In the middle of a desert “somewhere south of nowhere,” to a forlorn house made of metal and clapboard, a secret war advisor has gone in search of space and time. Richard Elster, seventy-three, was a scholar—an outsider—when he was called to a meeting with government war planners. They asked Elster to conceptualize their efforts—to form an intellectual framework for their troop deployments, counterinsurgency, orders for rendition. For two years he read their classified documents and attended secret meetings. He was to map the reality these men were trying to create. “Bulk and swagger,” he called it. At the end of his service, Elster retreats to the desert, where he is joined by a filmmaker intent on documenting his experience. Jim Finley wants to make a one-take film, Elster its single character—“Just a man against a wall.”
The two men sit on the deck, drinking and talking. Finley makes the case for his film. Weeks go by. And then Elster’s daughter Jessie visits—an “otherworldly” woman from New York—who dramatically alters the dynamic of the story. When a devastating event follows, all the men’s talk, the accumulated meaning of conversation and connection, is thrown into question. What is left is loss, fierce and incomprehensible.
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"Point Omega is an extremely short novel (only 117 pages) with very little action. Most of the book is either conversations amongst the characters or the inner musings of their minds. Consequently, I often found myself momentarily pausing in my reading, pondering upon what the characters were thinking about. At times,it almost felt I was musing right along with them. An interesting, and in that sense, quite unique reading experience..." — Kevin (4 out of 5 stars)
"Point Omega is an extremely short novel (only 117 pages) with very little action. Most of the book is either conversations amongst the characters or the inner musings of their minds. Consequently, I often found myself momentarily pausing in my reading, pondering upon what the characters were thinking about. At times,it almost felt I was musing right along with them. An interesting, and in that sense, quite unique reading experience..."
“DeLillo has achieved a precision and economy of language here that any writer would envy.”
“A splendid, fierce novel by a deep practitioner of the form…Enlivening, challenging, harrowing, and beautiful.”
“A novel of ideas—about how language, film, and art alter what we think of as reality. It’s for readers ready to slow down and savor the words. It’s for those who would watch not just Psycho, but ponder the meanings of ‘24 Hour Psycho’.”
“If Underworld was DeLillo’s extravagant funeral for the twentieth century, Point Omega is the farewell party for the last decade…DeLillo has…written the first important novel of the year."
“DeLillo is, without any doubt or qualification, one of the most influential, brilliant, gifted, and insightful of American novelists. There are sentences in this book that are breathtaking.”
“Haunting…DeLillo slows down the whole culture, all of our repertoire of artifacts, words, and gestures.”
" Second half of the book is much stronger than the first. "
" Brilliant concept, brilliantly written. Thoroughly recommend reading (at least once!). "
" Ultimately not enough going on in this DeLillo. He seems to have in recent novels minimized the plot to tell us something about how stillness affects the affected, but I'm not sure I got it. "
" One of the only books I've in a single sitting...because I had to. Something of an anomaly. "
" Short, but a puff of literary richness. "
" Short, well-written, with interesting characters, but ultimately unfulfilling in its vagaries. Strangely, DeLillo is writing more like Denis Johnson these days, and vice versa. "
" One of the best books that I've read this year. "
" Kinda beautiful. "
" While this is a slim book, it isn't a quick read. DeLillo is dealing with how we perceive reality and consciousness in the novel so it is something that is meant to be reflected on - not rushed through. "
" Point Omega is an enigmatic book. I found that reading reviews - after I read the book - was useful. Really interesting, short (!) and quite puzzling. Maybe I'll read it again ;-) "
" Another loser by a well known author. The only good thing about this book - it's short (117 pages). No real plot or ending, no explanations. "
" I wasn't expecting the ending - at all. "
" Too short! I know nothing about DeLillo but the book sets itself up with an interesting plot, then curveballs and ends. A few very intriguing ideas, but despite enjoying what I read, I'm left feeling: what was the point? "
" Perfect structure and wonderful handling of POV. "
" I still get the feeling that DeLillo deliberately confounds vagueness with depth, but I like the minimal backdrop of the desert here, and the general disquiet of the book. "
" Eh. Not my favorite DeLillo. Felt like it needed more incubation time. "
" DeLillo can expertly render a sentence, but this novella has too much abstract intellectualizing for my taste. It should have a categorization on the back cover reading "fiction/film theory/armchair psychoanalysis." "
" everybody remembers the killer's name, norman bates, but nobody remembers the victim's name. anthony perkins is norman bates, janet leigh is janet leigh. the victim is required to share the name of the actress who plays her. it is janet leigh who enters the remote motel owned by norman bates. "
" Me encantó. Tiene el tono de En la ciudad blanca, la última buena película que ví. "
" Since it is a short book, I thought I could breeze through it. What happened instead was I got mired down in the first couple of chapters with boring and incidental details that I just stopped reading it. "
" This is the third DeLillo I've read and, so far, the only one I have enjoyed. I thought this book was pretty brilliant, yo. "
" Compelling, deep and not without humor. "
" Don DeLillo's latest is a brief, cryptic and thought-provoking novel which references the Hitchcock classic, "Psycho", as well as more contemporary traumas like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and divorce. "
" three people living in a desert. of vast time and slow landscapes. "
Don DeLillo is the author of seventeen novels which have won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Saul Bellow Award, the Jerusalem Prize for his complete body of work, and the William Dean Howells Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2013 he was awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and in 2015, the National Book Foundation awarded DeLillo its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
Campbell Scott has, in addition to his numerous stage and film credits, narrated more than forty audiobooks, including This Boy’s Life and Into Thin Air, and won seven AudioFile Earphones Awards.
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