Don DeLillo Archives - A Geography of Reading

Why this Book Now?

Although today is the fiftieth anniversary of that unforgettable day, that is not why I bought or started reading this book. I found it used at a local store and I was entranced to have a look into how events like this shape our lives and our culture. I’ve been unable to read fiction about September 11 even now, and I was curious what and how O’Donnell had captured as she wrote this book just two years after Kennedy was shot.

I also wanted to know more about my family. My parents both grew up in Texas, though I’m not sure if my mom had already moved to New Mexico by then. I know she was in school when the news broke. My father though was 19 and already in the Marines. Because I once asked, they’ve both told me exactly what they were doing when they heard the news, but the memory wasn’t visceral for me so I promptly forgot. I am sure their memories of 1963 are as clearly imprinted on their minds as 2001 is on mine.

It wasn’t even until I was nearly finished reading the book that I realized this anniversary was near.

What Did I Learn?

O’Donnell presents a wide and representative array of characters in this book. From the conservative father to the new wife who worries that he could have been part of the plot and the liberal son who loved Kennedy and suffers greatly and openly for it. They have neighbors who are former communists and a former maid who rounds out the story with a look at an African American woman in the still-segregated South. I was not emotionally invested in these characters. Even when the son nearly shoots his father, I was not roused. Instead they feel like set pieces laid out to each show what that type of person would have felt. That was a failing of the book, but a part of me understands creating that kind of emotional distance from a tableau that must have felt fresh. Still it surprised me because the setting of this book was so domestic and I expected to empathize more with the characters.

What surprised me about the book was that the conspiracy theories about Ruby were surfacing so early. I’ve read Libra by Don Delillo and American Tabloid by James Ellroy, but I always just assumed (regardless of the truth or fiction behind either book) that all of that information surfaced later. I found myself wondering throughout the book what else the characters had access to because when I think of that day in history, all I can see is the Zapruder film, but how different it must have been to hear the news first. I wondered also if that footage would have even been shown on television then in all of its gory detail.

What I Still Don’t Know

As much as I love fiction and prefer it both to nonfiction and in many cases real life, I am not sure if fiction can capture the full or true essence of events this momentous. Poetry can, and I found some solace in Poetry After 9/11 even as I failed to connect with Falling Man by Don Delillo and chose not to read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. Even in War and Peace I skim over the war bits to read the juicy love story.

It’s not that I don’t care about these events. I care about them in a place so deep inside me I can’t even talk about it. As a student of politics and humanity, I want and need to know how we function as a society and as individuals in times of great loss. I’ve read everything I could ever find about the Holocaust. Maybe it’s because those are all things that happened to other people in other times and fiction and literature are the only way that I can connect with them that I accept the imperfect facsimile.

Maybe I’ve seen the Zapruder film and watched the towers fall too many times. But when it comes to events that feel closer to me–my grandparents knew Lady Bird Johnson and Nellie Connally, even if only peripherally–I know that there is something in my heart that is not described by these social commentaries.

So I’ll disappoint you today and avoid talking about the craft of this book. But what I’d love to know from you is where you turn when you seek to understand the evils of the world. Do you look for and find solace in literature? Have you read pieces about these events that you care to share? Or do you want to share that most intimate gift, your own story about a day in history?

I’m off to ask my parents once again what they experienced on November 22, 1963. Maybe this time I’ll write it down.

A novel is a fiction, necessarily orchestrated to form a cohesive story. In Mao II, Don DeLillo creates a fictional world structured around specific historical events. The reader suspends disbelief and goes along with the author on the journey he set in motion. However, DeLillo seems to resist the submission by the reader to the story. He creates a world that feels cinematic instead of authentic. Then DeLillo slips in moments that feel so true, they pull back the curtain, show the two-dimensionality of the façade, and remind the reader of the fictional contrivances of the rest of the book.

Cinematic Fiction

DeLillo crafted one scene in the book so masterfully it felt cinematic. When Brita is photographing Bill in his writing room, DeLillo writes: “Bill looked for matches now, clearing papers off the desktop.” Through this action, I could see exactly the jumble of his room and the mess of his thoughts. Then DeLillo goes on: “[h]e struck the match and then forgot it.” It was beautiful. I was enthralled. I knew Bill completely through that one gesture. I could see him distractedly cogitating on his relationship with the world outside his house. I felt like I was watching the scene on screen and I didn’t mind that it felt cinematic rather than real. But then DeLillo takes it too far as Brita is taking the last pictures of Bill: “[Brita] moved in closer and refocused, she shot and shot, and he stood their looking into the lens, soft eyes shining.” DeLillo has carefully placed the reader in the position of seeing Bill through the lens of that camera to further the point he is trying to make about images. But at the same time, he is forcing the reader to step outside of the narrative and help construct the fiction. He took me from my seat in the theater and put me behind the camera. I felt forced to participate in the contrivance of the image.

A Series of Unlikely Events

DeLillo also kept me on the outside of the book looking in by throwing together too many unlikely events. If it were just the story of a man (Scott) who is led by fate (we are to believe) to his reclusive idol’s (Bill’s) doorstep, a photographer (Brita) who has sought out this idol, and the idol and his relationship with his editor (Charles) and family, I can weave together the threads and follow the story without complaint. But DeLillo ads in a myriad of disparate and improbable characters: a girl (Karen, a girl so spaced out she knows Warhol’s hair color but can’t remember his name) who was married at Yankee Stadium by the Reverend Moon and who somehow runs into Scott; Arafat; and a poet who was kidnapped at exactly the right moment to become a vehicle for Bill’s come-back. The story was too big for me, and even with a strong belief in fate, I had difficulty making the leaps DeLillo wanted me to make to believe that these characters could ever come together at precisely the right times without divine intervention. It felt like he was reminding me this was a fiction.

Moments of Truth

In sharp contrast to the contrivances DeLillo presented, there were two moments in the book that felt heartbreakingly true. One was when Bill is speaking about his childhood: “I used to announce ballgames to myself….I was the players, the announcers, the crowd, the listening audience and the radio. There hasn’t been a moment since those days when I’ve felt nearly so good.” Having read enough DeLillo to recognize his fascination with baseball, I felt like this was him ascribing his own childhood to Bill. It was so humbly written and so shockingly revealing of an author’s desire to be an entire world, this moment stood out glaringly from the rest of the text. I felt for the first time that I was reading something true. The other sentence where I felt like I could touch the author was: “[a] woman knows how to want something.” It was so cryptic and yet so universally applicable. It seemed like one of those moments where an author throws in an observation he has made that speaks more to a greater truth than to the characters. Again, I felt I was taken out of the narrative, but this time by truths rather than fictions.

I enjoyed the book. I was caught up in the breadth of the story and the seamless way DeLillo panned back and forth between the thoughts of various characters. The book felt important. He was talking about big ideas and trying to make a point beyond the flow of the story. I liked the thrust of all of that. But in trying to make his point, DeLillo forced the situation (I have to believe consciously) and as a result, the story rang tinny. I think he was making a point about the fallacy of images, but I would have preferred to have the story. DeLillo reminded me that the reader can innately tell the difference between fact and fiction. And if I lie to them, whatever story I am trying to tell or whatever meaning I am trying to get across becomes tainted. I don’t mean that I will write nonfiction–I mean instead that I have to carefully consider whether the characters’ actions and my situations ring true. My novel must be a carefully crafted world, but I have to avoid the feeling of contrivance.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Mao II from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.