Falling Man

Richard Drew/Associated Press 2001

"I don't know this America anymore. I don't recognize it. There's an empty space where America used to be."

Don DeLillo, Falling Man

In this new book, DeLillo returns to the spare, intensely laconic style that characterized his work before popular success softened and then bloated it. Not surprisingly, the reviews were mostly negative. (Evidencing, with those recently of Pynchon and Banville, only a continuing decline in critical taste.) Don't listen to them.