Falling Man
As a New Yorker keeping a Web log not without literary pretensions, I felt more or less obligated to read Falling Man, even though I couldn't stand the one other book by Don DeLillo that I've read, Underworld. Let's just say that this extremely lengthy and, to put it generously, comprehensive novel did not spend a lot of time in my library once I'd done with it. It does give a frisson of sorts to recall the dust jacket: the Twin Towers seen through the bell tower of a small church - a bell tower rather like the one that was destroyed by the collapsing buildings, although belonging to a church rather farther away.
Years ago, I picked up a remaindered clothbound copy of White Noise, and I've always meant to read it. Falling Man is, in any case, the very opposite of Underworld in the length department. It reads like a full novel but it doesn't outstay its welcome. It's engrossing rather than taxing.
