Like its subject, DeLillo's new novel is empty.
In 1985, there was an investment opportunity, a new stock trading on the busted literary market. This IPO was White Noise; the CEO and author of the business plan was Don DeLillo. A major publishing house fronted the money and obviously wanted a return. Weird in-laws nationwide were whispering at parties, offering the fax numbers of their brokers. And everyone wanted in on the ground floor.
The stock divested itself every few years. 1988 saw the introduction of Libra. In 1991 Mao II was unveiled. And in 1997, Underworld monopolized its sector. 2001's The Body Artist dipped the stock, though it soon evened out. Some of the older products were repackaged; diversification made the old new again. The advertising department received raises all around. And now in 2003, DeLillo Inc., one of the most wrongly respected corporations in America, is pleased to introduce Cosmopolis, ready for trading with any esthetic that will throw worth its way.
But the share prices drop. The stock plummets. The ground floor has fallen out.
This is no book about money, no Seven Habits of Highly Effective Literati, the most astounding example of which is William Gaddis' JR. No-this book's about a man who has a lot of money, Eric Packer, an assets manager. And that's the first mistake. Money is an immense theme, an enormous motif open for development. But Eric Packer is not a theme. He's a lone, isolated asshole, super-rich and self-obsessed, living in a three-floor penthouse in DeLillo's ivory tower. The book opens there and then takes the reader for a ride (in a limo). Inside, Packer speculates on the yen. He and his ridiculously limned team attempt to divine the enormous patterns of currency fluctuation, patterns corresponding to lunar cycles and tides, tree rings, the proportions of the nautilus, the torso of Apollo?
But what are the patterns predicting DeLillo? A decent book 30 percent of the time? A meaningful line every other paragraph? Yes, once again they're on every page, these attempts to sloganeer the moment. Every one of them is virtual, an attractive surface of metaphor and simile worth something and then not. For his thirteenth novel, here's some of page 13, same as the other two-hundred-some: "He used to sit here in hand-held space but that was finished now. The context was nearly touchless." Read and repeat.
Representation is the only way to understand DeLillo. He's like this and like that, an idea fattened on reference, a word-association session that diagnoses everyone. In Cosmopolis we're in 2000. Logically or not, there's a techno-rave and a rap star's funeral. The protagonist is rich? There's your limo right there. And he'll pimp it out. DeLillo digresses on voice-activated firearms. He'll reference the anti-globalization movement. Why not? It was on the 11 o'clock news.