"I wanted a war in three lines..." At the end of his service, Elster retreats to the desert, where he is joined by a filmmaker intent on documenting his experience.

In his review for Publishers Weekly, Dan Fesperman revealed that the Finley character is "a middle-aged filmmaker who, in the words of his estranged wife, is too serious about art but not serious enough about life" and compares Elster to "a sort of Bush-era Dr. Strangelove without the accent or the comic props".

[2] Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Alexandra Altar described the novel as "a meditation on time, extinction, aging and death, subjects that Mr. DeLillo seldom explored in much depth as a younger writer.

"[4] An original short story unrelated to Point Omega entitled "Midnight in Dostoevsky" appeared in the November 30 edition of The New Yorker.

[7] DeLillo made an unexpected appearance at a PEN event on the steps of the main branch of the New York City Public Library in support of Chinese dissident writer Liu Xiaobo, who was sentenced to eleven years in prison for "inciting subversion of state power" on December 31, 2009.

"[2] However, Fesperman writes that there are occasions when "the going gets a little tedious",[2] and he compares the novel to a "brisk hike up a desert mountain — a trifle arid, perhaps, but with occasional views of breathtaking grandeur.

"[11] The only slightly negative remark regards the novel's brevity, but the overall conclusion was highly positive: "though it be but brief, DeLillo's latest offering is fierce.

[12] In his mostly negative review for New York magazine's books section, Sam Anderson struck a note of disappointment, puzzlement, and confusion.

In Anderson's opinion, Point Omega is "[the latest of a] recent stretch of post-Underworld metaphysical anti-thrillers—The Body Artist, Cosmopolis, Falling Man—[showing DeLillo's writing] has reached a whole new level of [narrative] inertia".

Anderson further remarks on the novel's style: "DeLillo is, after Beckett and Robbe-Grillet, the indisputable master of grinding a plot to the brink of stasis and then recording its every last movement.

"[13] Anderson finally concludes on a negative note: "I get the sense that he wants his oeuvre to culminate in a pure act of attention, and I’m not convinced that the novel is the best medium in which to do that.

As a raging DeLillo fan, I’d be more excited to see him branch out to another genre—an experimental autobiography, or essayistic micro-observations of his favorite art and literature—than write another short novel about detached and largely interchangeable characters.

[15] Further, Harvey finds fault with how, as he argues, "Point Omega was presumably conceived of as an emotional education – a story about a coldly intellectual man whose daughter’s disappearance leads him to recognise the limits of the intellect and his own human fallibility...