Embodying a Counter-Haiku in Don DeLillo’s Point Omega
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This essay attempts to understand DeLillo’s literary asceticism in his critical engagement with history and art in Point Omega. The novel addresses the extremely barbed question about the relevance and validity of art in relation to history. Through Richard Elster’s vision of “haiku war,” a curious hybrid of a minimalist Japanese poetic genre and a violent form of historical conflict, DeLillo attempts to find answers for the question: When a war assumes a form of art, or when history mimics the art of exhaustion, how could art assert its raison d’être and claim its distinctive value, while remaining critically engaged with history, instead of escaping from history? To better explicate and contextualize Elster’s “haiku war,” I will first discuss his theory on the end of history, which would facilitate his tortuous justification for the Iraq War. In the second part of this essay that focuses on Elster’s cunning appropriation of the Japanese poetic genre, I will trace the ways in which DeLillo comes up with what might be called a counter-haiku, an eccentric vision of art, through which history could come back to our critical consciousness. Ultimately, DeLillo’s poetics of literary asceticism or estheticism seeks to reclaim the rightful place of art in history.
Abstract
This essay attempts to understand DeLillo’s literary asceticism in his critical engagement with history and art in Point Omega. The novel addresses the extremely barbed question about the relevance and validity of art in relation to history. Through Richard Elster’s vision of “haiku war,” a curious hybrid of a minimalist Japanese poetic genre and a violent form of historical conflict, DeLillo attempts to find answers for the question: When a war assumes a form of art, or when history mimics the art of exhaustion, how could art assert its raison d’être and claim its distinctive value, while remaining critically engaged with history, instead of escaping from history? To better explicate and contextualize Elster’s “haiku war,” I will first discuss his theory on the end of history, which would facilitate his tortuous justification for the Iraq War. In the second part of this essay that focuses on Elster’s cunning appropriation of the Japanese poetic genre, I will trace the ways in which DeLillo comes up with what might be called a counter-haiku, an eccentric vision of art, through which history could come back to our critical consciousness. Ultimately, DeLillo’s poetics of literary asceticism or estheticism seeks to reclaim the rightful place of art in history.
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