THE BILLIONAIRES' ROAD TO DISAPPEARANCE IN
DON DELILLO'S NOVELS COSMOPOLIS AND ZERO K Cover Image

THE BILLIONAIRES' ROAD TO DISAPPEARANCE IN DON DELILLO'S NOVELS COSMOPOLIS AND ZERO K
THE BILLIONAIRES' ROAD TO DISAPPEARANCE IN DON DELILLO'S NOVELS COSMOPOLIS AND ZERO K

Author(s): Radu Surdulescu
Subject(s): Fiction, Philology
Published by: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti
Keywords: Karl Jaspers; boundary situations; existential leap; Zygmunt Bauman; immortality; rebirth; cryonics;

Summary/Abstract: This paper deals with a later theme in Don DeLillo's fiction, which can be summed up as the wealthy American financier's passage: these characters' evolution presented in the two novels mentioned above can be approximately compared to the Gaussian bell curve. Using Karl Jaspers's existentialist terms, we may state that, if the two main characters, Eric Packer (Cosmopolis), and Ross Lockhart (Zero K),appear in the beginning as sheer empirical beings, locked in their Dasein and unable to reach genuine communication with their fellows, they are more or less suddenly faced with a "boundary situation" that will force them to take a huge leap towards Existenz (the German philosopher's word for authentic being) and give up the mere factuality of their lives.The ways in which the two tycoons do it are, though, quite different. EricPacker was in the beginning apparently engaged in what Zygmunt Bauman considers to be a typically postmodern "life strategy": the deconstruction of immortality, which is meant to carry away the fear of death; afterwards, pushed on by an irresistible death drive, he will choose gradual self-destruction. On the contrary, Ross Lockhart,his later embodiment, lets himself be driven by a will to rebirth, and finds an outlet in the hope offered by his own futuristic cryonics project.

  • Issue Year: VII/2017
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 5-15
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: English