Don DeLillo really knows how to open a book. The celebrated first sentence of Underworld still rings: ‘He speaks in your voice, American, and there’s a shine in his eye that’s halfway hopeful.’ He speaks in his own voice, DeLilloese. And so do all his characters. Falling Man begins in the dust of the Twin Towers and, some 200 pages later, returns to them.
It was not a street anymore but a world, a time and space of falling ash and near night. He was walking north through rubble and mud and there were people running past holding towels to their faces or jackets over their heads. They had handkerchiefs pressed to their mouths. They had shoes in their hands, a woman with a shoe in each hand, running past him. They ran and fell, some of them, confused and ungainly, with debris coming down around them, and there were people taking shelter under cars.
Comments
There are currently no comments for this article.