From omega point to point omega : inverting the investigative act of reading in Don DeLillo’s point omega

Abstract

I begin my paper with the observation that Don DeLillo’s works are often construed as incomprehensible and obscure by critics. Due to this cryptic nature, I will argue in my paper that readers are inclined to take on an investigative reading of his novels. This forms the first part of my paper, where I will work within the novel Point Omega to demonstrate how readers tend to read DeLillo’s texts as ‘conspiracy narrative’. For the sake of elucidation, I define the term ‘conspiracy narrative’ as a narrative that induces readers to take on a conspiracist impulse in their act of reading. This means that they would tend to believe that a conspiracy is indeed taking place in the narrative and strive to make sense of its inner workings by taking an investigative reading into the text. In the second part of my paper, however, I will argue that such an approach to the investigative reading of Point Omega proves to be futile, as well as a reading of any kind. Instead I will propose that the novel encourages not a reading of the text but an appreciation of the elements that constitutes the text itself.