Postmodernist icon Don DeLillo’s newest book “Cosmopolis” serves mostly to flaunt his own intelligence.
Luckily for readers, his egotism can be backed up-he’s not only smart, but oddly fascinating.
Nothing about the book-an almost real-time account of a day in the life of a multibillionaire stockbroker-is realistic. Of course, that day happens to be a chaotic, life-changing day for the protagonist, but that’s only to be expected.
The characters are as detached and cool as they can get, and serve mostly to provide intellectual banter with stockbroker Eric Packer. Here is a man who has nothing better to do than be chauffeured around in his limousine all day, letting his numerous assistants do the real work of trading bonds while he ruminates on death, life and postmodernist theory.
It’s unfair to use “inhuman” as an insult against Eric, though. It’s certainly true, but DeLillo makes no claim that he is human. He lives in a 48-room apartment! His wife of 22 days doesn’t know what color his eyes are!
And so on.
What is left is an endless parade of peripheral characters who pop in and out of Eric’s limo to discuss perplexing topics such as does “doubt” still exist in the computer age?
Those looking for interesting characters or even a plot won’t like “Cosmopolis.” The book is more an exercise in experimental fiction than any sort of narrative story.
The author’s decision to follow Eric through every conversation and thought of the entire day is noteworthy. Real-time accounts often serve to make characters seem more true-to-life, but exactly the opposite is true in this case. What real person would have the time to spend an entire day in a limo talking to a bunch of geniuses about nothing in particular? Each of Eric’s thoughts distances him more and more from the reader.
The book’s dialogue is rapid and sometimes baffling. While it’s often difficult to tell who’s saying what, it becomes apparent about halfway through the novel that the distinction doesn’t matter. All the characters-the bodyguard who names his gun after a former lover, the wife who refuses to have sex because it zaps her energy and so on- are really just DeLillo.
And DeLillo wants to discuss what he sees as the demise of society. Everyone in the book is obsessed with how fast the world is moving. The names and numbers speeding by on the omnipresent news tickers tantalize them. It’s difficult for them to digest real life until it’s broken down and analyzed in television sound bytes. They choose to live life vicariously through someone else’s cyber cam documentation of his own life.
So what happens next? Once everyone is thoroughly indifferent toward anything but the fantasy world of television and the movies, will society collapse? DeLillo doesn’t say for sure, but he apparently spends a lot of time thinking about it and wants his readers to, also.
The book is supposed to take place on an April day in the year 2000, but it’s obvious DeLillo, a brilliant satirist of the 1980s, hasn’t fully come to terms yet with the present. His preoccupation with tall, mirrored buildings and white stretch limos is a glaring leftover from two decades ago. The book would have worked better if it was set in the ’80s, but that probably would have made it easier for critics to dismiss it as a cheap Bret Easton Ellis knockoff.
DeLillo has discussed these things over and over again, but who cares? He’s already regarded as a preeminent authority on postmodernism, and critics almost uniformly heap praise on his books “White Noise” and “Underworld.” He doesn’t have to prove himself or to untangle the mysteries of the world anymore. He’s just playing around with “Cosmopolis,” exploring new ways of telling the same old story of a disenchanted man.
The slender book is best read straight through in a few spare hours. You can think about its message of paranoia and hostility for a few moments, then forget about it. Maybe later, on the day before your wedding, you’ll think about Packer’s marriage of convenience and myth, centered around the mistaken belief that his wife is beautiful. If you can convince yourself to buy the lie, can you really have a successful marriage?
Or, as you’re watching each new generation become more and more computerized, you’ll look back on Eric’s prophetic young analyst- who talks like a newscaster and is obsessed with finding patterns and order in life- and laugh at how true it all became.
And DeLillo would be satisfied.
