White noise

Caryn James

This piece appeared alongside a review of White Noise in the New York Times Book Review on January 13, 1985.

" 'I NEVER SET OUT TO WRITE AN APOCALYPTIC NOVEL' "

"I thought of a college that had a department of Hitler studies and that led to death as a subject," Don DeLillo says in describing the origin of White Noise. Talking by phone from his home just outside New York City, he is matter-of-fact. "I haven't a clue where that thought came from, but it seemed innately comic, and everything sprang from it. I never felt that I was writing a comic novel before White Noise. Maybe the fact that death permeates the book made me retreat into comedy."

Despite the shadow of Hitler and the topical issue of disastrous toxic leaks, Mr. DeLillo says his novel is about prosaic events—the anxieties and mysteries that infuse daily life. "I never set out to write an apocalyptic novel. It's about death on the individual level. Only Hitler is large enough and terrible enough to absorb and neutralize Jack Gladney's obsessive fear of dying—a very common fear, but one that's rarely talked about. Jack uses Hitler as a protective device; he wants to grasp anything he can."

The conjunction of the apocalyptic and the ordinary may be most evident in the character of Murray J. Siskind, who, Mr. DeLillo says, finds the supermarket "very rich in magic and dread; it's a kind of church. Perhaps the supermarket tabloids are the richest material of all, closest to the spirit of the book. They ask profoundly important questions about death, the afterlife, God, worlds and space, yet they exist in an almost Pop Art atmosphere."

Everyday mysteries are embodied in the book's children as well.

"They are a form of magic. The adults are mystified by all the data that flows through their lives, but the children carry the data and absorb it most deeply. They give family life a buzz and hum; it's almost another form of white noise," Mr. DeLillo says. Although he has no children, he denies that their real-life absence influenced his decision to "populate" White Noise with them. "There's very little autobiography in my books," he says.

Mr. DeLillo is working on a new novel, but when asked to talk about it, his reply is characteristically understated: "My lips are sealed."

Don DeLillo

In this excerpt from Americana (1971), David Bell films a man playing his father, an advertising executive, as he expounds on television advertising.

from AMERICANA

A game show was on TV, young married contestants and a suavely gliding master of ceremonies; there were frequent commercials, the usual daytime spasms on behalf of detergents and oral hygiene. This is what I filmed for roughly eight minutes, the TV set, having to break twice for reloading, as Glenn and I, off camera, read from the wrinkled scattered script. Glenn spoke in a monotone throughout.

"We're going to talk about test patterns and shadows. Certain forms of darkness. A small corner of the twentieth century."

"I have all the answers."

"And I have the questions," I said. "We begin, simply enough, with a man watching television. Quite possibly he is being driven mad, slowly, in stages, program by program, interruption by interruption. Still, he watches. What is there in that box? Why is he watching?"

"The TV set is a package and it's full of products. Inside are detergents, automobiles, cameras, breakfast cereal, other television sets. Programs are not interrupted by commercials; exactly the reverse is true. A television set is an electronic form of packaging. It's as simple as that. Without the products there's nothing. Educational television's a joke. Who in America would want to watch TV without commercials?"

"How does a successful television commercial affect the viewer?"

"It makes him want to change the way he lives."

"In what way?" I said.

"It moves him from first person consciousness to third person. In this country there is a universal third person, the man we all want to be. Advertising has discovered this man. It uses him to express the possibilities open to the consumer. To consume in America is not to buy; it is to dream. Advertising is the suggestion that the dream of entering the third person singular might possibly be fulfilled."

"How then does a TV commercial differ from a movie? Movies are full of people we want to be."

"Advertising is never bigger than life. It tries not to edge too far over the fantasy line; in fact it often mocks different fantasy themes associated with the movies. Look, there's no reason why you can't fly Eastern to Acapulco and share two solid weeks of sex and adventure with a vacationing typist from Iowa City. But advertising never claims you can do it with Ava Gardner. Only Richard Burton can accomplish that. You can change your image but you can't change the image of the woman you take to bed. Advertising has merchandised this distinction. We have exploited the limitation of dreams. It's our greatest achievement."

"What makes a good advertising man?"

"He knows how to move the merch off the shelves. It's as simple as that. If the advertising business shut down tomorrow, I'd go over to Macy's and get a job selling men's underwear."

"Let's get back to images. Do the people who create commercials take into account this third person consciousness you've talked about with such persuasiveness and verve?"

"They just make their twenty-second art films. The third person was invented by the consumer, the great armchair dreamer. Advertising discovered the value of the third person but the consumer invented him. The country itself invented him. He came over on the Mayflower. I'm waiting for you to ask me about the anti-image."

"What's that?"

"It's the guerrilla warfare being fought behind the lines of the image. It's a picture of devastating spiritual atrocities. The perfect example of the anti-image in advertising is the slice-of-life commercial. A recognizable scene in a suburban home anywhere in the USA. Some dialogue between dad and junior or between Madge and the members of the bridge club. Problem: Madge is suffering from irregularity. Solution: Drink this stuff and the muses will squat. The rationale behind this kind of advertising is that the consumer will identify with Madge. This is a mistake. The consumer never identifies with the anti-image. He identifies only with the image. The Marlboro man. Frank Gifford and Bobby Hull in their Jantzen bathing suits. Slice-of-life commercials usually deal with the more depressing areas of life—odors, sores, old age, ugliness, pain. Fortunately the image is big enough to absorb the anti-image. Not that I object to the anti-image in principle. It has its possibilities; the time may not be far off when we tire of the dream. But the anti-image is being presented much too literally. The old themes. The stereotyped dialogue. It needs a touch of horror, some mad laughter from the graveyard. One of these days some smart copywriter will perceive the true inner mystery of America and develop an offshoot to the slice-of-life. The slice-of-death."

"Have you spent the major part of your adult life in the advertising business?"

"All but four years."

"Where were they spent?" I said.

"I served a hitch in the army during the war."

"Where?"

"The Pacific."

"Where in the Pacific?"

"The Philippines."

"Where in the Philippines?"

"Bataan: they made two movies about it."

"Do you ever feel uneasy about your place in the constantly unfolding incorporeal scheme of things?"

"Only when I try to pre-empt the truth."

"What does that mean?"

"One of the clients I service is the Nix Olympica Corporation. They make a whole line of products for the human body. Depilatories, salves, foot powder, styptic pencils, mouthwash, cotton swabs for the ears, deodorants for the armpit, deodorants for the male and female crotch, acne cream medication, sinus remedies, denture cleansers, laxatives, com plasters. We were preparing a campaign for their Dentex Division; that's mouthwash primarily. Okay, so we zero in on one of the essential ingredients, quasi-cinnamaldehyde-plus. QCP. We take the hard-sell route. Dentex with QCP kills mouth poisons and odor-causing impurities thirty-two percent faster. Be specific. Be factual. Make a promise. Okay, so some little creep says to me in a meeting: thirty-two percent faster than what? Obviously, I tell him: thirty-two percent faster than if Dentex didn't have QCP. The fact that all mouthwashes have this cinnamaldehyde stuff is beside the point; we were the only ones talking about it. This is known as pre-empting the truth. The creative people do a storyboard. Open on Formula One racing car, number six, Watkins Glen. Action, noise, crowd, throttling, crack-ups, explosions. Number six comes in first. Beauty queen rushes up to car, leans over to kiss driver, then turns away with grimace. Bad breath. She doesn't want to kiss him. Cut to medical lab, guy with white smock. This is a dramatization—charts, diagrams, supers, QCP thirty-two percent faster. Back to original guy, number six, different race. Checkered flag drops, he wins, wreath around the neck, beauty queen kisses him, dissolve to victory party as they dance, kiss, whisper, dance, kiss. We took the idea to Dentex. They loved it. We took it upstairs to Nix Olympica. They loved it. They were delighted. They gave us the okay to shoot. We get cars and drivers and extras. We go up to Watkins Glen. We use helicopters, we use tracking shots, we use slow-motion, we use stop-action, we zoom, we wide-angle, we set up two small crashes and one monster explosion with a car turning over that nearly kills half the crew. I called a special meeting of the agency's planning board and ran the final print for them. They loved it. When I told them it cost as much, pro-rated, as the movie Cleopatra, they were delighted. They would have something to tell their wives that evening. The next day we showed the commercial to Dentex. They loved it. They were delighted. We took it upstairs to Nix Olympica. They turned it down flat. The money didn't bother them; they were impressed with the money; they would have something to tell their wives. But they turned it down flat. They ordered us to re-shoot both sequences in the winner's circle."

"Why?"

"Because of the Oriental. Because of the old man standing at the edge of the group of extras who were crowding around the winner's circle both times, first when the beauty queen refused to kiss number six and then when she did kiss him. Both times he was there, this small shrunken old man, this Oriental. Who was he? Who hired him? How did he get into the crowd? Nobody knew. But he was there all right and Nix Olympica spotted him. All the other extras were young healthy gleaming men and women. It's a commercial for mouthwash; you want health, happiness, freshness, mouth-appeal. And this sick-looking old man is hovering there, this really depressing downbeat Oriental. Look, I love the business. I thrive on it. But I can't help wondering if I've wasted my life simply because of the old man who ruined the mouthwash commercial. On a spring evening some years ago, during the time when my wife was very ill, when she was nearing the very end, I walked up a street in the upper Thirties and turned right onto Park Avenue and there was the Pan Am Building, a mile high and half-a-mile wide, every light blazing, an impossible slab of squared-off rock hulking above me and crowding everything else out of the way, even the sky. It looked like God. I had never seen the Pan Am Building from that particular spot and I wasn't prepared for the colossal surprise of it, the way it crowded out the sky, that overwhelming tier of lights. I swear to you it looked like God the Father. What was the point I was trying to make?"

"I don't know."

"Neither do I. I guess that's what comes of trying to pre-empt the truth."

"What is the role of commercial television in the twentieth century and beyond?"

"In my blackest moods I feel it spells chaos for all of us."

"How do you get over these moods?" I said.

"I take a mild and gentle Palmolive bath, brush my teeth with Crest, swallow two Sominex tablets, and try desperately to fall asleep on my Simmons Beautyrest mattress."

"Thank you."