With all plots moving in one direction, it’s time to launch our Collective into Week 5. There are only two more weeks to go, ye mighty Meanderers, and it continues to be a great treat to read your comments as I trot along the trail.
Last week I went back in time to my first job. It was the end of the day and dark already, so it must have been winter. I shut down my machine, meandered over to my car, and ended up chatting with the head of our editorial department in the parking lot.
After a minute or two the conversation took a turn to real life. One of us shared a hard thing that we were dealing with, I can’t remember whether that was her or me. We talked about the likelihood that most people had something hard they were dealing with, much of the time, and never talked about it.
I remember us nodding out there in the parking lot, in no rush, saying it was super interesting that we all know death is a real thing, a thing we’re going to get around to one of these days. But we put that aside and find a way to focus on fixing the typos on page 57 of a computer book, which back then was almost the definition of an ephemeral object, born to be put out of print.
The tone wasn’t grim. It was “isn’t that something?”
I was barely out of college, and she wasn’t just a grown up, she was the personification of leadership and focus, of hitting dates and doing quality work. But she knew that we lived in two worlds at the same time. It’s stayed with me all these years that we paused there, and we took a moment before driving home, to acknowledge a big truth.
In this little ditty, about Jack and Babette, our protagonists have lost their ability to put this big truth aside. To forget their fear so they can take a step. Take a breath.
They compete to see who’s more terrified.
Him: “I wake up sweating. I break out in killer sweats.”
Her: “I chew gum because my throat constricts.”
Him: “I have no body, I’m only a mind or a self, alone in a vast space.”
Her: “I seize up…”
Jack, Babette, DeLillo, all of us — interesting animals for sure, smart enough to know we’re really truly, no joke, going to die, but not quite smart enough to know what to do about it. Or even how to think about it.
I’m loving this book, Jack’s jackassery and all, for making me think about it, for sending me back to that conversation in the parking lot. And especially, in this moment of fairly high anxiety, for surfacing all the throat constricting moments around us and the many ways we wave our hands at those moments, like flies we’re trying to push up, down, over, away.
This week: Let’s meet up at the end of page 268 aka the end of Chapter 36, where it turns out “Your doctor knows the symbols.”
And then, one week later, magnets await at the finish line!
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 31-36.
Yikes, I am meandering through the woods down a totally different path. Only 2-3 pages read this week.
Cecil, your week 5 intro is beautiful! Thanks for starting and leading us on this meander!
Just finished the first chapter of this week’s read to find another child for the family tree – Mary Alice, daughter of Jack & Dana.
rough age? I can update my li’l graphic.
Also he was married to one of them twice, I now see.
I’ll refrain from hating Jack this week – trying something new…
I was a struck in particular by two lines that I think are related, the caveat being I am a chaplain and I would for a religious institution so my relationship to death is very different than Jack and Babette and DeLillo.
A breezy architectural line in chapter 31, “the ruin is built into the creation” is of course about much more than a building – for me this is what makes life so deeply beautiful and precious; we have a limited number of days on this planet, with these people, in this moment of identity, we are born to die and we are always in the process of this steady transformation from being to energy – what do we do with that time is the question?
Later in Chapter 36, planning a possible trip for Heinrich to the ashram Jack says to his ex, “…but I don’t want him getting involved in something personal and intense like religion.” I’m not about to be an apologist for religion so fear not meandering friends – and, it is this very opportunity for the personal and intense experience of understanding who you are in the cosmic spiritual world, that I believe provides a way to find comfort in the inevitable ruin of our being.
Having a sense of personal belonging in a larger universe doesn’t necessarily take away the fear of death – the unknown is always scary (we are biologically programmed for that), change is not something most people seek out, and yet getting involved with a personally, intense system for thinking beyond the limitations of self can be the very salve needed to comfort us as we face the limitations of our knowing.
19 – his first marriage with Dana
When Jack tells Dr. Chakravarty (ch 34) “To the best of my knowledge, I feel very well,” I was struck by how little meaning there is in anything in this world. The idea that we are not necessarily the authorities on our feelings speaks volumes.
This seems reinforced a few pages later in the dinner with Heinrich & Orest (Ch 35) in the problem of defining the “now dead.” The characters are terrified of death because they don’t know what it means, which suggests that reciprocally, they don’t know what life means. Which would pretty well explain why Jack places no authority in himself to know how he feels.
It also made me realize that the character I like best is Winnie – who is capable of working in a factual world and reminds Jack (and all of us?) in Chap 30 “I think it’s a mistake to lose one’s sense of death. Isn’t death the boundary we need? Doesn’t it give a precious texture to life, a sense of definition? You have to ask yourself whether anything you do in this life would have beauty or meaning without the knowledge you carry of a final line, a border or limit.”
And with that thought, my song for this section is Sisters of Mercy “This Corrosion”
Your doctor knows the symbols.
I enjoyed this section. I have many questions. One is: how does one “walk across campus in a European manner”? (chapter 32) 🙂
I will share more questions tomorrow…
Ooh, good choice, though “Black Planet” would work too.
This section was a tough but rich go. Chapter 34: Murray: “I don’t trust anybody’s nostalgia but my own. Nostalgia is a product of dissatisfaction and rage. It’s a settling of grievances between the present and the past. The more powerful the nostalgia, the closer you come to violence. War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.”
Whoa, there, Mr. Murray, self-professed jaded New Yorker. Don’t you start dissin’ my nostalgia! I like to think of my nostalgia as something sweet and gentle and comforting, as it smoothes away the rough edges of my bad experiences and life’s many tragedies, including the deaths of loved ones.
Poor Jack–he’s truly obsessed with his own death (and to a much lesser extent, Babette’s, despite his protests to the contrary). He doesn’t seem to have the capacity for truly processing what it will mean to him when others close to him die.
And here I have to agree with Maggie, fellow meanderer, who evokes the spiritual sensibility that Jack seems to lack. Says Maggie: “…we have a limited number of days on this planet, with these people, in this moment of identity, we are born to die and we are always in the process of this steady transformation from being to energy – what do we do with that time is the question?”
What the hell is Jack doing with his time?
“How literary, I thought peevishly. Streets thick with the details of impulsive life as the hero ponders the latest phase in his dying.”
This section had some really beautiful passages, but I think it’s Vern’s monologue on aging that will stick with me the most. “Forget the mind completely. The mind goes before the body. that’s the way it’s supposed to be. so don’t worry about the mind. The mind is all right.”
I’ll never argue with a Sisters of Mercy song suggestion but will add “The Sun Always Shines on TV” to our imaginary White Noise mixtape….which I will gladly make into reality at the conclusion of this endeavor.
I loved this juxtaposition between Jack and his ex, Janet.
“Nothing. I have everything. Peace of mind, purpose, true fellowship. I only wish to greet you. I greet you, Jack. I miss you…I only wish to talk a while…”
“I hung up and went for a walk.”
It hi-lighted for me the undercurrent of superficiality in the book. Given the opportunity for connection and meaning, Jack scurries off to wallow in his fears. All the characters have stereotyped veneers but with secrets and schemes in the background. Even the doctor and medical technicians talk around a subject rather than about it. Makes the whole book edgy despite the somewhat mundane subject matter.
I thought the insane asylum burning down while fathers and sons bonded while watching kinda summed up the book so far for me. The entertainment value of tragedy is nothing new (“Oh, the humanity!”), but it feels like just another day in Jack’s world. Just another tragedy to distract us from our lives. And Jack and Heinrich weren’t watching a barn burn down, or a theater, or a house. They were watching an insane asylum burn down. Yeesh! Jack even entertains deep thoughts (a la Jack Handy) as they watch a woman burn before his eyes, all while doing nothing… but watching. I almost want to thank the author for the nice fire.
“the ruin is built into the creation” — if ever there was a perfect description of mortality.
Ahhh-still reading and posting. Deep inspirational thoughts to come next week
Yes — and thanks also to Maggie for highlighting it above and for her thoughts on that and spirituality.
“My own plain hand, crosshatched and whorled in a mesh of expressive lines, a life terrain, might itself be the object of a person’s study and wonder for years. A cosmology against the void.”
Amidst the constant TV chatter, the superficiality, callousness, and I sufficiently introspective fear of death — a little bit of recognition of greater things that we (might) embody.
I’m sure there is something I underlined that is profound, only I can’t find the book and it’s 9:15 Saturday night and f-ing spring forward and I have to get up at 5. I do love the image of the insane asylum (right there in the middle of town, uneuphemized, known by all) burning down–resonates with me this week.
I’m deviating from 80s rock into the realm of country for my song choice this week. Garth Brook’s 1989 hit “If Tomorrow Never Comes.”
The pseudo-science in this section amused me. It started with Heinrich’s incorrect use of the title Sir to refer to Albert Einstein and Denise’s use of “corolla” instead of the sun’s corona; and heavy molecules. I was waiting for DeLillo to talk about heavy water too. I also liked the questions our cast of dead heads asked. ‘ “If there’s no air, how can it [space] be cold?” ‘ However, my favorite quote of the week comes from Dr. Chakravarty: “People tend to forget they are patients. Once they leave the doctor’s office or hospital, they simply put it out of their minds. But you are all permanent patients, like it or not. I am the doctor, you the patient. Doctor doesn’t cease being doctor at close of day. Neither should patient. People expect doctor to go about things with the utmost seriousness, skill and experience. But what about patient? How professional is he?” That’s followed by the discussion of Jack’s potassium level about which there “isn’t time to explain.” After all, “We have true evaluation and false evaluations. This is all you have to know.” …to which I reply that I wish we as patients could make true payments and make false payments. I couldn’t ask for a better place to conclude this week’s comments than that!
The word Hitler appears 50 times in the book. Unexpected going in, and haven’t ‘engaged’ Hitler this much in a book since a university course. I’ll admit the enjoyment in various passages.
Chapter 36
“They would exchange Hitler gossip, spread the usual sensational rumors about the last days in the führerbunker…They were cheerful and eager, given to spitting when they laughed, given to outdated dress, homeliness, punctuality. They seemed to have a taste for sweets.”
Sweets.
Then observations on guns. Interesting bridge between Hitler and…
Then the hilarious exchange with the doctor. DeLillo really excels at these humorous dialogues, like between the professors. Monty Pythonesque.
“What about appetite?” he said.
“I could go either way on that.”
“That’s more or less how I could go, based on the printout.”
“In other words you’re saying sometimes I have appetitive reinforcement, sometimes I don’t.”
“Are you telling me or asking me?”
“It depends on what the numbers say.”
“Then we agree.”
“Good.”
“What can it do in terms of worst-case scenario contingencies?”
“Cause a person to die.”
“Speak English, for God’s sake. I despise this modern jargon.”
Awesome writing.
On a personal level, I have to agree with your experience of nostalgia, Computilo. For me, the word evokes lovely memories of listening to post-punk bands on cassette in the Volvo Station wagon I drove in high school.
Still, I could relate Murray’s musings to MAGA hats and Hitler’s frightening form of populism. Hmm, maybe individual nostalgia aint so bad, but collective nostalgia is easily weaponized.
This week, I find myself thinking of doctor’s and priests. Confession, amongst other religious rituals, is way to care for and maintain one’s eternal soul, which will really come in handy and determine the quality of experience and accommodations once the mortal coil is discarded. All to say, if you believe in the afterlife, embodiment is an illusion, an anteroom for eternity.
Meanwhile, in the secular late capitalism of WN, embodiment is the thing, is all you get. In this framework, one where there is no afterlife, visits to the priest become superfluous, and the medical establishment is granted authority and reverence. Where once there was the afterlife, the post-body, granted as the palliative of death, now there’s Dylar – a drug engineered to outwit the mechanisms that know the mechanism will fail.
All of this leaves me wondering what to think about Vernon and his parting monologue – is the man in total paranoid denial of death, or is he enlightened? Not sure.
I find myself still chewing on these ideas. WN seems to ask the question, “What happens when religious precepts no longer regulate the body?” The adults in WN, and American culture in general, appear to be living an arm’s race between mortality and pleasure – you can eat what you want, smoke what want, drink what you want; no deific force will be keeping tabs. Yet, all of those now unregulated acts, those deep-fried sources of bodily enjoyment and/or momentary distractions from the pervasive, buzzing fear of death, are killing you, too. This logic seems to move out concentrically – climate change could be framed as an existential threat powered by all the things people do and buy to distract themselves from their mortality.
I’m late to resume my findings of this section, and many things have been mentioned before.
I enjoyed this section, although two sentences disturbingly stood out to me:
“He looks like a man who finds dead bodies erotic.” (Murray, ch. 32) — I don’t know that I can think of something worse to say about a person, simply judging them by their looks.
“… I greet you Jack. I miss you. … I only wish to talk a while, pass a moment or two in friendly reminiscence.” I hung up and went for a walk. (ch. 36) — Do we know what makes Jack despise his ex-wife so much that he would hang up on her when she just said all she wanted was a friendly chat and that she missed him? Damn, Jack, you don’t want to be liked, do you?
One beautiful sentence stood out, too: Warmer weather produces voices in the dark. (ch. 36)
Anyone else made the connection to Tetris, in the section about bagging groceries? “he sees the items arranged in the bag before he touches a thing” (end of ch. 36). Invented in 94, Tetris didn’t become famous until 98 with its Nintendo release. So that association can only be made by later readers (like me)
Other than this, the burning asylum and the fathers/sons watching, the garbage picking, the Hitler conference with gothic type name tags, the discussion over the Zumwalt weapon, the dialogues with the doctors… there’s much to ponder about. Interesting read.
I read! I am meandering! I just forgot to post earlier in the week, grrr. I liked Jack telling Winnie that she was a true enemy. Onward ho!
i do that, with the groceries. i think of it as preparation for my retirement job at which i will shine. tip of the hat to winnie and the conversation above. death makes life sweet. (corporal immortality would be hell. plus, i’m curious about what comes next–aka post-post retirement.)
aka expirement.
i’m here at the end of the thread all by myself, cecil, and i can say anything, anything at all!
pugnax!!!!!
for completeness’ sake wanted to add a few notes from this week while working on week 6:
they are vampiring Wilder
burning madwoman brings to mind Blake for some reason
“They listen in their sleep.”
“‘Why would anyone want to trace it?'” (parody of a naïf)
“one of those drifters with a skimpy beard” (we all know the type, from tv)
noir influence
“If you have a mental, where is he going to cone at you from?”
“We began to see a blank space where Vernon stood” (DeLillo’s unique evocation of cultural magic realism)
Babette is blue collar (class)
“we rent a cassette” ??
“Don’t worry about the—” turns into a comic routine
“Ziploc sacks of liver and ribs” (creepy serial killer vibe)
“‘Look here, a bracketed number with computerized stars'” (metafiction, character quotes the signifier, similar to an encoding error in comp sci)
Autumn Harvest Farms !!
“Babette was right. He spoke English beautifully.” (like everyone else in this world)
conference paper topic: “Listmaking in 20th century postmodern metafiction”
blobette
I tell you, they are vampiring Wilder
Sunnies and Moonies
“‘I’m looking at a bracketed number with little stars'” callback
comedy cold:
“What about potassium?”
“We don’t do potassium”
Where is that cited?
I can so relate to “Journeys home were always a test. […] A sulky menace brewed back there”.
There’s a lot of trips I remember taking with the kids where they’d be cranky, tired – you name it – which made these trips home sometimes really hard to endure.
The casual naming of “Mein Kampf” lying around the house got to me. Actually, all the Hitler references throughout the entire book are hard to stomach for me.