White Noise

by Don DeLillo

To die in an apartment instead of a house can depress the soul, I would imagine, for several lives to come.

“Sounds like a boring life.” “I hope it lasts forever,” she said.

“For most people there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is.”

“These are the things they don’t teach,” Lasher said. “Bowls with no seats. Pissing in sinks. The culture of public toilets. All those great diners, movie houses, gas stations. The whole ethos of the road. I’ve pissed in sinks all through the American West. I’ve slipped across the border to piss in sinks in Manitoba and Alberta. This is what it’s all about. The great western skies. The Best Western motels. The diners and drive-ins. The poetry of the road, the plains, the desert. The filthy stinking toilets. I pissed in a sink in Utah when it was twenty-two below. That’s the coldest I’ve ever pissed in a sink in.”

What good is knowledge if it just floats in the air? It goes from computer to computer. It changes and grows every second of every day. But nobody actually knows anything.”

I tell myself I have reached an age, the age of unreliable menace. The world is full of abandoned meanings. In the commonplace I find unexpected themes and intensities.

“What if death is nothing but sound?” “Electrical noise.” “You hear it forever. Sound all around. How awful.” “Uniform, white.”

“Right. We all fear death to some extent. Those who claim otherwise are lying to themselves. Shallow people.” “People with their nicknames on their license plates.” “Excellent, Jack. Do you believe life without death is somehow incomplete?”