Don DeLillo's latest novel is set in New York, and describes a day in the life of Eric Packer, a fantastically wealthy 28-year-old currency trader. The day begins with Packer deciding that he needs a haircut. Accompanied by Torval, his chief of security, he sets out across town in his stretch limousine. It is a bad day for travel: the president is in town, which, as Torval predicts, means they will "hit traffic which speaks in quarter inches". To make matters worse, an anti-capitalist demonstration is taking place, as well as the funeral of a rap star.
Packer lives in a 48-room triplex, and owns a Soviet fighter plane. His limousine (inside which most of the action takes place) is decked with an "array of visual display units . . . medleys of data on every screen". A member of the global super-rich, he thinks nothing of going tiger hunting in Siberia with fellow multibillionaires. His mind, like a computer, operates at superhuman speed: faced by the flashing rows of data in his limo, we are told that "he absorbed this information in a couple of long still seconds". He is also in touch with less cerebral urges: his physical appetites feature prominently in the novel, and he interrupts his journey in order to have rough sex with several women.
All the while, he speculates on the imminent fall of the yen. Having risen unexpectedly overnight, this continues to climb throughout the day. Against the advice of his chief financial adviser, Packer continues borrowing money in vast sums. In the process, he squanders not just his own fortune, but also that of his wife, into whose accounts he manages to break. Oddly, Packer doesn't seem perturbed by this. In a way, his financial ruin is confirmation of his solipsistic belief that "when he died, he would not end. The world would end." For it is not just he and his wife who suffer as a result of his erratic dealings; he brings the economy crashing down with him.
The dizzying pace of technological progress, a perennial theme in DeLillo's work, here takes on the quality of an obsession. In Packer's eyes, the present is forever receding into obsolescence. Everyday objects strike him as absurdly outmoded. Diamonds are "a form of money so obsolete Eric didn't even know how to think about it". Palm Pilots, too, are ridiculously old-fashioned. Packer's technological hauteur engenders some of the smartest writing in the novel.
Cosmopolis is, for the most part, a zany novel, a riot of wacky observations and madcap insights. As usual, DeLillo hints at mysterious connections between things that seem to have little in common: during the anti-capitalist protest, Packer thinks he sees a "shadow of transaction between the demonstrators and the state"; one of his advisers identifies "an affinity between market movements and the natural world". Some American reviewers have mocked this aspect of his work, criticising his presumption to, as one critic put it, have a "direct line on the weird, powerful yet slippery spectacles and paradoxes of contemporary life". And it is true that, with its mostly preposterous storyline and apocalyptic atmosphere, Cosmopolis does at times resemble a comic book.
Yet one can forgive DeLillo such excesses, because he writes so well. Torval is described as a "man whose head seemed removable for maintenance"; Packer's chief of technology sits in a "masturbatory crouch". The novel opens with the following description of Packer's insomniac nights: "Sleep failed him more often now, not once or twice a week but four times, five. What did he do when this happened? He did not take long walks into the scrolling dawn. There was no friend he loved enough to harrow with a call." Anyone inclined to doubt DeLillo's powers as a writer should reflect on the poetry of this passage, and on those two unexpected words, "scrolling" and "harrow".
