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White Noise
AMERICAN POSTMODERNISTS
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3. White Noise by Don Delillo Chapters 21 - 30
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“I’m not just a college professor. I’m the head of a department. I don’t see myself fleeing an airborne toxic event. That’s for people who live in mobile homes out in the scrubby parts of the county, where the fish hatcheries are.” Wow, elitist snob, what?
“We watched Wilder climb backwards down the attic steps, which were higher than the steps elsewhere in the house.” Surely this puts Wilder at under 5 years of age…
If members are still commenting at this stage, what do you have to say about: "What did it all mean? Did Steffie truly imagine she’d seen the wreck before or did she only imagine she’d imagined it? Is it possible to have a false perception of an illusion? Is there a true déjà vu and a false déjà vu? I wondered whether her palms had been truly sweaty or whether she’d simply imagined a sense of wetness. And was she so open to suggestion that she would develop every symptom as it was announced? ' I'll comment on that soon.
Just btw, Ovulation comes before menstruation, there’s no mystery in that.
While the family is at the emergency camp, it becomes painfully obvious that the novel is set in a time before they even had basic cellphones, let alone smartphones. I suppose there’s a sort of clear line between the time before the use of the internet and smartphones became ubiquitous, and the advent of the information age as we know it. It’s even before PC’s – note how he calls the one at the camp a “microcomputer” - people didn’t even have PC’s, let alone laptops or tablets of any kind. …and yet, they already have a data profile for Jack. Prescient, DeLillo, prescient…
The sarcastic humor comes to the fore again very clearly where Babbette reads the story about past-life regressions done by Dr Chatterjee. The listeners all seem to ‘believe’ just as modern-day conspiracy theorists show themselves quite prepared to believe the most outrageous and outlandish stories.
Most of the predictions by the psychics in the next tabloid are pretty funny, but this one is perhaps less funny: ” “Members of an air-crash cult will hijack a jumbo jet and crash it into the White House in an act of blind devotion to their mysterious and reclusive leader, known only as Uncle Bob. ...yet how prescient was that? Keep in mind this was written just more than fifteen years before 9/11.
I think that if the moon exploded, we’d be in far, far more trouble than just lost tides and scattered debris….
In Jack and Heinrich’s conversation about “being flung back to the Stone Ages”, Heinrich isn’t making a distinction between experts in “Ancient Greek” circles and experts in his current time. Of course experts in their fields know how to make fridges and how fridges work, even if the common man on the street doesn’t. Just as in “Ancient Greek” times, scholars in a particular field, for example mathematics –Pythagoras for example, knew some mathematical and geometrical rules, but it’s not as if the common man on the street in those times knew these principles; and in fact, schoolchildren today know as much math or more (and probably physics too) than Ancient Greek scholars did.
..and if you did wake up in the Stone Ages and there was a epidemic raging, yes, you would know the basics of preventing it from spreading (if you were a sensible person and not a conspiracy theorist), but there wouldn’t be epidemics, because people only banded together in very small groups. Epidemics need to have high population densities to build up virulence and need to be widespread to be an epidemic in the first place. These small groups hardly had any contact with one another in those days - the earth was only very sparsely populated with humans.
It’s as if for this book, deLillo went onto the internet and copied and pasted a bunch of articles from various places and sort of mixed them up randomly and then used phrases out of the mish-mash to populate his character’s conversations, and I suppose the result –is- a bit like the mish-mash of information we’re constantly bombarded with in the information age.
Everything’s fake, especially where Murray is concerned. Even the Heimlich maneuver Murray wants to perform on the prostitute. ...and these people also have fake news - but then what’s new?
”A woman with an armband handed out masks at the door, gauzy white surgical masks that covered the nose and mouth. We took six and went outside.” Oh boy, déjà vu of good times, there…
I always felt Wilder was 3 almost 4. Able to be self sufficient inthe fact that he was mobile.
Mod
Indeed, yes - I would agree with that assessment. And, having had toddlers myself, I can't help feeling that Babette is not a very maternal person, in fact, less so that Jack the narrator is.
It is more often Jack that nurtures the little boy, and even Heinrich seems more interested in him than Babette or the girls seem to be.
My sister and I were quite a bit older than my baby brother and I remember that were always fighting over who can help bathe him and feed him, and my sister, my mother and I were always playing with him and clucking over him as he grew up.
Even on the day that Wilder was crying so much, it was Jack who wanted to take him to the doctor and Babette was more concerned about appearances and about what she would say to the doctor.
Nobody ever seems to talk to the poor little tyke, and he never does the typical naughty toddler stuff that you always have to be watching them for.
I can't help wondering what his purpose in the story is, but then I haven't finished the book yet.
Frankly at times I'm overwhelmed at how "needy" all the kids are in their own way. (I've had four of my own so I have been there!) Heinrich is precocious beyond years through his intellectualization,* cynicism and "push back" behaviour toward his father. The girls are "next level" in the their antics. Denise's insights into her mother's health, Steffie's hypersensitivity to watching characters in T.V.
No wonder Wilder doesn't feature. Interesting to pin his crying session against that backdrop. Not heard even under the most dire circumstances.
*"In psychology, intellectualization is a defense mechanism by which reasoning is used to block confrontation with an unconscious conflict and its associated emotional stress - where thinking is used to avoid feeling. It involves removing one's self emotionally from a stressful event". Wikipedia.
Was the author even aware of that aspect?
Mod
Bonitaj said: " intellectualization is.... Was the author even aware of that aspect?"
I suspect the author is far more knowledgable than his characters are (at least, I hope so, otherwise he'd be a bit of an idiot, wouldn't he?)
Also, I looked it up, and at the time of writing this novel, the author had no kids, so that might explain why his depiction of family life that includes kids feels a bit off. Although, I must admit that Heinrich and Denise feel rather real. I know a few "wise guy" kids like that, though I would have put them both at slightly older ages than they appear to be.
Mod
I don’t really like how DeLillo/the narrator seems to pooh-pooh the importance of correct posture. In today’s sedentary world, posture IS very important, as is keeping your core strong, etc.etc. Especially if you have an injured back or other back problems. As someone who has benefited from biokinetic advice in this regard, I know this first-hand.
The credo of the consumerist religion: “Everything was fine, would continue to be fine, would eventually get even better as long as the supermarket did not slip.”. - love the bits of acid humor that the author slips in.
Oh, the good old days, when you could actually call your doctor at their home. Only in a small town will you be able to call your doctor at home, let alone get through to speak to him/her on the phone – that is, if you even know who your doctor is, the way that global corporations have taken over every profession including the medical one, these days.
This conversation: “Dylar is some kind of psychopharmaceutical. It’s probably designed to interact with a distant part of the human cortex. Look around you. Brains everywhere. Sharks, whales, dolphins, great apes. None of them remotely matches the human brain in complexity. The human brain is not my field. I have only a bare working knowledge of the human brain but it’s enough to make me proud to be an American.” , is really ridiculous. It’s a ludicrous thought that an expert neurochemist wouldn’t know much about the human brain….
Also, slow-release tablets have been around for ages and ages.
Poor Babette. She had to do her research without the internet.
Re the silliness about the idea that hearing words could make you think it is really happening, that's just not how the brain works. Language processing is a complex thing. Several areas of the brain must function together in order for a person to develop, use, and understand language.
What rather strikes me about the novel as a whole : At a time in history, when the world was just starting to come out of the Cold War, when medical technology had reached a zenith never reached before, and the life-expectancy of white, middle-class Americans are probably higher than it ever was before, no epidemics or great wars in sight, even, and in the vapidness of their existence, people have a terrible, terrifying fear of death. Doesn’t that just show how strange human psychology is?
As for anxiety about death, there’s been medication for that – various remedies, in fact, for ages. Plus living your life more fully so you have less time to ruminate also helps.
In any case, wow, so she prostitutes her body without consulting her husband? I would not have been a happy camper in his shoes…
True story: I knew a guy like Orest Mercato who loved to play with and collect poisonous stuff. Plants, snakes, spiders. He didn’t make it over thirty. But he didn’t die from poisoning. A bolt of lightning hit him as he was walking up the scree slope of a mountain with metal climbing equipment hanging from his belt and in his backpack. I kid you not.
“ ‘They want to bite, they bite,” he said. “At least I go right away. These snakes are the best, the quickest. A puff adder bites me, I die in seconds.”
Oh man, but can these characters spout out nonsense: For the toxicity of a puffadder bite, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puff_ad... and/or
http://toxicology.ucsd.edu/Snakebite%...
According to the sources above, an untreated bitten adult human male will take about 25 hours to die from puff adder venom, so, I guess about 1,500 seconds? Seconds, yes, but lots and lots of them. Besides, why not just keep some anti-venom at hand? Seems the most sensible thing to do…
Mod
I was also wondering where he came up with the idea of calling the GP at home... in what lifetime can one still do that?Your point about Heinrich is well taken although perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I just felt him to be a "Flat character" in Shakespearean terms - and his lack of affect pointed to something a little more sinister. The fact that he never seemed to "trouble" De Lillo or anger him in any of their encounters spoke reams about their lack of true connection. I still consider him to be too smart or is that "too smart-ass" at times.
Perhaps, a younger "alter ego" version of De Lillo himself!?
Mod
Ah yes, I see what you mean. He's obviously a personality that copes with life in general by "intellectualizing" things, as you pointed out earlier.
...but I still think that DeLillo seems to lack knowledge of family life, since, as you yourself just pointed out, Jack always behaves in an affable manner with wife and kids, and is never ruffled by anything they do or say. Perhaps Jack is so relaxed due to the fact that he doesn't seem to need to work very hard, tee-hee.
On the other hand, he is highly neurotic with his constant hassling about the fear of death...
Chapter 28
Murray’s course in car crashes and the ‘fun’ film crews have in shooting the footage, with the implication that it’s also fun to watch as entertainment on the consumer’s side, seems to sort of segue in with DeLillo’s earlier focus on the human fascination with disasters and how the media has turned this human proclivity into fodder for consumer products – how they serve up news about disasters as a product for us to consume.
Murray and his department’s focus on car crashes as a consumer product, for me seems to shine a light on how violence, an age-old consumer product as served up in the Roman Circus, has once again become an object of titillation, and the implication is, even pleasure, in the bleak landscape of consumerism, where consumers as a group are a target (and I’d almost be inclined to say “a victim”) to be exploited.
Chapter 29
DeLillo (or is it Jack?) comes across as a bit racist when he comments on how “beautifully” Dr Chakravarty, a surname which seems to label him as an East-Asian Indian, speaks English.
In addition, just as silly as the style and content was of what the pilot of the plane who lost 3 engines said, just as ridiculous is the way Dr. Chakravarty speaks to Jack, unless of course, the guy is a total quack. Not sure if the style in which he speaks is supposed to be interpreted as poking fun at Indians, since doctors simply don’t talk that way, and I can’t imagine even a quack saying things like :
“The less you know, the better. Go to Glassboro. Tell them to delve thoroughly. No stone unturned. Tell them to send you back to me with sealed results. I will analyze them down to the smallest detail. I will absolutely pick them apart.
I mean, usually the doctor will send the patient to a pathologist with filled in requests, and the pathologist performs the requested tests and interprets the results and sends them back to the requesting physician automatically. But the doctor would say to the patient something like: I’d like to have some further tests done on you, please take these forms with you to so-and-so lab. Not the weird little piece of dialogue that Dr Chakravarty delivers.
Mod
At this point of the book, at some point into the airborne disaster, I suddenly realized why I just simply lost interest in finishing the book the last time at this very point.
It's as if the book has no heart, no soul, no single character that one feels one can relate to (reminds me of Middlemarch in that respect) - it's just a mish-mashed pastiche of icons from consumer and postmodern culture, and while that may be amusing for a little while it soon gets old. I would never even have pushed on this far, did I not feel an obligation to finish because of this commitment I had made.
EDIT: Apologies, but I really didn't enjoy chapter 21. It does seem to get better again, though, so sorry for that.