{"id":174460,"date":"2020-12-07T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2020-12-07T12:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=174460"},"modified":"2020-12-06T05:53:10","modified_gmt":"2020-12-06T05:53:10","slug":"listening-to-the-silence-with-don-delillo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/12\/listening-to-the-silence-with-don-delillo\/","title":{"rendered":"Listening to the Silence with Don DeLillo"},"content":{"rendered":"

5 Dec 2020 – <\/em>In 1997, Don DeLillo, the author of seventeen novels, published what many consider his masterpiece, Underworld<\/em>.\u00a0 It was a prophetic book in many ways, especially with its focus on the World Trade Towers and the way the book\u2019s cover, front and back, pictured the towers shrouded in smoke or clouds with what seemed like a large bird approaching it at its upper floors. That the front cover had a positive image and the rear a negative one with the light and dark inverted gave it a ghostly look that was haunting. I remember when I first saw the book, I wondered if the photograph was showing a plane or a bird approaching the north tower near what looked like twenty or so floors from the top.\u00a0 I concluded it was probably a bird, but four years later reality entered the picture with a plane exploding into the side of the building twenty or so floors from the top.<\/p>\n

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The photo is ambiguous but eerily suggestive, especially in retrospect.\u00a0 Below the towers we see a cross atop the local church seemingly holding the towers together, as if to announce the future of the new Crusade against Islam, or perhaps the connection between God and Mammon, or maybe a reminder that \u201cyou cannot serve God and mammon.\u201d\u00a0 Who knows?<\/p>\n

No one seeing it now could avoid thinking of the attacks of September 11, 2001.\u00a0 And reading the words of the character Brian, who is in the waste management business, one realizes why the cover photos were an appropriate choice and how they captured DeLillo\u2019s story and the terrible future. Fresh kills and burials. The underworld. Brian thinks as he stands atop the mountains of waste at the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island and looks at the Twin Towers across the harbor: \u201cThe towers of the World Trade Center were visible in the distance and he sensed a poetic balance between that idea and this one.\u201d Does Brian know that soon nearly three thousand people will be wasted there?\u00a0 And that his twinning of the towers with waste would soon take on the creepiest of meanings. \u201cThe wind carried the stink across the kill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ezra Pound once said that artists are the antennae of the race.\u00a0 He seemed to be speaking of DeLillo, among others.\u00a0 Can artists intuit the future?\u00a0 Did DeLillo realize the fate of the Twin Towers? \u00a0How?<\/p>\n

When I read Underworld<\/em>, I was struck by its uncanny brilliance.\u00a0 This was in 1998.\u00a0 I recommended it to everyone I knew. No one would read it.\u00a0 It was too long \u2013 827 pages \u2013 and maybe something closer to the bone dissuaded them, as if its title was announcing dread and death and they preferred smiley faces. \u00a0Then, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, I again recommended it.\u00a0 No one took my suggestion to read it. Perhaps then it wasn\u2019t the length but its eerie insights. Its prescience.\u00a0 Its weirdness.\u00a0 Its references to the Twin Towers, terrorists, the view of the Towers from the Fresh Kills landfill where the debris from the attack was in fact later taken and laid to waste as fast as possible to avoid inspection, buried, the reference to germs and the fear of them, the need to wash your hands over and over, the traumatic looping of images on television, so much repetition, such frantic sex, loss of faith, nuclear dread, etc.\u00a0 The book was capacious and captivating and unnerving.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s your argument?\u201d one character asks another.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou asked, so I\u2019ll tell you.\u00a0 That the biggest secrets are staring us straight in the face and we don\u2019t see a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or don\u2019t want to.<\/p>\n

What are those open secrets now?<\/p>\n

DeLillo\u2019s latest book is The Silence<\/em>, which is called a novel but is really a long short story or a novella.\u00a0 But the categories don\u2019t matter.\u00a0 It\u2019s a meditation in words on silence, death, technology, and loss, always the heart of the matter and DeLillo\u2019s core themes. It is very short \u2013 117 pages of big print. All the characters talk gibberish, inanities that cut to the bone. It\u2019s hard to know whether to laugh or cry when hearing them talk. Yet much of their talk is frightening because it is the way people do talk to each other. The sounds of silence. What did you say?\u00a0 What?\u00a0 What did you say?\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember, I was texting.<\/p>\n

And like Underworld<\/em>, whose first 150 pages are devoted to the first nationally televised baseball game played on October 3, 1951 at New York\u2019s Polo Grounds that ended with a ninth inning home run by the Giants\u2019 Bobby Thompson that came to be called \u201cthe shot heard round the world,\u201d The Silence <\/em>centers around a group of five people gathering in 2022 to watch the Superbowl on a superscreen TV in a Manhattan apartment.<\/p>\n

Sport: from old French, desporter<\/em>, to divert; literally, to carry away. From what? To where?<\/p>\n

\u201cFilling time.\u00a0 Being boring.\u00a0 Living life,\u201d says Tessa to Jim who are on a plane returning from France.\u00a0 Jim is fixated on the screen in front of him that is flashing the plane\u2019s altitude, the temperature, time to destination.\u00a0 Tessa is writing in a small notebook her memories of what they saw on their trip so that in the years to come she may realize what she had missed, \u201csomething I don\u2019t see right now.\u201d Both killing time.\u00a0 Jim jabbers on about nothing, but he \u201cwasn\u2019t listening to what he was saying because he knew it was stale air.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in the NYC apartment a threesome is awaiting their arrival for the big viewing of the Superbowl. Drinks and snacks are ready.\u00a0 There sit Diane, Max, and Diane\u2019s former student, Martin, who is in his early thirties. Routine, boredom, and ennui await the kickoff and the arrival of the other couple and expected excitement. The national diversion on a small scale.\u00a0 A question hovers in the air: \u201cWhat are we doing here, that is the question,\u201d says Vladimir in Samuel Becket\u2019s Waiting for Godot<\/em>.\u00a0 \u201cAnd we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do we?<\/p>\n

Back on the plane, something happens, \u201ca massive knocking somewhere below them.\u00a0 The screen went blank.\u201d\u00a0 Knock, Knock.\u00a0 Who\u2019s there?\u00a0 Death. \u201cAre we afraid?\u201d she said.\u00a0 The plane crash-lands because all the electronics have failed.<\/p>\n

Back in the high-rise aerie, the threesome talk in clipped voices like the robotic Alexa. \u00a0While her husband Max sits and drinks bourbon and stares at the big screen, Diane, in search of something to excite her, prods the gangling Martin with absurd questions to which he quickly responds with gibberish that gives her a sexual frisson.\u00a0 Boredom is a powerful force.<\/p>\n

The kickoff is minutes away.\u00a0 \u201cSomething happened then.\u201d\u00a0 The images on the screen shake, get distorted, and then the screen goes blank.\u00a0 Their phones go dead.\u00a0 At first they think it is a local outage, but it soon becomes apparent that what happened on the plane was happening everywhere and that the entire electronic grid was down, all electricity, the internet out.\u00a0 Max keeps staring at the blank screen, cursing. He starts announcing out loud the invisible game:<\/p>\n

Play resumes, quarter two, hands, feet, knees, head, chest, crotch, hitting and getting hit.\u00a0 Super Bowl Fifty-Six. Our National Death Wish.<\/p>\n

Martin tells Diane he is taking a medication, and a side effect can be that others can hear your thoughts or control your behavior.\u00a0 \u201cYes, we all do this,\u201d he says.\u00a0 \u201cA little white pill.\u201d<\/p>\n

It seems madness has walked in.\u00a0 Blank screens.\u00a0 Disoriented minds.<\/p>\n

Soon Tess and Jim, after visiting the darkened hospital with others from the plane crash to have Jim\u2019s head wound attended to, walk to the apartment through darkening empty streets for the absent game.\u00a0 Martin says, \u201cAre we living in a makeshift reality?\u00a0 Have I already said this?\u00a0 A future that isn\u2019t supposed to take form just yet?\u201d<\/p>\n

The five sit and eat by candlelight as cold joins the darkness of the encroaching night.\u00a0 \u201cWas each a mystery to the others, however close their involvement, each individual so naturally encased that he or she escapes a final determination, a fixed appraisal by the others in the room?\u201d<\/p>\n

No one knows what has happened, who or what is behind the digital takedown. Or who they really are.\u00a0 Martin says, \u201cNobody want to call it World War III but this is what it is.\u201d\u00a0 His madness pours from his mouth, a ranting filled with the kinds of questions and thoughts many would think if the digital takedown really happened, the kinds of questions more and more people are now asking.\u00a0 Will DeLillo be prescient again: Is a digital “attack” coming soon?<\/p>\n

Martin\u2019s words:<\/p>\n

Certain countries.\u00a0 Once rabid proponents of nuclear arms, now speaking the language of living weaponry.\u00a0 Germs , genes, spores, powders.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

DeLillo:<\/p>\n

Cyberattacks, digital intrusions, biological aggressions.\u00a0 Anthrax, smallpox, pathogens.\u00a0 The dead and the disabled. Starvation, plague, and what else.\u00a0 Power grids collapsing.\u00a0 Our personal perception sinking into quantum dominance\u2026And isn\u2019t it strange that certain individuals have seemed to have accepted the shutdown, the burnout?\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The five of them sit and talk on and on in the silence. Each delivers a closing monologue, as if it\u2019s closing time and the last drinks have been served. Say what you want. What has happened?\u00a0 Speak. Was this foreseeable? \u00a0\u00a0Have we been zombified?\u00a0 Lost our ability to think, to communicate, to grasp what\u2019s happening around and within us?\u00a0 Have our digital addictions destroyed our humanity?\u00a0 Have we reached our expiration dates?\u00a0 Who is doing this to us?<\/p>\n

Your phone is wasted; don\u2019t seek its advice.<\/p>\n

Just as he seemed to perceive the attacks of September 11, 2001 four years before they occurred, does DeLillo know something that most would prefer to avoid?\u00a0 Are we like Tessa, who wishes to just go home and return to normality but who feels she is \u201cin a tumbling void\u201d?<\/p>\n

When her husband Jim hears her say something about home, \u201che realizes it is simply fake, a dead language.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHome,\u201d he says finally.\u00a0 \u201cWhere is that?\u201d<\/p>\n

DeLillo has been asking that for decades.<\/p>\n

Are we and he like Max, who ends the book understanding nothing and staring into a blank screen?<\/p>\n

Or can we see the biggest secret staring us straight in the face?<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t help thinking that DeLillo tipped his hand at the end of Underworld <\/em>when he has the book\u2019s protagonist, Nick Shay, born and bred like his creator in the Italian Arthur Ave. section of the Bronx, say what he longs for:<\/p>\n

I long for the days of disorder.\u00a0 I want them back, the days when I was alive on the earth, rippling in the quick of my skin, heedless and real.\u00a0 I was dumb-muscled and angry and real.\u00a0 This is what I long for, the breach of peace, the days of disarray when I walked real streets and did things slap-bang and felt angry and ready all the time, a danger to others and a distant mystery to myself.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Can we get back into our skins or are we doomed to tumble into a void?\u00a0 The signs are not too encouraging.<\/p>\n

My wife and I were recently hiking on a narrow mountain trail along which we encountered not a soul. We came to an isolated spot overlooking a valley to the east.\u00a0 We stopped, looked, and listened.\u00a0 Not a sound.\u00a0 Not even birds. Just beautiful silence. There was so much to hear there. When we continued on, we saw a couple with a dog up ahead.\u00a0 The man and woman each wore a mask.\u00a0 When they saw us, mask-less criminals, they quickly stepped off the trail.\u00a0 The woman pulled the dog close to her and the man took out and checked his phone.\u00a0 As we passed, they said not a word, but their eyes spoke fear.\u00a0 I was wondering if the man was texting the police.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Edward Curtin is a widely published author and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. His new book is <\/em>Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies<\/a> \u2013 His website: Behind the Curtain<\/a> – email: edcurtinjr@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

5 Dec 2020 – In 1997, Don DeLillo, the author of seventeen novels, published what many consider his masterpiece, Underworld. It was a prophetic book in many ways, especially with its focus on the World Trade Towers and the way the book\u2019s cover, front and back, pictured the towers shrouded in smoke or clouds with what seemed like a large bird approaching it at its upper floors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":174464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}