White Noise

by Don DeLillo

The second irony is that it’s not the bodies of women that I ultimately crave but their minds. The mind of a woman. The delicate chambering and massive unidirectional flow, like a physics experiment. What fun it is to talk to an intelligent woman wearing stockings as she crosses her legs.

A man in a booth sold postcards and slides—pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book. “No one sees the barn,” he said finally. A long silence followed. “Once you’ve seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn.”

“Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We’ve agreed to be part of a collective perception. This literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism.”

At such moments I find I love him with an animal desperation, a need to take him under my coat and crush him to my chest, keep him there, protect him. He seems to bring a danger to him. It collects in the air, follows him from room to room.

as if the past possessed some quality of light we no longer experience,

She was transcribing names and phone numbers from an old book to a new one. There were no addresses. Her friends had phone numbers only, a race of people with a seven-bit analog consciousness.

“Because we’re suffering from brain fade. We need an occasional catastrophe to break up the incessant bombardment of information.”

Crowds came to form a shield against their own dying. To become a crowd is to keep out death.

The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream. May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan.

No sense of the irony of human existence, that we are the highest form of life on earth and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.

“Terrifying data is now an industry in itself. Different firms compete to see how badly they can scare

“We’re all brilliant. Isn’t that the understanding around here? You call me brilliant, I call you brilliant. It’s a form of communal ego.”

“I’m still sad, Winnie, but you’ve given my sadness a richness and depth it has never known before.” She turned away, blushing. I said, “You’re more than a fair-weather friend—you’re a true enemy.” She turned exceedingly red. I said, “Brilliant people never think of the lives they smash, being brilliant.”

They would attack us, using the classic strategy of fighting among themselves. But attack us for what reason? For not getting them home faster? For being older and bigger and somewhat steadier of mood than they were? Would they attack us for our status as protectors—protectors who must sooner or later fail?

He gave the impression he was intent on outfoxing us, working on our guilt, showing us that no matter how little sleep we got, he got less.

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.”

In theory, violence is a form of rebirth. The dier passively succumbs. The killer lives on. What a marvelous equation. As a marauding band amasses dead bodies, it gathers strength. Strength accumulates like a favor from the gods.”

You are sure that you are right but you don’t want everyone to think as you do. There is no truth without fools.