Terrorism and Temporality in the Works of Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo

James Gourley

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781441109569
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Terrorism and Temporality in the Works of Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo starts from a simple premise: that the events of the 11th of September 2001 must have had a major effect on two New York residents, and two of the seminal authors of American letters, Pynchon and DeLillo. By examining implicit and explicit allusion to these events in their work, it becomes apparent that both consider 9/11 a crucial event, and that it has profoundly impacted their work. From this important point, the volume focuses on the major change identifiable in both authors' work; a change in the perception, and conception, of time. This is not, however, a simple change after 2001. It allows, at the same time, a re-examination of both authors work, and the acknowledgment of time as a crucial concept to both authors throughout their careers. Engaging with several theories of time, and their reiteration and examination in both authors' work, this volume contributes both to the understanding of literary time, and to the work of Pynchon and DeLillo.

1

Mao II: Prefigurations of Terrorist Time

Introduction

Don DeLillo’s 1991 novel, Mao II, is DeLillo’s most terrorism-focused novel published before the September 11 attacks on the United States. After September 11 critical attention was renewed in the novel, with some critics emphasizing the prophetic qualities of the text.¹ In this chapter I will analyze Mao II in regard to its lengthy consideration of time. Considering the novel’s temporal focus it comes as no surprise to discover that in DeLillo’s notes and drafts for Mao II, held at the Harry Ransom Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, we can see DeLillo’s consideration and analysis of temporality, and a special focus on societal conceptions of time as discussed in George Steiner’s In Bluebeard’s Castle. In this chapter I will explicate how the conceptualization of time that DeLillo develops out of his analysis of Steiner’s work unfolds in Mao II, and how the prophetic paradigm the novel is now interpreted through inflects the temporal focus of the work.

In Bluebeard’s Castle

DeLillo’s main notebook kept in preparation for the writing of Mao II returns a number of times to In Bluebeard’s Castle, focusing especially on one quotation that appears to have been very influential on the composition of the novel. DeLillo notes this sentence with interest: “[t]he quickening of time, the new vehemence of private consciousness, the sudden nearness of the messianic future.”² These lines are from the first chapter of Steiner’s text, “The Great Ennui.” Interestingly, DeLillo does not quote Steiner verbatim, omitting “and historicity” after “vehemence” in the quotation above.³ This omission is an intriguing one, especially considering DeLillo returns to Steiner’s comment a number of times in his notebooks. We may consider the omission evidence of DeLillo’s focus on the theoretical manifestations of time as opposed to the historical events Steiner interrogates.

Steiner’s text argues that, contrary to many previous interpretations, the period from “the 1820s [to] 1915” is a period of ennui, resulting in an extreme outbreak of violence and aggression throughout the world, manifesting itself in the period of turmoil between 1914 and 1945, including both world wars.⁴ The so-called 100 years peace, Steiner argues, actually masks a developing and consistent sense of dissatisfaction both within the arts and society in general. The motivation for this building concern is derived, Steiner argues, from a shift in temporality. Time itself is the progenitor of the subsequent violence, especially manifested in a shift in our societal perception of time. During this period the population experienced an acceleration of time—the progress of change was understood to be faster than ever before—new technologies, and the possibilities they facilitated, emerged at a staggering rate. Steiner argues that the importance of this period manifested itself in an understanding that radical changes were taking place, and that these changes were no longer restricted to the elite, but now effected the entire Western population. He writes:

As Goethe noted acutely on the field at Valmy, populist armies, the concept of a nation under arms, meant that history had become everyman’s milieu. Henceforth, in Western culture, each day was to bring news.⁵

Steiner exhibits a similar sentiment regarding the human perception of time. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century being:

a time span more crowded, more sharply registered by individual and social sensibility, than any other of which we have reliable record. Hegel could argue, with rigorous logic of feeling, that history itself was passing into a new state of being, that ancient time was at an end.⁶

History, usually the domain of the past (“ancient time”), was being shifted quickly into the present, a condition that created a maelstrom of concern and confusion as to how time could be understood and interpreted. The previous concepts of past, present, and future were placed under interrogation, for they no longer seemed entirely appropriate, considering the immediacy, and growing speed, of events in this period.

The City: New York City

Steiner emphasizes the role the city plays in this acceleration of time, arguing that the primary literary manifestation can be seen in the poetry of Romanticism. Steiner argues: “[i]n romantic pastoralism there is as much of a flight from the devouring city as there is a return to nature.”⁷ Steiner develops the same sentiments when he writes:

The immense growth of the monetary-industrial complex also brought with it the modern city, what a later poet was to call la ville tentaculaire—the megalopolis whose uncontrollable cellular division and spread now threatens to choke so much of our lives. Hence the definition of a new, major conflict: that between the individual and the stone seas that may, at any moment, overwhelm him. The urban inferno, with its hordes of faceless inhabitants, haunts the nineteenth-century imagination.⁸

There are obvious parallels to be observed between the period Steiner is analyzing and the present day. Considering the historical immediacy of many of the events that motivate Mao II and the general aura of the 1980s as the decadent era to end all decadence, DeLillo’s motivation for presenting the city with some disdain appears clear. Indeed Mao II, in its analysis of 1980s languor shares many similarities with Donald Antrim’s Elect Mr Robinson for a Better World, and Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. Antrim’s focus is small-town America, but for Easton Ellis, as for DeLillo, New York City, commonly referred to be its residents simply as “the City,” presents itself as the perfect synecdoche for America in its entirety, while also existing as the ultimate world city: the epitome of the “urban inferno.”

Mao II’s narrative that operates in the present begins in Chapter 1 after the “At Yankee Stadium” prologue’s narration of Karen’s Moonie wedding, and ties DeLillo’s temporal theorization to the acceleration of time Steiner identifies in the modern city. We encounter Scott, Bill’s assistant, in New York City, waiting to meet Brita, the photographer who will finally reveal Bill Gray to the world after all his years of seclusion. Two incidents within the first pages of this chapter establish the sense of isolation within the city and its alienating effects. The first is, in many ways, reflective of DeLillo’s more comedic approach (viz. White Noise) of the 1980s. As Scott leaves a bookstore he sees:

a man in a torn jacket come stumbling in, great-maned and filthy, rimed saliva in his beard, old bruises across the forehead gone soft and crumbly. People stood frozen in mid-motion, careful to remain outside the zone of infection [. . .]. It was a large bright room full of stilled figures, eyes averted. Traffic pounded in the street [. . .]. A security guard approached from the mezzanine and the man lifted thick hands in a gesture of explanation.

“I’m here to sign my books,” he said.⁹

Despite the perverse humor of the homeless man encroaching into a city space that he is explicitly excluded from, the reader is simultaneously alerted to the numbing effects of the city. The “zone of infection” is of more concern to the bookstore patrons than the actual condition of the individual. DeLillo’s conclusion reinforces the ennui at the heart of the city: “People saw it was all right to move again. Just another New York moment.”¹⁰ For this very brief period of time the accelerating time of the novel is stopped. A temporal disjunction, which, in its metaphorical nature, argues for the absurd, and accelerated, nature of time within the modern city.

A second incident involving Scott reinforces this point. As he moves down a New York street he is confronted by a woman who he believes is trying to force him to take her child. She identifies him as trustworthy simply because he appears not to be a resident of the city. She badgers Scott, telling him: “‘[y]ou’re from out of town so I can talk to you.’”¹¹ She proffers the child to Scott, saying: “‘[t]ake it outside the city, where it’s got a chance to live.’”¹² DeLillo establishes, within these two short anecdotal passages, the concerns that exist within the City: how the metropolis operates both on a different t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1 Mao II: Prefigurations of Terrorist Time
• 2 The Futurity of September 10
• 3 Beckett’s Proust and Falling Man
• 4 Intimate Time: The Limits of Temporality in Point Omega
• 5 ∆t: Precursors to Pynchon’s Reconsideration of Temporality in Gravity’s Rainbow
• 6 The Duration of Thomas Pynchon’s Hell
• 7 Pynchon’s Futurist Manifesto
• 8 Inherent Vice and the Chronotope
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index