"Armageddon, Armageddon…Have Another Cocktail, Darling!": Don DeLillo's Point Omega and the End of the World as We Know It

Jonathan Butler

《小說與戲劇》 20卷2期 (2011/01) Pp. 65-97

並列摘要

In this essay, early critical response to Don DeLillo's most recent novel, Point Omega, is considered in light of DeLillo's visionary propensities, his uncanny ability, in the words of Vince Passaro, to be ”our most prescient novelist, the man whose imagination felt like a crystal ball in which we made out the ghostly silhouettes of our future.” Some of the early criticism of DeLillo's 2010 novel-or novelette, as it is a terse 117 pages-reveals a deep perplexity over whether DeLillo is seriously engaged with his subject matter or whether he is merely playing an elaborate joke on the reader. Other reactions to the novel lament the loss of scope manifest in DeLillo's more encyclopedic representations of contemporary American life, works like Libra and Underworld. Such responses bemoan a thinness of character in DeLillo's newest novel and implicitly suggest that the best of DeLillo's talent is well behind the aging writer.
My argument is that, following Vince Passaro, more attention should be given DeLillo's impetus as a visionary, thus considering Point Omega from the perspective explicitly articulated by DeLillo's disillusioned protagonist, Richard Elster, who claims that ”consciousness is exhausted,” that humanity is well on its way to an evolutionary leap in its collective being, back to its place within the natural world. Support for this claim is both internal to the narrative itself and external to the novel in the form of a number of contemporary thinkers of various occupational designations whose work corroborates this sense of widespread anticipation-if not the already-ongoing process-of just such a transition for human consciousness. Ultimately, more emphasis should be placed on DeLillo's intended purpose, to ”suggest” things rather than articulate them in sharp detail, a purpose commensurate, as I argue, with the nature of speculating on such an ”evolutionary leap” for humanity. Resurrecting such philosophical import from the narrative, it seems to me, more than compensates for any dearth of literary form or content.

並列關鍵字

Don DeLillo ； Point Omega ； early criticism ； contemporary American life ； human consciousness ； evolutionary leap

參考文獻

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Kakutani, Michiko. “Make War. Make Talk. Make It All Unreal.” New York Times. 1 Feb. 2010. 14 May 2010 .

Shulevitz, Julia. “In Search of the Real.” Slate. 7 Feb. 2010. 14 May 2010 .

Bellow, Saul(1975).Humboldt's Gift.New York:Penguin.