Zero K by Don DeLillo (2016)

A wealthy man attempts to live forever.

Book Review:  Zero K was my introduction to Don DeLillo; don't know if it was a good place, but it's where I started. This is postmodernist literature, not that the label matters, but I haven't read many such novels, so here is a fresh view of the arena. The story line is simple: a 30-something man watches as his extremely wealthy father and step-mother attempt eternal life through a cryogenic process a quantum leap beyond anything imagined today.

This is a book of thoughts more than emotion, and always wordplay. The characters are Spockian, analyzing, defining, dwelling on conscious evaluation of life rather than simply living. They feel logic rather than responding to sharp spikes of emotion, and treasure small moments of feeling. Much silence punctuated by meaningful conversation. The one present moment of violence in Zero K is over in a sentence, with no repercussion or effect. A past moment of violence is much the same: after a wife stabs her husband, he bandages himself and the couple go to bed. Much of the first-person narration is filtered through memory; some of the present-tense narration seems unreliable. Sex is sterile and emotionless. Zero K is a meditation on death, the impermanence and unpredictability of the world, the residue of life.

While reading I thought of Ayn Rand, in that every sentence is written to advance a message rather than the plot; in fairness, this is better writing, tho Rand's is more emotional. Zero K also reminded me of '60s European art films, where surreal events occur periodically, the main character (and the viewer) simply observe and accept, and life goes on. Except here we're in "tomblike" buildings, geometric slabs (like flattened pyramids?), where an extremely rich man (think pharaoh) has determined to live forever; as part of the cryonic process organs are even removed and sealed separately.

So what of the book? The first half is designed to provoke thoughts about death and life, touching on philosophy, politics, family, and it succeeds, neurons were firing. This isn't a book for healthy teenagers -- De Lillo is 80 and thinking about life in a way that is impossible for those farther from death (if read by teenagers, please re-read 30 years later, and then 20 years after that). When I was a teenager I thought about death every day, but I never thought I'd die. The second half of the book (there is literally Part One and Part Two) shows something of the son's life and his mild relationship with a woman and her son. It's all somewhat pleasant except the world and the son are falling apart.

All in all I enjoyed Zero K, tho it is a book more of the head than the heart. More thinking than feeling. Well written, thought provoking, meaning always elusive and uncertain. A good book makes the reader think, and Zero K does that. The reader just accepts that this is how Don DeLillo writes a book. At the end, a good ending, I was still left with one other thought: if this is all their lives are, why do they want to live forever? [4 Stars]