During a section about Matti, DeLillo suddenly breaks out of the third person narrative and directly “questions” the reader. This happens twice. The first time is on page 402, “Do you work with sound waves? Do you gauge the effects of blast on delivery aircraft? Do you do physics packages and dream about a girl back in Georgia…” I’m not typing out the entire thing. The second occurrence is on page 413, when he writes, “Did you do grad work on solar energy? Did you do a paper on the trigger principle of nuclear fission….” (again, not typing out the entire thing). I wonder about the purpose of this, and what the intention is.

I noticed that DeLillo uses the present tense to describe things that take place in the 50's. The "present", or at least the parts of the book that are most like our current world, he generally describes in the past tense.

I was wondering why he did this. Does it say that the past, the 50's, is somehow more alive and real to us than what we think of as the present? I don't really know. I thought about Gravity's Rainbow and how it's like you are reading the whole book from a later time than WWII (maybe). Perhaps it's like we are reading the book from the 50's and looking forward...but that sounds silly so maybe not.

I so want to break out into song. I'll refrain, though.

I rather liked the Prologue…and am quickly picking up on DeLillo’s writing style, which I think I rather like. I notice that he uses repetition to make something stick in the reader’s mind. It sounds pretty cool, I think. Here are a few examples:

Pg. 23 “Edgar fixes today’s date in his mind. October 3, 1951. He registers the date. He stamps the date.”

Pg. 27 “He’s reading and reading the sign. He’s reading the sign.”

Pg 28. “A man slowly wiping his glasses. A staring man. A man flexing the stiffness out of his limbs.”