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May 15, 2004A couple days ago, I finished reading DeLillo's White Noise. I was in the middle of 18.313, Seminar in Discrete Mathematics, not listening to a fellow classmates presentation (apologies) when I realized I was within thirty pages of the glorious end which I did not realize would be so glorious.I finished the book in a much better mood than I started it. I felt deep inside the world it took DeLillo so long to create, and the kinds of little details that had irritated me at the beginning were falling into place, further supporting the existence of Jack Gladney's life. Now, to the quoting! Any boldings are my own. -- -Ch. 16, if I had the time to retype it. A good mini-project for the summer, or for my two weeks at home. Involves a young boy crying all day, and for reason really hit me. -Bee was quietly disdainful of wisecracks, sarcasm, and other family business... She was self-possessed and thoughtful, had brought us hand-carved gifts from the jungles. She took taxis to school and dance class, spoke a little Chinese, had once wired money to a stranded friend... She was taller, thinner, paler, both worldly and ethereal, as though in her heart she was not a travel writer at all, as her mother had said she wished to be, but simply a traveler, the purer form, someone who collects impressions, dense anatomies of feeling, but does not care to record them. -Was Murray right? Were we a fragile unit surrounded by hostile facts? Would I promote ignorance, prejudice and superstition to protect my family from the world? -Was this some kind of end-of-the-world elation? Did he seek distraction from his own small miseries in some violent and overwhelming event? His voice betrayed a craving for terrible things. -I wanted to be near the children, watch them sleep. Watching children sleep makes me feel devout, part of a spiritual system. It is the closest I can come to God. If there is a secular equivalent of standing in a great spired cathedral with marble pillars and streams of mystical light slanting though two-tier Gothic windows, it would be watching children in their bedrooms fast asleep. Girls especially. -Whatever its source, the utterance struck me with the impact of a moment of splendid transcendence. I depend on my children for that. -There was an empty air mattress on the floor, but I wanted to share Babette's and eased myself next to her body, a dreaming mound. Her hands, feet and face were drawn under the sheltering coat; only a curst of hair remained. I fell at once into marine oblivion, a deep-dwelling crablike consciousness, silent and dreamless. -We watched him use his spoon to mold the mashed potatoes on his plate into the shape of a volcanic mountain. He poured gravy ever so carefully into the opening at the top. Then he set to work ridding his steak of fat, veins and other imperfections. It occurred to me that eating is the only form of professionalism most people ever attain. -The final pages of Ch.17. -"The thing about marriage today is that you don't have to go outside the home to get those little extras... Wives will do things. They want to do things... It used to be the only thing available in the American home was the basic natural act. Now you get the options too... It's an amazing comment on our times that the more options you get in the home, the more prostitutes you see in the streets... Wives wear edible panties. They know the words, the usages. Meanwhile the prostitutes are standing in the streets in all kinds of weather, day and night. Who are they waiting for? Tourists? Businessmen? Men who've been turned into stalkers of flesh?" -I resumed staring at the gun. It occurred to me that this was the ultimate device for determining one's competence in the world... What does it mean to a person, beyond his sense of competence and well-being and personal worth, to use it?... It was a secret, it was a second life, a second self, a dream, a spell, a plot, a delirium. German-made. -Last pages of Ch. 33. -The time of spiders arrived. Spiders in high corners of rooms. Cocoons wrapped in spiderwork. Silvery dancing strands that seemed the pure play of light, light as evanescent news, ideas borne on light. -End of Ch.36. -"I'm saying you can't let down the living by slipping into self-pity and despair. People will depend on you to be brave. What people look for in a dying friend is a stubborn kind of gravel-voiced nobility, a refusal to give in, with moments of indomitable humor. You're growing in prestige even as we speak. You're creating a hazy light about your own body. I have to like it." -"The vase and terrible depth." "Of course," he said." "The inexhaustibility." "I understand." "The whole huge nameless thing." "Yes, absolutely." "The massive darkness." "Certainly, certainly." "The whole terrible endless hugeness." "I know exactly what you mean. -"Fear is unnatural. Lightning and thunder are unnatural. Pain, death, reality, these are all unnatural. We can't bear these things as they are. We know too much. So we resort to repression, compromise, and disguise. This is how we survive in the universe. This is the natural language of the species." -"Why do I feel so good when I'm with Wilder? It's not like being with the other kids," I said. "You sense his total ego, his freedom from limits." "In what way is he free from limits?" "He doesn't know he's going to die. He doesn't know death at all. You cherish this simpleton blessing of his, this exemption from harm. You want to get close to him, touch him, look at him, breathe him in. How lucky he is. A cloud of unknowing, an omnipotent little person. The child is everything, the adult nothing. Think about it. A person's entire life is the unraveling of this conflict. No wonder we're bewildered, staggered, shattered." [See Recollections of Early Childhood by William Wordsworth.] [See Byzantium by William Butler Yeats.] -"I believe, Jack, there are two kinds of people in the world. Killers and diers. Most of us are diers. We don't have the disposition, the rage or whatever it takes to be a killer. We let death happen. We lie down and die. But think what it's like to be a killer. Think how exciting it is, in theory, to kill a person in direct confrontation. If he dies, you cannot. To kill him is to gain life-credit. The more people you kill, the more credit you store up. It explains any number of massacres, wars, executions... Slaughter is never random. The more people you kill, the more power you gain over your own death. There is a secret precision at work in the most savage and indiscriminate killings. To speak about this is not to do public relations for murder. We're two academics in an intellectual environment. It's our duty to examine currents of thought, investigate the meaning of human behavior. But think how exciting, to come out a winner in a deathly struggle, to watch the bastard bleed." -"I'm only a visiting lecturer. I theorize, I take walks, I admire the trees and houses. I have my students, my rented room, my TV set. I pick out a word here, an image there. I admire the lawns, the porches... I speculate, I reflect, I take constant notes. I am here to think, to see. Let me warn you, Jack. I won't let up." -I knew who I was in the network of meanings. -I knew what red was, saw it in terms of dominant wavelength, luminance, purity. -I fired a second shot just to fire it, relive the experience, hear the sonic waves layering through the room, feel the jolt travel up my arm... I tried to see myself from Mink's viewpoint. Looming, dominant, gaining life-power, storing up life-credit. But he was too far gone to have a viewpoint. [See Recoil by Amrys Williams.] -End of Ch.39. -End of Ch.40. -- |
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