Lateness and Lessness

Abstract

The end of the twentieth century was dominated by a sense of historical lateness. In the canonical accounts of late style developed by Theodor W. Adorno and Edward Said, late style is the anachronistic and ironic use of past styles and conventions. In contrast, this chapter argues that Don DeLillo and Philip Roth develop a different kind of late style: one that uses the expressive qualities of prose ‘lessness’ to articulate a specific vision of late-twentieth-century lateness. In DeLillo’s Point Omega and The Body Artist, and Roth’s Nemeses quartet, lateness is a process of lessening that never ends—one that fails to lead to moments of rupture or transformation.