The Obsessions of the Lonely: On death and life and Zero K
“Ordinary moments make the life.” This is written on page 109 of Zero K. But It’s the abnormal moments that make up DeLillo’s fiction. A death facility in a Central Asian desert, a death facility that will become a life facility in the future, once the means and technology are available – this is the setting of Zero K. DeLillo’s fiction is an assemblage of moments that could be plucked from underground newspaper columns or whispered to you by a nervous, bedraggled man on an unfamiliar street or taken from those compartments of the internet that require a login to a private network.
By Tristan Foster.