Keep Looking

Don DeLillo

You look out at the water near the end of the day.  The sunlight is reflecting off the surface in interesting ways.  At times it doesn't look like a lake at all, but also not like anything natural.  The play of light is wholly unsettling, but you can’t not look.  You walk up to the shore and look down to the water.  At first you see nothing but changing patterns of light and dark and color; nothing is recognizable.  But gradually you see shapes below the surface, shapes that glint and glow, move and morph.  Then they’re gone.

That’s my experience reading the nine stories that comprise Don DeLillo's The Angel Esmeralda.  The surface is puzzling and not entirely coherent, but there are glimpses of an inner order that is compelling.  The language is pleasing but not unconventional.  The plots are straightforward.  There is little that is explicitly postmodern.  But the real action is below the surface in the realm of ideas.  DeLillo’s real subjects are ideas and feelings, and his approach is always from the side, never straight on.

I remember reading some of the stories when they originally appeared.  This time I read a few of them more than once.  The feelings stay with me even if I remain a little frustrated that my glimpses below the surface are so fleeting.

I won’t even try to discuss the individual stories, but suffice it to say that DeLillo has quite a bit to say on the subject of terror in modern life.  Sometimes the terror is explicit, sometimes not.  DeLillo seems fascinated with how we deal with fear in everyday life.

I’ll have to come back to these stories.  I can’t not look.