The Silence: A Novel

By Don DeLillo

From the National Book Award–winning author of Underworld, a “daring…provocative…exquisite” (The Washington Post) novel about five people gathered together in a Manhattan apartment, in the midst of a catastrophic event.

It is Super Bowl Sunday in the year 2022. Five people, dinner, an apartment on the east side of Manhattan. The retired physics professor and her husband and her former student waiting for the couple who will join them from what becomes a dramatic flight from Paris. The conversation ranges from a survey telescope in North-central Chile to a favorite brand of bourbon to Einstein’s 1912 Manuscript on the Special Theory of Relativity.

Then something happens and the digital connections that have transformed our lives are severed.

What follows is a “brilliant and astonishing…masterpiece” (Chicago Tribune) about what makes us human. Don DeLillo completed this novel just weeks before the advent of the Covid pandemic. His language, the dazzle of his sentences offer a kind of solace in our bewildering world. “DeLillo’s shrewd, darkly comic observations about the extravagance and alienation of contemporary life can still slice like a scalpel” (Entertainment Weekly).

“In this wry and cutting meditation on collective loss, a rupture severs us, suddenly, from everything we’ve come to rely on. The Silence seems to absorb DeLillo’s entire body of work and sand it into stone or crystal.” —Rachel Kushner

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribner
• Release date: Oct 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781982164577

Don DeLillo

Don DeLillo is the author of many bestselling novels, including Point Omega, Falling Man, White Noise, Libra and Zero K, and has won many honours in America and abroad, including the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize for his complete body of work and the William Dean Howells Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his novel Underworld. In 2010, he received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award. He has also written several plays.

Book preview

PART ONE

-1-

Words, sentences, numbers, distance to destination.

The man touched the button and his seat moved from its upright position. He found himself staring up at the nearest of the small screens located just below the overhead bin, words and numbers changing with the progress of the flight. Altitude, air temperature, speed, time of arrival. He wanted to sleep but kept on looking.

Heure à Paris. Heure à London.

Look, he said, and the woman nodded faintly but kept on writing in a little blue notebook.

He began to recite the words and numbers aloud because it made no sense, it had no effect, if he simply noted the changing details only to lose each one instantly in the twin drones of mind and aircraft.

Okay. Altitude thirty-three thousand and two feet. Nice and precise, he said. Température extérieure minus fifty-eight C.

He paused, waiting for her to say Celsius, but she looked at the notebook on the tray table in front of her and then thought a while before continuing to write.

Okay. Time in New York twelve fifty-five. Doesn’t say a.m. or p.m. Not that we have to be told.

Sleep was the point. He needed to sleep. But the words and numbers kept coming.

Arrival time sixteen thirty-two. Speed four seventy-one m.p.h. Time to destination three thirty-four.

I’m thinking back to the main course, she said. I’m also thinking about the champagne with cranberry juice.

But you didn’t order it.

Seemed pretentious. But I’m looking forward to the scones later in the flight.

She was talking and writing simultaneously.

I like to pronounce the word properly, she said. "An abbreviated letter o. As in scot or trot. Or is it scone as in moan?"

He was watching her write. Was she writing what she was saying, what they were both saying?

She said, "Celsius. Cap C. It was someone’s name. Can’t recall his first name."

Okay. What about vitesse. What does vitesse mean?

I’m thinking about Celsius and his work on the centigrade measurement.

Then there’s Fahrenheit.

Him too.

What does vitesse mean?

What?

Vitesse.

Vitesse. Speed, she said.

"Vitesse. Seven hundred forty-eight k per hour."

His name was Jim Kripps. But for all the hours of this flight, his name was his seat number. This was the rooted procedure, his own, in accordance with the number stamped on his boarding pass.

He was Swedish, she said.

Who?

Mr. Celsius.

Did you sneak a look at your phone?

You know how these things happen.

They come swimming out of deep memory. And when the man’s first name comes your way, I will begin to feel the pressure.

What pressure?

To produce Mr. Fahrenheit’s first name.

She said, Go back to your sky-high screen.

This flight. All the long flights. All the hours. Deeper than boredom.

Activate your tablet. Watch a movie.

I feel like talking. No headphone. We both feel like talking.

No earbuds, she said. Talk and write.

She was Jim’s wife, dark-skinned, Tessa Berens, Caribbean-European-Asian origins, a poet whose work appeared often in literary journals. She also spent time, online, as an editor with an advisory group that answered questions from subscribers on subjects ranging from hearing loss to bodily equilibrium to dementia.

Here, in the air, much of what the couple said to each other seemed to be a function of some automated process, remarks generated by the nature of airline travel itself. None of the ramblings of people in rooms, in restaurants, where major motion is stilled by gravity, talk free-floating. All these hours over oceans or vast landmasses, sentences trimmed, sort of self-encased, passengers, pilots, cabin attendants, every word forgotten the moment the plane sets down on the tarmac and begins to taxi endlessly toward an unoccupied jetway.

He alone would remember some of it, he thought, middle of the night, in bed, images of sleeping people bundled into airline blankets, looking dead, the tall attendant asking if she could refill his wineglass, flight ending, seatbelt sign going off, the sense of release, passengers standing in the aisles, waiting, attendants at the exit, all their thank-yous and nodding heads, the million-mile smiles.

Find a movie. Watch a movie.

I’m too sleepy. Distance to destination, one thousand six hundred and one miles. Time in London eighteen o four. Speed four hundred sixty-five m.p.h. I’m reading whatever appears. Durée du vol three forty-five.

She said, What time is the game?

Six-thirty kickoff.

Do we get home in time?

Didn’t I read it off the screen? Arrival time whatever whatever.

We land in Newark, don’t forget.

The game. In another life she might be interested. The flight. She wanted to be where she was going without this intermediate episode. Does anyone like long flights? She clearly was not

Reviews for The Silence

[akbouterse · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

2.5 stars
A little too highbrow for me, I think.

[064-699196 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

At least four of DeLillo's novels, in my opinion, could have easily won a Pulitzer Prize, but he has had no luck there either. Those novels are "White Noise, Underworld, Libra, and Cosmopolis."His newest novel, "The Silence," will not go down as one of his great novels, regardless of how his publisher Scribner might advertise the book. Its attempt at seeing World War 3 as a war in which technology and all communication are shut down is not especially a new theory, and the characters are not very interesting, even when they are quoting the great Einstein. This is not a book I could recommend, but he is an author that should be read... Just don't start with this book.

[jphamilton-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In Don Delillo’s novella, The Silence, a couple survive a plane crash, and they still make it to a Manhattan Super Bowl party in 2022, all while the world is suffering a massive and mysterious power outage. But to this reader, it seemed that our author did not have the energy to finish writing his story. Confusion, disaster, and apocalypse certainly amassed a lot of possibilities, but Delillo seems content to just write a series of disjointed moments in a vague storyline, and then decided that the story simply didn’t need an ending. Since Underworld’s 827 pages, his books have slimmed significantly, and this wee one is barely 116 pages. I hate to suggest it, but does being in his eighties have anything to do with how much he’s invested here? As a lover of short stories and experimental writing styles, I am rarely put off by a short work, but it has to prove itself, to get me involved with the characters and/or the story.Though he wrote the book before the pandemic, it may well benefit from being released into our upended world, where little seems to give comfort or make sense. A line from one of the book’s reviews sticks in my mind, it spoke of its unexpected and bewildering style, like a Stephen King novel scored by Philip Glass instead of Chuck Berry.The early reviews were hard on the book, but eventually I broke down and got it anyway. Hell, it’s Delillo. But now that I’ve read it, it’s not a Delillo that I’ve known. Did some publisher sneak into his house and steal random pages off his desk?

[petescisco · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Delillo returns to a theme that he's visited many times -- the fraught alliance between us and our machines. As he narrates tales of people affected by that relationship, Delillo shows us life in what Ulrich Bech called "the risk society." People in the modern western world put a kind of blind faith in the technology that has become nearly invisible to us. The West is a complex system rooted more and more in its technical assumptions. But what happens when the lights go out?

[lemeritus-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Quite frankly, the most stultifying 125 pages I've ever read.

[philipjhunt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A delightful, strange, thought-provoking and short riff on a world in which all things technological fail in one instant. Virtually no plot beyond the setup. And neither climax nor denouement in a world for which we see how techno-dependent we are. And thus how helpless.

[brianinbuffalo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It’s rare when I finish a book without being able to pinpoint whether I liked it or hated it. I found myself in this predicament after reading DeLillo’s expanded short story (I’m sorry, this doesn’t even quite hit the “novella” moniker in my mind.) On one hand, the author explores a timely topic – the ubiquitous presence of technology – and begins to scratch the surface of how we might react to the sudden absence of all-things-digital/technological. DeLillo is clearly a skilled word merchant. He gets more “bang for buck” per sentence than most authors get in a word-crammed page. But even with his literary prowess, I don’t believe he delved into this complex theme with enough depth. One review aptly notes that much of the short story is a collection of monologues. I found some of them insightful. Others were opaque or just plain weird. Having said that, “The Silence” is so short that it can be consumed in a couple hours. Given this reality, I encourage readers to experience this strange literary encounter for themselves.

[thewanderingjew_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Silence, Don DeLillo, author: Laurie Anderson, Jeremy Bobb, Marin Ireland, Robin Miles, Jay O. Sanders, Michael Stuhlbarg, narratorsThe year is 2022. Jim Kripps and Tessa Berens are flying from Paris to Newark Airport on their way to a friend’s Manhattan home to watch the Super Bowl. Jim doesn’t like the long flight and wants to talk, but she is busy writing in her book. There will be one other guest at their friend’s apartment, Martin Dekker. He is a former brilliant, physics student of Diane Lucas. She and Max Stenner are the hosts of the night’s entertainment and dinner. Max hopes there will be enough food. The three of them are watching the game on a giant TV, wondering where their friends from Paris are. Why are they late? Was the flight delayed? They are not overly concerned. Their conversation borders on the mundane; there are innocuous, meaningless, sometimes very confusing questions or statements that actually encourage thought while they befuddle the reader’s mind. When the TV fails to produce a picture, when the game disappears from the screen and the TV no longer operates properly, they wonder, is it just their apartment, their building? They try to call their children but their phones won’t work, neither will their computers. They check with neighbors, but they are all in the same boat. In a world where people are constantly in touch, they are suddenly completely out of touch. How widespread is it? Is it a minor glitch, a contained event that will soon be fixed? They don’t know and have no way of finding out. How can they entertain themselves? This tiny book considers a world in which technology fails, all at once, all over the world, and it happens while a huge population is watching the 56th Super Bowl, so millions are aware of the failure all at once. What will the first thoughts be? Will anyone care, at first, about anything but the game and their immediate need for gratification in this world of “me first”? Will they wonder who caused it? When will their service be restored? Why now? Was it the Chinese? What will be the impact of such a catastrophic event? Will planes fall out of the sky? Will satellites fail and spin out of their orbits? Will everything that depends on technology and not the human intellect simply fail? Will prison cell doors open? How will information and news be provided? Will it really matter since we are living in a world of “fake news” anyway? How will gasoline pumps work? How will travel continue. How will they work? How will they get funds from their banks? Who will ship food and where should it be shipped? How can they reach their doctors? How can they get medication?. How will they survive if all communication is cut? In the streets, will there be chaos? Will there be riots? Will there be looting and violence and lawlessness? Who will maintain law and order? In this tight little story, in not much more than 125 pages, such profound questions will arise in the minds of the readers, because besides entertaining themselves, they will have bigger problems. As these and other questions come into the reader’s mind, the most important to consider will be, could such a cyber attack ever really occur?

[randymetcalfe · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It’s Super Bowl Sunday. That much is clear. Max and Elaine are hosting a small gathering for the game. Martin, Elaine’s former student in college and now a physics teacher at an elite New York City high school, is one of the guests, though his preoccupation, as ever, is with Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. Jim and Tessa are to be the other guests, but they are, at the moment, on a flight back from Paris. They may arrive a bit late. A cataclysm occurs (probably) and the aftermath is just as riveting as any Super Bowl football game could have been. Or just as dull.This is DeLillo in very high form. So prepare yourself. Have a cold shower and a very dry martini, or three. Then take a deep breath.Fortunately, despite announcing to us in the sub-title that it is a novel, you’ll find The Silence so brief that you may be able to read it all in one long exhalation. Of course it may take a few more readings to make peace with it, which no doubt justifies the novel ascription. I’m not there yet. I’m still meandering in the confused zone. But it felt like it meant something (probably). No doubt your reading will be superior to mine.And so, gently recommended. But read it a few times just to be sure.

[pivic-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When you read work of an old writer, one who’s famous, it takes some toll: you might be thinking of that person’s prior work, how they viewed the world back in the day.I read DeLillo’s Libra before I read The Silence. That book was a mighty kind of marathon around dialogue and scenes; it was masterfully told, but I quickly tired of the main vein. That’s what killed the book for me.This time around, DeLillo’s taken the pulse of modern times for a lot of western people by proving that he masters brief dialogue over carefully crafted and rhythmic language that swings between conversations in different worlds.The book takes place in 2022 and starts off inconspicuously.“He was Swedish,” she said.“Who?”“Mr. Celsius.”“Did you sneak a look at your phone?”“You know how these things happen.”“They come swimming out of deep memory. And when the man’s first name comes your way, I will begin to feel the pressure.”“What pressure?”“To produce Mr. Fahrenheit’s first name.” She said, “Go back to your sky-high screen.”“This flight. All the long flights. All the hours. Deeper than boredom.”“Activate your tablet. Watch a movie.”“I feel like talking. No headphone. We both feel like talking.”“No earbuds,” she said. “Talk and write.”She was Jim’s wife, dark-skinned, Tessa Berens, Caribbean-European-Asian origins, a poet whose work appeared often in literary journals. She also spent time, online, as an editor with an advisory group that answered questions from subscribers on subjects ranging from hearing loss to bodily equilibrium to dementia.Here, in the air, much of what the couple said to each other seemed to be a function of some automated process, remarks generated by the nature of airline travel itself. None of the ramblings of people in rooms, in restaurants, where major motion is stilled by gravity, talk free-floating. All these hours over oceans or vast landmasses, sentences trimmed, sort of self-encased, passengers, pilots, cabin attendants, every word forgotten the moment the plane sets down on the tarmac and begins to taxi endlessly toward an unoccupied jetway.One of the things that I enjoyed most about this book is that I think DeLillo doesn’t try to seem smart when writing. You can always tell when a writer wants their ego fed by injecting stuff designed to make others slap them on the back.Most of the dialogue leaves everything about scenery to the reader:“You can’t help yourself.”“I don’t want to help myself,” she said. “All I want to do is get home and look at a blank wall.”This is a thoughtful, carefully written, short, and beautiful novel. There is a lot of material in it, most of which make do for re-reading. It’s a jostling book in its ease. If I must compare it to anything, I’d go with Richard Linklater’s Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight trilogy, or perhaps Terry Malick’s Tree of Life.

[pomo58 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Silence by Don DeLillo is a compact and sparse meditation on our digital connections, both to the world at large and our fellow human beings.This is the type of book, really more of a novella than a novel, that will be hit or miss with most readers. It consists largely of monologues, delivered to others who may or may not be listening. That aspect alone will turn some readers off, there is nothing going on, well, except for the fact the world seems to have gone quiet, at least digitally.Like many of DeLillo's books this one has as many ways into it as there are readers. Ignore those who like to make freshman type comments of "all of his books are the same book." It isn't that the statement is entirely wrong, it is that it means nothing. If one misses or chooses to ignore nuance, then yes, they are the same. But that is true of about 98% of fiction writers, so the point has zero actual meaning other than posturing. All you need to understand from that kind of comment, similar to the juvenile "bro-lit" comment, is that these readers didn't like the book. Those comments add nothing beyond that. Don't get me wrong, I think there are plenty of things that could turn a reader off of this book. Being supposedly the same book as all his others or the even more asinine bro-lit outlook aren't explanations, they mean little to nothing about this book, they speak far more about those readers and who they think they are or who they try to pass themselves off as being.This is not my favorite of his books but it is definitely one of the more meaningful to life as it currently is. I actually bumped my rating up because over the couple days since I read it the first time, I kept thinking about the world within the work. And how I, or people I know, might act if we suddenly had no connection to the outside world with no explanation. Any book, fiction or nonfiction, long or short, that makes me ponder what is and what might be has succeeded on a level well beyond whether it is a "good" book. It is an impactful book, far more valuable in my world than simply a good book.I do recommend this book to just about everyone. It is short, so even if it doesn't appeal to you it is only an hour or two of your time and it may still make you think even if you don't enjoy it. Among my friends, I will likely recommend to the vast majority, skipping those I know who would find it either boring or too full of talking that appears to go nowhere. For others, it will likely reward their two hour investment even if they might not really like it.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[browner56 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It is Super Bowl Sunday in New York City, two years in the future. A man and wife, middle aged and well educated, are having a small gathering in their apartment to watch the game. One guest, a former student of the physics professor wife, has already arrived and another couple will be coming as soon as their plane from Paris lands. But just as the game is starting, the power inexplicably goes out along with all other means of electronic communication, throwing the world into a chaotic, albeit silent, state. So, what do people do when that happens? Apparently, they talk and wax philosophical until morning comes.That is a very brief summary of Don DeLillo’s novel The Silence. However, to call this work a novel is a bit of a stretch; it likely does not even qualify as a novella, but reads more like a short story that has been extended just slightly beyond normal length. That distinction is important because after offering a provocative setup—what would happen if we were suddenly cutoff from all of our cyber dependencies?—the author does not really develop either the characters or the story in sufficient depth to address the topic in a compelling way. Instead, what the reader gets is a very cursory discussion of some high-brow topics (e.g., Einstein’s theory of relativity, cryptocurrencies) and even a quick, gratuitous reference to the COVID-19 crisis that occurred sometime earlier.It is fair to compare this book to the author’s own estimable catalog of work. Not to the most brilliant of his novels (White Noise, Underworld, Libra), but to the lesser-known Cosmopolis, which also was published shortly after a cathartic global event (i.e., the 9/11 attack). Unfortunately, the comparison is not favorable for The Silence because that earlier book, while still concisely written, was developed with the sort of depth and insight that one would expect from a fully realized story. In fact, although Cosmopolis disappointed some readers by not being about the 9/11 tragedy directly, it proved remarkably prescient in predicting the advent of high-frequency trading and the Occupy Wall Street protests that would occur just a few years later.I suppose it is worth noting that I have been a big fan of DeLillo’s work for many, many years. Like a lot of people, I was at first put off by the stilted and unrelatable characters he creates, but I soon learned that the author was writing novels about the important concepts that define our lives and that his characters were just delivery vehicles meant to convey the bigger message. And can he ever craft some amazing sentences! That much certainly remains true in this book, despite its failure to deliver on an otherwise promising premise. If I am disappointed in what I found here, it is only because I have been conditioned by this writer to set my expectations so very high.