Dread Persists

Abstract

J. Michael Lennon reviews Don DeLillo’s novella The Silence, reading it as a distilled meditation on technological dependence, collective anxiety, and the persistence of existential fear in contemporary life. Lennon outlines the work’s spare narrative structure, which confines its action largely to a Manhattan apartment during an unexplained technological collapse, and emphasizes DeLillo’s reliance on fragmentary dialogue, speculative conjecture, and ritualized memory as responses to sudden systemic failure. The review situates The Silence within DeLillo’s larger body of dystopian fiction, drawing connections to White Noise, Cosmopolis, and Falling Man, while also invoking literary and philosophical touchstones ranging from Poe to Einstein. Lennon argues that DeLillo’s radical compression intensifies the novella’s effect, producing a pointillist narrative in which meaning emerges through juxtaposition rather than resolution. Ultimately, the review presents The Silence as a sobering reflection on modern vulnerability, one that refuses consolation and leaves readers suspended in unresolved dread.