Abstract

Abstract:

In his 2007 novel Falling Man, Don DeLillo depicts New York City, in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, as a place in which nearly everyone seems to be experiencing some form of religious longing. Still, for almost all of DeLillos characters, religious longing remains disconnected from any formal religious practice or any community of faith. The most significant exception is the books main character, Lianne Glenn, who struggles to return to Catholicism, partly through her memory of an encounter in college with the theology of Soren Kierkegaard, partly through her work with a writing group of Alzheimer’s patients, and partly through her memories of her fathers rigidly traditional Catholicism. Liannes discovery of a more questioning Catholicism continues the preoccupation in DeLillos fiction with the struggle for spirituality and morality in a contemporary America. More specifically, it also clarifies the growing significance in his recent work of the spirituality of Ignatius Loyola.

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