The Return of the Sublime and the Transcendental in Don DeLillo’s Zero K
The Return of the Sublime and the Transcendental in Don DeLillo’s Zero K

Summary/Abstract: This article focuses on the sublime experience in Don DeLillo’s recent novel Zero K, framing it as a return, via sublime, to a possible, albeit vicarious, experience of the transcendental. General consensus on the sublime gravitates towards awe and terror upon encountering phenomena that overwhelm the mind, forcing it to become conscious of its limits. However, postmodern theory has largely departed from the idea of the transcendental in the sublime, focusing instead on the failure of representation itself. Don DeLillo’s novels often problematize this very failure. In Zero K he has arguably reinjected the possibility of the transcendental into the idea of the sublime. Despite main protagonist Jeffrey Lockhart’s various doubts, his visit to the Convergence – a cutting-edge cryonic facility, designed to emphasize the spiritual and religious side of an experiment with immortality – proves solemn and awe-inspiring, and he is overwhelmed by the project’s ingenuity, massiveness, and all-encompassing spiritual atmosphere.

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