DeLillo skates through a day in the life of a brilliant and precocious New
Economy billionaire in this monotone 13th novel, a study in big money and
affectlessness. As one character remarks, 28-year-old Eric Packer "wants to
be one civilization ahead of this one." But on an April day in the year 2000,
Eric's fortune and life fall apart. The story tracks him as he traverses
Manhattan in his stretch limo. His goal: a haircut at Anthony's, his father's
old barber. But on this day his driver has to navigate a presidential visit,
an attack by anarchists and a rapper's funeral. Meanwhile, the yen is
mounting, destroying Eric's bet against it. The catastrophe liberates Eric's
destructive instinct-he shoots another character and increases his bet.
Mostly, the action consists of sequences in the back of the limo (where he
stages meetings with his doctor, various corporate officers and a New Economy
guru) interrupted by various pit stops. He lunches with his wife of 22 days,
Elise Shifrin. He has sex with two women, his art consultant and a bodyguard.
He is hit in the face with a pie by a protester. He knows he is being stalked,
and the novel stages a final convergence between the ex-tycoon and his stalker.
DeLillo practically invented the predominant vernacular of the late '90s (the
irony, the close reading of consumer goods, the mock complexity of technobabble)
in White Noise, but he seems surprisingly disengaged here. His spotlighted New
Economy icon, Eric, doesn't work, either as a genius financier (he is all about
gadgetry, not exchange-there's no love of the deal in his "frozen heart") or
a thinker. The threats posed by the contingencies that he faces cannot lever
him out of his recalcitrant one-dimensionality. DeLillo is surely an American
master, but this time out, he is doodling.
A lot of people hated this booked, but this upper liked it a lot. Not his best,
but even a so-so novel from DeLillo is better than the best of almost everyone
else.Will Patton does a terrific job reading.
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