Point Omega – Don Delillo

Publication Date 04/03/2011 ISBN 9780330512398
Dimensions 197mm x 130mm Weight 0.14 kg Pages 160

I’ve recently read this book on a small sojourn I did that involved maritime travel. I bought it in Stockholm and I wanted some pleasant reading along the way. Since I was travelling alone on my journey Don Delillo caught my eye right away. I have read some of his stuff before and I find his prose to be soothing and appealing to the mind. It tends to have a calm rhythm as one engulfs itself in the narrative before ones eye. I like books that absorb my attention completely and this book almost managed a decent 80 to 89 %. I tend to drift into other imaginary landscapes in my mind as I read quite easily. I don’t understand this process but I do, I drift thinking about other stuff. Having said that I suppose that the book accomplished its purpose, to distract me from the fact that I was travelling alone.

The narrative of Point Omega carries an internal dialogue that is hypnotizing. Although Don Delillo can exaggerate with some techniques to draw in the reader into the mind of the narrator at hand. By this I mean that Don Delillo wants to exact an exegesis out of the reader by focusing on what seems to me banal attempts to force the reader to focus on the now of the narrator. This technique can work for some people who are in dire need of being awed. Or people who succumb to the half aspiration to romanticize the narrative of the stream of consciousness. An example seems to be at hand. At several points of the reading one is confronted with an attention getter that demands that the reader focus on the significance of a particular word. The reader is then left with the single word and is asked to contemplate its meaning, its resonance and so on.

Great book otherwise and if you get the chance to read it it won’t be a waste of your time.

For more info go to the following website on the book. http://www.picador.com/Books/Point-Omega