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COSMOPOLIS
By Don DeLillo
Scribner, $25, 209 pp
Reviewed by John Freeman
The heroes of Don DeLillo's early fiction were seekers. They hit the road in search of the American soul, peered into distant stars to decode life on Earth. They didn't just pursue truth; they hedged their lives upon its existence. Eric Packer, the hero of DeLillo's mandarin new novel Cosmopolis, represents the nihilistic flip side of such early protagonists.
A 28-year-old megabillionaire, Eric has poured all of his prodigious intellect into conquering global markets - a world he acknowledges means nothing. As a result of this single-minded worship of wealth and power, Eric controls an empire so large and so valuable he travels with armed security guards. His favored mode of transportation is a white stretch limo, a vehicle so banal in New York City it is a terrific disguise for his eminence.
Cosmopolis concerns a daylong odyssey Eric makes across the island of Manhattan in April 2000 to get to work and to get a haircut. It is the height of the recent market bubble and Eric has made a monumental bet on the Japanese yen, a bet that will either prove his grandiose theories of currency trading or turn him into a pauper. The outcome of this bet lends this novel one minor strain of tension. The other comes from chapters DeLillo splices in from the perspective of a disillusioned stalker who plans to kill Eric because of what he represents.
The dovetailing of these two plots ought to makeCosmopolis suspenseful, but it's not. The novel oozes toward its nonclimax like a vehicle stuck in traffic, an effect DeLillo must have wanted. After all, just as Eric's limo pulls away from his $108-million triplex apartment it gets mired in crosstown traffic. There are many things impeding his progress: a presidential visit, the funeral of a rap star, his daily physical, and three bizarre pieces of performance art. The glacial pace of Eric's progression cross town should be a problem, but instead it plays into DeLillo's strengths at creating mood and atmosphere. His eye pans across New York City seeing all - the menace and grit of Midtown, the lovable homeliness of Hell's Kitchen.
Throughout the ride various underlings of Eric's pop in an out of the limo, holding conversations in sexually charged financial gibberish. DeLillo has always had a superb ear for American dialect, but here he gives our vernacular a further tweak, turning this novel into a Beckett-like farce on the language of power. "I'm so obsolete I don't have to chew my food," Eric boasts at one point.
Such language is its own justification, DeLillo suggests in Cosmopolis. It creates a reality that is hard to peer through; against it all else seems trivial. Eric is so dead to the world he accepts this numbed existence. "He told himself this was his wife," DeLillo writes of him in one scene.
It's always been hard to connect with DeLillo's characters: They are brainy and a little sedated, unimpressed by the kind of paranoid plots their creator places them in. Eric presents a few extra challenges to reader, though. His fabulous wealth and privilege are so otherworldly he is not just numb, he's bored, and cruelty is how he livens the day. Every six blocks are so he pops out of the limo for a meal and an aggressive roll in the hay with one of his many lovers.
None of these experiences, however, push Eric's pulse above resting pace. Meanwhile, because DeLillo is such a careful, precise writer, our hearts actually do respond. We sweat over whether Eric will be caught cheating, worry about whether his bet will flop. It's an anxiety-producing experience: caring more about what happens to a character than a character does himself. DeLillo has used this gambit before, most notably in White Noise. The only difference is that Eric's acceptance of how his day spirals out of control feels less like passiveness and more like decadence.
In this sense, Cosmopolis is less about Eric than it is about America. As usual, DeLillo is not portending good things for our nation. By the end of the novel Eric has erased his magnificence. In his absence, there is nothing.
- John Freeman is a writer in New York.