The Revision of History in Contemporary American Fiction

This paper aims at analyzing the novels Washington, D.C. (1967), by Gore Vidal, and Point Omega (2010), by Don DeLillo, in order to show the narrative strategies applied by the authors to reevaluate History in their texts. Washington D.C. addresses the period which ranges from the New Deal up to the McCarthy era, and Point Omega is related to the war on terror after 9/11. Vidal discusses not only matters concerned with the United Stated entering the Second World War and the fear of Communism, but also issues on political power, treason and the uses of publicity in politics. In 1937, Senator Burden Day and his Judiciary committee had stopped President Roosevelt’s bill to pack the Supreme Court. Senator Day had political ambitions, but he sees his assistant, Clay Overbury, become his opponent. Clay emerged as a “war hero” (a questionable one) and was a suitable candidate for the media. In Point Omega, Don DeLillo presents Richard Elster, a “defense intellectual” involved in the Bush government for more than two years with military strategies of the war in Iraq. Jim Finley, a filmmaker, wants to document Elster’s experience and the reader is led to question the consequences of the war. This discussion will be based on texts by Hutcheon (1988, 1993), White (1999) and Ricoeur (2007).

Toni Morrison’s Paradise (1997) reveals numerous possible Americas. The novel is set in Oklahoma, during the 1970’s, portraying characters facing the issue of affirming themselves as African-Americans at the period of Civil Rights Movement. All these characters are trying to figure out how they fit in America and how America belongs to them. For some, the definition of home in the United States is related to their ancestors who lived in that country during slavery or after it. For others, the traces of a homely America are in their connection to the ancestors who lived in Africa, before slavery. While for Morrison, there is a possible America connecting the States to Brazil through a shared history concept. She is able to assess American history through an episode that belongs to Brazilian oral history. In Paradise, the author shifts a Brazilian incident, the attack to a cathedral with the consequent killing of black nuns who practiced both candomblé and Catholicism, to an American context, reevaluating African-American history. This paper aims at analyzing how the narrative of this novel elaborates shifting ideas of what it means to be an American, formulating an inclusive shared history concept.

The September 11 attacks have originated a wide range of artistic manifestations which have not only searched for plausible explanations for the tragedy, but also reviewed the events. In his novel Falling Man, published in 2007, Don DeLillo deals with this episode. The author examines, in a critical way, how such a powerful country, which has always claimed to be connected to the future, was so vulnerable to that terrorist action. On the one hand, there is capital and work; on the other, “a few men willing to die”. The novel focuses on a family going through a crisis and whose characters are victims of both 9/11 and their own eccentricities. The text also approaches the stories of survivors of the catastrophe and describes the routine of the agents in the terrorist network. The character “Falling Man” is DeLillo's vivid personalization of the tragic events of 9/11 and their aftermaths. This paper aims at analyzing the narrative strategies employed by the author to reevaluate the past of American society, presenting multiple perspectives for the interpretation of a historical fact. Thus, the readers are led to rethink official History. Texts by White (1985), Hutcheon (1988, 1991), Baudrillard (2002), Vidal (2003) and Chomsky (2001, 2004) will base the discussion of those issues.