Cosmopolis by Don Delillo

Sometimes you open a book and by the end of the first page you realise you're in the hands of a master. Delillo is a master. Cosmopolis is short but every word is placed with sniper like precision and the structure of the story - a single journey across town in the back of a car - deceptively simplistic in its layered and absurdist construction. It packs in more ideas, conundrums and perspectives than a dozen trilogies by lesser writers.

Is the protagonist Eric actually God? Is he Prometheus or the foreman at Babel? Is he Icarus? It's hard to pin down which archetype is being aimed at - not because it's not clear - but because Eric is human - a distilled version of aspiring, rational, pattern spotting, self improving man. Everyone else is chaff blown by the wind of his will to power. Now, in some sense, it's too easy to point at Nietzsche the arch nihilist and put Eric in his footsteps. I think it would also be wrong to suggest the story is about nihilism - even if it is about the death of God at the hands of one of his own, rejected, foot soldiers. Is Benno Levin a corruption of Good Priest? Is he actually The Accuser, the Satan - a fallen angel come to wreak his revenge but with the means or opportunity until his God puts them his way? As a retelling of the Divine conflict it is masterful and the delicious construction of putting men in the parts is both the story in itself and a sublime piece of metaphor.

Yet Delillo is also pushing at the door of technology, of controlling the world - the glimpses of other powerful men, of protest and the fragility of modern society are the tableau against which Eric finds himself going for a haircut. How ephemeral are algorithms that decide the fate of billions and trillions of dollars (and hence people's lives)? How robust are the bodies and lives we're tied to? Although we may wish for escape, for freedom from the flesh - do we even realise how bound we are to the meat which makes us?

I'm rambling using big words. Never a good sign - but in this case a mark of just how awesome this novel is. I'd happily spend an evening with friends working out just exactly what is going on in it. Recommended.