ABSTRACT
In his contribution to 9/11, DeLillo concentrates on the marginal and muted responses to the traumatic confrontation with death. This chapter approaches Falling Man by pointing to modes of coming to terms with the inconceivable while insisting that the rupture it inflicts can never be fully mended. The interminability of grief is commensurate to the singularity of the event. DeLillo’s sensitive response to the attacks, suffering and loss shows in the metonymy of the drifting shirt, the Morandi still lives and not least the performance artist “Falling Man.” These images (including “shrapnells”) and instances of art bring home to us that this experience of loss will stay with us; mourning resists closure. Keith Neudecker, an immediate survivor of the attacks, does not manage to come to terms with the trauma, he abandons himself to a lethargy he finds in professional poker. His (estranged) wife Lianne actively faces her grief, cares for Alzheimer’s patients, and turns to spirituality. She finds a way to sort out her life without forgetting the dead. The final paragraph deals with the perverted death cult of the terrorists, whose Manichaeism and self-image as martyrs provided an all too simple ideology for their deed.
