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According to the press blurb, legendary American author Don DeLillo “…completed this novel just weeks before the advent of Covid-19.” However, “The Silence is the story of a different catastrophic event. Its resonances offer a mysterious solace.” And one that only extends to 117 pages as well! Must be a quare compact read.
The plot is very simple:
The plot is very simple:
It is Super Bowl Sunday in the year 2022. Five people, dinner, an apartment on the east side of Manhattan. The retired physics professor and her husband and her former student waiting for the couple who will join them from what becomes a dramatic flight from Paris.
A worldwide power outage puts a spanner in the works (to put it politely) and each character is forced to reckon (without technology) with themselves and the outside world.
Nowhere near as apocalyptic in terms of content as the scenario implies, it has been described in some reviews as Beckettian. Quite an apt comparison. With the focus on five characters and their reactions to the complete breakdown going on around them, they resort to sprouting verbose, on the nose monologues that range from Einstein’s proclamation that “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones” right down to counting stairs. The syntax is very formal, very literary. As if the characters have been waiting their whole lives to speak like this and, when the moment finally arrives, it appears in the most unnatural form.
As a result of this and the lack of action, The Silence is a cold and mildly disconcerting read. Albeit one that is entertaining if you enter with a certain frame of mind. Some readers have admitted to struggling with the text, feeling it to be flat and lifeless. One could argue, however, that the sudden loss of technology (which is a crutch in the modern world) would leave most people adrift and bereft of proper conversation, so it could be argued that the “flat and lifeless” criticism is actually an intentional move on the part of DeLillo to make the end of the world much more mundane.
As an example, the character of Max’s reaction to not being able to watch the Super Bowl is both predictable and yet unsettling (he stares intently at the screen), while the interactions between his wife Diane and her former student James (who can’t stop quoting Einstein) strongly hint at a marriage held together by Sellotape (i.e. technology) and a youth culture trapped not only by a fixation with the past, but also no clear way of making their mark on the current climate.
Another factor that helps with the unease is that we’re never sure what it is that has caused this outage. There is some speculation about Chinese involvement, but the discussion around it is very loose and is never properly investigated. As a result, there is an ever-pervading sense of powerlessness (literally and metaphorically) throughout the narrative.
Ultimately, it is a book that is not for everyone. There’s a possibility that, if stretched out over 200 odd pages, with the issues examined with a finer lens and a more accessible writing style, DeLillo could have written a novel akin to his classic White Noise. As it stands, it’s an experimental novella which doesn’t quite fulfil it’s potential. But the fact that it doesn’t is what makes it so oddly compelling. We are merely left to ponder to ourselves.
As Beckett once wrote: “We always find something, eh Didi, to let us think we exist?” Maybe The Silence is a more modern example of this phenomenon?
Don DeLillo, 2020, The Silence. Picador, ISBN-13: 978-1982164553
Nowhere near as apocalyptic in terms of content as the scenario implies, it has been described in some reviews as Beckettian. Quite an apt comparison. With the focus on five characters and their reactions to the complete breakdown going on around them, they resort to sprouting verbose, on the nose monologues that range from Einstein’s proclamation that “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones” right down to counting stairs. The syntax is very formal, very literary. As if the characters have been waiting their whole lives to speak like this and, when the moment finally arrives, it appears in the most unnatural form.
As a result of this and the lack of action, The Silence is a cold and mildly disconcerting read. Albeit one that is entertaining if you enter with a certain frame of mind. Some readers have admitted to struggling with the text, feeling it to be flat and lifeless. One could argue, however, that the sudden loss of technology (which is a crutch in the modern world) would leave most people adrift and bereft of proper conversation, so it could be argued that the “flat and lifeless” criticism is actually an intentional move on the part of DeLillo to make the end of the world much more mundane.
As an example, the character of Max’s reaction to not being able to watch the Super Bowl is both predictable and yet unsettling (he stares intently at the screen), while the interactions between his wife Diane and her former student James (who can’t stop quoting Einstein) strongly hint at a marriage held together by Sellotape (i.e. technology) and a youth culture trapped not only by a fixation with the past, but also no clear way of making their mark on the current climate.
Another factor that helps with the unease is that we’re never sure what it is that has caused this outage. There is some speculation about Chinese involvement, but the discussion around it is very loose and is never properly investigated. As a result, there is an ever-pervading sense of powerlessness (literally and metaphorically) throughout the narrative.
Ultimately, it is a book that is not for everyone. There’s a possibility that, if stretched out over 200 odd pages, with the issues examined with a finer lens and a more accessible writing style, DeLillo could have written a novel akin to his classic White Noise. As it stands, it’s an experimental novella which doesn’t quite fulfil it’s potential. But the fact that it doesn’t is what makes it so oddly compelling. We are merely left to ponder to ourselves.
As Beckett once wrote: “We always find something, eh Didi, to let us think we exist?” Maybe The Silence is a more modern example of this phenomenon?
Don DeLillo, 2020, The Silence. Picador, ISBN-13: 978-1982164553
⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist.
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