The New Yorker has a lengthy excerpt from Don DeLillo's upcoming novel, The Falling Man, which features the attacks on the twin towers on 9/11 as a central figure. [Amazon.com pre-order link]

Every time she saw a videotape of the planes she moved a finger toward the power button on the remote. Then sh kept on watching. The second plane coming out of that ice-blue sky, this was the footage that entered the body that seemed to run beneath her skin, the fleeting sprint that carried lives and histories, theirs and hers, everyone’s, int some other distance, out beyond the towers The skies she retained in memory were dramas of cloud and sea storm, or the electric sheen before summer thunder in the city, always belonging to the energies of sheer weather, of what was out there, air masses, water vapor, westerlies. This was different, a clear sky that carried human terror in those streaking aircraft, first one, then the other, the force of men’s intent. Every helpless desperation set against the sky, voices crying to God, and how awful to imagine this, God’s name on the tongues of killers and victims both, first one plane and then the other, the one that was nearly cartoon human, with flashing eyes and teeth, the second plane, the south tower.

He watched with her one time only. She knew she’d never felt so close to someone, watching the planes cross the sky. Standing by the wall, he reached toward the chair and took her hand. She bit her lip and watched. They would all be dead, passengers and crew, and thousands in the towers dead, and she felt it in her body, a deep pause, and thought, There he is, unbelievably, in one of those towers, and now his hand was on hers, in pale light, as though to console her for his dying. He said, “It still looks like an accident, the first one. Even from this distance, way outside the thing, how many days later, I’m standing here thinking it’s an accident.”

“Because it has to be.”

“It has to be,” he said.

“The way the camera sort of shows surprise.”

“But only the first one.”

“Only the first,” she said.

“The second plane, by the time the second plane appears,” he said, “we’re all a little older and wiser."

The image above is more than a little troubling, I realize, but it's also crucial to understanding the state of our world today. And if anyone, DeLillo can map out his postmodern terrain.

[via metafilter.com]