After a fairly average sunset at least hereabouts, welcome to the start of Week 4!
Last week thanks for the rich thread, packed with references to Secret Hitler (a “social deduction” game), the adventures of a mischievous pool toy, some frustrations with J.A.K’s POV, reflections on what White Noise would be like in the 2020s, and a reminder that airborne dangers and face masks require no updating to fit the times.
Extra thanks to Xian who created a fab family tree I love so much I had it turned into a back tattoo. Which really doesn’t help me much now that I think of it. Dag.
I’m still really enjoying the read, underlining scads of sentences. Murray upsets me. The dude is everywhere. And the camp felt like some dream I probably had last night. (“You were there, Dr. Vitz. And you were there too, Computillo.”)
The image that’s stuck with me for a few days is the horror of the Airborne Toxic Event coming into view, like The Blob sliding down main street. Taking on all comers, like King Kong beating its breast while metal birds and spotlights circle round.
I was waiting for the ATE to start to speak. I wondered, what would I do if Climate Change walked into a bar (Trout Fishing-style) and ordered a drink I despise?
And then happily, I think, they were back in town and we all had a moment to reflect on the snow. To frown at Murray. To maybe think a little about being “assigned death” (to borrow Maggie’s excellent phrase from the comments). And to get ready for the next leg of our journey.
This week: Let’s meet up at the bottom of page 219 aka the end of Chapter 30, where we’ll take “a last look at the sky and start walking down the hill.”
Say pally, how’s this work again? Finish on time, comment each week, and stay in the hunt for a free “I Survived the White Noise Meander” magnet. Oh, and in case you were wondering: This is the post for comments on Chapters 23-30.
“The purpose of Babette” – I read this line over and over as it presents in different places and am quite frankly disgusted by the egocentricity and narcissism of Jack. Babette only exists as a role that fulfills a particular need, just as the children have a purpose only in defining aspects of himself or serving certain emotional needs. Jack is a character created for himself with no real purpose or contribution to make beyond being Jack, and perhaps this is the terror he had of death – that Jack simply will disappear and life will go on…
Yeah, that is some uber-mansplaining, isn’t it?
I was coming here to write about that exact line. Jack’s narcissism is astounding yet also extremely unsurprising.
It’s also the ultimate degree in generic culture – people as products
Week 4 of the Meander: In which JAK, the Hitler Studies professor, manages to become *more* unlikeable….
Also – 80s songs for Airborne Toxic Event: Peter Gabriel’s “Red Rain” and Nena’ “99Luftballons”
Babette, Babette. First she’s the only character who’s referred to in the 3rd person, even by the kids and now she keeps getting assigned ‘purposes’ by Jack like she’s AI for him to experiment with.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Mercator’s goal of breaking “the world endurance record for sitting in a cage full of poisonous snakes” is ridiculous on its face, but hey, planking, ice-bucketing, bottle flipping… all totally worthwhile. And what kind of name is Mercator? Of course I had to look it up. Went to bed last night smarter than when I woke up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection
You’re welcome.
Oh… 80s song for this run… 99 Luftballons (in the original German) by Nena:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fmHCpfAknE
God, the 80s were bonkers.
I find the opening paragraph of ch 27, with its statement that “This death was still too deep to be glimpsed” followed by the SIMUVAC & the conversation with Mercator about the record interesting. It’s as if everyone is staring at death all the time, but the only one anyone seems really concerned by is Jack’s – which is, of course, the simple truth that we must all die eventually.
p.s Missed Dr. Vitz’s earlier shoutout for 99 Luftballons. Such an obvious choice though.
Not sure why but some how this section feels to me as if it is in a lower register or a minor key relative to the plot so far. In the last few meandering weeks I increasingly underlined and added marks of exclamation etc to various passages whereas this time I read for pages on end occasionally thinking “yes that was a good line” or “good way to end a chapter once more half-telling the joke about how if you tell the ‘awkward’ woman a joke you can get her to blush on demand” but rarely noting anything.
I could help admiring this bit:
“I thought I was going through a phase, some kind of watermark period in my life.” “Landmark, I said. “Or watershed.”
Both because of the well observed bit of language in her initial spoonerism but also in the main character’s fundamental disckishness, that he feels the need to correct her when she is finally coming clean about something she has been afraid to discuss.
Still meandering to the target page….
ok finished… the segment did pick up a bit with the big reveal. a few startling phrases jumped out. Leaded, unleaded, super unleaded. He said he was literally sorry. I’m tentatively scheduled to die. It means your dead. I signed up to be a victim again. …his pendulous member. I had my own dying to dwell upon. Self, self, self.
A lot of the big issues were addressed in this section, life and death, sex and love and trust. But what I really want to know is, was Heinrich playing with his mashed potatoes a “Close Encounters” reference?
Every character I’ve met on this meander (with the exception of my fellow meanderers) is pretentious and unlikeable. There. I’ve said it. I simply do not like these people! And yet, I’m fascinated by the fact that DeLillo has drawn me into this web of unlikeables and kept me reading. What else might I not like about their lives? Will new likable characters be introduced? Will some of these clowns become likable after all? Is there another Toxic Airborne Event a’coming? Pure genius.
Many of you are not fond of Jack. To me this sentiment reached a climate during the section in which Babette is coming clean. Isn’t he constantly trying to make her story about him? He just doesn’t seem to care all too much about her feelings. And the constant “purpose of Babette”, like Maggie commented on already, is driving me nuts. If you marry a person it’s not because they serve a purpose. People evolve. Babette changes, and so does Jack. That’s probably because he didn’t stay with any of his previous wives, because they have lost their purpose for him. Argh. I don’t know how but I forgive her her unfaithfulness. I don’t forgive him his nagging and selfishness.
PS: There’s a typo in the German word Totenbuch (it’s misspelled as Todtenbuch).
Sharing the unlikable sentiment, with the exception of the kids, love them.
I’m hoping that Jack’s purpose is to meet a painful end.
Enjoyed this description of Steffie – “She had a history of being devout in her victimhood.”
But this sentiment was super creepy to me – “Look past the violence, Jack. There is a wonderful brimming spirit of innocence and fun.”
Reviewing the comments this week and considering the commonly held frustration or irritation toward Jack, I stopped and considered how this book made me feel.
On reflection, not much.
While reading, I’ve been pulled along by the language; I echo what others have said about the underlinability of this book. The sentences are precise, funny, unexpected. Jack’s voice, his descriptions are wry, charismatic, intelligent, and tyrannical. To care about a character, to worry about them, or become invested in them requires, I think, an understanding of the character’s vulnerability, to feel that they are subject to forces beyond their control. This is a book that is consumed with the smallness and fragility of human life bounded in the net of global, post-industrial complexity. Weirdly though, the feeling that every scene, object, and person around Jack is being varnished and staged through his language and perspective, makes Jack feel less like a vulnerable subject and more like a demigod – the one who makes the world instead of being subject to it.
That said, this made me laugh: “‘Save your tender loving care for the nuclear fireball in June. We’re at four minutes and counting. Victims, go limp. And remember you’re not here to scream or thrash about. We like a low-profile victim. This isn’t New York or L.A. Soft moans will suffice.'”
Just finished this week’s reading and I think I have a minority opinion: I’m loving this book and its lush white noises. I’m learning all sorts of tricks about how to keep other people from eating my food. And I’m surprised to find that I sympathize with most of the book’s flawed characters. Except for Murray. Oh that Murray.
But then again I also like almost all the candidates in this year’s Democratic primaries. 🙂 See you tomorrow for the start of Week 5!
Not connecting with any of the characters, but love the writing and language. Toyota Celica. Dristan Ultra. MasterCard, Visa, American Express. Just fun surprises, often.
I meandered over to Google to see what was there about WN. Lots, much of it fairly recent, as in Babette as object in the age of #Metoo. And then one from Joshua Ferris constructing it as a tale of secular religion: “[DeLillo] has done nothing short of scuttling the entirety of established religious systems only to remake one, full of the same structures and accoutrements, out of the stuff of American cultural life, very often out of the same white noise that doubles in the book as the agent of death against which those structures and accoutrements are intended to protect.” And to think I used to write papers that sounded like that… http://blog.bookcritics.org/blog/archive/joshua-ferris-on-white-noise-part-1
Good choices, Dr. Vitz. I was thinking of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” with its hypnotic repeating riff.
“He thinks he’s happy but it’s just a nerve cell in his brain that’s getting too much stimulation or too little stimulation.” As a physical chemist, I thought DeLillo perfectly condensed the concept of white noise into this one sentence. Noise is superimposed frequencies competing for recognition with the frequencies of the real or true signal. Then toss in the color imagery of white and black –white for purity or truth, yet in some cultures, death; black in our culture representing death, as in the plume we read about last week. Brilliant!
Fully agree with Maggie and others. I was frustrated last week by DeLillo lack of women character development, and then it became worse. Jack was a perpetual invalidation machine when Babette tried to explain her fear and pursuit of remedies. The optics of Jack’s failed relationships, combed with his narcissism, create a dark DeLillo message about men.
Winnie Roberts (neuroscientist) is a rare and interesting female character exception.
i am here, guarding the tail end of the meander.
Uh oh, Cecil, I liked Murray in this section. He nailed the exuberance, the celebratory feel of a crash sequence in an action movie. Fireball, baby! Maybe it’s a bit of transfer of energy… I also liked the weirdness of the professors’ lunchroom, the way Grappa must answer Lasher.
Can only echo here what’s been said before: Delillo’s take on female characters is ugly, particularly his portrayal of Babette and the fact that she’s supposed to serve Jack’s purpose gets me really frustrated.
As to Barbara’s comment about the typo – p 210, Das Aegyptische Todtenbuch (she and I had talked about this offline and commented on how frustrating we both find badly researched books): I found the typo to “good” to be a real typo and so I did a little research of my own and came to realize that this is actually not a typo, but the original (antiquated) way of writing the book’s title. So, sorry Don in Barbara’s and my name! 😉