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Hyper-abstract intellectualization. Overly-ruminative prose peppered with mysterious and incomplete sentences. Pages of characters projecting thoughts onto others. Ugh.

I get what DeLillo is going for in Point Omega: the environments that we create and choose to inhabit blind us and remind us of what makes up every millisecond of our human existence. And, the relationships and events of our lives thrust us inevitably forward, into and through the importance and significance of now. This is a nice revelation to have.

But one line perhaps best sums up why DeLillo’s treatment of this idea doesn’t work for me: the narrator’s wife, in a gentle criticism of the narrator’s film work, asks, “Why is it so hard to be serious, so easy to be too serious?� Reading Point Omega, I feel DeLillo is, like in Falling man, too serious about his subject, too self-conscious and self-indulgent. (And also, that comma without the conjunction in the middle of the quote—whose mother speaks like that?)

So the story: Defense Department intellectual Richard Elster flees from the city and immerses himself in the vast and vacant land- and skyscape of the desert southwest. He seeks perspective and escape. Young filmmaker Jim Finley visits him there to persuade him to make a one-take, no-cut documentary interview. Before long, Elster’s daughter, Jessie, arrives and a new dynamic opens up between the three of them. Bookending this action are two scenes from an art exhibit obsessively frequented by an anonymous fourth character and visited once by Richard and Jim, and another time by Jessie.

The mind moves fast and furiously in these scenes in Point Omega, but, in the name of economy (or self-indulgence?), it leaves the prose in scraps behind. We’re thrown quizzical contradictions like: “It was like bricks in a wall, clearly countable, not like the flight of an arrow or bird. Then again it was not like or unlike anything.� Or “’Meaningless,� he thought ‘or maybe not.� And other times we’re left pondering chapter-starters like: “Every lost moment is the life.� Intentional vagueness and self-conscious profundity really rub me the wrong way.

Equally maddening is when characters spend pages fabricating other characters' thoughts and personality—especially when it’s painfully, painfully obvious that the imagineer is wrong (and borderline insane): the helpless and anonymous fourth character, a man at a museum who lingers for hours every day watching and contemplating the film Psycho played in super-slow motion, fantasizes about the thoughts and personalities of the people who enter and leave—and we are forced to follow his twisted thought. Argh. Argh. Argh. Argh. Argh. Instead of groaning, perhaps I should choose instead to give DeLillo credit for capturing the man’s instability.

(DeLillo says that the idea for the novel came from watching this exhibit repeatedly at the MoMA. I hope the character in the novel is an exaggeration, and not a mirror, of his own thoughts�)

Overall, it seems that everyone is in search of something in Point Omega, and no one quite gets there. We and the characters are pulled away from the omega point, when time slows down and understanding is complete, by the people and action around us. I respect this, but I wish that the experience of achieving this understanding could have been more pleasurable.

Do I recommend it? For DeLillo enthusiasts and serial music fans...
Would I teach it? Shockingly, maybe. It’s short, and full of stuff.
Related texts: Falling Man
Lasting Impression: Stylized reflection on the acceleration and deceleration of time and knowledge.

Postscript: (Note: I'm about to perform an act of literary blasphemy and talk about sports. Don't hate on me.) I have not seen Douglas Gordon's installation, 24 Hour Psycho, but I did see the Superbowl, and the super slow motion clips of wide receivers and defensive backs running and colliding serve equally well for demonstrating the thousands of mental calculations the human mind makes every second, and therefore encouraging us to consider time and thought in new ways. The most relevant difference, I imagine, is that 24 Hour Psycho is the result of careful calculation and artful construction, while sporting events are the result of athletic improvisation. Nonetheless, as an insight into what we see and don't see in our behavior, I think the result is the same.