Don DeLillo seems determined to nail modern America down, and he may yet. His previous novels have tackled football ("End Zone"), pop music ("Great Jones Street"), and science ("Ratner's Star"), and in "Players" … he takes on terrorism. Terrorism of an attenuated, urbane sort; the book is really about sophistication, or at least nothing is as clear about it as the sophistication of the author, who combines a wearily thorough awareness of how people pass their bored-silly lives in New York City with a (in this novel) lean, slit-eyed prose and a pseudo-scientific descriptive manner….

[The] drastic unlovableness of Lyle and the very tepid appeal of Pammy discourage the considerable suspension of disbelief necessary to follow them into their adventures as they break loose from connubial anti-bliss. (p. 127)

Don DeLillo has, as they used to say of athletes, class. He is original, versatile, and, in his disdain of last...