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Two months after September 11, 2001, Don DeLillo published a rare essay, "In the Ruins of the Future: Reflections on Terror and Loss in the Shadow of September." Five months later, "Baader-Meinhof" appeared. The title refers to Gerhard Richter's paintings of the 1960s German radicals, but the tale evokes the post-9/11 climate. The major motifs in the essay and tale resurface in DeLillo's new novel, Falling Man. It deals with Keith Neudecker; his estranged wife, Lianne; and their circle. DeLillo juxtaposes these New Yorkers with the terrorists who man the plane that hits the north tower-where Keith is at his desk. All three texts portray the social, economic, and psychic fallout from the attacks. They also describe the disconnect between America's self-image and its image in the eyes of the world. One can map history's coordinates in these texts, which lead back inexorably to Mao II. Two abiding preoccupations unite these works: the repression of memory and the memory of repression.
First, "In the Ruins of the Future." An essay by Don DeLillo is a rare treat. However, while the nation clamored for answers, DeLillo resolved instead to ask more questions. He wanted to comprehend the causes and consequences of 9/11, but wondered: "Is it too soon?" (39). No one was more aware than DeLillo of the speed with which politicians and media pundits transformed the tragedy into spectacle, which then became the official story. Instead, DeLillo highlighted "the counter-narrative," which is both subversive and heart-breaking. It includes crosses, flags, flowers, and posters of the missing-all the ephemeral tokens of grief. The counter-narrative's provenance is the realm of the unspeakable, the unfathomable. It does the work of mourning.
DeLillo does not reconcile myth with fact. Both are part of the counter-narrative, as is false memory and the Internet's "rumor, fantasy, and mystical reverberation" ("Ruins" 35). In other words, selfdeception is part of this psychic geography. "We can tell ourselves," DeLillo writes, "that whatever we've done to inspire bitterness, distrust, and rancor, it was not so damnable as to bring this day down on our heads." "We can tell ourselves," but in order to understand what has befallen us, we must abandon the binary division between "Us and Them" (34). In this regard, Mao II provides...