COSMOPOLIS, Don DeLillo

Years ago, I read Libra, DeLillo’s fictional account of the Kennedy assassination and I became a fan. DeLillo has the ability to tell a fictional story wrapped in the very real happenings of current events. That’s not to say his stories are easy to read, quite the contrary, they are dense with information and often very long.  This little novel takes place on one April day in the year 2000.  A young, brilliant and fantastically wealthy asset manager is driven in his custom limousine across Manhattan to get a haircut.  That’s the plot; the story line is his journey to find meaning in life now that he has achieved everything at the ripe old age of 28.  Halfway through the story, p. 107, the author writes eloquently:  The threat of death at the brink of night spoke to him about some principle of fate that he’d always known would come clear in time.  Now he could begin the business of living.  This is a quick read full of commentary on the state of the world year 2000. Scribner, 2003, 209 p.