Fed up with the interjections by that unaccountable narrative voice passing judgment on characters in Lucifer’s Hammer and yet a huge fan of subjectivity, I was glad to read the first-person P.O.V., “I” on the first page of White Noise.
Almost immediately we read Jack Gladney’s penchant for a Whitman-esque catalog technique to describe his life in Blacksmith. His lists introduce an intellectual’s quick satiric wit as well as bring to our attention, the “sorrowful weight” of the possessions that surround him as a professor, family man and citizen in the modern world. I’m convinced there’s something shameful about noticing slight changes in a product package design such as when Gladney spots “a white package of bacon without a plastic window for viewing a representative slice” in Siskind’s grocery basket. However, consumerism as an intellectual concept and not a practice is a separate, more complicated matter. In this same domestic scene, it seemed to Gladney that he and Babette, “in the mass and variety of [their] purposes, in the sheer plenitude those crowded bags suggested…in the sense of replenishment [they] felt…it seemed [they] had achieved a fullness of being.”
Is this said entirely tongue-in-cheek? I’m not so sure. Experiencing a shopping high during Christmastime, Gladney thinks: “I was bigger than these sums. These sums poured off my skin like so much rain. These sums in fact came back to me in the form of existential credit. I felt expansive.” Green, the source of revelation? Should I be worried?
Gladney’s choices of catalog subjects aren’t always material and even when they are, the objects imbue ideas. Upon arriving to school, his students remove “controlled substances, birth control pills and devices…Dum-Dum pops, the Mystic mints” from their cars that later serve as evidence of the “criminal pleasures” of a youth in summertime. We’re shown that the professor is a man of imagination. Meditating on the academic robes of department heads, Gladney characteristically says, “I like the idea,” and spins himself a fantasy. He often fantasizes to the point of hilarious hyperbole. Gladney’s imagination seems to fill in the holes between the materials of an “objective world.” But lists become increasingly disturbing, even volatile such as the following about his kids’ school being evacuated: “No one knew what was wrong. Investigators said it could be the ventilating system, the paint or varnish, the foam insulation, the electrical insulation, the cafeteria food” and on and on.
Suddenly, Gladney’s wit is troubling and cowardly. This list in particular is distant from his own imagination. He can’t see directly into his students’ suitcases and offers his best guesses; the evacuation report is no invention of his. The material world threatens to harm those dear to him. Is he a helpless owner of information?
The catalog structure resembles a physical accumulation of things, not necessarily a haphazard piling. Struck by the rich, dynamic language of White Noise, I prefer to think of it as an overflow of (desired and undesired) relevant knowledge. But is it all useful?