REVIEW: "The Silence" by Don DeLillo
As I‘ve stumbled through the hazy collection of days and murky assembly of weeks that have made up pandemic, I’ve thought many times about how much more difficult this would all be if it had happened when I was a child. How impossible it would have been if, in 1990, we had all been forced to sequester in our homes.
There would have been no internet through which to digitally connect.
No Netflix on which to binge.
No cellphones with which to text.
It would have been truly isolating.
Truly difficult.
Truly impossible to avoid the face-to-face interaction that, thanks to COVID-19, now put us at risk.
Even within the (relatively) short span of my own lifetime, the way in which we connect has changed profoundly.
And, while our seemingly perpetual connectivity has its benefits, I'm not sure that's always a good thing.
I, an admitted cell phone addict, have pondered this conundrum many times. And I pondered it even more deeply as I read The Silence by Don DeLillo, a novel that makes up for in depth what it lacks in length.
As this novel opens, readers find themselves thrust into a Manhattan living room on what is normally one of the noisiest of days: Super Bowl Sunday.
New Yorkers Denise and Max and their guest, Martin, are, like most Americans on this most apple-pie-ish of days, crowded around the TV set. They are enjoying both the game and the commercials in equal measure, while planning the calorie bomb that will be their halftime munchies.
All seems to be right in the world until the TV goes black. The viewers check their cell phones, certain that these pocket-sized know-it-alls will have some information as to what is going on but they, too, are mysteriously void of life.
Even more severely impacted by this sudden digital blackout are Tessa and Jim, Denise and Max’s friends who had planned to attend the Super Bowl party immediately after returning from a Paris vacation. For them, this sudden digital silence has an even more terrifying side-effect as the plane on which they are flying, suddenly unable to depend on technology, crash lands.
With the din of electronic chatter that interminably surrounds us suddenly absent, this quintet — and presumably all impacted humans — are left with nothing but the thoughts in their own heads to keep them company.
Absent distraction, they are forced to truly confront what they think, explore what they feel, and ponder what will come next.
DeLillo’s clean prose made this work easy to read, despite the heavy themes and almost frustratingly cerebral plot structure.
I call this a “work” because I would hesitate to label it a novel. It deviates significantly from traditional narrative structure, leaving the reader feeling less like they are listening to a skilled storyteller and more like they are engaging with a bombastic grad school lecturer.
There were times throughout when the author tried too hard to be deep, put too much effort into being provocative just for the sake of provocativeness.
*Spoiler Alert*
For example, in the course of this slim 124 page novel, two separate duos decided to respond to the new and deafening silence by having illicit sex.
This, I hazard to say, is a testament to the fact that a man penned this novel as few women would think, "Wow, everything has suddenly gone dark and we don't know why... let's bone.” #JustSaying
*End Spoilers*
If I were reading this novel in a different time, in a different place — if I were reading it 12 months ago when the prospect of walking around masked and lathering my hands with pools of sanitizer any time I accidentally touch another human would seem just an aspect of dystopian fiction — I might have felt differently about it.
In all likelihood, when DeLillo penned this novel, finishing on the figurative eve of the COVID-19 outbreak, it probably all seemed like a hypothetical. It was, understandably, hard to imagine that, outside of the confines of fiction, we would experience such a profoundly disruptive event.
But now we, in some sense, have.
Now we don't have to wonder how it would go. We don’t have to wonder whether society would truly break down. We don’t have to wonder whether we would give in to our most base instincts and totally abandon social norms.
Honestly, the drama that we have experienced since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic has been so much more dramatic and life-changing than anything even hinted at in this novel, which reaffirms my belief that the author didn’t capitalize off of all of the narrative possibilities inherent in this premise.
There is a deeper meaning, I am sure. But, sadly, DeLillo didn't present it. He, instead, left it up to the readers to decide what this all means. He (courageously?) left us to hypothesize how it will all turn out.
An interesting exploration that misses the mark, this “novel” earns 2 of out 5 cocktails.
Do you ever feel like you need a digital detox? I use my phone… a lot. And I have, on more than one occasion, pondered whether I should try to step back from the device. What techniques have you used to put some much needed separation between yourself and the persistently present internet? Tell me about it in the comments, below.
Let’s dip into something a bit… lighter. Want to see what I pick? Follow me on Goodreads and subscribe to updates in the sidebar on the right.
