tadzio. His dreams are now filled with unbridled lust.

Aschenbach physically deteriorates. The hotel is nearly empty and he discovers that the Polish family is departing. He goes to the beach to watch Tadzio for the last time. The blond, pale Tadzio is roughhousing with an older, dark haired boy and the larger boy humiliates Tadzio, leaving him with his face in the sand.

Aschenbach watches from a beach chair as Tadzio walks toward the water alone in his shame. The boy turns around and looks to Aschenbach who sees, or believes he sees the boy beckoning to him. Several minutes later, Aschenbach is discovered dead of cholera in his chair.

I read Gravity's Rainbow several months after reading this and there were elements that were similar. Both books represent the north as elite and cerebral and the south as base and carnal. Both books draw heavily on mythology and dreams. Death in Venice is actually a great primer on the modernist style and certainly a great example of exercising economy with words.

That Mann chose to center Aschenbach's obsessions around pedophilia and homoerotic elements leaves me with questions. Mann was married and had six children, but it's believed that he was a homosexual. There was also an actual Tadzio that Mann and his wife saw while on a seaside vacation, although the real Tadzio was only eleven at the time. Were these factors part of the story because Mann was illustrating Aschenbach's extreme reaction to complete suppression of his libidinous nature?

If you've read it, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Next up: Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon