Reading Project Update

One down and 24 to go.

I finished rereading Travels with Charley, which was just as rewarding as always.  (My review of it can be seen at Baby Got Books.)  I then proceeded directly to White Noise, the first book on the shelf I plan on working my way through.

Unfortunately, I have had to put White Noise aside, and I think that the problem is that I’ve read it before.  My wife put it best when she said, “It’s very readable; it’s just not rereadable.”  Because the thing about it is this:  White Noise is definitely a post-modern novel, and while that’s all well and fine, it also means that, instead of Don DeLillo telling me about life, he’s telling me what he thinks about life.  Which is like being stuck at a party with that acquaintance who has one interest in life and never stops flogging it.  The first time you hear the diatribe, it’s fine.  It might even be extremely interesting.  However, the next time, it is less so, and it will never get better no matter how many times you are so exposed.

Now, the argument might be made that this is true of any novel, but it most certainly is not.  Books that are written in a less intellectualized way, books that are less related to lectures, have an almost endless set of meanings.  The meaning comes from that particular reader intersecting with that particular text, and each reader will come away from a book with a different experience and therefore interpretation of it.  Post modernism wants nothing of that, however.  Just like some political hack on a Sunday morning “news” program, the point is to control the message.  We see this when we attend installation type art shows.  In some cases, small light blue cards appended to the exhibit tell us what it means.  In other cases, the message is spelled out quite plainly in words in the work itself just so the artist can be assured that no viewer has the temerity to think for themselves or to have their own experience of the work.

And I found myself feeling the same way about White Noise.  Throughout the first part, I kept saying to myself, “I get it.  Jack’s a phony.  I get it.  There’s always a TV on or an announcement at a store or some kind of white noise in the background of modern lives.  I get it.”  I had gotten to a point, rather early on, in which the main character, Jack, has a conversation with his son, Heinrich, that no one has ever had or will ever have.  It was all too thought out, too intellectual.  It was that guy with the jabbing finger making the same point that he made that time at the barbecue.  I got it then, I get it now, and I’m not going to get it any more tomorrow.

Because there is no more to get.  It’s all made plain because there is no faith in my ability to interpret and no interest in the subtle game that less insistent authors play with readers.  I look in a mirror and instead of seeing myself, I see Don DeLillo.

Now, I say all this not to insult Mr DeLillo.  He is a great writer, and I’m glad I read White Noise.  Once.  I’m even more glad that I read Libra, which I think was a phenomenal performance.  I wish him nothing but the best.  Really.  I’m just losing whatever interest I once had in post modernism and am ready for post post modernism to begin, whatever that might be.

I have moved on to The Bean Trees and will replace White Noise with Straight Man by Richard Russo, which my wife is currently reading and which seems to be just up my street.