Jocelyn Payne
Second Essay- Wolfe
2/24/97
Documentation of Technology
While Don Delillo's White Noise is not considered metafiction, it contains certain
elements that Tom Wolfe describes as essential for the continuation of the new social novel in
his manifesto, "Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast." Wolfe cites that the primary approach that
modern authors should take when writing the contemporary novel is describing the individual
as a result of society and his environment. The characters in White Noise are clearly
manifestations of their society, and while Delillo does not place them in a megalopolis, his
ironic setting middle America, serves as an unlikely area for disaster to occur. The author
studies a small microcosm of American life to show that the events of the times saturate into all
areas, not just at the top of civilization. Like Wolfe, Delillo documents themes and trends of
society, but studies them on a less complex level, similar to an anthropologist who studies the
common people of a village to better understand how the whole civilization functioned.
Delillo reveals that is just as important to study society on a smaller scale as it is to focus on
the "big, rich slice of contemporary life," to fully document the time period.
Delillo is answering Wolfe's call to modern authors requesting documentation of mass
culture and major events in society. Through posing the idea that perhaps technology is a major
influences in American life, he implies that the two deserve the same attention as events as
large as the Vietnam War, causing modern society to be "more varied and complicated and
harder to define" (Wolfe 28) than societies written about in the past. When Wolfe writes, "It
strikes me as folly to believe that you can portray the individual in the city today without also
portraying the city itself,"(Wolfe 28) he is stating that people are a product of their
environment. In White Noise the characters have been removed from the urban setting to
isolate the factors that influence the identities of Americans, thus allowing for technology to be
examined and documented more precisely.
Delillo’s accentuation on technology, demonstrates that he sees it as one of the major
forces at work on society today. Characters in the novel have become desensitized due to the
constant bombardment of technology and are unclear as to the role that humanity plays in a
mechanized world. The simulacra created by the television and other forms of technology has
made it difficult people to think and react on a human level. Alfonse demonstrates that
because humans are suffering from "brain fade," they are gradually losing their ability to think
without the influence of technology this line of thinking when he says:
"The flow is constant. Words, pictures, numbers, facts, graphics, statistics, specks,
waves, particles, motes. Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we
need them, we depend on them."(Delillo 66)
Disaster is one of the last events in which human emotion and reaction are preserved. The use
of the word "depend" is grim, implying that the human race will symbolically cease to exist
without the human touch. Through the toxic event the characters are enabled to regain human
perspective about who they are and the reality of the technology that surrounds them. The
difference in the perception of danger that the elderly have and that of the younger generation
displays the progression of technology. The elderly's recognition of the weather as an
"impending calamity" seems trivial in comparison to the airborne toxic event and displays their
alienation from the modern times.
Technology further desensitizes people by hindering their ability to communicate
in a complex world where many things are incomprehensible. When Wilder cries for an
extended period of time his glossolalia represents the difficulty the characters face in
conveying and perceiving their fears about the uncertainty of the world in which they live.
Jack is the only character that is able to relate to Wilder’s state, as he too has experienced the
difficulty involved with speaking in tongues- German being a sophisticated language that he
cannot learn nor understand. It is clear that Jack sees Wilder’s crying as a soothing human
outlet when he says:
He was crying out, saying nameless things in a way that touched me with its depth and
richness. This was an ancient dirge all the more impressive for its resolute monotony.
Ululation. I held him upright with a hand under each arm. As the crying continued, a
curious shift developed in my thinking. I found that I did not necessarily want him to stop.
It might not be so terrible, I thought to sit and listen to this a while longer. We looked at
each other. Behind that dopey countenance, a complex intelligence operated. I held him
with one hand using the other hand to count his fingers inside the mittens, aloud, in
German. (Delillo 68)
The use of the words "dirge" and "Ululation" make it ironic that Jack finds solace in Wilder’s
outburst. Wilder’s crying is desperate, and he is crying because he is in a world in which he
cannot communicate. Because Wilder does not speak his role is that of a voyeur who sees
death as inevitable as a result of the environment that surrounds him. When Jack counts out
loud in German he relates to Wilder’s sense of doom and hopelessness and is comforted only
by the shared human emotion.
Like Wolfe, Delillo acts as an observer of society and a prophet for the future. Just as
Wolfe foresaw a situation similar to the Tawana Brawley case, Delillo wrote of the potential of
a massive life threatening industrial spill. While the spill and the setting seemed unrealistic to
critics and readers of the 1980’s, today readers can relate to such an event and see the
impending dangers that may ensue with the advancement of technology. When Jack says: "We
live in a neat and pleasant town near a college with a quaint name. These things don’t happen
in places like Blacksmith" (Delillo 114) he emphasizes Delillo’s argument that advancing
technology and its aftermath is location-blind and has saturated all aspects of American
society. In White Noise, Delillo does just what Wolfe requests when he writes,
"The imagination of the novelist is powerless before what he knows he’s going to
read in tomorrow morning’s newspaper. But a generation of American writers
has drawn precisely the wrong conclusion from that perfectly valid observation.
The answer is not to leave the rude beast, the material, also known as the life
around us, to the journalists, but to do what the journalists do, or are suppose to
do, which is to wrestle the beast and bring it to terms." (Wolfe, 32)
Delillo has brought the beast to terms, but has done it from the ground up instead of merely
exposing the obvious at the top.