I never had to read any DeLillo for class. I kept hearing about his book "White Noise," which won the National Book Award in 1985. But I'm weird about the books I choose to read in that I won't read the hot seller or big name from an author first. I don't scour the bestseller lists to find out what's selling and who people are reading. I avoid the hype as much as possible so I can keep my opinion on the writer and their writing as unbiased and fair as possible. On that note, I picked up DeLillo's "Point Omega" first, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It's quirky and strange and came to a conclusion that wasn't much of a conclusion and left me with more questions than when I'd started the book, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. Somehow, two men out in the desert became interesting. Couple that with bookended imagery of an art exhibit of Hitchcock's "Psycho" stretched out/slowed down and viewed over the course of a twenty-four hour period and you've got a strange novel indeed.
I eventually picked up "White Noise," but I picked up "Mao II" as well. DeLillo's prose is quick and moves the reader across the page effortlessly without catering to the idea of dumbing anything down. The concepts within aren't simple-simon type stuff, but the language eases into a reader's sensibility like water through open fingers. As proof, the night I began "Mao II," I had only planned on reading the first 40 or 50 pages and ended up damn near finishing the book.
The book begins with a prologue, a section of story that puts the readers up in the stands of a baseball stadium. We are watching the simultaneous marriage of 6,500 couples on the field below from the perspective of Rodge and Maureen whose daughter, Karen, is below. There is talk that the person officiating the ceremony is the head of a cult that their daughter has gotten involved in and once the ceremony is over, so ends the prologue.
Part I is about author Bill Gray, a recluse. He hasn't given interviews or had pictures taken in over 30 years. Brita, a photographer working on a project compiling the photos of writers across the globe, has been given access to take pictures of Bill. She sticks around for a few days before returning to New York City (a couple hours away) and then Bill is given an opportunity, by his editor, to do something very outside the box in regards to a foreign poet who has been taken prisoner by a hostile country.
Part II begins with Bill having been convinced to travel abroad to meet with people who might be able to free this foreign poet. The conversations in this section of the book are, personally, a bit overblown and excessive. What I originally believed to be several playful repartees between the characters turns into the standard speaking style of ALL the characters, which is both annoying and unrealistic. Each conversation becomes characters speaking past each other, which works when in moderation, but becomes stale and not a little infuriating the longer they go on. Despite the main character of the book being a writer, each character talks like a writer should write, which all sounds very meta, but people don't speak like this to each other unless they're trying to impress someone or they were born pretentious. These moments are where DeLillo's authorial control takes over too much and ruins what could be great conversations between the well-developed characters he's put on the page.
"Your anger. The airspace we weren't allowed to enter when you were brooding. What about your vanishing act?"
"Look, why even bother with me if you really believe I was that difficult?"
"I don't know. Maybe I'm a coward. I can't bear the thought that bad feelings might harden between us and I'll grow old always regretting. And maybe it's because there are no kids in my future. I don't have to live my life like a history lesson in how not to be like my father. There won't be anyone I can fuck up the way you did the job on Sheila and Jeff."
She put her head into the opening between the rooms, showing a sly smile.
"We don't think your behavior had anything to do with writing. We think the Mythical Father used writing as an excuse for just about everything. That's how we analyze the matter, Daddy. We think writing was never the burden and the sorrow you made it out to be but as a matter of fact was your convenient crutch and your convenient alibi for every possible failure to be decent."
This is a fairly tame example, but fathers and daughters don't speak to each other like this. Hell, most writers (and I know A LOT of writers) don't even speak to each other like this. Some of the other passages are really just too much to handle and when nearly every conversation spins off into this kind of philosophical and hyper self-examining grandiloquence, it really rips asunder the scenes that DeLillo puts together nicely.
With Gray traveling cross-continental now, he becomes enmeshed in a strange twisting of plot that I'm not sure I can even sum up properly if I wanted to. Discussions abound about how writers are much like terrorists and how this particular writer, Gray, is instrumental in not only saving this prisoner but also plays a part greater than being a pawn in some political/counter-cultural movement. Frankly, a lot of it is ridiculous and reads like DeLillo simply arguing his own points and counterpoints about terrorism with himself. The book was written in 1991, so it's a full decade pre-9/11, but it makes some interesting points about terrorism through the conversations on the page.
The section is full of Brita and Karen, both in different cities, being hyper-aware of the homeless, the downtrodden, the poor. There are scenes where both women (at different time and in different cities) involve themselves in the lives of the homeless population. I'm still not entirely sure what purpose these sections serve for the overall narrative other than to further get into the heads of both women. However, I could make the argument that these sections are present in order to cast a reflective nature back onto American policies in regards to our own people; terrorists actively use violence to control people whereas we "allow" a more subdued violence to happen to our own populace in an effort to not have to take responsibility for it. This is most likely reading too much into it.
This section ends with Bill Gray on a boat to Beirut.
Part III begins with Brita in Beirut. She is being sent to photograph the very same individual, Abu Rashid, that previously held the foreign poet hostage. More conversation about terrorism and why Rashid demands that his young servants wear hoods covering their entire heads. The book ends with a marriage procession led through Beirut's late evening/early morning by a tank.
I thoroughly enjoyed "Point Omega." I walked away from this feeling very 'meh.' It started off incredibly strong and then devolved into what felt like more of a lecture than a story, which I've always been warned about by my own mentors. I've read other books like this before as well and I finally understand why you don't write towards a meaning...you let the meaning bubble up from the book itself. When you try too hard to make a point, you end up bashing your reader over the head with it and, more often than not, steer them further away from your point of view.
Not unlike some forms of terrorism, I suppose.