Point Omega

Rich with implied and unanswered questions, Don DeLillo's latest novel, Point Omega, is an unnerving examination of certainty and doubt, the power of images versus the power of the written word, and the endless challenge to make sense of one's life—and death. Richard Elster, an academic and a former military consultant during the second war in Iraq, has retired and retreated to a spot off the grid, deep in the barren American Southwest. He's gone to a place of silence and emptiness in order to extract himself from the terminal pull of time, the better to contemplate it while pondering his own imminent extinction. Jim Finley, a directionless filmmaker without a life of his own, and a vague idea about making a documentary on Elster, has followed him there to convince him to take part in his project. Together, they spend the days saying little, drinking a lot, and each waiting for the other to give in or give up. Into this standoff comes Elster's daughter, Jessie—an angel to her father and a source of temptation to Finley. DeLillo deftly sidesteps the potential banality of an Oedipal conflict with a simple, chilling plot twist that yanks the final section of the book into a metaphysical mystery tale, while allowing it to retain its deeper philosophical currency. Less obscure than The Body Artist, more focused and refined than Falling Man, Point Omega is the finest distillation thus far of late-era DeLillo, and a welcome return to form.