White Noise by Don Delillo

The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence. The writer is the man or woman who automatically takes a stance against his or her government. There are so many temptations for American writers to become part of the system and part of the structure that now, more than ever, we have to resist. American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous.
Writers in repressive societies are considered dangerous.
That's why so many of them are in jail.

Don DeLillo, from the 1988 interview with Ann Arensberg

I decided to read my first Don Delillo work after I heard Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Prep and The Man of My Dreams (see May 23rd blog entry) mention "White Noise" as her top pick of novels from recent literary history. I believe the New York Times had just published a list of the top novels selected by a list of current authors. The top choice was Beloved by Toni Morrison, which Sittenfeld candidly admitted that she had never read. When she mentioned White Noiseas her top choice, I made a mental note to include it on my reading list.

The first person narrator, Jack Gladney, tells his story with relentless honesty. The world is too much with him, indeed. Technology's comforting white noise is always present. His children have jaded vulnerabilities that make you ache and cringe. His youngest child, Wilder, is too young to speak at all, yet brings the most comfort to the family (and the reader) by simply existing. His needs--food, water, sleep--give human life a simple purpose.

As I read through the increasingly bizarre events, which take place in an all-too-familiar traditional college town, I found myself admitting to my own fleeting (yet real) fixation on my own death and the death of my loved ones. Do you indulge in detailed visions of what-if cancer strikes? What-if the drunk driver hits my car? What-if it is my bag of spinach that carries my deadly calling number? Admit it.

The characters in White Noise often wander the supermarket and ponder its contents and displays for meaning. Delillo's choice to have them observe the supermarketplace was a clever choice as shiny tinfoil packages of snacks can tell an eloquent tale about the America of this era.

My father worked in the grocery industry and so I grew up knowing that there were stories behind how the bananas got to the produce section. I learned that bananas start off as vegetables and end up as fruit. I saw the climate-controlled rooms where bananas are held--frozen in time--until they are deemed ready to ripen for the stores. I used to think this destroyed the poetry behind the apples and oranges. Of course now I realize that seeing behind the display cases was seeing the poetry of the process. As mechanical and ugly as the process may be in comparison to the finished fruit.

Jack and his wife Babette go about their daily lives and deal with an airborne toxic event causing them to evacuate their town beneath a comforting blanket of white noise. Beneath the noise, however, is the ever present fear of death. A fear that drives them to confront or avoid their existence with a fierce determination to escape the fear, even if they can't escape death itself.

While I have not had a chance to discuss White Noise with fellow readers, I have read a few reviews and visited other useful sites:

Crowding Out Death
by Jayne Anne Philips (originally appeared in the New York Times, January 13, 1985.)

New York Times Featured Author: Don DeLillo
This site contains reviews of DeLillo's books and an audio reading and interview.

The Don DeLillo Society
This site contains a bibliography, events, links, and more.

White Noise on White Noise
This site is a fun creation about White Noise.

Here are a few DeLillo quotes about writing:

I became a writer by living in New York and seeing and hearing and feeling all the great, amazing and dangerous things the city endlessly assembles. And I also became a writer by avoiding serious commitment to anything else.

DeLillo to Jonathan Bing, 1997

I write to find out how much I know. The act of writing for me is a concentrated form of thought. If I don't enter that particular level of concentration, the chances are that certain ideas never reach any level of fruition.
DeLillo in an article by William Leith in 1991

Literary News

Murakami Wins Short Story Prize

by Lawrence Van Gelder
Published September 27, 2006 in the New York Times

Haruki Murakami of Japan has won the second Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, a $44,700 prize billed as the world's richest for short stories, The Guardian of London reported. Mr. Murakami is to share his prize for "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: Twenty-Four Stories" (Knopf) with his translators, Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin. When the announcement of the winner was made in Cork, Ireland, the hometown of O'Connor (1903- 1966), the jury hailed Mr. Murakami as "a master of prose fiction," saying he "writes with great integrity, unafraid of dealing with tough and difficult situations between people who constantly misunderstand each other."

Read my January 4, 2006 blog entry about reading Murakami's book, "Kafka on the Shore."

Updating My Bookshelf

A not too smallish box arrived from Amazon today. This means it is time to update my not so current "current" bookshelf. I'd like to make separate entries about the following titles, but time may not allow.

Recently read:

White Noise by Don DeLillo

Three Junes by Julia Glass

The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

It is an eclectic collection.--literary fiction, autobiography, and young adult fiction. I would be happy to tell you more about any of these titles if you would like a preview before you buy.

I've updated my "Current Bookshelf" in the sidebar to reflect my newest obsessions.

YWCA and Ten Thousand Villages

support the
YWCA of St. Joseph County

by shopping at
Ten Thousand Villages
919 W. McKinley, Mishawaka
20% of the day's sales will go to the YWCA
10 am-6 pm Friday, Sept. 22

For more information:
Joann Phillips
Resource Development Director
YWCA of St. Joseph County
1102 S. Fellows St., South Bend, IN 46601
PH (574) 233-9491, ext. 316; FAX (574) 233-9616 jphillips@ywcasjc.org

mark your calendars!

spread the word!

Club Noma, Downtown South Bend

I had heard the owner of the new Club Noma speak about his plans for the hip new bar and restaurant for several years. Those well laid plans have finally been realized.

Last night we headed downtown South Bend to find some dinner and catch a bit of the Ohio v. Texas football game. The regular haunts were packed and so we gave up on the game and enjoyed the delicious soups at the Chocolate Cafe. Heading home, we noticed the Now Open sign in front of Club Noma. Despite our grungy dress, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to peak inside.

We were greeted with hors d'oeuvre of duck, salmon caviar, and chicken--all tasty Asian fusion morsels, a promise of what the dinner menu holds. The bar is a work of art. The owner's eye for detail is truly extraordinary. The bar attendants are stylish and classy (not to mention hot). The live DJ is turning the tables, backlit by smooth water lights. The music is right on for the hip vibe pulsing through the miniature jellyfish orbs over the bar, the bare brick walls (waiting for their soon-to-arrive neon logo), and blood red leather couchettes. Hot, hot, hot.

And soon the center stage will be taken by an enormous free standing jellyfish aquarium. We all know how mystically gorgeous those creatures are. They captivate with their sensuous arms and transparent bodies. Hot music, throbbing jellyfish, and did I mention the martinis?

I am a classic vodka martini girl, a little dirty, with blue cheese olives. None of those fancy sweet concoctions for me. But you would be surprised how difficult it is to find a good plain old martini--and I am not just talking about our bendy city.

Martini Report Card for Club Noma: A+

While I am a straight up martini kind of girl, Club Noma has a tempting list of martini cocktails. I might have to go for the one with pear in its description. Sounds healthy. I need to balance my olives with a daily fruit serving, per the suggestion of my good doctor.

Congratulations to the owner and staff at Club Noma. Well done.

Applause. Applause. Applause.

The official grand opening will be Thursday, September 14th.

Club Noma description
http://www.opentable.com/rest_profile.aspx?rid=4936

Club Noma
119 North Michigan Street
South Bend, IN 46601
Their website:
http://www.clubnoma.com/

South Bend Tribune Review
September 20, 2006
"New South Bend fusion restaurant reflects a vision"
by Heidi Prescott

Art Beat 2006, Downtown South Bend

http://www.artbeatsouthbend.org/

Russian Tea Time

My parents emailed us with the announcement: They had planned a tour of their six children to celebrate their 45^th wedding anniversary. This trip would take them a few miles across town, hundreds of miles across the prairie, to Northern Indiana, the East Coast, and the Rocky Mountains within a week. They asked us to pick out a nice restaurant for each night of their weekly weddinganniversarypalooza.

I met them in Chicago and took them to a little place I had discovered a few years ago. It is a Russian restaurant, Russian Tea Time, with old world red velvet drapings, samovars, and nesting dolls. Lots of mirrors and attentive waiters. When I was sixteen, I convinced my parents to let me become a People to People Ambassador. I flew to Moscow and studied biology in Sochi along the Black Sea Coast. I viewed Stalin’s mummified body in great solemnity. I visited a tea plantation and ate fresh raspberries atop a mountain.

I was a sixteen-year-old Kansas girl serving as Ambassador of Peace. It was 1991 and political upheaval was the rule, little did I fully realize as I went about selecting the perfect black-lacquered box as a memento for my treasure chest back home.

So the selection of Russian restaurant to honor my parents’ 45^th anniversary was no accident. They gave me Russia, and I thought it would be nice to share a Russian meal with them.

We started with a flight of vodkas—bilberry, cranberry, and plain. These vodkas, served with dark rye bread chunks and pickles, go down like velvet. A fine way to start any long, long lunch.

We decided to share a sampler meal because we couldn’t decide between all the delicious options. Borscht (served hot, the traditional way), beet caviar, stuffed mushrooms. Followed by stuffed cabbage, Moldavian chicken meatballs, a breaded chicken delight, beef stroganoff, kashi and rice.

The finish must be handled with care. We managed it properly by drinking endless cups of deep amber Russian tea (available for sale on their website) and a selection of strudels, cookies, and cakes.

A hearty almost three-hour celebration.

The restaurant is located a few steps from the Art Institute, but the day was too mild to ruin by going indoors. So we headed to the Millennium Park to watch kids and adults splash in the Crown Fountain, a public art fountain. If you haven’t visited this park, go now. It is really one of my favorite parks in the world. Very well done. Especially worth it on a mild, sunny, and breezy day.

It was a brief world wind visit. I hope they do the same for their 46^th anniversary!

About Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)

In the later years of Marcel Duchamp’s life, he liked to say that he was simply a “respirateur,” a “breather.” After a lifetime of pursuing art and perfecting his game of chess, Duchamp had evolved into a work of art himself. He did not have to justify or explain his art or way of life, that was up to his interviewer and posterity. His main responsibility in life: to breathe, long and deep, taking in this world’s oxygen just the same as any other mortal man.

While the name Duchamp may not ring a bell, you have surely seen or heard about one or two of his works. For example, he is the artist that painted a jaunty mustache on a postcard reproduction of the Mona Lisa (1919). He also submitted, under the same R. Mutt, an inverted urinal to an art show (1917). Although the urinal was rejected from the show, it has become a legendary anti-sculpture.

I came to admire Duchamp’s self-described title as “respirateur” after reading Duchamp: A Biography by Calvine Tomkins. He was a man who lived his life by his own rules, unafraid to fly in the face of a conventional life and all its creature comforts. He breathed and he created things. In a world suffused with material objects, he transformed the mundane into art by making his “readymades.” He took a regular snow shovel, inscribed a cryptic title, signed it and it was art. Or was it? His art went beyond the visual and material elements associated with art and made his audience think and ask the question: what is art? (What would Duchamp have said about the CowParade?)

Duchamp inspired young artists to think freely, think boldly about both art and life. Some criticized Duchamp for all the bad art that sallied forth in the late twentieth century. And there has been some regrettable artwork. And yet I have to say that Duchamp has inspired me in a positive way. It is my job to be a “respirateur.” For too long I have been enslaved by doctrinal dictates and good-girl standards that compel me to observe and serve the world. Being a good-girl perfectionist, the observe-and-serve mandate dictates when it should merely guide.

First, one must breathe and then one can observe and just observe. Only then can I witness to what I see. Witness by my writing. By my art. And finally by my actions.

Duchamp taught me that it is okay to merely observe the world. In fact, it may be the finest act of humility there is. Of course, to accurately observe the world—to see truthfully what there is and what there should be—is enough for a lifetime. Practically, his life and art have also given me permission to write my novel by my own rules.

Making Sense of Marcel Duchamp
Timeline and pictures of his art.

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