“WHITE NOISE” A NOVEL BY DON DELILLO
It has been several decades since I read Don DeLillo’s “White Noise”.
I cannot say it was my favorite novel at any time. I found it less to my liking than my friend did when he insisted I read it. Some of the wordplay is magnificent, and some feel a bit stilted, but it was a book I have not forgotten.
Part of it is about a plague-like airborne attack that kills and creates havoc for the world and the characters of the book.
The focus of the book is death, in all of its subtle and not so subtle existence. Or, non-existence as it were.
An excerpt:
“Why can’t we be intelligent about death?” I said.
“It’s obvious.”
“It is?”
“Ivan Ilyich screamed for three days. That’s about as intelligent as we get. Tolstoy himself struggled to understand. He feared it terribly.”
“It’s almost as though our fear is what brings it on. If we could learn not to be afraid, we could live forever.”
“We talk ourselves into it. Is that what you mean?”
“I don’t know what I mean. I only know I’m just going through the motions of living. I’m technically dead. My body is growing a nebulous mass. They track these things like satellites. All this as a result of a byproduct of insecticide. There’s something artificial about my death. It’s shallow, unfulfilling. I don’t belong to the earth or sky. They ought to carve an aerosol can on my tombstone.”
“Well said.”
What did he mean, well said? I wanted him to argue with me, raise my dying to a higher level, make me feel better.
“Do you think it’s unfair?” he said.
“Of course I do. Or is that a trite answer?”
He seemed to shrug.
“Look how I’ve lived. Has my life been a mad dash for pleasure? Have I been hellbent on self-destruction, using illegal drugs, driving fast cars, drinking to excess? A little dry sherry at faculty parties. I eat bland foods.”
“No, you don’t.”
He puffed seriously on his pipe, his cheeks going hollow. We walked in silence for a while.
“Do you think your death is premature?” he said.
“Every death is premature. There’s no scientific reason why we can’t live a hundred and fifty years. Some people actually do it, according to a headline I saw at the supermarket.”
“Do you think it’s a sense of incompleteness that causes you the deepest regret? There are things you still hope to accomplish. Work to be done, intellectual challenges to be faced.”
“The deepest regret is death. The only thing to face is death. This is all I think about. There’s only one issue here. I want to live.”
After the year we have had in this country, and the world, I think we all share that basic want.
We want to live.
If life is to move forward, we must get back to living like life means something to us. Yes, I want to live, but not if living is a death existence – fearing one moment to the next, hiding from friends, and worrying about a gentle bump in the grocery aisle.
That is not living.
That is walking death suspended in time.