The work of highly successful artists is often described in the work's place in time relative to the artist's career. Thus you have early Picasso, late-period Beethoven. Sometimes the word vintage is employed as in, "*Jaws* is vintage Speilberg…" Writers seem to fare less well than their non-literary counterparts as their careers mature. Late-period Beethoven could be summed up by terms masterful, exquisite and revolutionary. Picasso never stopped innovating and only in very old age, right at the end, did he struggle and fail. My perception is that writers seldom get a glittering third act. Maybe time and further reading will prove me wrong. DeLillo seems to have the reputation of the artist whose best work is strictly in the rear-view mirror. I don't agree.

Centered on a trio of characters, this novella seems to vibrate with what must be a distinct Delilloness. I felt it in *White Noise* and I felt it here in this compact story of an experimental filmmaker (whose career it seems will never have a second act, let alone a late-period/vintage/revolutionary phase); a fading, retired military scholar — the intended subject of the filmmaker's new project; and the scholar's disturbed daughter. My overall impression is much the same as it was for *White Noise*. Somehow I sense that DeLillo is playing three-dimensional chess, and while I might be stuck playing checkers, I can feel the genius in his work. I will leave in-depth interpretation of the book up to readers more familiar with his entire body of work. All I can offer is an assertion that whatever skill you can identify on the page is just the tip of the iceberg. The uneasy, almost other-worldly quality and the characters which practically slip from the page they are so alive attest to much more going on than meets the eye.

If anything, reading this short work convinces me that DeLillo deserves a full hearing, that I owe it to him and to myself to read all his books. I started *Underworld* as a teenager, loved it even then, but stopped for whatever reasons. Let's blame it on the hormones. *Mao* and *Libra* have been on my (virtual) shelf forever. I will now try to make my way through the entire heap. I can't offer a higher recommendation than to say it makes me want to read more. ( )

This is a novel which enjoyed but might not be as appreciated by many other readers. This is the first book of DeLillo I have read although I have many, but not all, of his other works. It is very short (117 pp) and closer to a novella than a full length novel. It takes place in near the Salton Sea in Southern California which is a desolate area near a body of water of high saline content. The four characters are interesting but hardly convincing. One is a Bush administration Neocon apparently working on a general rationale for the invasion of Iraq. This happens to be the central character of the book. In reality there were no ultimate rationales for the war just an excuse to wage a war without fear of losing it. Men and women in uniform being expendable in reality and an acceptable loss on strategic terms. War schemers untouched by the reality of human death and amputated bodies. The book deals with a videographer who tries to document one of the unseen architects of the war (Richard Elster) as he retreated from the terrorist renditions that followed upon it. Lots of MIT & CAL Tech ruminations which culminate in Elster's own arrival at an Omega Point of Cosmic Consciousness which strangely wills to destroy itself. The Omega Point was an old idea from Teihard de Chardin where all of creation converges with the human mind in a super-consciousness. This new entity was God. This was considered by de Chardin as a mysticism of science, at least from the Jesuit point of view. Teihard de Chardin was a Jesuit priest. Elster in turn reshapes that theology into a Heideggerian flavored nihilism. For me, this novel is a chance for the author to try out some new ideas which may or may not work in some future novel. I was impressed by the book although knowing that few others would see the same value as I had, especially women. Delillo develops his own ideas of the the nature of the present temporal now, what is consciousness, and can personal subjectivity be so affected by experience that personhood itself is altered. No answers here, but only the recognition that aging and personal loss can force an examination of one's past actions and motivations. ( )

Point Omega is an extremely short novel (only 117 pages) with very little action. Most of the book is either conversations amongst the characters or the inner musings of their minds. Consequently, I often found myself momentarily pausing in my reading, pondering upon what the characters were thinking about. At times,it almost felt I was musing right along with them. An interesting, and in that sense, quite unique reading experience... ( )

I'll give Don Delillo $50 if he writes something that's not about a writer, professor, or otherwise creative person. ( )

The real point omega is- damn the Iraq war was fucked up and america needs to not exist ( )