Post 9/11 US Fiction: Don DeLillo and Jonathan Safran Foer

Theodor Adorno once claimed that to write poetry after Auschwitz was barbaric. He later rescinded this ideal, claiming that ‘perennial suffering has as much right to expression as a tortured man has to scream’.  Adorno was concerned that attempts to artistically interpret or even condemn Auschwitz would be callous, and at the same time, success at such an attempt would be futile.

The same has inexorably been said about art (especially fiction) after 9/11. I have recently read two books that deal with 9/11 in very contrasting ways. The first was Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and the second was Don DeLillo’s Falling Man. Foer’s attempt is different as it seemingly adopts 9/11 as a principal theme, and is excessively referential to the event. The plot is strange and simple, a boy named Oscar, who loses his father in the terrorist attacks on September 11^th 2001, finds a key left by his father and searches New York for whatever it may open, meeting a variety of people who have also suffered and thereby forming relationships built on their mutual anguish.

Oscar is overwhelmingly precocious and is increasingly unlikeable. Foer seems to ask the reader to forgive Oscar’s apparent arrogance and obnoxiousness due to his ever-present melancholy. However, I couldn’t look past how unlikeable he was; page by page I grew increasingly irritated by this 9 year old child. I think what I disliked most was how the author was perpetually referring all of Oskar’s exploits back to the horror of his father’s death, and unfortunately, this didn’t allow the story to expand, or Oskar to become more agreeable.

I think the main problem with Foer’s attempt was that it dealt with 9/11 head on; it appeared too romantic due to the sweet young boy who prevailed through his torment and overcame his fears and trepidations despite the horror of the event. It almost played on 9/11 as a certain way to capture it’s readers, and although this was seemingly a smart move (it sold many copies and was made into a truly awful feature film); in literary terms, the book is over romantic, glorified and ultimately dull.

DeLillo’s attempt is a far more accessible and likeable piece of literature. DeLillo is a more experienced writer and the theme of terrorism has appeared in his works before, especially Players and Mao II (Both excellent books). He has even been called prophetic as he eerily wrote in Players that ‘to Pammy the towers didn’t seem permanent’.

Falling Man begins in the towers, where he claims one can hear the ‘buckling rumble of the fall, this is the world now’. It follows the aftermath of the event, through the lives of a New York couple (Keith and Lianne) who rekindle a past romance. It looks at how their lives have been effected without the over romantic aspects that Foer uses, rather it is quite laconic and only deals with 9/11 intermittently, usually in the characters psychology or through the emotions inspired by a performance artist who hangs from buildings, representing the titular photograph that was famous after the attacks, the Falling Man. (Interestingly, this picture (above, left) also plays a rather significant part in Foer's novel)

By avoiding perpetual reference to 9/11, DeLillo is able to form a far stronger plot and develop more likeable characters that you are genuinely sympathetic towards. This is not to say I had no sympathy for Oskar, but rather he was far more enigmatic and therefore tougher to engage with, and was ultimately, and bear in mind these are fictional stories, tiresome.

I think perhaps what I took from reading these two books, was that in order to engage in such tragic events, the author must attempt to avoid permanent reference to the event, and while it can form the core of the story (in fact if this is part of the plot that would be almost inextricable), playing on the collective emotions that derive from such a horrific event can lead to a novel that is vapid, over-romantic and cheap.

DeLillo gets the balance just right, he deals with the event but also develops a story outside of it, a story in which the event is in the background, permanently installed in the mindset of his characters but not unavoidably driven by it. I would recommend Falling Man and most of DeLillo’s other works, he is an extremely talented contemporary writer, and one of the few that I would entrust to attempt the ostensibly insurmountable task of literature after September 11^th.