Imagine riding on a train in New York City after 9-11. As you cross an elevated trestle, you see a man standing on the rails. The next instant, you see his falling body as he plunges over the side.
Would you press your nose to the window, reach for your cell phone, or just sit there, reliving images of other falling people, framed by smoke and the trembling shadows of the two towers?
What you don't see is that he snaps up short a few feet below the platform, caught by a rudimentary safety harness. It is an act, performed citywide, that has earned him the name "The Falling Man."
Falling Man, by Don DeLillo, is not primarily about the stunts of the fictional David Janiak, the Falling Man. Instead, it chronicles the attempts of a few New Yorkers to make sense of September 11.
The book opens on a man named Keith, who escapes onto the street minutes before the collapse of the first tower. In his confusion, he returns to his estranged wife, Lianne, and his son, Justin. Unable to go back to life as usual, Keith travels extensively, playing poker, something he shared with his lost friends.
Justin has been deeply affected by the hush surrounding the facts about 9-11. Using binoculars, Justin watches the sky for the return of "Bill Lawton," the mystical man who was responsible.
Lianne works with dementia patients, encouraging them to write as a form of therapy. As the members of her group wrestle with God, justice, and anger, she tries to do the same. She is haunted by the image of the Falling Man and what he represents.
Lianne's mother, Nina, is an art historian and avowed rationalist. Nina is in a relationship with Martin, whose explanations for September 11 are concrete and academic: economics, politics, and history. Yet somehow they always end up talking about God.
Subtle, seemingly unrelated incidents capture the numbness and confusion that characterized the days after 9-11. On the wall of Nina's apartment are two still life paintings. Natura morta is the Italian title. At one point, Lianne compares the people in the room to a still life - natura morta in the wake of 9-11. "It's about mortality, isn't it?" Nina says. "Being human," Lianne says.
Keith struggles throughout the book to face his brush with death and mortality. His wrestling is mirrored in flashbacks to the preparations of one of the 9-11 hijackers. When the hijacker completes his mission at the end, the crash of the plane leads to the closing scene of the book, in which Keith finally relives what actually happened before he emerged onto the street.
Despite its realistic feel, "Falling Man" is a novel, and DeLillo encourages readers to recognize it as such. In a moment of self-mockery, Keith revisits his apartment to gather his things. Inside, he pauses, saying, "In the movie version, someone would be in the building, an emotionally damaged woman or a homeless man, and there would be dialogue and close-ups."
What about in the novel version?
For DeLillo, the meeting point of reality and illusion is central. In conversation with the one living member of his poker set, Keith sits in front of a hotel waterfall. "Did you ever look at that waterfall?" he asks, "Are you able to convince yourself you're looking at water, real water, and not some special effect?" Terry replies, "I don't think about it. It's not something we're supposed to think about."
Like Keith and the waterfall, the characters in "Falling Man" struggle to think about the unthinkable, to separate Bin Laden from the mystical Bill Lawton, and to find their way back to the towers to try to understand.
The raw emotion created by the Falling Man will not let them forget.
When David Janiak dies, Lianne reads a series of press clippings about his life. In the process, she finds pictures of the real people who leaped from the World Trade Center on September 11. Lianne remembers witnessing one of Janiak's falls. She thinks, "That nameless body coming down, this was hers to record and absorb." Her words can refer to both sets of images.
For Keith, Justin, and the real people of whom they are shadows, the task is the same: to record, to absorb, and to remember.
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