If a tree falls in the forest and there are no reporters around ...

I suppose I should acknowledge that it's Valentine's Day, even though I'm not a fan of the holiday. The fact that my SO is in San Francisco (and that we've actually never had a Valentine's Day together in all our five years as a couple) doesn't help matters much, but I suppose I could do worse for a dinner date than Don DeLillo. One of my favorite parts of White Noise so far is actually the relationship between Jack and Babette - they interact with each other so carelessly, so unthinkingly, simply because their places in each other's lives are confirmed. It's a comforting portrayal of stability in a book that seems to be about the exact opposite.

I just finished the first section ("Waves and Radiation"), and it's gotten a lot easier to read with concentration, now that I understand the particular type of concentration this book requires. I'm slightly bothered by the way his characters engage in dialogue - particularly the children, I suppose. I accept the ridiculousness of the dialogue between Jack and Murray because they are, after all, both fairly ridiculous professors in concentrations that lend themselves to overstatement and overanalysis. But what accounts for the odd preternatural tone in the discourse between his children? I know it's just part of the atmosphere of the novel, and I do realize this is intentional - a result of all the waves and radiation invading their mentalities. DeLillo obviously knew that his dialogue wasn't, perhaps, 100% realistic, but it still rubs me the wrong way.

One thing that struck me particularly towards the end of the section was a little snippet of dialogue that follows Jack's airport run-in with the stricken passengers of a flight that plummeted four miles, only to have its engines restart and carry on as though nothing had occurred. He has just listened to this long, terrifying saga, and Bee, his 13-year-old daughter, who came on a different flight, appears next to him.

"Where's the media?" she said.
"There is no media in Iron City."
"They went through all that for nothing?"

I find it unsettlingly true that, in today's culture, nothing seems to mean anything - or perhaps even exist - unless it is confirmed by some kind of media outlet. Which may, perhaps, be the force driving this huge blogging trend right now. Everyone wants their existence to be confirmed. To mean something. To be undeniably tangible - "Look, there's my name!" If you don't have a website link to stick up in your MySpace or Facebook profile, than who are you? The acceptance of mass media as a driving force in the world has created a sort of ontological hole in the universe. It's fascinating to me. And scary.

Anyway, Don DeLillo certainly knows how to pick apart America's bizarre struggle with existence and death, despite his sometimes fantastic dialogue.