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Embedded and Embodied Memories: Body, Space, and Time in Don DeLillo's White Noise and Falling Man

Embedded and Embodied Memories: Body, Space, and Time in Don DeLillo's White Noise and... KATRINA HARACK Embedded and Embodied Memories: Body, Space, and Time in Don DeLillo’s White Noise and Falling Man on DeLillo has long been concerned with the nature of time, the minute details of human existence, and how human beings interact with the spaces and places around them. Indeed, his 2010 novel Point Omega features a character who reflects on the nature of time as he watches the movie Psycho, slowed to an excruciating pace. Other characters, including a filmmaker and a war expert named Elster, discuss time, space, and the city. The desert is compared to New York, where “other people are conflict” (23) and life con- sists of a “minute-to-minute reckoning” (44) that is meant to counteract terror; in contrast, the desert reveals “Time that pre- cedes us and survives us” (44). Literature once provided ballast against the terror of time, creating meaning, but now Elster claims that we are driving toward extinction, the point omega that will remove consciousness and return us to “inorganic mat- ter” (53) in a “sublime transformation of mind and soul or some worldly convulsion” (72). This theory is, however, undermined by the disappearance and possible murder of Elster ’s daughter, Jessie. At http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Contemporary Literature University of Wisconsin Press

Embedded and Embodied Memories: Body, Space, and Time in Don DeLillo's White Noise and Falling Man

Harack, Katrina.
Contemporary Literature , Volume 54 (2) – Sep 18, 2013
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Publisher
University of Wisconsin Press
Copyright
Copyright © the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin.
ISSN
1548-9949

Abstract

KATRINA HARACK Embedded and Embodied Memories: Body, Space, and Time in Don DeLillo’s White Noise and Falling Man on DeLillo has long been concerned with the nature of time, the minute details of human existence, and how human beings interact with the spaces and places around them. Indeed, his 2010 novel Point Omega features a character who reflects on the nature of time as he watches the movie Psycho, slowed to an excruciating pace. Other characters, including a filmmaker and a war expert named Elster, discuss time, space, and the city. The desert is compared to New York, where “other people are conflict” (23) and life con- sists of a “minute-to-minute reckoning” (44) that is meant to counteract terror; in contrast, the desert reveals “Time that pre- cedes us and survives us” (44). Literature once provided ballast against the terror of time, creating meaning, but now Elster claims that we are driving toward extinction, the point omega that will remove consciousness and return us to “inorganic mat- ter” (53) in a “sublime transformation of mind and soul or some worldly convulsion” (72). This theory is, however, undermined by the disappearance and possible murder of Elster ’s daughter, Jessie. At

Journal

Contemporary Literature – University of Wisconsin Press

Published: Sep 18, 2013

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