Article in Law and Literature · July 2007 doi: 10. 1525/lal

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L a w & L i t e r a t u r e
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Vo l u m e 1 9 , N u m b e r 2
Is this not a veiled plea to resist the impulse to impose meaning on an event whose overwhelming
human significance lies precisely in the way that the negativity of death drains all meaning from the
world? Nevertheless, it seems to me that if this story itself has a meaning, it is precisely that the lesson
death teaches is that one can only escape the compulsive, and ultimately fatal—“[i]t practically killed
us,” as Keith says—attempt to discover and attribute meaning (“the urge to ask, examine, delve, draw
things out, trade secrets, tell everything”) by engaging in the loving, mourning identification-without-
appropriation that DeLillo himself identifies, in his other work (if not overtly thematized as such in this
story), with the attitude of the artist and writer.
LAL1902_07.fm Page 302 Thursday, May 24, 2007 12:21 PM
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• 1000453cover.pdf
  • Adam Thurschwell