Don Delillo's White Noise: the natural of the species.

Don Delillo's White Noise: the natural of the species. White Noise is probably the only novel written by a white maleAmerican in the last fifteen years to have consistently broken throughto reading lists at colleges and universities in the United States United States,officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. .Given the canon quakes of the last decade, this stands by itself as acultural fact worthy of mention. And given the enormous range and highquality of writing by other white males - from old guardists likeMailer, Bellow bellowone of the voices of cattle. Usually refers to the arrogant call of the bull used to announce territorial rights. Abnormalities of the voice include hoarseness as in rabies, or continuous repetition as in nervous acetonemia. See also low, moo. , Roth, Updike, and Doctorow, to graying eminences ofexperimentation like Barth, Vonnegut, Pynchon, Coover, Hawkes, Gaddis,and Gass, to bold younger writers like Richard Powers, Ted Mooney,Steven Erickson, and William Vollman - the book's emergence is allthe more remarkable. It is my sense that White Noise has begun toreplace The Crying of Lot 49 as the one book professors use to introducestudents to a postmodern sensibility. I have taught the book at twouniversities, to a wide variety of students from different backgrounds,to freshman, upper-classmen, and graduate students, and I can onlydescribe their response to it as rousing. I can't say it is myteaching that makes this so; I've done my share of teaching goodbooks See how to find a good computer book. to stone silence. Yet the novel seems to draw out a certain buriedawareness in my students that the most familiar aspects of their lives -shopping malls, television, families, and the languages of these things- harbor deep and resonant mysteries. It affects them, I think, as asustained defamiliarization of their own lives. After reading it, it is(or should be) impossible to shop in a supermarket the same way, towatch a televised disaster the same way, even - and this is crucial - tolisten to a baby's cry the same way. Preposterously funny,immediately accessible, yet deeply sophisticated on a formal andstylistic level, White Noise is one of the few novels capable ofmastering - perhaps taming - our schizoid schizoid/schiz��oid/ (skit��soid)1. denoting the traits that characterize the schizoid personality.2. confusions about the massmedia experience. It is a novel which, because of its wide-rangingexplanatory power and uncanny compassion, somehow helps.Critical appreciation for DeLillo and White Noise continues to mount.We have Tom LeClair's In The Loop and Arnold Weinstein'sNobody's Home, with their explicit or implicit intentions to putDeLillo in the company of the masters of contemporary fiction. FrankLentricchia's two collections of essays, one"introducing" Don DeLillo's corpus as a whole and theother discussing White Noise alone, produce an array of superlatives.Finally, there is a growing number of so-far uncollected essays, thebest of which is probably Leonard Wilcox's "Baudrillard, DonDeLillo's White Noise, and the End of Heroic Narrative."However, as Wilcox's title suggests, and as a perusal ofLentricchia's and LeClair's books will bear out, these criticscelebrate the novel largely because it seems to illuminate reigningtheories of cultural post-modernism, as if it were written as an exampleof what Fredric Jameson Fredric Jameson (born April 14, 1934) is an American literary critic and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for the analysis of contemporary cultural trends; he described postmodernism as the spatialization of culture under the pressure of organized capitalism. , Jean-Francois Lyotard, or Jean Baudrillard Jean Baudrillard (July 29, 1929– March 6, 2007) (IPA pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ bo.dʀi.jaʀ][1]) was a French cultural theorist, philosopher, political commentator, and photographer. havebeen saying about our socio-cultural condition: White Noise aspostmodern prototype. This tendency may have something to do with thefact that White Noise was published in 1985, seemingly in the wake of anumber of exciting, much-Xeroxed and much-discussed theoretical essays,among them Baudrillard's "The Ecstasy of Communication,"Jameson's "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of LateCapitalism In his work Late Capitalism Ernest Mandel argues for three periods in the development of capitalism. First is market capitalism, which occurred from 1700 to 1850 and is characterized largely by the growth of industrial capital in domestic markets. ," and Lyotard's "Answering the Question: WhatIs Postmodernism?"(1) "White Noise and Libra," writesWilcox,with their interest in electronic mediation and representation,present a view of life in contemporary America that is uncannily similarto that depicted by Jean Baudrillard. They indicate that thetransformations of contemporary secrets that Baudrillard described inhis theoretical writings on information and media have also gripped themind and shaped the novels of Don DeLillo Don DeLillo (born November 20 1936) is an American author best known for his novels, which paint detailed portraits of American life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He currently lives in New York City. . (346)In his "Libra as Postmodern Critique," Frank Lentricchiacalls "the most photographed barn in America episode" fromWhite Noise one of DeLillo's "primal scenes," insofar in��so��far?adv.To such an extent.Adv. 1. insofar - to the degree or extent that; "insofar as it can be ascertained, the horse lung is comparable to that of man"; "so far as it is reasonably practical he should practice asit signifies that "the environment of the image is the image it iswhat (for us) 'landscape' has become, and it can't beturned off with the flick of a wrist. For thisenvironment-as-electronic-medium radically constitutes consciousness andtherefore (such as it is) contemporary community - it guarantees that weare a people of, by, and for the image" (Introducing Don DeLillo195). This kind of analysis comes right out of Baudrillard, with hisgrandstanding hyperbole about the postmodern world as pure simulacralsystem, and also recalls Jameson, with his notation of "thefragmentation of the subject," "a new depthlessness" and"the logic of the simulacrum."(2) Finally, John Frow John Frow (born 1948) is an Australian professor and Chair of English Language and Literature at the University of Melbourne. He was educated at Wagga High School and the Australian National University, and has lived and worked in South America in 1970 and 1971 and then did seesWhite Noise's Airborne Toxic Event as an instance of what Lyotardcalls postmodern writing ("presenting the unpresentable inpresentation itself"), and sees a whole series of episodes in thenovel through the lens of Baudrillard's and Deleuze's ideas ofsimulacra (176, 180-83).Now all these analyses are certainly helpful, an apparent case of thevisions of the novelist and the theorist happily dovetailing to mutuallyilluminating effect. I read White Noise along these lines for severalyears myself. Yet gradually the congruities between the novel andtheories of postmodernism began to slip. It no longer seems to meaccurate to call the world of White Noise a "mediascape" or a"mediocracy mediocracygovernment or dominance of society by the médiocre.See also: Societygovernment or dominance of society by the mediocre.See also: Government ," for instance, or to see a smoothly homologous homologous/ho��mol��o��gous/ (ho-mol��ah-gus)1. corresponding in structure, position, origin, etc.2. allogeneic.ho��mol��o��gousadj.1. relationship between the "white noise" of the novel andBaudrillard's concept of simulacra (Wilcox 346; Crowther).Something else is operating in the novel that has been escaping ournotice. That something is complicated and can't be reduced to asingle statement, but let me begin by noting that DeLillo's ideasabout language are quite different from those of the postmoderntheorists I've mentioned. Beginning with The Names, and then inWhite Noise, Libra, Mao II, and the novella novella:see novel. novellaStory with a compact and pointed plot, often realistic and satiric in tone. Originating in Italy during the Middle Ages, it was often based on local events; individual tales often were gathered into collections. "Pafko At theWall "Pafko at the Wall", subtitled "The Shot Heard Round the World", was originally published as a folio in the October 1992 issue of Harper's Magazine. It was later (1997) incorporated as the prologue in Don DeLillo's magnum opus novel, Underworld ," DeLillo has been exploring the idea that language issomething more than a ceaseless flow of signifiers with no restingplace; furthermore, he's been suggesting that the "whitenoise" of consumer culture is saying something far more compellingthan that our minds have been colonized by the static of latecapitalism. I'd like to explore the proposition that the phenomenonof "white noise" is not merely the cultural dreck dreck?n. SlangTrash, especially inferior merchandise.[German, dirt, trash and Yiddish drek, excrement, both from Middle High German drec ofconsumerism, nor the demotic demotic:see hieroglyphic. language DeLillo's characters use toshut themselves off from their terror that they will die - far from it,in fact. "White noise" is for DeLillo contemporary man'sdeepest expression of his death fear, a strange and genuinelyawe-inspiring response to the fear of mortality in the postmodern world.IIDeLillo doesn't articulate a systematic theory of language - fewAmerican novelists do - but he has focused increasingly on language notas a system of signifiers and signifieds (that is, as a system ofdenotation de��no��ta��tion?n.1. The act of denoting; indication.2. Something, such as a sign or symbol, that denotes.3. Something signified or referred to; a particular meaning of a symbol.4. ), but as something with a much grander scope: he now appearsto see language as a massive human strategy to cope with mortality. Inhis first few novels, this isn't true: it was only with his secondnovel End Zone, DeLillo himself admits, that he even began to realizethat "language was a subject as well as an instrument in mywork" (Le Clair interview 21). Subsequent novels like End Zone andGreat Jones Street fit pretty comfortably into poststructuralistparadigms of language, in which linguistic systems and media culturerigidly constitute the self, reality, and meaning.(3) However, even fromthe beginning DeLillo has been fascinated by the kinds of language thatelude systems, classification, or semiotic semiotic/se��mi��ot��ic/ (se?me-ot��ik)1. pertaining to signs or symptoms.2. pathognomonic. analysis: consider thehilarious pre-game grunts of the football players in End Zone; BuckyWunderlick's "pee-pee-maw-maw" lyrics in Great JonesStreet; the babbling babblingNeurology Quasi-random vocalizations in infants that precede language acquisition. See Lalling stage. domestic intimacies of Lyle and Pammy in Players("They jostled each other before the refrigerator. 'Goody,chedder.' 'What's these?' 'Brandy snaps.''Triffic.' 'No you push me you.'" [53]); theglossolalia glossolalia(glŏs'əlā`lēə)[Gr.,=speaking in tongues], ecstatic utterances usually of unintelligible sounds made by individuals in a state of religious excitement. in The Names; White Noise's media blips; the avalancheof unprocessable information burying Nicolas Branch in Libra; theululating crowds in The Names, Mao II and "Pafko At The Wall."Gradually, I think, this fascination with non-denotative, perhaps"pre-lingusitic" language has begun to occupy the center ofDeLillo's curiousities as a novelist, as if these kinds ofutterance speak to, and perhaps of, some mystery that is vital tounderstanding postmodern culture Postmodern Culture is an electronic academic journal founded in 1990. It is the result of an early experiment in electronic content delivery via the Internet and has succeeded in becoming a leading publication of interdisciplinary thought on cultural experience. .(4) It is as if DeLillo now listensless to what his culture is saying than to the roar of its saying it. InWhite Noise's supermarket, amidst "the toneless systems, thejangle and skid of carts, the loudspeaker and coffeemaking machines, thecries of children," Jack Gladney hears "over it all, or underit all, a dull and unlocatable roar, as of some form of swarming lifejust outside the range of human apprehension" (36). It is thismysterious "swarming life," whatever it is, swirling amidst usin the noises we make, that DeLillo seems to be after.(5)At the conclusion of Players, Pammy Wyant only understands themeaning of the word "transient" (which defines her better thanany other word) when the word itself takes on "an abstracttone" for her, and begins to "[subsist sub��sist?v. sub��sist��ed, sub��sist��ing, sub��sistsv.intr.1. a. To exist; be.b. To remain or continue in existence.2. ] in her mind as [a]language [unit] that had mysteriously evaded the responsibilities ofcontent" (207). This swerve away from the denotative de��no��ta��tive?adj.1. Denoting or naming; designative.2. Specific or direct: denotative and connotative meanings. content oflanguage evolves into something of a conscious strategy for both DeLilloand some of his characters starting with The Names. The novel is abreakthrough book insofar as it articulates for the first time avirtually religious sense of awe before the very fact that languageexists, as if DeLillo had discovered an extraordinary mystery in theutterly familiar act of human utterance.(6) DeLillo has both James Axtonand Owen Brademas learn to attend to language not as attempts tocommunicate specific meanings but as aural or palpably physicalphenomena, whose meanings are less important than the "swarminglife" or "being" that seems to emanate from them.(7) Afine example of this occurs early in the novel when James, in atypically uncontextualized eruption of wonder, listens to a crowd ofAthenians "absorbed in conversation." It occurs to him thatConversation is life, language is the deepest being. We see thepatterns drive the words, the gestures drive the words. It is the soundand picture of humans communicating. It is talk as a definition ofitself. Talk. . . .This is a way of speaking that takes such pure joy in its ownopenness and candor that we begin to feel these people are discussinglanguage itself. What pleasure in the simplest greeting. It is as thoughone friend says to another, "How good it is to say, 'How areyou?'" The other replying, "When I answer, 'I amwell and how are you,' what I really mean is that I'mdelighted to have a chance to say such familiar things - they bridge thelonely distances." (52-53)Here James lets language evade the responsibilities of content untilit become something else - a broad signifier sig��ni��fi��er?n.1. One that signifies.2. Linguistics A linguistic unit or pattern, such as a succession of speech sounds, written symbols, or gestures, that conveys meaning; a linguistic sign. of something behind orimmanent im��ma��nent?adj.1. Existing or remaining within; inherent: believed in a God immanent in humans.2. Restricted entirely to the mind; subjective. in all denotation ("over it all, or under it all" isanother way to put it). In this case, language becomes that which"bridges the lonely distances" between people, that whichliterally consoles them in their mortal states.This particular view of what language "really means," themessage hidden though immanent in its very sound, becomes clearer as thenovel proceeds. During their exhausting (and beautifully rendered)marital quarrel, James realizes that amidst the pettiness of theiraccusations, "the pain of separation, the fore-memory ofdeath" hovers over and under their talk (123). "Kathryn dead,odd meditations, pity the sad survivor," James thinks."Everything we said denied this. We were intent on being petty. Butit was there, a desperate love, the conscious hovering sum of things. Itwas part of the argument. It was the argument." Immanent in theirlanguage is the apprehension of death: "It was part of theargument, It was the argument."Later, Owen and James (after his separation from Kathryn) becomefascinated by the names cult, a terrorist group which randomly matchesup the initials of towns with the initials of people passing throughthem, and then ritualistically murders the people because of thecoincidence. The group is playing a nihilist ni��hil��ism?n.1. Philosophya. An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence.b. A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.2. end-game with the idea thatlanguage is arbitrary, that signifiers and signifieds lack any essentialconnection. Owen is at first transfixed with the cult's ideas,sensing a kinship between their mocking but inexorable terror-logic andhis own haunting despair brought on by his sense that he himself cannever link signifier to Signified, word to Word, as his tongue-speakingPentecostal forebears were apparently able to do when he was a boy. Hefollows the cult to India, and in a capitulation CAPITULATION, war. The treaty which determines the conditions under which a fortified place is abandoned to the commanding officer of the army which besieges it. 2. to his own nihilism nihilism(nī`əlĭzəm), theory of revolution popular among Russian extremists until the fall of the czarist government (1917); the theory was given its name by Ivan Turgenev in his novel Fathers and Sons (1861). ,does nothing while the cult murders one more victim. The game, he thenrealizes (too late), is up. He can no longer bear what the cult standsfor, and makes his own stand against them. He tells James: "[Thecult's] killings mock us. They mock our need to structure andclassify, to build a system against the terror in our souls. They makethe system equal to the terror. The means to contend with death hasbecome death" (308). This speech, one of the high moments inDeLillo's work, tells us that language, whatever it specificallydenotes, and however it may be used to "subdue and codify codifyto arrange and label a system of laws. "human beings, remains in the broadest sense a manifestation of "ourneed to build a system against the terror in our souls." Languageis "our means to contend with death," and therefore the onlyresponsible use of it comes from understanding that this terror dwellsin all human utterance. Any other use mocks language. In the simplestterms, then, we need language because it bridges the lonely distancescreated by the fact that we are all going to die.Owen's speech revivifies James Axton: "I came away from theold city feeling I'd been engaged in a contest of some singular andgratifying kind. Whatever [Owen had] lost in life-strength, this is whatI'd won" (309).(8) Upon his return to Greece, he is finallyable to confront the Parthenon (as well as many other things), amonument he's avoided the entire novel because it has always feltto him too "exalted:" "It is what we've rescued fromthe madness. Beauty, dignity, order, proportion" (3). Yet thistime, with the help of Owen's affirmation of what language'simmanent message is, he can face it. The Parthenon no longer seems tohim monumental, "rescued" from history and placed at animposing remove from human discourse. Now he sees it as part of thehuman crowd that surrounds it, as part of the babbling white noise ofhuman beings who congregate around beauty, dignity, order, andproportion as a way of handling their own death fears. The result?"I hadn't expected a human feeling to emerge from the stonesbut this is what I found, deeper than the art and mathematics embeddedin the structure, the optical exactitudes. I found a cry for pity. Thisis what remains to the mauled stones in their blue surround, this opencry, this voice which is our own" (330). It is a lovely passage,stripped clean of the studied neutrality or corrosive cynicism that hascharacterized the bulk of DeLillo's fiction till now. James is ableto overcome the monument's authoritative aura, and to sense in theParthenon a merely human cry for pity, a testament to our common mortalterror and longing. And he's able to do this not despite butbecause of the tourists who talk and snap pictures along the uprightfragments of the ruin: "This is a place to enter in crowds, seekcompany and talk. Everyone is talking. I move past the scaffolding andwalk down the steps, hearing one language after another, rich, harsh,mysterious, strong. This is indeed what we bring to the temple, notprayer or chant, or slaughtered ram. Our offering is language"(331). This passage, which ends the novel proper (and precedes theexcerpt from Tap's novel) is the culmination of the novel'sexploration of what DeLillo feels lies immanent in language. Language isthe organized utterance of mortals connecting themselves to othermortals. However humans may use language to exploit each other, it isalso what binds them in life against the terror of death, and in thatrespect, it is "the deepest being." What is so powerful isDeLillo's serene sense of celebration. Nowhere in DeLillo'swork have his narratives moved to such a sense of climax and epiphany.The Names is itself a kind of annunciation Annunciationdove and lilypictured with Virgin and Gabriel. [Christian Iconography: Brewer Dictionary, 645]ElizabethMary’s old cousin; bears John the Baptist. [N.T. , a novel which takes delightin its self-conscious effort to share the cry of pity which is language,to speak language's death-echoes while announcing that to speakthem is precisely to live most boldly.The novel's coda, called "The Prairie" and written byJames's son Tap, is a pure and generous "offering," a tenyear-old's effort to tell Owen Brademas's story of how as aboy he was unable to speak in tongues Verb 1. speak in tongues - speak unintelligibly in or as if in religious ecstasy; "The parishioners spoke in tongues"mouth, speak, talk, verbalise, verbalize, utter - express in speech; "She talks a lot of nonsense"; "This depressed patient does not verbalize" at his Pentecostal churchmeetings. The text, replete with misspellings, reveals not justlanguage's slippery multiplicities (as a Joycean text does) butTap's own cry for pity. Tap's own aliveness - his attempt tobridge the lonely distances - keeps poking through the curtains ofstandard English. Earlier, James says that he finds the "mangledwords" of Tap's novel "exhilirating.""He's made them new again, made me see how they worked, whatthey really were. They were ancient things, secret, reshapable"(313). "The Prairie" is about falling from grace, of course,about a boy's recognition that he's filled not with the Word,but simply words. While "worse than a retched nightmare," thisvery recognition brings him into the "fallen wonder of theworld" (my italics) - which is finally the world of The Namesitself, where language, fallen indeed, remains a matter of wonderbecause, with every utterance, it speaks the mystery of human beingsgrappling with time and nothingness. And with such a recognition cancome the awareness that the human scene is everywhere and always amatter of pity and awe.IIIThe ideas about language that surface in The Names and which pervade per��vade?tr.v. per��vad��ed, per��vad��ing, per��vadesTo be present throughout; permeate. See Synonyms at charge.[Latin perv White Noise as well are not exactly commensurate with theoriespropounded by postmodernists. For DeLillo in his later work, languageemerges from a definable though mysterious source - the human terror ofdeath - and whatever it denotes, utters under its breath, "I speakto bridge the lonely distances created by our mortality." This maysound unnecessarily reductive re��duc��tive?adj.1. Of or relating to reduction.2. Relating to, being an instance of, or exhibiting reductionism.3. Relating to or being an instance of reductivism. , but there's good reason, aside fromthe textual evidence above, to suggest why DeLillo finds such ideascompelling. Tom LeClair notes that Ernest Becker's book The Denialof Death "is one of the few 'influences' [DeLillo] willconfirm."(9) Becker's simple and powerful thesis is that"the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal likenothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity - activity designedlargely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying insome way that it is the final destiny for man" (ix). The death fearis with us from birth, and all human "projects" - especiallythe language we use to help us construct our belief systems - aredesigned to evade or deny or conquer the fear of death. Becker'sideas shadow White Noise at every turn, and help explain some keyepisodes in the novel.However, before I explore these episodes, I want to flesh out what"white noise" means in this novel, since I think a limitedidea of the term has kept many readers from appreciating the full rangeof DeLillo's exploration of postmodern culture. We can begin withthe obvious. White noise is media noise, the techno-static of a consumerculture that penetrates our homes and our minds (and our serious novels)with ceaseless trinities of brand-name items ("Dacron, Orlon, LycraSpandex") and fragments of TV and radio talk shows ("'Ihate my face,' a woman said. 'This is an ongoing problem withme for years'") (White Noise 52, 263). It includes "thehuman buzz" of transactions taking place at the shopping mall, the"incessant clicking of shutter release buttons" that surroundsthe Most Photographed Barn in America, as well as the utterance of aphrase - "Toyota Celica" - by a girl who is coping in sleepwith something as terrifying as the Airborne Toxic Event (84, 13, 155).Now, from the point of view of contemporary Marxism or the FrankfurtSchool Frankfurt School,a group of researchers associated with the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute of Social Research), founded in 1923 as an autonomous division of the Univ. of Frankfurt. , white noise is the manifestation of the final triumph ofcapitalist appropriation, specifically of late capitalism's"prodigious expansion . . . into hitherto uncommodified areas. . ..One is tempted to speak in this connection of a new and historicallyoriginal penetration and colonization of Nature and theUnconscious." (Jameson, "Postmodernism" 78). FromBaudrillard's perspective, white noise is the realm of the ecstasyof communication, of mass culture's signifying swirl whichdisperses the subject into links in the signifying chain In semiotics, a signifying chain is an interlocking system of signifiers. , into a mereterminal in Communication's Mainframe. In such a scenario, life anddeath have no subjective reality unless they are confirmed by theSystem. Certainly DeLillo pays at least lip service lip servicen.Verbal expression of agreement or allegiance, unsupported by real conviction or action; hypocritical respect: to such powerfulinterpretations when he has Jack hear from a medical technician that"death has entered" his body. "You are the sum total ofyour data," the man says. "No man escapes that" (141).Jack thinks: "It is when death is rendered graphically, istelevised so to speak, that you sense an eerie separation between yourcondition and yourself. A network of symbols has been introduced, aneerie awesome technology wrested from the gods. It makes you feel like astranger in your own dying" (142).Yet clearly Jack will not be a stranger in his own dying - the entirenovel is about a man whose death sensations are all too familiar - andthe phenomenon of white noise goes far beyond "neutral and reifiedmediaspeech" or capitalist appropriation (Wilcox 347). White noisemanifests itself in much subtler ways, in ways that have little to dowith consumerism, mass media, or high technology. It isn't merelyimposed from without by socioeconomic or communicational systems, butemerges from sources originating within the characters, from the sameorganismic death fear that we find operating in The Names. White noise,therefore, encompasses a wide variety of human utterance, bothdenotative and not. Examples are everywhere: the melancholy"homemade signs concerning lost dogs ''For the Pearl Jam rarities compilation, see Lost Dogs (album).Lost Dogs have been called a country music supergroup, but they consider themselves to be a roots and alternative music group. and cats, sometimes written inthe handwriting of children;" the Gladneys' charminglyfact-bending family chats (the result of "overcloseness, the noiseand heat of being"); the "low-level rumble that humansroutinely make in a large enclosed space Noun 1. enclosed space - space that is surrounded by somethingcavityspace - an empty area (usually bounded in some way between things); "the architect left space in front of the building"; "they stopped at an open space in the jungle"; "the space between ;" Vern Dickey'sparting speech to Babette and Jack ("'Don't worry aboutme,' he said. 'The little limp means nothing,'");the discussions of the New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of emigres ("Did you ever brush yourteeth with your finger?"); the "love babble and buzzingflesh" that Jack imagines went on when Babette slept with WillieMink (4, 81, 137, 255-6, 67, 241). What all these phenomena share is apassion for utterance to "bridge the lonely distances," to"establish a structure against the terror of our souls." It islanguage as the denial of death, as the evasion of what cannot beevaded. "Pain, death, reality," Murray Jay Siskind will say:"we can't bear these things as they are. We know too much. Sowe resort to repression, compromise, and disguise. This is how wesurvive in the universe. This is the natural language of thespecies" (289).Let's take up one example of "the natural language of thespecies": Babette's father's speech to his daughter andson-in-law, which is a comic masterstroke mas��ter��stroke?n.An achievement or action revealing consummate skill or mastery: a masterstroke of diplomacy.See Synonyms at feat1. of death-evasion. Now VernonDickey is on his last legs, a man with a horrible chronic cough chronic cough,n health condition characterized by either a lingering cough or a recurring cough lasting more than a month. , and the"look of a ladies' man in the crash-dive of his career"(245). Given the man's health and woefully woe��fulalso wo��ful ?adj.1. Affected by or full of woe; mournful.2. Causing or involving woe.3. Deplorably bad or wretched: erratic visiting habits,clearly the reason Babette cries so much when he's about to leaveis because she's not sure she will ever see him again. But hisspeech, which rolls off his tongue with a hurling momentum that soondwarfs the substance of what he's saying, is pure driven whitenoise. To capture this essential momentum, I quote at length:"Don't worry about me," he said. "The little limpmeans nothing. People my age limp. A limp is a natural thing at acertain age. Forget the cough. It is healthy to cough. You move thestuff around. The stuff can't harm you as long as it doesn'tsettle in one spot and stay there for years. So the cough's allright. So is the insomnia. The insomnia's all right. What do I gainby sleeping? You reach an age when every minute of sleep is one lessminute to do useful things. To cough or limp. Never mind the women. Thewomen are all right. We rent a cassette and have some sex. It pumpsblood to the heart. Forget the cigarettes. I like to tell myselfI'm getting away with something. Let the Mormons quit smoking.They'll die of something just as bad. The money's no problem.I'm all set incomewise. Zero pensions, zero savings, zero stocksand bonds. So you don't have to worry about that. That's alltaken care of. Never mind the teeth. The teeth are all right. The looserthey are, the more you can wobble wobble/wob��ble/ (wob��'l) to move unsteadily or unsurely back and forth or from side to side. See under hypothesis. wob��blen.1. them with your tongue. It gives thetongue something to do. Don't worry about the shakes. Everybodygets the shakes now and then. It is only the left hand anyway. The wayto enjoy the shakes is pretend it is somebody else's hand. Nevermind the sudden and unexplained weight loss. There's no pointeating what you can't see. Don't worry about the eyes. Theeyes can't get any worse than they are now. Forget the mindcompletely. The mind goes before the body. That's the way it issupposed to be. So don't worry about the mind. The mind is allright. Worry about the car. The steering's all awry. The brakeswere recalled three times. The hood shoots up on pothole pothole,in geology, cylindrical pit formed in the rocky channel of a turbulent stream. It is formed and enlarged by the abrading action of pebbles and cobbles that are carried by eddies, or circular water currents that move against the main current of a stream. terrain."(255-6)The remarkable effect of his deadpan speech is that Babette breaks upin helpless laughter; she "walk[s] in little circles of hilarity,weak-kneed, shambling, all her fears and defenses adrift in the slyhistory of his voice" (256). This is what white noise often does:it sets one's fears and defenses about death adrift within language(which captures and - somehow - neutralizes them), and for a time thosefears are assuaged. They can even be turned to laughter, and redeem themoment from the death-fear's grip. Vernon Dickey knows what Murrayknows about the responsibility of dying men: "What people look forin a dying friend is a stubborn kind of gravel-voiced nobility, arefusal to give in, with moments of indomitable in��dom��i��ta��ble?adj.Incapable of being overcome, subdued, or vanquished; unconquerable.[Late Latin indomit humor" (284).What the novel brings together, then, are two kinds of white noise:that which is a product of late capitalism and a simulacral society, andthat which has always been "the natural language of thespecies" - death evasion - and which now gets expressed in theargot ar��got?n.A specialized vocabulary or set of idioms used by a particular group: thieves' argot.See Synonyms at dialect.[French. of consumer culture. The result is a vision of contemporaryAmerica that bypasses cultural critique in favor of recording awe atwhat our civilization has wrought. Because for DeLillo, while whitenoise certainly registers the ways in which Americans evade their deathfear, it can also be heard - provided we learn to listen properly - as amoving and quite beautiful expression of that death fear. It becomesnothing less than a stirring revelation of the fear of death, a noise ofgreat (and frankly, unpostmodern) pathos.IVAt the height of their "major dialogue," Jack and Babetteexplicitly connect their fear of death to white noise. Says Jack to hiswife:"How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fearsabout ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk topeople, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep andreal. Shouldn't they paralyze par��a��lyzev.To affect with paralysis; cause to be paralytic. us? How is it we can survive them, atleast for a while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no onesees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is itsomething we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we sharethe same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?"What if death is nothing but sound?""Electrical noise.""You hear it forever. Sound all around. How awful.""Uniform, white." (198)This is a breathtakingly loaded passage, and among its virtues isDeLillo's hint to the reader about how to listen to white noise -not simply as cultural detritus detritus/de��tri��tus/ (de-tri��tus) particulate matter produced by or remaining after the wearing away or disintegration of a substance or tissue. de��tri��tusn. pl. but as the manifestation of an attemptto communicate one's fear and hence to "bridge the lonelydistances." Life, Jack says here, is lived in virtually unbrokenterror that it will end. How do we survive? By repression, of course -by personal and culture-wide denial of the death-fear. But perhaps, Jackgropes, "we share the same secret without knowing it" (myitalics): perhaps we speak our death terror all the time withoutrealizing it. In the mysterious way some couples have of understandingthe drift of one lover's words when even the lover himselfdoesn't quite understand what he's saying, Babette urges themboth on to the notion that death itself might just be filled with whitenoise. And if that is so, what is all the noise - not justmedia/consumer noise but the noise they make while they "walkaround, talk to people, eat and drink" - that surrounds them inlife? It can only be their intimations of death; it is the death-fearexpressed in the only terms that a postmodern media culture knows how toexpress it.Three important passages in the novel reveal that there is wonder anda curious kind of revelation in the recognition that white noisecommunicates the death-fear. In each one, Jack hears a different kind ofwhite noise, and by a mysterious entrance into its sound, he experienceswhat can only be called an epiphany. It is not the kind of epiphanywhich changes his character; Jack enters, each time, into a strangerelation with the sound which is seemingly timeless, and has noafter-effects in the temporal realm. The epiphanic revelationsdon't help him "deal" with his death-fear in any tangibleway, especially because Jack doesn't know what it is he'sexperiencing. (This ignorance, incidentally, signifies the majordifference between Jack and James Axton, who not only learns to readwhite noise as an expression of the death fear, but incorporates thisknowledge into both his life and the text he writes.) Jack never gathersthe revelations together into something he can use in the future.The first moment comes during Wilder's seven-hour stint ofcrying. Ernest Becker Dr. Ernest Becker (1925-March 6, 1974, Vancouver, British Columbia), a cultural anthropologist and interdisciplinary scientific thinker and writer, came to the recognition that psychological inquiry inevitably comes to a dead end beyond which belief systems must be invoked to spends some crucial early pages in The Denial ofDeath arguing that even for infants, the death-terror is"all-consuming."(10) When Babette wonders if it isn't alittle silly to contact a doctor just to say "My baby iscrying," Jack, in that marvelously panicked way of his, blurts out,"Is there a condition more basic?" (75). As Jack drivesBabette to her sitting, standing, and walking class - Wilder wailingbetween them - Jack begins to feel that "there was somethingpermanent and soul-struck in this crying. It was a sound of inbreddesolation" (77). Becker would give a nod here. But the scenebecomes most fascinating when, after Jack drops Babette off, he drivesWilder around. The boy's "huge lament continued, wave afterwave."He was crying out, saying nameless things in a way that touched mewith its depth and richness. This was an ancient dirge dirge?n.1. Musica. A funeral hymn or lament.b. A slow, mournful musical composition.2. A mournful or elegiac poem or other literary work.3. all the moreimpressive for its resolute monotony. Ululation. I held him upright witha hand under each arm. As the crying continued, a curious shiftdeveloped in my thinking. I found that I did not necessarily wish him tostop. (78)Anyone who has ever borne the sustained bawl of a child will surelywonder about this "curious shift." What prompts it?The inconsolable crying went on. I let it wash over me, like rain insheets. I entered it, in a sense. I let it fall and tumble across myface and chest. I began to think he had disappeared inside this wailingnoise and if I could join him in his lost and suspended place we mighttogether perform some reckless wonder of intelligibility. (78)The boy's crying becomes a secret inhabitable space which is"strangely soothing." "It might not be so terrible, Ithought, to have to sit here for four more hours, with the motor runningand the heater on, listening to this uniform lament" (78). Why?Jack, I'd argue, has hit upon the secret we all share withoutknowing it. In his hysterical terror, Wilder is expressing (howeverunconsciously) his death fear, and in a primal way is trying to"bridge the lonely distances." He is doing what James Axton inThe Names says all language does, only here it is in a "large andpure," prelinguistic form. The connection between Wilder'scrying and language in The Names tightens in the chapter's lastparagraph, when, the crying jag finally concluded, Jack notes thatWilder looksas though he'd just returned from a period of wandering in someremote and holy place, in sand barrens or snowy ranges - a place wherethings are said, sights are seen, distances reached which we in ourordinary toil commonly regard with the mingled reverence and wonder wehold in reserve for feats of the most sublime and difficult dimensions.(79)I don't think there's a single note of hyperbole here.Wilder has come back from "a remote and holy place:" the placewhere death is confronted without the benefit of the protections the egoestablishes against it - just as Owen Brademas, who gradually stripshimself of ego protections in The Names, confronts it while followingthe death-cult from Greece to India. And the religious language Jackemploys evokes his exalted feeling that sharing his death-terror withhis son is a primordial human moment.A second epiphanic moment comes during the Airborne Toxic Event.Jack, having had a computer confirm just minutes earlier that"death has entered" his body, overhears his daughter Steffiewhisper in her sleep the words "Toyota Celica." He responds bysaying that "the utterance struck me with the impact of a moment ofsplendid transcendence" (141, 155). Critics so far have beenbaffled by what seems to them Jack's outsized response to hisdaughter's words, but if we see Steffie's outburst as anexample of the death-fear speaking through consumer jargon, thenJack's wondrous awe will strike us, strange as it may seem, asabsolutely appropriate.(11) It is tempting, particularly if one is usedto ironizing any talk of transcendence in a post-modern novel, to saythat Jack's desperation in hearing that Nyodene-D has entered hissystem has simply overcome him, and that he is already predisposed toexpect the hieratic hieratic:see hieroglyphic. from sleeping children:Watching children sleep makes me feel devout, part of a spiritualsystem. It is the closest I can come to God. If there is a secularequivalent of standing in a great spired cathedral with marble pillarsand streams of mystical light slanting through two-tier Gothic windows,it would be watching children in their little bedrooms fast asleep.Girls especially. (147)However, the shock Jack feels when he hears what Steffie has spokengoes beyond even what he expected: "A long moment passed before Irealized this was the name of an automobile. The truth only amazed memore" (155, my italics). Something splendid, if not transcendent,is indeed going on.We have to remember, first of all, that Steffie is seven years old,and living without her real mother - which we know troubles her because,while perfectly capable of watching TV disaster footage with the rest ofthe family, she runs out of the room whenever a sitcom Dad argues with asitcom Mom. The novel doesn't dramatize dram��a��tize?v. dram��a��tized, dram��a��tiz��ing, dram��a��tiz��esv.tr.1. To adapt (a literary work) for dramatic presentation, as in a theater or on television or radio.2. her vulnerability (DeLillois never sentimental), but it hardly needs pointing out that theAirborne Toxic Event has terrified ter��ri��fy?tr.v. ter��ri��fied, ter��ri��fy��ing, ter��ri��fies1. To fill with terror; make deeply afraid. See Synonyms at frighten.2. To menace or threaten; intimidate. her. Steffie is less equipped tohandle the cloud's terror than anyone in the novel, even Wilder,who is too young to register this external death-threat. Steffieincorporates the terror of the entire day's events, and in sleepcommunicates her fear in the only way she knows: by babbling"Toyota Celica." It is as if she has - with the wisdom thatDeLillo attributes to Wilder in this novel and to children in general inan interview(12) - understood what the hopped-hysteria of massadvertising has really been saying all along (beneath, below or above itall), which is this: You are afraid of dying; let this phrase, thissound-bite, this whirling bit of language so pervasive worldwide that itcan serve as common coin in Sri Lanka Sri Lanka(srē läng`kə)[Sinhalese,=resplendent land], formerly Ceylon,ancient Taprobane, officially Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, island republic (2005 est. pop. or Schenectady, Rio de Janeiro orReykjavik - let it soothe your fears; let your dread dissolve in thechanting of this media mantra.The language DeLillo uses to lead up to Jack's moment istelling. Steffie's utterance "was beautiful and mysterious,gold-shot with looming wonder. It was like the name of an ancient powerin the sky, tablet-carved in cuneiform cuneiform(kynē`ĭfôrm)[Lat.,=wedge-shaped], system of writing developed before the last centuries of the 4th millennium B.C. " (155). This descriptionrecalls the hieratic language of The Names, of course, and OwenBrademas's desire to touch the stones that had been etched withhieroglyphics by ancient tribes. "It made me feel that somethinghovered," Jack says. "But how could this be? A simple brandname, an ordinary car. How could these near-nonsense syllables, murmuredin a child's restless sleep, make me sense a meaning, apresence?" (155). Jack cannot answer, but a reader informed aboutDeLillo's sense of language surely can. Jack has touched the quickof his daughter's death-fear here just as he had with Wilderearlier. What is so splendid about the scene is that the most demoticlanguage speaks the death fear in a way that is at once wondrous, comic,and pathetic (in both senses of the word). It is a moment of powerfullycharged ambivalances: pathetic that Steffie has had to express her fearsthis way, but amazing that she does; awe-inspiring what strange psychictrails she had to follow to make her deepest fears heard, equallywondrous that on some level, they are heard.(13)The third epiphanic moment I'd like to discuss takes place nearthe end of the novel, after Jack has shot Willie Mink and is beingtreated by Sister Hermann Marie for a flesh wound flesh woundn.A wound that penetrates the flesh but does not damage underlying bones or vital organs. to his wrist. Jack hasshot Willie in a psychological re-enactment of a Nazi's efforts toconquer his own death fears by killing others. Jack has wounded Williein a state of psychopathic psy��cho��path��icadj.1. Of, relating to, or characterized by psychopathy.2. Relating to or affected with an antisocial personality disorder that is usually characterized by aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior. omnipotence om��nip��o��tent?adj.Having unlimited or universal power, authority, or force; all-powerful. See Usage Note at infinite.n.1. One having unlimited power or authority: the bureaucratic omnipotents. - then is shot in return.However, this is not one of those shootings where a man discovers hisown human connection to another person through the spilling of blood.Jack only comes to a sense of human connection later, in his chat withSister Hermann Marie. What she tells Jack, in effect, is that priestsand nuns of the Catholic church just speak another kind of white noise.They don't "believe" their teachings; they help peopleevade death with a torrent of doctrine, litanies, catechism - language.The church's job is to give comfort, and the white noise ofreligion provides that. At first, Jack rejects her argument, insistingthat real belief is necessary, that it is the substance of the beliefthat counts, that the Church can't just be pretending. But SisterHermann Marie scoffs at his naivete na��ive��t��or na��?ve��t�� ?n.1. The state or quality of being inexperienced or unsophisticated, especially in being artless, credulous, or uncritical.2. An artless, credulous, or uncritical statement or act. . When Jack fails to understand her,she gives up any attempt to explain herself with denotative language.Instead she begins by "spraying [Jack] with German" - alanguage which Jack, despite his Sisyphean attempts to learn it, cannotunderstand. However, it is better that he can't, for from the nunburstsA storm of words. She grew more animated as the speech went on. Agleeful glee��ful?adj.Full of jubilant delight; joyful.gleeful��ly adv.glee vehemence entered her voice. She spoke faster, moreexpressively. Blood vessels flared in her eyes and face. I began todetect a cadence, a measured beat. She was reciting something, Idecided. Litanies, hymns, catechisms. The mysteries of the rosaryperhaps. Taunting me with scornful prayer.The odd thing is I found it beautiful. (320)Again, the question here is why Jack reacts the way he does. But bynow we know the answer. He's heard the message immanent in therhythms and patterns of this white noise, but he's had to hear itin a pure, babbling, glossolalic form before it can have an effect onhim. He finds it beautiful because, once again, he's glimpsed thequick of the human death-fear, heard the naked cry for pity implicit in Adj. 1. implicit in - in the nature of something though not readily apparent; "shortcomings inherent in our approach"; "an underlying meaning"underlying, inherent all human speech, heard "the offering" of "language"which is stripped of all meaning except the desire to "bridge thelonely distances."VThe strategy of death-evasion - "the natural language of thespecies" - that characterizes white noise illuminates much of thenovel. Jack's immersion in Hitler studies is clearly his attempt tobury himself in a discourse so horrible that his own death-fear is madepuny pu��ny?adj. pu��ni��er, pu��ni��est1. Of inferior size, strength, or significance; weak: a puny physique; puny excuses.2. Chiefly Southern U.S. Sickly; ill. . (Says Murray, "Hitler is larger than death. You thought hecould protect you. . . .You wanted to be helped and sheltered. Theoverwhelming horror would leave no room for your own death.'Submerge me,' you said. 'Absorb my fear'"[287]). Dylar is a kind of pharmaceutical reification re��i��fy?tr.v. re��i��fied, re��i��fy��ing, re��i��fiesTo regard or treat (an abstraction) as if it had concrete or material existence.[Latin r of white noise: apill to evade the death-fear. Heinrich's techno-nerd behavior - hispen-pal relationship with convicted murderer Tommy Roy Foster Roy Foster may refer to: Roy Foster (Baseball Player) Roy Foster (football player) R. F. Foster (historian) ; hisfriendship with Orest Mercator and his attempts to immortalize im��mor��tal��ize?tr.v. im��mor��tal��ized, im��mor��tal��iz��ing, im��mor��tal��iz��esTo make immortal.im��mor himselfin the Guinness Book of Records; his confident recital of scientificfacts at the Red Cross center during the Airborne Toxic Event - all ofthese rehearse his attempt to diminish his death-fear. Finally, DeLilloexplicitly associates Jack's attempt to kill Willie Mink (theultimate strategy for evading death, as Murray makes clear, is to killsomeone else) with white noise: after listening to one of Willie'srambling speeches, Jack "heard a noise, faint, monotonous,white"; getting ready to fire, Jack notes "[t]he precisenature of events. Things in their actual state. . .White noiseeverywhere"; finally, when Jack actually fires the gun, DeLillodescribes it this way: "the sound snowballed, in the white room. .." (306, 310, 312).Yet there remains a problem with this reading, and its name is MurrayJay Siskind. Murray is the one character in White Noise who isn'tafraid of dying. Practically everyone else in the book walks through thenovel in a state of suppressed terror, and it comes out in all manner ofstrange and lovely behavior. (In fact, the principle behind Jack'snarrative voice - which in my view is the novel's greatestaesthetic achievement, and deserves separate treatment - is Jack'senormous awe at the most familiar events, an awe that comes from hisknowledge that the backdrop for the familiar is the dark mystery ofmortality.) Murray, however, manages to express only delight, or elsemere semiotic interest, in the phenomena around him. When he takes Jackto The Most Photographed Barn in America, he tells Jack that in thisprototypical simulacral scene, "We can't get outside the aura.We're part of the aura." While Jack doesn't need to fillus in on his own reaction to this - wondrous ambivalence, as always - hedoes add that Murray "seemed immensely pleased by this" (13).He, not Jack, is the true Baudrillardian man, the true ecstatic in theworld of Communication. Immersed academically in "American magicand dread," he feels no dread himself (19). At the Gladney home,while the family watches in confusion, awe, and fear as Babette appearson the TV set, Murray is as removed and unmoved as a video camera:"[Wilder] remained at the TV set, within inches of the dark screen,crying softly, uncertainly, in low heaves and swell, as Murray tooknotes" (105). During the Airborne Toxic Event, while everyone elseis wandering around terrified, Murray is soliciting prostitutes toperform the Heimlich maneuver Heimlich maneuver,emergency procedure used to treat choking victims whose airway is obstructed by food or another substance. It forces air from the lungs through the windpipe, pushing the obstruction out. on him (!). Finally, in his most fatefulaction, Murray carefully guides Jack through a thicket ofrationalization into a psychological clearing where it appears that theonly thing Jack can do about his death fear is to kill Willie Mink.Throughout their "serious looping Socratic walk," Murrayinsists that "I'm only a visiting lecturer. I theorize the��o��rize?v. the��o��rized, the��o��riz��ing, the��o��riz��esv.intr.To formulate theories or a theory; speculate.v.tr.To propose a theory about. "and that "We're a couple of academics taking a walk,"which suggests he's oblivious to the "practicalconsequences" such a walk will have on a man whose death-fear is sopowerful he's willing to try anything to overcome it (282, 293,291, 282). Murray's logic has a brilliant inevitability to it: thedeath-fear seems unassailable. A "meaningful,""interesting" life won't help us deal with it, nor willlove overcome it. Either one can place one's trust in technology("Give yourself up to it, Jack. Believe in it. They'll insertyou in a gleaming tube, irradiate irradiate/ir��ra��di��ate/ (i-rad��e-at) to treat with radiant energy. ir��ra��di��atev.1. To expose to radiation, as for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes.2. your body with the basic stuff of theuniverse"), or "you can always get around death byconcentrating on the life beyond," or one can put oneself under one"spell" or another to help one forget death (285, 287). Whenit becomes clear that none of these options will work for Jack, Murraygoes on a tear of death-naming:"The vast and terrible depth." "Of course,"[Jack] said. "The inexhaustibility in��ex��haust��i��ble?adj.1. That cannot be entirely consumed or used up: an inexhaustible supply of coal.2. Never wearying; tireless: an inexhaustible campaigner. ." "I understand.""The whole huge nameless thing." "Yes, absolutely.""The massive darkness." "Certainly, certainly.""The whole terrible endless hugeness." "I know exactlywhat you mean." (288)What has he communicated? Nothing, really. This kind of head-ondenotation is impotent before the death terror. In The Names, thisattempt to "bridge the lonely distances" might have beenenough to temporarily ward off the death fear, but not here, not justbecause Jack's death fear is so much balder than JamesAxton's, but more importantly because Murray's own language isdisembodied: it doesn't acknowledge a death-fear of its own, andthus Jack has nothing to "bridge" his own fear to. InJack's mind, his only remaining option is to kill Willie Mink.Murray, then, is both the novel's ecstatic seer and its evilpresence. He mouths the most brilliant lines in the book, and clearlyspeaks many of DeLillo's observations about postmodern society. Atthe same time, he is the most compelling element in the plot'smovement "deathward," and his clinical objectivity isunearthly. He may as well be from another planet. If every othercharacter is actuated by his or her death fear, Murray's characteris precisely defined by his lack of one. He is a man without a self, forin this novel to have no death fear is to have no self.(14) It is notMurray, but Jack, speaking with that disarmingly baffled voice, whoseunintended humor gives off the novel's brilliant sheen of tenderirony, who is capable of uttering the mysteries of white noise.VII have tried throughout this essay to suggest that DeLillo'sattitude toward the world of his novel is generous-spirited; it is notso much that he is uncritical toward a mass consumer society as that hehas attempted to complicate the stiff categories of ideological orcultural critique. The novel does not "celebrate" the whitenoise of advertising and mass media - of course not. But it realizesthat it is in that noise that our terrors and longings can be read. Theeffect of the narrative as a whole is similar to that achieved by LaurieAnderson For the author, see .Laurie Anderson (born Laura Phillips Anderson, on June 5 1947, in Glen Ellyn, Illinois) is an American experimental performance artist and musician. in her performance piece, "Oh Superman." The entiresong - a daring and very moving meditation on the need for us to letauthorities (government, ideologies, "Mom and Dad") assume theresponsibilities of our freedom in the postmodern world - has for itsbacking "rhythm track" a tape loop of Anderson imitating avulnerable child's voice, chanting "Ah ah ah ah ah ah. . .." Perhaps because the voice seems trapped in that tape loop, andbecause it serves as a backdrop for the adult terror enacted in thesong, the effect is startling: a listener feels a terrible patheticidentification with the child, though the song itself is laced with coolsynthesizers and a distancing irony. In White Noise, everyone is thattape-looped child, cooing its need and fear through a forest oftechnologized culture.The novel also puts one in mind of Wim Wenders's extraordinaryWings of Desire. In that 1987 film, Bruno Ganz Bruno Ganz (listen(helpinfo); born March 22 1941) is a Swiss actor. He is one of the leading figures in contemporary European theatre and cinema. plays the angel Damiel,who listens with great tenderness to the internal and externalconversations of human beings. Despite the enormous variety of the humanutterances, it is impossible for a viewer to hear these utteranceswithout attending to a gradual realization: all these people are goingto die. Hearing human utterance from a caring angel's point ofview, we hear human language under the sign of eternity. Under thatsign, language cannot help but emanate its own mortal gleanings. Damieldecides in the end to give up his celestial status because he has fallenin love with a mortal, and he knows that without knowing what mortalityis like, his love will mean nothing. For to know what it is to be humanis to know what it is to die. Perhaps only an angel can truly understandsuch a thing - it is what makes an angel an angel. But for us humans,these are probably unbearable words: they are what make murder, suicideand all manner of violence conceivable. Yet they also send up gorgeousdesperate flurries of white language, and make such amazing novels asDeLillo's possible.ENDNOTES1 Baudrillard's essay was first published in Hal Foster'sThe Anti-Aesthetic and later expanded into a monograph with the samename; Jameson's essay appeared first in The New Left Review and waslater made the introductory chapter to his massive Postmodernism, or theCultural Logic of Late Capitalism; Lyotard's essay was appended tohis highly influential book, The Postmodern Condition: A Report onKnowledge. It was these texts, rather than the brilliant and innovativework of Ihab Hassan during the seventies and early eighties, that reallybroke down academic resistance to postmodernism.2 Cf. Fredric Jameson's essay, "Postmodernism, or theCultural Logic of Late Capitalism" 63, 58, and 85. In the book ofthe same name, the page references are 14, 6, and 46, respectively,though Jameson alters the language slightly in the first case.3 Surely the most persuasive and helpful chapter in LeClair's InThe Loop - a book which runs DeLillo's novels through a host oftheoretical paradigms which often wrench the life right out of them - isthe one in which he looks at End Zone in terms of Derrida'scritique of logocentrism lo��go��cen��trism?n.1. A structuralist method of analysis, especially of literary works, that focuses upon words and language to the exclusion of non-linguistic matters, such as an author's individuality or historical context.2. . In that chapter, the fit between novel andparadigm is true.4 Cf. Dennis A. Foster's "Alphabetic Pleasures: TheNames" in Lentricchia's Introducing Don DeLillo 157-173,particularly 159-160, for an evocative though all too brief explorationof DeLillo's interest in prelinguistic utterance, using JuliaKristeva's ideas of the semiotic, the symbolic, and the chora asmarkers in his theoretical grid.5 Any explication ex��pli��cate?tr.v. ex��pli��cat��ed, ex��pli��cat��ing, ex��pli��catesTo make clear the meaning of; explain. See Synonyms at explain.[Latin explic of what DeLillo means by "mystery" andthe "swarming life just outside the range of humanapprehension" threatens to become portentous, swollen bymetaphysical - and yes, German - rhetoric. I'm afraid this isunavoidable. DeLillo's tightest philosophical connections are notwith Baudrillard or Lyotard, but with Heidegger. Consider thesimilarities in their outlooks: their shared conviction that it is the"familiar" or the "at-hand" that yields the deepestmeaning; their shared fascination with etymology etymology(ĕtĭmŏl`əjē), branch of linguistics that investigates the history, development, and origin of words. It was this study that chiefly revealed the regular relations of sounds in the Indo-European languages (as described ; Heidegger'sexplicit belief, and DeLillo's performative per��for��ma��tive?adj.Relating to or being an utterance that peforms an act or creates a state of affairs by the fact of its being uttered under appropriate or conventional circumstances, as a justice of the peace uttering one, that the worldmust be viewed from a stance of "radical astonishment"; thecloseness of the statements "language is the deepest being"(DeLillo) and "Language is the House of Being" (Heidegger);their concepts of immanance - Being for Heidegger, intimations of"presence" or "something hover[ing]" in DeLillo;their metaphors of "illumination" or "unconcealment"in epiphany; and finally, their preoccupation with death. This essaywill not offer a Heideggerian reading; however, while Heidegger beginshis philosophical system with a conviction about Being's presence,DeLillo is never less than racked with ontological doubt. The"presences" that hover occasionally in DeLillo's fictionappear as fleeting visitations which leave nothing behind but an awedsense of wonder in those who witness them. Still, Heidegger's ghostexerts a powerful presence in DeLillo's work; he hovers over itall, or under it all - a fitfully fit��ful?adj.Occurring in or characterized by intermittent bursts, as of activity; irregular. See Synonyms at periodic.fit locatable roar.6 In the Paris Review interview, DeLillo says "with this book Itried to find a deeper level of seriousness as well. The Names is thebook that marks the beginning of a new dedication" (284).7 We must tread carefully here. The Names is a dense and complicatedbook that is almost entirely about language, and I will delineate inthis essay mainly what I consider DeLillo's breakthroughaffirmation of human utterance. Yet, as Michael J. Morris has pointedout, the novel also engages the idea that language is profoundlydangerous, that in its zeal to name and denote, it "subdues andcodifies" all that it touches (Names 80). Morris argues that in TheNames, language, like international corporatism corporatismTheory and practice of organizing the whole of society into corporate entities subordinate to the state. According to the theory, employers and employees would be organized into industrial and professional corporations serving as organs of political or the names cultitself, is repressive and murderous. Morris makes a fine case for thisreading, but in the end he cannot explain the patently affirmative toneof the book's ending. As I'll try to show here, when DeLilloand his characters finally stop listening to language as denotation andlisten to it as utterance instead - when at last language "evadesthe responsibilities of content" - what is immanent in languageemerges, and the novel's powerful affirmation of language becomespossible.8 James is really a changed man upon his return. He is able to quithis job immediately upon realizing he's been a CIA CIA:see Central Intelligence Agency. (1) (Confidentiality Integrity Authentication) The three important concerns with regards to information security. Encryption is used to provide confidentiality (privacy, secrecy). dupe, and herealizes that his own "blind involvement" in the CIAconstitutes a "failure to concentrate, to occupy a serious center -it had the effect of justifying everything Kathryn had ever said aboutme. Every dissatisfaction, mild complaint, bitter grievance. They wereall retroactively correct. It was that kind of error, unlimited inconnection and extent, shining a second light on anything andeverything. In the way I sometimes had of looking at things as she mightlook at them, I saw myself as the object of her compassion and remnantlove" (317). Finally, in quitting his risk analyst position,he's able to sit down and write the book we're reading:"These are among the people I've tried to show twice, thesecond time in memory and language. Through them, myself. They are whatI've become, in ways I don't understand but which I believewill accrue to a rounded truth, a second life for me as well asthem" (329). James's reflections here are all life-andlanguage-affirming, a far cry from his earlier cynicism and desperation.Owen is the immediate cause.9 Le Clair, In The Loop 213. DeLillo made this confirmation inpersonal correspondence to Le Clair.10 Becker 15. Becker makes the primary argument about children andthe fear of death on pages 13-23, but I can summarize by saying that forBecker "the child...lives with an inner sense of chaos" whoseroot is the organismic "fear of annihilation." This fear,Becker goes on, quoting Gregory Zilboorg, "undergoes most complexelaborations and manifests itself in many indirect ways." The deathfear becomes in fact "a complex symbol and not any particular,sharply defined thing to the child." Thus, children's"recurrent nightmares, their universal fear of insects anddogs" - these and other fears have at their base the terror ofdeath. Becker takes pains not "to make the child's world seemmore lurid than it is most of the time" - Becker is an enviablyquiet and balanced thinker but he does insist that phenomenologically,having an infant's consciousness "is too much for any animalto take, but the child has to take it, and so he wakes up screaming withalmost punctual punc��tu��al?adj.1. Acting or arriving exactly at the time appointed; prompt.2. Paid or accomplished at or by the appointed time.3. Precise; exact.4. regularity during the period when his weak ego is in theprocess of consolidating things" (19-20).11 Le Clair calls Steffie's words simply "a product ofconsumer conditioning," but since that is all he makes of them, hecannot explain why Jack would sense something transcendent in them. Hedismisses Jack's response by calling it "a delusion" andan attempt to escape consciousness (Le Clair 219). Frow frow?n.Variant of froe. suggests thatSteffies's words come from the "unconscious of herculture," but realizes that this recognition alone is insufficientto bring on Jack's "moment of splendid transcendence."Frow concludes his discussion of the issue with this: "The questionof the source of enunciation enunciation(inun´sēā´shn),n an auxiliary function of teeth, particularly those in the anterior sector of the dental arch; the formation of sounds of [Toyota Celica] remains an interestingone" (Frow 426). Arnold Weinstein quotes the episode only to say"One hardly knows what to make of such renderings, these epiphanicmoments," except that they demonstrate the Frankfurt Schoolchestnut that the "inner life" has been colonized by the"outer" life (Weinstein 306). Finally, Wilcox, in passing,explains Jack's epiphany as an attempt to "glean meanings fromthe surrounding noise of culture. Jack is drawn toward occasions ofexistential self-fashioning, heroic moments of vision in a commodifiedworld." However, Wilcox's entire article is about the end ofthe heroic narrative, and so his use of the adjective "heroic"to describe Jack is meant ironically (Wilcox 349).12 In his interview with Anthony DeCurtis, DeLillo says that "Ithink we feel, perhaps superstitiously, that children have a directroute to, have direct contact to the kind of natural truth that eludesus as adults. . . .There is something they know but cannot tell us. Orthere is something they remember which we've forgotten (DeCurtis302).13 In the 1993 Paris Review interview, when asked to comment on theToyota Celica incident, DeLillo replied: "When you detach one ofthese words from the product it was designed to serve, the word acquiresa chantlike quality. . . .If you concentrate on the sound, if youdisassociate dis��as��so��ci��ate?tr.v. dis��as��so��ci��at��ed, dis��as��so��ci��at��ing, dis��as��so��ci��atesTo remove from association; dissociate.dis the words from the object they denote, and if you say thewords over and over, they become a sort of higher Esperanto. This is howToyota Celica came to life. It was pure chant at the beginning. Thenthey had to find an object to accommodate the words" (291). Theinterviewer doesn't ask what that "object" is, but thatdoesn't take much effort. Given the scene's context, it canonly be Steffie's fear of death.14 The novel identifies selfhood explicitly in terms of the fear ofdeath. Winnie Richards tells Jack that the sight of a grizzly bear grizzly bearor grizzly,large, powerful North American brown bear, characterized by gray-streaked, or grizzled, fur. Grizzlies are 6 to 8 ft (180–250 cm) long, stand 3 1-2 to 4 ft (105–120 cm) at the humped shoulder, and weigh up to is"so electrifyingly strange that it gives you a renewed sense ofyourself - a fresh awareness of the self - the self in terms of a uniqueand horrific situation." Jack responds, "Fear isself-awareness raised to a higher level." "That'sright," Winnie answers. "And death?" Jack asks."Self, self, self," she says. "If death can be seen asless strange and unreferenced, your sense of self in relation to deathwill diminish, and so will your fear." "What do I do to makedeath less strange?" Jack implores. "How do I go aboutit." Winnie's frustrating answer: "I don'tknow." (229).WORKS CITEDAnderson, Laurie. "Oh Superman." Big Science. 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"An Outsider in This Society: An Interview with DonDeLillo." Interview with Anthony DeCurtis. Introducing Don DeLillo.41-64.-----. "Don DeLillo: The Art of Fiction CXXXV." Aninterview with Adam Begley. Paris Review 128 (1993). 275-306.Foster, Dennis A. "Alphabetic Pleasures: The Names."Introducing Don DeLillo. 157- 173Foster, Hal, ed. The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture.Port Townsend: Bay Press, 1983.Frow, John. "Notes on White Noise." Introducing WhiteNoise. 173-189.Jameson, Fredric. "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of LateCapitalism." New Left Review 146 (1984). 53-91.-----. Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.Durham: Duke UP, 1991. Le Clair, Tom. In The Loop: Don DeLillo and theSystems Novel. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1987.Lentricchia, Frank, ed. Introducing Don DeLillo. Durham: Duke UP,1991.-----. ed. New Essays on White Noise. New York: Cambridge UP, 1991.-----. "Libra as Postmodern Critique." Introducing DonDeLillo. 191-213.Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report onKnowledge. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984.Morris, Michael J. "Murdering Words: Language in Action in DonDeLillo's The Names." Contemporary Literature 30:1 (1989).113-122.Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. New York: Harper, 1986.Weinstein, Arnold. Nobody's Home: Speech, Self and Place inAmerican Fiction From Hawthorne to DeLillo. New York: Oxford UP, 1993.Wilcox, Leonard. "Baudrillard, Don DeLillo's White Noise,and the End of Heroic Narrative." Contemporary Literature 32:3(1991) 346-365.Wings of Desire. Dir. Wire Wenders. 1987.Cornel cornel:see dogwood. Bonca is editor of the literary journal Jacaranda jacaranda(jăk'ərăn`də): see bignonia. jacarandaAny plant of the genus Jacaranda (family Bignoniaceae), especially the two ornamental trees J. mimosifolia and J. cuspidifolia. . He haspublished essays on Angela Carter, Saul Bellow, and the canoncontroversy.