Read this through quickly when it first came out -- thank you, Amazon pre-order -- and then again this past month, as I was fiddling with a short essay about an earlier book, Cosmopolis.

Point Omega can be read as the fourth book in a series of which Cosmopolis was the second: the four slender novellas that have followed DeLillo's sizable Underworld.

When I reread Point Omega, I did so slowly, though not quite at the pace suggested by the book, which opens and, in as near as one could get to a "spoiler" in a DeLillo novel, closes with a detailed consideration of Douglas Gordon's art work 24 Hour Psycho. In 24 Hour Psycho, the Hitchock film is slowed so that it takes 24 hours to watch in its entirety. Every moment, every eye opening, every sliver of light crawling across the floor, happens at a speed that is virtually nill.

The book tells two stories, three if you include those opening and closing sections. At first, it's the tale of a man who visits a reclusive thinker who'd played a strategic role in the second Iraq War, in the hopes of making a film of the man speaking. Then the thinker's daughter shows up, and when she suddenly disappears, the book becomes a consideration of her absence -- like a thriller shorn of any thrills, just the emptiness and fear, and the deeper emptiness that subsumes them when the girl and her disappearance become memories.

This isn't DeLillo at his best, though it is the first of the four novellas to end better than it begins (not including the framing 24 Hour Psycho sections).

If you're a reader who likes plot points neatly tied and convention followed, this book is not for you.  Point Omega by Don DeLillo revolves around a character named Elster, who is an intellectual that was brought into the war effort around 2004.  I can't think exactly who he is modeled on, but he's an apologist, a hawk, a salesman coming up with terms like "a haiku war," as if by changing the words we use to wage war we can change the context or identity of war.

Elster has quit the scene and escaped to a home in the desert when the reader meets him in the novel.  He's out there with a man in his earl thirties, Jim Finley, a not so successful film maker, who wants to do an interview / monologue with Elster.  Put the camera on the man and let him ramble for 90 minutes.  Moreover, he worships Elster's intellect, even though Elster seems to be in a state of decline.

This narrative is sandwiched between two chapters called: Anonymity and Anonymity 2, which take place at the Museum of Modern Art where an installation of 24 Hour Pyscho is being played in a sparse, dark room.  These two chapters are narrated by an anonymous man who comes to the installation for hours at a time every day.  He is obsessed with the film, but also observes the other attendees.  Is this nameless narrator just a passing stranger, or does he have something to do with the disappearance of Elster's daughter, Jessie?

I don't care how well this novel works or doesn't work.  What I appreciate is that DeLillo is trying something new, and that he has enough caché for the book to be published.  Point Omega ends with the reader wondering what may have happened; however, Elster and Finley are in the same quandary as the reader.  Jessie, Elster's daughter who has been staying with them, has disappeared and no one knows what happened.  Did she wander into the desert?  Did she hitch a ride and run off somewhere?  Was foul play involved?  There are moments in life that will always be a mystery.  We can conjecture, toss possibilities into the air, and ruminate, but ultimately we will never know.  The book leaves the reader with these questions, and the mystery of Jessie's disappearance haunts for days to follow.

DeLillo's writing is, to me, comparable to wind on a winter's day. It's cold, determined, impartial, and all-encompassing. He's not one of my favorite authors, but very few authors can work the same magic as him, and very few authors would write a book like this one.

Lovers of plot, beware. Closure-junkies, stay far away. Emotional connection seekers, read something else. Fans of experimentation, prose-addicts, idea maniacs, eat your heart out.

I had no expectations or forknowledge of the topic, which turned out to be a meditation on death and dissolution and an inability to fully enage with life. I may read it again with a more analytical eye, or someday while off the grid in a desert cabin.

Unenomainen ja koruttomasti kerrottu pienoisromaani kahdesta miehestä - Richard Elsteristä ja Jim Finleystä. Elster on entinen puolustusministerin neuvonantaja, joka uransa aikana perehtyi lukuisiin valtion salaisiin dokumentteihin. Lopulta Elster vetäytyy erämaan yksinäisyyteen asumaan. Jim Finley haluaa tehdä dokumentin Elsteristä, vain mies ja seinä ja kaikki otettaisiin purkkiin yhdellä otoksella. Jim matkustaa erämaahan Elsterin luo ja vierailu muuttuu päivä reissusta viikon reissuksi, kunnes aika vain kuluu. Elsterin tyttären Jessie saapuminen talolle pistää pakan sekaisin ja potin räjäyttää lopullisesti tyttären katoaminen. En pidä unenomaisuudesta, mutta kuitenkin tämä oli kaikessa lyhykäisyydessään traaginen ja vihlaiseva tarina. Kirjan tunnelma oli ainutlaatuinen ja kiehtova. Haluan tutustua muihinkin miehen teoksiin.

mygod the prose. THE PROSE.

Pondering of the present moment and a reminder to just be, yet the message altogether undercut by its own lack of presence.

"We want to be the dead matter we used to be. We’re the last billionth of a second in the evolution of matter.”

DeLillo’s whole thing encapsulated in two sentences. The Greatest Living Novelist