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Point Omega

by Don DeLillo

REVIEWER – TIFFANY BRIDGER

Renowned American novelist Don DeLillo has done it again. That is; shocked, engrossed, and positively delighted fans with his fifteenth book, Point Omega (2010). Although a rather slender paperback in comparison to his recognised work Underworld (1997), it is both abruptly and intensely engaging.

The story is layered stylistically into an anonymous prologue, the initial events or ‘middle’, and then an epilogue, although it backtracks in logical time. The opening pages invite readers to be a visitor to a dark room inside the Museum of Modern art in New York, summer 2006. A man, also anonymous, stands against a wall, losing himself to the eerie rhythm of Douglas Gordon’s videowork, 24 Hour Psycho.

It is cold inside the gallery and the movie plays in slow motion, free of dialogue or sound, but the man narrates the movie and the events around him as they happen. In a vaguely manic discussion with himself, he reveals how truly comfortable he is here, how he wishes he could stay beyond the closing hours. Neurotic and disturbing, his voice echoes his fear of reality – “the bright fact that breathes and eats out there, the thing that’s not the movies”.

Certainly, DeLillo’s unusual introduction leaves the reader in a confused state of anticipation – who is this man? Is he dangerous? Instead he cuts this scene and the real story begins.

At the end of his service as a secret military advisor, seventy-three year old Elster withdraws from the world to a secluded house. Jim Finley, a young filmmaker, joins him there: “somewhere south of nowhere is the Sonoran Desert or maybe the Mojave Desert or another desert altogether.” Jim’s thoughts are occupied only by the idea of documenting Elster’s experience with the government, “in the blat and stammer of Iraq.”

On arrival Jim intends to stay a night or two. Before he realises, a seductive interplay of discussion and words, the peaceful isolation of the desert and a visit from Elster’s daughter Jessie, a young woman from New York, has him stay for over three weeks. The three unlikely personalities become entangled in comfortable routine until one afternoon shatters everything for one of the men. The lingering scene from the museum comes into question towards the end of the story and the reader must piece the remains together.

Point Omega is a thought-provoking, unsettling read that will leave you looking over your shoulder. The goosebumps DeLillo creates, however, are not dissatisfying.

Point Omega by Don DeLillo, Pan Macmillan/Picador, RRP $29.99