A few years ago I went through a relatively brief, but intense, phase of reading Don DeLillo’s novels. I think I read just about everything of his with the exception of Libra (perhaps a surprise to some since it’s one of his better-known books). It was DeLillo who was one of the first writers who made me pause in the midst of reading and remark to myself, “This is like nothing I’ve read before.” The long prologue to Underworld — to cite a prime example of DeLillo’s effect on me — made me think he was some kind of magician with words. I didn’t know sentences could possess such sheer power and force: the ability to grab hold of you and take you along for a ride. Reading him was the thrill of a great roller coaster.
DeLillo, suffice it to say, changed the way I thought about language — particularly its inherent musical qualities. Of course not everything thing by DeLillo hit with me; there were times when I found passages redundant, uninteresting, or crossing too far over into the realm of pretentiousness. But his writing as a whole was something I thought about often.
DeLillo’s newest book, Zero K, is his sixteenth novel. It’s his most substantial one in quite some time, and in my opinion his best among recent works. (Falling Man, Point Omega, and especially Cosmopolis were below his capabilities.) With his new novel, DeLillo and his distinct style have made a persuasive return. It’s a good feeling, even if the themes of the novel center on death and dying and the grizzly state of humankind. Then again, these are the kinds of things DeLillo has always taken on, and generally taken on quite well.
The protagonist-narrator of Zero K is Jeffery Lockhart, only son of billionare businessman Ross Lockhart, who is a principal financer of a secret death restoration center in the middle of nowhere. Known as the Convergence, it’s a place of mystery and technological innovation, and a place where Ross has continually invested more and more of himself.
The father and son have always had a strained relationship, unhelped by the fact that Ross left Jeff and his mom when he was thirteen. But now, with the impending death of Artis, Ross’s second wife, Jeff has suddenly been invited halfway across the planet to the Convergence’s eerie world of cryogenics and nanotechnology. The Convergence offers an environment drastically different from the ordinary world — a world where death and terror loom everywhere. Here, instead of unending violence and mortality, there is “the long hushed hallways, the sense of enclosure and isolation, a new generation of earth art, with human bodies in states of suspended animation.”
Though it is Artis who is plagued by severe and disabling illnesses, Ross is equally intent on utilizing the technology of the Convergence. Jeff, on the other hand, is skeptical about the process and rationalization behind it, and his questioning of Ross’s motivations drives much of the father-son plot of the story. There is, in addition to this, Jeff’s relationship with his girlfriend, Emma, which plays out in the latter half of the novel. Emma’s son, Stak, a precocious teenager — somewhat reminiscent of Billy Twillig, the mathematical prodigy in DeLillo’s Ratner’s Star — adds an element of plot as well.
A DeLillo novel, however, is usually not plot-driven, and Zero K is no exception. What matters most are the philosophical reflections and the ideas and meditative states of the characters. In Zero K Jeff muses constantly on language: its nature in general, the use of naming and identifying, the idea of pinpointing with as much definiteness as possible about what something is or what is something means. This is a motif in much of DeLillo’s work. In a 2009 short story called “Midnight in Dostoevsky,” a character remarks, after debating with a friend about what kind of coat a man is wearing, “I tried to invent an etymology for the word “parka.”’ This is not so different from Jeff, who is always grappling with language, always exercising a sort of compulsion to understand the ontology of things. “Define coat, I tell myself. Define time, define space.” At another point Jeff says, “Certain words seemed to be located in the air ahead of me, within arm’s reach. Bessarabian, penetralia, pellucid, falafel. I saw myself in these words.”
There are times when Zero K loses its substance and instead floats along on excessively ambiguous and vapid thoughts. Likewise, the fragmented writing — the continuous two- and three- sentence paragraphs which make up parts of the novel — sometimes feel like a cheap substitute for more refined writing. But for all that Zero K carries a haunting and characteristically modern way of approaching death and personal identity.
Spectatio 