What would you do if every screen in America suddenly went dark? Smartwatches, cellphones, laptops, televisions, car consoles, interactive shopping mall maps, McDonalds’ drive-through menus, digital billboards in Times Square—all of it, blank. Whatever the causes and ultimate consequences of such an event, it would certainly turn the world and our worldview on its head—or would it? In his newest novel, The Silence, acclaimed author Don DeLillo imagines such a blackout in the uncomfortably near future of Super Bowl Sunday 2022, exploring the responses of five acquaintances stranded in a New York apartment after a nationwide technology crash brings life to a grinding halt. As DeLillo unwinds each character’s reaction to the sudden change, the reader is left to consider what they might do if such a disaster were to happen tomorrow. In an era when “unprecedented” is our new normal, The Silence offers escape by imagining a different kind of nationwide disaster than the pandemic disaster we are currently weathering. 

          The story begins with a married couple-—Jim Kripps and Tessa Berens’—flying from Paris to New York. He is a tall claims adjuster; she is a multi-ethnic, multilingual poet. Their flight crashes just outside of Newark, a casualty of the mysterious tech blackout. Escaping virtually unscathed, they manage to straggle to the home of their waiting friends, Diane Lucas and Max Stenner, hosts of a Superbowl watch-party interrupted by the loss of television signal. She is a professor; he is a home inspector; both are trapped in a lackluster thirty-seven-year marriage, “[n]ot unhappily but in states of dire routine, two people so clutched together that the day is coming when each of us will forget the other’s name.” Already present in the Lucas/Stenner apartment is a “semi-eccentric” high school physics teacher, Martin Dekker, Diane’s former student. Their evening together unfolds in a series of stream-of-consciousness monologues that one might call a conversation, on subjects from Chile’s Large Synoptic Survey Telescope to bourbon. Diane mentions Finnegan’s Wake; there are moments in which this book feels like an homage to Joyce, though about twelve notches more comprehensible—DeLillo only invents a word here and there. Despite the wide range of topics discussed, the cause or exact nature of the blackout is never explained. Is it nationwide? Worldwide? It is also unclear whether it is just screens or all power that has failed; sometimes the lights are on, other times they are off. Perhaps the conflicting images are intentional, meant to show that the characters are just as baffled as the reader. 

          Conceptualizing the end of the world as we know it is baffling. In our current moment, it is positively unnerving. Since March, when the Coronavirus broke out in America, screens have kept the world connected; their absence now would halt education, communication, and careers, severing our lifeline to the rest of the world. Moreover, the pandemic would make this devolution that much worse. Any loss of power now would deliver a blow to the fragile digital infrastructure we have arranged in place of our normal lives. On the other hand, DeLillo’s premise is almost more intriguing than terrifying. The idea of “the end of the world as we know it” does not sound so scary anymore—been there, done that. An end to technology could be an alluring, nostalgic, Luddite fantasy, with the appeal of watching a film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice or footage of a 1940s Big Band dance. If all of my screens went blank, would I walk more, cook more, read more? Would I take up needlepoint? Gardening? Some industries might agree, preferring a blast to the pre-electric past. The Postal Service would be thrilled, small local businesses would flourish without Amazon, and the Sears-Roebuck Catalogue would come back with a vengeance. 

          In imagining this stream of possibilities, I disregard the obvious and enormous risks to our health, safety, and quality of life that a nationwide blackout would cause. DeLillo manages to reflect some of the distress and confusion that would ensue after such an event with his jarring prose. His writing is as disorienting as a nationwide blackout, lacking a discernible story arc or message. The rambling monologues and unconnected musings of the characters indicate a breakdown in normality, something we can all identify with during this pandemic. Strangely comforting, The Silence is both confusing and provocative, a fitting complement to our present disaster.