White Noise

by Don DeLillo

“Fear is self-awareness raised to a higher level.”

“What do I do to make death less strange?

We wanted to eat, not look around at other people. We wanted to fill our stomachs and get it over with. We didn’t need light and space. We certainly didn’t need to face each other across a table as we ate, building a subtle and complex cross-network of signals and codes. We were content to eat facing in the same direction, looking only inches past our hands.

“It’s called the sun’s corolla,” Denise said to Steffie in a separate discussion. “We saw it the other night on the weather network.” “I thought Corolla was a car,” Steffie said. “Everything’s a car,” Heinrich said.

This was the week a policeman saw a body thrown from a UFO.

Police hypnotists plan to intensify their sessions in an attempt to uncover the message.

This was the night the insane asylum burned down. Heinrich and I got in the car and went to watch. There were other men at the scene with their adolescent boys. Evidently fathers and sons seek fellowship at such events. Fires help draw them closer, provide a conversational wedge.

“Were people this dumb before television?”

The power of suggestion makes some people sick, others well.

Murray says it is possible to be homesick for a place even when you are there.

It made me think of the Law of Ruins. I told Murray that Albert Speer wanted to build structures that would decay gloriously, impressively, like Roman ruins.

The ruin is built into the creation,

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.

The more things I threw away, the more I found. The house was a sepia maze of old and tired things. There was an immensity of things, an overburdening weight, a connection, a mortality.

But how can I not look? Even if you took all my mirrors away, I would still find a way to look.

“You mean am I sick unto death? The fear hasn’t gone, Jack.”

“It is all a corporate tie-in,” Babette said in summary. “The sunscreen, the marketing, the fear, the disease. You can’t have one without the other.”

“Here’s what I think. I’m nothing without the snakes. That’s the only negative. The negative is if it doesn’t come off, if the humane society doesn’t let me in the cage. How can I be the best at what I do if they don’t let me do it?”

There are more people dead today than in the rest of world history put together. What’s one extra?

“You are intentionally facing death. You are setting out to do exactly what people spend their lives trying not to do. Die. I want to know why.”

If the self is death, how can it also be stronger than death?

About three hours after we’d first become aware of it, the vapor suddenly lifted, saving us from our formal deliberations.

What happens to them when the commercial ends?

He wants to leave school and work full-time at Foodland, bagging groceries? He tells them he likes to bag groceries. It is the one thing in life he finds satisfying. Put the gallon jugs in first, square off the six-packs, double-bag the heavy merch. He does it well, he has the knack, he sees the items arranged in the bag before he touches a thing.

Your doctor knows the symbols.

“Why can’t we be intelligent about death?” I said.

“It’s almost as though our fear is what brings it on. If we could learn not to be afraid, we could live forever.”

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.”

“So you’re saying, Jack, that death would be just as threatening even if you’d accomplished all you’d ever hoped to accomplish in your life and work.”

“Nothing is stronger than death. Do you believe the only people who fear death are those who are afraid of life?”

Do you believe life without death is somehow incomplete?” “How could it be incomplete? Death is what makes it incomplete.” “Doesn’t our knowledge of death make life more precious?” “What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It’s an anxious quivering thing.”

Once your death is established, it becomes impossible to live a satisfying life.” “Would you prefer to know the exact date and time of your death?” “Absolutely not. It’s bad enough to fear the unknown. Faced with the unknown, we can pretend it isn’t there. Exact dates would drive many to suicide, if only to beat the system.”

Technology is lust removed from nature.”

The point is you’re standing at the edge of a smoldering ruin where others lie inert and twisted.

“Helpless and fearful people are drawn to magical figures, mythic figures, epic men who intimidate and darkly loom.”

“Some people are larger than life. Hitler is larger than death.

We walked under a bright banner announcing a raffle to raise money for some incurable disease. The wording seemed to indicate that the winner would get the disease.

We’re all aware there’s no escape from death. How do we deal with this crushing knowledge? We repress, we disguise, we bury, we exclude. Some people do it better than others, that’s all.”

So we resort to repression, compromise and disguise. This is how we survive in the universe. This is the natural language of the species.”

“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.

No wonder we’re bewildered, staggered, shattered.”

“Gorgeous evasions,” he said. “Great escapes.”

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.”

“It’s a way of controlling death. A way of gaining the ultimate upper hand. Be the killer for a change. Let someone else be the dier. Let him replace you, theoretically, in that role. You can’t die if he does. He dies, you live. See how marvelously simple.”

Your whole life is a plot, a scheme, a diagram. It is a failed scheme but that’s not the point. To plot is to affirm life, to seek shape and control. Even after death, most particularly after death, the search continues. Burial rites are an attempt to complete the scheme, in ritual.

“To plot, to take aim at something, to shape time and space. This is how we advance the art of human consciousness.”

How does a person say good-bye to himself? It’s a juicy existential dilemma.”

I bore a personal grudge against these things. Somehow they’d put me in this fix. They’d dragged me down, made escape impossible.

REMEMBER. You cannot access your account unless your code is entered properly. Know your code. Reveal your code to no one. Only your code allows you to enter the system.

“Getting in touch with death is not what they had in mind. Death is so strong that we have to repress, those of us who know how.”