Literature and Culture

go to the overpass all the time. Babette, Wilder, and I. We take a thermos of
iced tea, park the car, watch the setting sun” (DeLillo, 1998, p. 324). Due to
the effects of the ecological catastrophe, it is impossible to say whether the
spectacular sunsets that all the town’s residents come and see regularly are
the results of breached ecological balance or natural phenomena. Using
simple, declarative sentences that just describe the scene, it appears in front
of our eyes as a panoramic stage scene where element by element the
assemblage grows until the final frozen image, the tableau. In its cumulative
effect, it reminds us of religious congregations during the rituals where the
crowd experiences the sense of communion that helps it to overcome awe of
the metaphysical sublime. The readers become also the spectators, joining
the crowd and watching the simulacrum sunset.
The narrator in the book comments on the scene: “We find little to say to
each other” (ibid.). The speechless quality of the scene brings to the mind
silent spaces in the paintings of Edward Hopper, one of the most recognised
representatives of American art. We find in his oeuvre the image of a sunset
with the same momentum as if beyond the limit of time: “The sky takes on
content, feeling, an exalted narrative life” (ibid.). Hopper’s other works,
namely those which depict an isolated figure or figures in space, express the
same speechless narrative quality. They are presented as isolated from one
another, from themselves, part of the environment in the same way as other
inanimate elements. But they also contain the elements of urban landscape
that are so generic that even after almost a century they speak to the viewers
with disturbing intensity. “The only possible explanation is that these
paintings are not taken literally, but as an aesthetic experience, so that a
thematic interpretation will fail to provide a convincing explanation of their
appeal. This appeal is related to spaces or, more precisely, to the empty
spaces of Hopper's pictures, because it is this empty surface, in its often
colorful barrenness, that is ideally suited to function as a host for
aestheticized emotions or moods” (Benesch and Schmidt, 2005, p. 36).
The aestheticised emotions and moods are also related to the
iconography of modernity, the urban landscape, roads, highways, traffic
lights as the following examples from different media suggest. The last
chapter of DeLillo’s novel opens with the image of a small boy riding his
tricycle across the highway. The contrast between the ceaseless effort of a
child to move further on and the sweeping velocity of cars rushing by
captures the reader. The surreal quality of a dream the scene acquires
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