Rev Left Radio - White Noise: Postmodern Lit, Consumer Culture, & Thanatophobia

Episode Date: August 6, 2021

In this collaboration between The Left Page and Rev Left, Frank joins Breht to discuss the 1985 novel by Don DeLillo "White Noise". We discuss postmodern literature, the limitations of irony, American consumer culture, Brazilian politics, the fear of dying, fascism, the burning of the Amazon rainforest, the impact of technology on modern life, and so much more!   Check out, subscribe to, and support The Left Page: - https://leftpage.libsyn.com/ - https://www.patreon.com/leftpage/posts - https://twitter.com/leftpagepod ----- Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, I'm actually being interviewed by Frank from the Left page about the book from 1985, Don DeLillo's White Noise. While we start off the conversation in the first 20 minutes or so discussing the book itself and some of its major themes and postmodernism as a genre, etc., we quickly sort of shift into a much broader conversation about Brazilian politics and American politics, the ecological crisis, and many, many more things. Like, it really, it went in totally different directions than I thought it would, and I think that's true for Frank as well. But it was a really fascinating conversation. And I think what's important to note here up front is that you don't have to have read Don DeLillo's White Noise or even know what the hell it is to enjoy this conversation.

If you could make it through the first 20 minutes talking about a book you might not have read, The conversation really opens up after that, and we do a wide-ranging discussion on a bunch of topics. And, of course, some of you may know that Frank lives in and is headquartered in Brazil. So these parallels that we draw between the Brazilian far-right and the American far-right, the postmodern fracturing of narratives and the rise of conspiracy theories, how social media and the new sort of hyper-modern media outlets lend themselves to this stuff. we just we cover a bunch and that difference that contrast or the similarities between Brazilian and American politics I think are particularly interesting we get into the burning down of the Amazon and Bolsonaro and a bunch of different stuff but yeah go

definitely go check out Frank's podcast the left page especially if you're interested in literature broadly or history broadly he does a really wonderful job going through some fascinating texts and has on some fascinating guests so I really cannot recommend the left page enough. Without further ado, here's my discussion with Frank on Don DeLillo's White Noise and so much more. Hello everyone. Welcome back to the left page. I am Frank. You're always online historian, academic, writer. And today, I am here to talk about a very particular 1985 novel called White Noise by Don DeLillo. And to talk about it, I am joined by an amazing friend who runs an absolutely

incredible show and has been doing fantastic work for quite some time. He inspired me to do the left page and a bunch of other things and a lot of my work and my politics have been aided, helped, and assisted by Brett O'Shea from Revolutionary Left Radio. Welcome.

Yeah, thank you. I'm excited to be here for sure and thank you for the incredibly kind words. I really appreciate that. It's true though. Like, you you've been doing amazing work and to be able to spend some time chatting and doing a bit of my own work with literature with you here. It's pretty amazing. Absolutely. I'm excited. Yeah. So you want to maybe talk a bit about why you chose this book since you chose it. Sure. Yeah. Well, it's funny because when we were figuring out a book to read, I just sort of looked back at a book that I had read many years ago. I think I read this for the first time in my early 20s. And I remember really being impacted by

it. And I think in retrospect, you know, having reread it now, I think the obviously big thing that it hit me with at the time and why it resonated so deeply with me was this persistent anxiety surrounding death that sort of haunts the entire novel and is certainly a main theme of the book. And through my teens and into my 20s, all the way up into an existential crisis that we can perhaps talk about later on the episode, I too had this reoccurring, crippling, and anxious fear around my own mortality. And to see that fear of death in a culture specifically that goes out of its way to sort of hide death and push death onto the fringes, hide it in hospice care and retirement homes and not really deal with it that is hyper-focused on productivity at all

cost. You don't really get a lot of real sincere explorations of death and the anxiety around it. People will become very uncomfortable if you try to talk about it. They'll poo-poo it. They'll make some joke and move on to a new topic. So I think at the time that really got me. And then when you said, let's pick a book, I said, I really liked that book. So let's do that. And they really gave me a chance to revisit a book that I really remembered. And I think this time around, you know, with my political growth, with my just intellectual growth more broadly, it hit me a little different. I still like it a lot. And I think maybe we'll have some differences there. I'm by no means an expert on literature. I come out of philosophy and politics.

So getting into literature is sort of a side interest of mine. I've always enjoyed novels and various authors and whatnot. But, you know, perhaps I have some blind spots that you'll be able to point out and exploit throughout this episode. I mean, I come from a history background, so I'm filling those gaps literally at the moment. So it's a bit of fun time doing that. But yeah, I was selling, but before we started recording. that like I enjoy the book and I think there's a lot of interesting stuff and it's going to make for a great conversation but there were a lot of things that I just didn't like or didn't

necessarily gel with me and we'll get on them but yeah it's the fear of death it's interesting because kind of how it can happen a lot it is subterraneous for a lot of the novel and then it starts popping up and then it becomes a bit present and just all around be it as facing your own mortality and mortality in others and understanding grief and how, well, we don't. So that's definitely something, I don't know, I think that especially, you know, I'm fairly young. So it doesn't, it pops up quite a lot because, you know, climate change and everything going on and the pandemic, that becomes a persistent matter of facing like, so. I could die, oh, but it still feels somewhat more distant or at least, you know, you're trying to, especially as I read and working a lot as well separately with Gothic and horror literature, where that comes up a lot. So trying to engage with that and understanding like, okay, what is my engagement with mortality, with my own death and that as a phenomenon and at times like a spiritual understanding of that.

So it's something that is also present here and, you know, kind of more relevant even today or these past couple of years or recently and to remain so for quite some time. Yeah, absolutely. There's a prescience here that we can talk about. And I also think it's a very American novel. It's very much about many things, but partially that fear of death, manifesting in a sparkling, glimmering sort of facade of American society, you know, these huge shopping malls, these huge grocery stores, a very comfy, cozy little suburban life where

by all outward measures, there's no reason to fear, right? You've sort of been extracted from the nasty, brutish, and short life of life in nature. And for some reason, instead of alleviating that fear, it somehow heightens it. There's like an asymmetry and a contrast that makes it even worse. And then the society itself, the sparkling, glimmering facade of consumer capitalist American society is the thing that is causing the ecological crisis, causes the poisoning of his own body. And so there's this two, this is double-edged sword. There's the way the society appears and then the rotten underbelly of that society. and if the pandemic and climate change and the what he wrote this in 85 so the 35 some years since he wrote this has proven anything is that that is more and more true except the facade is starting to crumble and the rotten underbelly is starting to appear more obvious and explicit to more and more people so in that sense i think it's an interesting read to go back to the 80s and and try to you know read about read an american novel about american society at that time and think of how things have shifted

and changed in really interesting ways. And that's part of the reason I like this book as well. Oh, yeah. And especially a lot of different themes feel very familiar. I think about knowledge and information, and we'll get to that soon and about news and disbelief, especially with discussions like fake news and the like. But even the ecological disasters and climate change

and this glistening mask that is very, present in American society and exported all over the world the book feels very recent at the same time that it feels very much of its time you know those kind of things especially in terms of like style I think that that becomes a very clear

at least in such a and I guess that is sort of the point of like a very American portrayal of American society that feels very clear that felt very clear to me but it was also an interesting experiment and I think it works that there are some things and especially as we talk about academia that is yes this this could

this could pretty much basically happen in america and maybe a few other places but not to this degree so that struck me's like yes i i can definitely believe this yeah the parody of academia and the parody of hyper specialization and the sort of self-importance that a certain sort of academic can take on and the sort of detachment from everyday life that can sometimes be seen in those in those areas I think struck me as struck me as particularly funny and interesting and you know that's the thing about the book I don't know if you agree with this but I found it like hilariously funny even reading it back then I remember laughing out loud multiple occasions reading it again like some of the same exact little passages make me break out laughing

I had to read some out loud to my wife as I'm going through it at night before we go to sleep, just like sort of howling at some of the hilarity in the book. Did you find it to be a funny book at all? I think that at times it can be quite funny. I found it mostly annoying. I'm sorry. That's all right. But if taking it at a lighter tone, it's probably a lot more funny.

Well, let me ask you this then. What is the, if you could summarize your main critique, or, you know, pin it down into like a couple sentences. What would you say is the fundamental flaw or the reason that you did not particularly enjoy the novel? I think that I'm making a comparison as well in my head, which is kind of unfair because of what a bit about how like, and I think this in terms of like genre,

because as I was researching the book a bit, I found that it was sort of classified as a post-modernist book. And we can go on whatever the hell that means or not. But regardless of that, it is trying to tell a story in a different sort of way. So it incorporates, like, news, it incorporates, like, ads and propaganda all of the time. There's a sort of disconnection between the characters, events, and even the stories, the chapters are very short most of the time. So the story feels a lot very cut up, which I think is kind of the point, too. but I think stylistically

I just don't think it works because I don't think it's doing anything particularly different it's incorporating these events is a sort of cut up story so I don't really like that but I think what sort of and I was mentioned that it annoyed me

a bit more especially because I am there's a lot to this portray which is very kind of realistic and kind of pessimistic or like pushing characters

and sort of portrayals to a certain extreme. So like the family relationship, some of the characters' attitudes and portrayals, maybe if I did take the book a little less seriously, I would have enjoyed it or actually found it funny. But trying to take it, you know, kind of seriously and facing the book,

it struck me as a bit, I'm not going to say high-minded, because I don't think that's it. I think, and sorry for not giving a short answer at all. That's okay. It's a complicated topic, yeah. but it being it's trying to portray

this societal experience and via characters that I just I don't think I didn't find them I found moments of them realistic and others just very frustrating and just sort of okay I see what you're trying to do or portray this but I don't

I don't okay I get it so that was a lot of my experience reading it that's fair it's like yeah or go ahead do you have anything else to say on that yeah no I think it's just it it's it feels like the what it's trying to put forward and present via these characters is reinforced a lot of the time so it's like yes I get what you're saying is there more to it and in that sense like this is going to be very harsh but I yeah I'd rather have read an essay than a novel if this was the point I see and I'm being a bit of a dramatic to it it's not all that but I feel like there was

a lot to it that was trying to put forward these particular ideas or at least these particular interpretations and these images or scenes that I don't I won't say feel repetitive but can wear me that warm me out I think yeah I think

that's fair and I think we talked about this before we started recording I had a friend who said that you know she her critique was that it it is solipsistic, right? Or another way to say it is it's sort of over intellectualized, it's navel gazing, and I think

that is a fair critique. Do you think that general idea sort of applies to what you're saying here? Yeah, I think so. And I think that's what's interesting. I'm not sure I'd do it, but maybe in a few years or sometime, like reread it with the sort of lighter tone.

Because I was reminded at one time or another, but I just, I didn't connect enough with a book to put push forward that reading of a Brazilian realist novel from the late 19th century called the posthumous memories of brass cubas which is sort of similar but I feel like the humor is even more pronounced as this sort of wealthy elite aristocratic Brazilian landowner and how he's like he attempts to be sort of high-minded and naval gazing but and like this is if you try and take it seriously, you're probably going to end up annoyed, but if you take it

lightless, like, oh, this is, this is pure satire, then that makes a lot of sense. And I wonder if taking white noise as satire would be more amusing or more fruitful to read, I think. I think that's right. And I think I take it more like that than perhaps you did. And maybe that explains some of the disparity in our enjoyment. I mean, I think this is a hyper, sort of self-conscious, classic postmodern literary work that is meant to satirize a certain sort of person, a certain sort of culture, and the humor is very dark, black humor, and it is, I think Delillo is conscious that he's writing these characters in this sort of absurd and, you know, overly self-infatuated, navel gazee to use that term again, way. And so I really do read it

in that in that spirit and i think that light satirical sort of reading might lend it a different quality so perhaps if you ever go back and reread it i think that would be helpful to to take that approach to it not that necessarily one is wrong or right but i can certainly agree with you that if you sort of take it at face value and don't emphasize the satirical parody aspect of it that it can come off as overly solipsistic and sort of taking itself way too seriously etc so maybe that explains a lot of the disparity here yeah yeah I think that makes sense interesting because like it's part of the book all the same like there are moments where there is the sort of sincerity to it and it's like hmm interesting but I don't think it was

ever enough to on its own like driving to like oh this is satire like oh maybe maybe this is satire but yeah I think you've you've generally convinced me to like maybe someday I'll go back to it and look at it under this different view it could be fun it could be it could it will definitely be more fun. Yeah, for sure. All right, well, where do you want to go next with this? Just because, you know, the story is a few different things, but just as a simple, like, this is kind of what happens in the book.

We follow sort of the time in the life of Jack Gladney. His family, his, you know, in adventures, so to speak, in this sort of small town of Blacksmith. And his, a bit about his life, having created this field. of Hitler's studies, his family relationship, what was called like the airborne toxic event, which a lot about climate change and, shall we say, like, reactions to it or actions to it, or it's sort of reception, so to speak, and a lot more in the final section of the book, which is sort of dialorama, which is a lot about this fear of death and comforting or facing

these aspects. So it's essentially Jack Lanny is this main character that we follow. We follow mostly his thoughts, his sense, his relationship with his family, with his children, and yeah, that's

essentially it. So, where do you want to start? I want to start with academia with Hitler studies. We could talk about that. We could talk about what postmodern, maybe touch a little bit on postmodern literature itself, because Because I think this – yeah, this book is written in 1985, or at least that's when it's published.

I think it's really his first breakout novel, and it goes on to influence the David Foster Wallace's and the Franzenes and a bunch of other American postmodern writers in the next couple of decades. And, you know, postmodern literature, postmodern anything, it's a huge sort of bag of things that you pull from. But some elements of postmodern literature is this self-consciousness. this irony, this dark humor, this hyperrealism, playing on the Baldriard concept of a simulacrum, the concept of the hyperreal. There's a quote from Baldriard. I can't even ever say his name.

How would you say it? Baldriard. Pull it from my sort of non-existent French accent, which I can replicate fairly well. Bodriard. Okay. Yeah, it's better than I'll be able to do. I remember I said I once pronounced Al Thuze as Althusay, trying to be a little too French, and I got a biting email just chastising me for it.

So I try not to pronounce things. But, you know, a quote from him is this whole idea of like the replication, the simulation of the reel, the idea that like you're substituting signs of the reel for the real itself. And that comes up sort of implicitly throughout the novel, how it's structured. And I think that gets a little bit into the irony and the satire we were just discussing. But then it also becomes explicit when like the airborne toxic event happens. And you have this simuvac sort of organization, which is a simulated evacuation. And they're all about simulating disasters and practicing on dealing with them. But in this context, a real disaster has happened.

happening, but they're still conceptualizing it as if it is them simulating a real disaster. So, again, it's a sort of disorienting postmodern sort of thing that happens there. And then with the toxic airborne event itself, you know, I think we can read back into it climate change. And in the middle 80s, I'm not sure how many people knew about it. Like scientists knew about it. ExxonMobil certainly knew about it. And the stories were starting to appear. it was still pretty fringe, I would think.

So I think what the airborne toxic event is more about is like just the toxic pollutants of industrial or post-industrial American society, the pharmaceutical companies at this time the big eco-crisis was the depletion of the ozone layer. So I think that's what he's really focusing on with the airborne toxic event. But reading back, you can play into themes of pandemic and climate change quite well, this amorphous cloud of destruction that is coming towards us, right? You could definitely see that as climate change itself. I don't know exactly what he himself was thinking, but I would think in the cultural moment of the time, it was more about like just toxic pollutants and corporate runoff in the ozone layer

itself. It just so happens that the very systems that created those things go on to create climate change more broadly. Yeah, I think it's sort of this kind of prelude to the larger discussions of climate change that you that aren't here because as you put it like it wasn't that widespread but this is sort of in that same line or one of the points off of these types of contaminations these spellages and the like and I yes I kept thinking about what we are as I as I read it because not only are they treating reality as a simulation, but afterwards they remain around the town to keep watch if the contaminant levels are diminishing, if everything's okay, and also running other simulations, and

when an actual sort of contamination happens, people don't react as they simulated and prepared to do. So by that point, those things are intrinsically lost, like the simulation is of far higher value than reality or possible reality can ever be. Yeah, absolutely. Well said. And that point I made earlier about the underside of American society, it is the thing that's creating these ecological crises that poisons Jack Gladney. We can talk about whether he's really poisoned or not,

but that he believes that he is poisoned by this airborne toxic event because he gets out and pumps gas for two minutes while the cloud is hovering over him. But I think that theme is also reintegrated into the novel itself implicitly through the sunsets that take place after the airborne toxic events. So because of the pollutants in the sky or maybe the microbacteria released to break up the pollutants in the sky, the sunsets in Blacksmith, which is just like a generic suburban Midwestern small town, are beautiful. They're like awe-inspiring. Everybody notices, um, there's like, it's a very more intense sunset than anybody's ever seen before. And so that I think is speaking to that earlier theme of the facade of the

sparkling, glimmering American consumer society, this sort of disorienting glamour to it, but it's shaped and structured and is given rise to through the sort of downstream effects of what it takes and how hard it hurts the planet to create that glimmering facade. And I think the sunset and the pollutants and the fact that the sunsets are much more beautiful after the chemical event is another way of weaving that theme into the story itself. Yeah, because contamination and these violence, these disasters are, they are attractive by the characters throughout the story, but now it's throughout this event, even after all this,

it also has this sort of astonishing beauty to it. And there's like, in a sense, even we as readers are sort of like, but look what happened afterwards. Look at all at this majestic beauty now after this horrible chemical spillage. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, philosophically speaking, there's the concept, I think it comes from Kant, the Kantian sublime. And for Kant, the sublime is this equal mix of, you know, spectacular beauty and awe-inspiring

terror. So, you know, maybe watching an intense cloud or intense storm, you know, come in over your city or this, a giant tidal wave, you know, rolling in from the ocean, or looking up at the night sky when there's no light pollution and just being sort of disoriented by the expanse of the cosmos itself, you know, in Kahn's terminology, he talks about this as being the sublime, this mixture of beauty and terror. And I think that theme. is like the philosophical grounding of that particular theme more broadly, which I found to be interesting. True.

It makes sense. Especially having had this, although it is scary, it is impressive. The cloud itself is sort of quite a view, especially as like more helicopters appear and illuminated and all around it. So it is the choice of wars that the airborne toxic event, it really is an event in a sense that, and I think, this book has an interesting sense of that as like there isn't a capital E event that is sort of like an absolute doom, an apocalypse, so to speak, but there are occasional events that are like incredibly passing and ephemeral, but as a societal as, as, you know, the poisoning as death, as the fear of death, as these relationships break down. and all that that we see throughout the story,

there isn't anything in particular to trigger those. They're just there in the background happening. It's this idea of, and especially recently in regards to our situation, of like this slow collapse, and there isn't this capital E event. The one that is in the actual story even then is incredibly passing.

And like, yes, there are memories, there are, its effects, it's contaminants really, in Jack Lanie regardless of whether they're there or not it's not the absolute change it's very it's one point it's one moment and then it's it's sort of fading away although its effects

and it's others like it are there yeah yeah I mean it lives on in you know presumably inside of his body the men in mylex suits and the German shepherds stick around for a long period of time and so it becomes sort of of integrated into the overall society itself and just becomes the background noise, you know,

part of the white noise that the book is named after these, the sort of background, ambient chaos of American society. Sometimes it's little chunks that the TV in another room, you know, pierces through your consciousness, little snippets from the radio, or it's these, these, yeah, this non-event, really, that lives on in these various ways. And, you know, thinking about the non-event event is sort of interesting in light of climate change because the climate change is never going to be one big event. It's not going to be like, you know, the aliens come down and now all of a sudden this is the event and everything is, you know, inexorably changed afterwards. It's this slow bleeding into reality.

And that's sort of, that's sort of its, it's terror is that we've seen over the pandemic. I mean, Brazil and America specifically, how much death people will accept, how quickly people adapt to a new situation. We have a global pandemic that none of us have ever lived through and have no idea what to do. At first, there's a lot of terror, then there's political arguments, then it just becomes, you're on that side. I believe in masks and vaccinations. I'm on this side. I don't believe in math. You know, and then it just gets absorbed into the general ambient background noise of society.

Same with mass shootings in American society specifically. when they first started happening it was huge you know columbine was talked about for months on on every major news channel now we get three a day and unless there's 50 plus people dead nobody even notices um and so it's it's this terrible horrifying reality that in this case american society but societies perhaps more broadly can just absorb and adapt to these new things and so that is that sets us up for for climate change you know how much of this will be adapted and integrated and become the background white noise of our everyday society and what will it take to make people, you know, rise up in mass and demand real structural change.

The pandemic killed a World War I and a World War II amount of Americans combined and half the country didn't even believe it was real. So that sort of creeping terror is something that I think is going to become more and more relevant as climate change and its effects begin to continue and intensify the raining down upon us. Yeah, this entire discussion of information and understanding

these events, as non-events, as things that become incorporated that are like, oh, this is just the new normal, which is one of the worst expressions I've ever heard in my entire life, especially last year, and so on. But

it very much is that notion of like, oh, this is just another thing. to deal with. It becomes new white noise. It's not a real concern. It's not something to be worried about. It's just, it's just another thing that you can carry on day by day. And it's incredibly interesting because, you know, talking and thinking about the novel and as I was making the outline too, one of the things that I did forget, and I think it's sort of the point. Early on in the story, there is this sort of contamination in the school in the city. And at least one of I don't remember how many people die

but at the very least one of the people with Mylex suits in the investigation team dies from it and nobody knows what it is and it's just there and then it's like oh it becomes background noise we don't know what happens elsewhere like we imagine oh

it was fixed and things went back to school and everything carried on but it was it's pretty scary thing but it's just another part of background noise yeah you know in that sense, the title is

incredibly key to it. It's about these various white noises that start to come together, that is that are at times like events, that are contaminations, that are spillages, that are these dangers, these accidents,

these horrible things, but they're just oh, it's just another thing. Hmm. Carry on. Exactly. Yeah, and with that earlier event, of the school, this is impacting children, you know, like as a parent, Yes. Like that you would be horrified at this, but it is just sort of accepted and sort of, you know, hand waved away as if not a big deal.

They're handling it. The experts are taking care of it. No reason to really worry. And it kind of just reminded me as you were talking about, I was just talking about mass shootings and like, you know, Columbine was huge. But then we had Sandy Hook, which was also huge. I mean, little baby kindergartners mowed down by the dozens. And we just integrated that as well. And, you know, in American society, that was the moment of like, are we going to do something?

something about this settler gun culture in American society, or are we not? You know, if going into a school as a 19-year-old person with severe, you know, mental illness and mowing down a bunch of kids isn't going to make us even ask for background checks at gun shows, I mean, what will it take? And the truth is, nothing will be able to stop it because it's just the background culture of American society. So mass shootings are just going to keep happening. And ever since then, they have done just that. And, you know, this book, you can critique it for being solipsistic and navel-gazy and all the things that we talked about earlier.

But I think there also is, if you pull back to service a little bit, a genuine critique of capitalism, of consumer society, of the ecological catastrophe necessitated by the construction of American society and the pathology of American citizens in our society. And for that reason, that's something I think I, I love. largely missed as a much younger person when my politics weren't fully fleshed out. But as my political understanding has grown, I can sort of see much more of that on a second reading than I did on the first. Oh yeah. That much is very clear, I think, because while there is a sort of, there's a great deal of satire and criticism elsewhere and this very dark humor,

But there is also an engagement and understanding of, like, via certain images, via a certain, even, like, the, you know, we're talking about reality and simulation. That is a pretty important understanding of how to engage with these disasters in terms of preparation, understanding, and this whole idea of, like, media and this American culture, which is a lot of the time, like, just this consumer culture and just this sort of. cultural domination via these larger brands and you know we can think and consider how that has even strengthened itself in the past couple of decades but there is a great deal to understand to get from from this book that allows this critique to happen

that the book is also doing and I think that regardless of the books on limits and even getting the satire understanding limits and whatever, taking all that into account, the book also gives you interesting tools to criticize and to understand American society. And especially reading this book younger, I can imagine that it offered some very interesting tools and readings that you maybe won't have otherwise. And that right now, okay, you look at something else as something that engages with other types of aspects or that has a very different perspective than just the satirical

an ironic one, but that served its purpose in its time and it was incredibly interesting because I think it is, even if it didn't necessarily was that enjoyable an experience or I didn't personally like it as much or have some critiques of it, I still think it can and it does serve its purpose. I mean, we're here talking about it and it's giving us the tools and the possibility to have this larger discussion about the themes, the story and beyond and that is good on his own too. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, the critique, as you were talking, I keep thinking of things when you say other things, but the idea that the role that consumption plays in American society, you know, this was written 16 years

before 9-11, but Delilah would not be surprised at all in the wake of 9-11 that George Bush came out, if you remember, and told Americans, keep shopping. Like, that was the big message right away. It was keep shopping because, you know, with this terrorist attack, everybody's shaken, the economy, which is just completely driven by, you know, conspicuous, endless consumption. We needed that to continue going, even in the wake of this apparent tragedy. And so Bush came out and actually said that, you know, Americans, the best thing you can do for your country right now is to continue shopping. And that would, that could be in the pages of this book as like a satirical, ironic comment from some leader. but that is just American society and so I thought that was interesting

and then as he's this is in the 80s he's talking about the effective technology on our social relations you know the truth being mediated through the TV and the radio and part of the whole idea of white noises it's this background hum of media and

television and radio sets and that sort of distorts our thinking and creeps into our minds and becomes the sort of mediation between us and our own reality, well, that's only become more and more true with the rise of the internet and social media. Again, in the 80s, so the very early days of the internet when most people weren't even on it, and the internet makes no appearance in this book. It's just

TV and radio. But that's just become more and more true, this sort of mediating your experience of reality through back then, TV and radio today, social media, and it's getting further and further flung from the actual reality and truth on. the ground. For instance, here in the U.S., we have, and I'm sure your right-wing mirrors this in a lot of ways, the right-wing in America is now just a completely conspiratorial party. It operates on a whole other plane of reality. Anti-vaxxers used to be a pretty fringe aspect of society that everybody, politics aside, would largely make fun of, and now it's just the basic baseline belief of one of the two major parties in American society, the idea that the election was

stolen from Trump, right? An objectively untrue fact is now believed by over 75% of registered Republicans in American society. And that really shows how the truth is just utterly detached from reality. And because of technology like social media and the internet more broadly and TV shows like Fox News, it can be bent in any shape that is serviceable to certain interests that have the money to do the bending. And so, yeah, as we've said earlier, those things are just becoming more and more true,

not less true, as American society sort of circles the drain. Yeah, yeah, it's not too dissimilar here in terms of like it's just another deep conspiracy that, oh, it's, I mean, to get an example, even from before, Bolsonaro became president that because he was stabbed during the campaign before the election

and there was this whole idea that like oh but he was apparently a member from one of the left parties and it was all a large conspiracy in order to stop him and it's like he was he was apparently someone who acted violently

due to some personal issue and something it was never very clear But it was definitely not something of this, but it was all about connecting it to these particular worker labor parties and that, oh, they are the ones conspiring against and even trying to kill him when that was just blatantly not true. And a lot of that information was false and misleading. And, you know, even nowadays we're talking about information and that. on the one hand we have these highly conspiratorial far right or extreme right wing parties and groups and we also have you know liberal media just you know we have an expression in brazil

which is incredibly useful for that which is basically to use a rag to clean it up as if that was possible and just you know trying to but oh but it's about this and that it's not about this like i read now absolutely awful articles some months back about how like oh but it is actually the repression to fascist ideas and stopping them from divulging their thoughts that actually was responsible for their growth or that assisted it and I was like shut up shut up that's blatantly not true and it's just awful yeah yeah no it's it's incredibly scary and like with climate change too like there's that whole element there where we have a huge chunk of our society that just doesn't believe it's true um that it's just not happening and it's like the signs are all around

you like the west is on fire every summer i just went up to a Seattle during the the hottest it's ever been in Seattle and recorded human history um you know droughts floods everything it could not be more clear and yet no matter that the reality is right there in front of you there's still a huge chunk of people who just absolutely refuse to believe it and and think it is all a conspiracy by the communists to overthrow capitalism. It is fucking deranged. You know, Bolsonaro is sort of an interesting figure because we only get snapshots from Brazilian politics. And it seems every time I see a picture of Bolsonaro, he has like a feeding tube and he's shirtless on a gurney somewhere.

Oh, yeah, he's not looking great at all. He looks like shit. Yeah, I know. What the fuck. But he is, he's in the worst day you've ever seen. I love the idea of a big machismo man And every time I see him He's keeled over with a catheter shoved up his ass

Pretty much It's very much pathetic In the worst sense And this is like the level of conspiracy The level of belief in this group Or in the far right that Oh but it's just it's him powering through It's him being strong for his children

for his family, for his country. And like he's just being an asshole the whole time. He's sitting in his own diarrhea and vomit, and somehow that's still a sign of his his vitality. Yeah, basically.

It's pretty much it. Oh, something I don't, I actually don't want to forget to mention it, and I'll do it now. There's been, amongst the various sort of propaganda and ads that we get lately, especially here in Brazil, amongst, you know, various coaches and day traders

wanting you to get your first million and those pyramids games we also get like certain far right pretty much groups there's like oh no but you need to educate yourself properly so the latest one that I've been seeing well there's one that's called parallel Brazil which is

I mean the latest if I can even call it such documentary is about how the the smoke that comes from the Amazon rainforest fires are from the disinformation and fake news and not from actual fires. And I'm like, fuck off. Oh, my God.

Seriously. It's basically like propaganda for the agribusiness. Yeah. It's just it. It's like, and there's this guy saying how like, oh, the agribusiness is peace. I'm like, are you serious? Are you even serious? Absolutely why.

So, yeah, that was, that was vile. And the latest one, it's called uncommon sense that like, oh, you need to educate yourself and you need to read proper. and the latest that I saw very dramatic was like, what was the script again? The Pentagon is not only investing in military technologies

yes, that Pentagon but it's also investing on disinformation and not just via fake news. Have you noticed how the media ejectivates you or adjectives us are calling us fascists negationists

outright, obscurantists come to this class and I show you how they do that. And you know how it's called? Infor War. Amazing. Beautiful. I couldn't make this shit up even if I try. That is absolutely horrifying. And, you know, speaking of postmodernism, you can talk about postmodern literature, philosophy, but there's postmodern culture, a la Frederick Jameson. And one of the things that that happens and is happening and continues to happen is this fracturing of narrative reality, this fractioning of reality into any, you could you know, break it into a million pieces, pick up any piece you want and see whatever, you know,

morbid, grotesque reflections of reality you want to see in the thing. And I think that is behind both the right in Brazil and the right in America's complete delusional spiral into conspiracy land. And with the Amazon in particular, I do have a question about that because, you know, we're watching it up here. We see stuff like now, like at least a section of the Amazon is no longer sequestering carbon, but is a net releaser of it due to the slashing of the Amazon for cattle raising and soybean

production. Is it just a huge story all over in Brazil? I mean, I know the right wing has its own absurd fun house mirror version of it, but it's like the mainstream media covering it as like an urgent issue. It's very much the white noise. Like it's

there, but it's, uh, what can you do? I mean, there are various indigenous groups and people's like actively protesting and you know doing what they can to stop this because you know in terms of law projects and the like to basically expand the agribusiness and to allow this confiscation or this use the patient of land a lot of the time from proceeding and carrying on at horrifying speeds so it's it's barely covered it shows up occasionally it it is an active ongoing problem very much so and what we follow and what we end up being shown

a lot of the time is sort of these occasional moments or situations of like oh there's this new project and these various groups are processing about it although i'm following them and trying to get more of what they're actually trying to do in a longer run not just oh it's because this a specific thing. No, it's a larger scope. But a lot of the time, it has become this background noise. Oh, the Amazon rainforest is being destroyed. Yeah, sucks. And what we see, I think, are like these sort of more vile ways of increasing or expanding or accelerating that process in terms of allowing these lands to be owned by agribusiness,

by these larger landowners and, you know, basically taking land from indigenous peoples, even more so. So that is pretty much how it's going. Like, you know, they're resisting, absolutely, in all forms, ways, and shapes. But it is very much an ongoing situation that constantly threatens to get worse and worse in its dynamic, so to speak. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like it's going to come.

to a head at some point because something like the Amazon basin and the Amazon rainforest more broadly is just so crucial to the overall health of the planet and the biosphere that there might eventually either Brazil gets its shit together through indigenous resistance, getting Bolsonaro out, you know, getting somebody like Lula or somebody even further left into office, et cetera, and protects the Amazon or at some point like other countries are going to see that this needs to be stopped. But, you know, this is this new world we're entering where Nobody's sequestered in their national borders anymore. The problem has spilled out of national borders, and it is all global all the time, and the contradictions that that gives rise to.

I do think also that there is a death drive in the right wing, specifically in settler colonial societies. This death drive, you see it in Bolsonaro, fuck it, burn the rainforest, you see it in Donald Trump, you know, climate change is a hoax made by the Chinese, like drill baby drill, you know, Trump opened up millions. of acres that were once publicly protected lands and to hand it over to the fossil fuel corporations for plundering and extraction. And it's like this, this pathology in the settler mentality that is just, it would rather just destroy everything and go down in a blaze of unglory than it would to just stand back and take into account other people and think about the future. It's really morbid and the fracturing of narratives and this this extreme drive to plunder and exploit the last few you know areas of the planet while the whole fucking thing burns it is incredibly incredibly

scary and I think properly pathological yeah no I think that makes sense because it's such a level of like devouring everything that can be taken all the time that it is astonishing and it is very much scary but in a sense it's like it goes beyond beyond any sort of reason or even emotion it's too much and it is I think it's no exaggeration to put it as pathological to the extent degree and intensity that it is and that it has been going lately a lot of the time yeah yeah no other animal does to its environment what the human animal does to its environment. It's horrifying. All right. Well, do you want to keep talking about this book? Yeah, sure. I mean, I do love that we talked about this question about media,

of information and ecology, because it's an interesting conversation to be had, especially because a lot of the time I felt when it was starting to become a thing that it was understood a lot by liberal media that it is, oh, the danger of fake news and this new thing as an event when it, even that, that's a very strong push because it's not really, these are just better weaponized now, you know, fake news are as well as human history pretty much, and that's why to talk about this point in specific, the book sort of, a lot of the discussions feel familiar. For example, like in the airborne toxic event,

we have the characters leave you and go to sort of camping site that's far from the city in order to be away from like the billowing cloud or whatever name it takes. It takes multiple names throughout the chapter, eventually becoming the

airborne toxic event. And the various rumors and information and ideas that like, oh, but it's supposed to be this, but it's supposed to do that. And the various side effects that the contamination can have, that it's, I don't remember them all, but it's supposedly like headaches and vomiting or like, and there's like, um, sweating palms and. Deja vu. Deja vu, which is, uh, incredibly interesting. Uh, and eventually it's like coma

and death. And they, they refuse Jack and, I think Jack and one of his children, like Heinrich, uh, refused to tell his wife and younger sister because they they were apparently feeling the symptoms as they heard it or something along those signs and they were like we'd better not tell them just in case yeah exactly as if to reveal the new information would spark in them the very symptoms that the new information was revealing are supposed to be there exactly yeah and there's that interesting thing you just mentioned about the naming of the thing. The first, the first name that came through the radio was a featherly plume, right? So kind of, kind of anodyne, you know, not so bad. Featherly plumes can be dealt with. And then it's called, then they said they've changed

the name. What are they calling it now? A black billowing cloud. And then a little bit later, they're changing it again. It's now a toxic airborne event. And it is, it is funny because the way that language shifts and frames the reality itself, I think, is the point in using that sort of device to talk about this unknown thing. But again, you know, to bring it back to climate change, it's like it started off as global warming. That's not so bad, you know, warming. Global warming, it gets a little hotter. The summers are a little nicer. Who cares? You know, and now it's like, no, this is actually more than just warming. It's his global change. Okay, well, that's more broad. It's certainly a little bit more early.

urgent, but, you know, change is inevitable. Everything changes. And I now, I have long for a while now, I've been thinking that, like, we need to, to move the dial on this language thing again. Like, I've been using words like climate chaos or the destabilization of the biosphere, maybe not as punchy as climate change, but it gets closer to the reality because warming in and of itself is not a negative thing. Change in and of itself is not a negative thing. But chaos is. De-stabilization sure is. And that's, you know, seems to get more at the point than these things. And with, like, naming it global warming, for example, what did the dumbass right-wingers do? Every time it snowed, they make a snowball and say, oh, really, global warming? Har, har, har, ha. So we had to change it to climate change because those dumbasses were saying global warming can't be real because it snows sometimes. And it's like, oh, my God, we're playing this endless game of trying to just name the thing and trying to agree on the name of the thing, which is the second order.

to the thing itself, you know, as opposed to doing anything meaningful to stopping it regardless of what the fuck you call it. Yeah, exactly. It's like, I mean, one of the ways that I've been understanding and thinking about it in just as dramatic terms is like an eco-apocalypse because, you know, the consequences and effects are very much like sort of a collapse and continuing disaster as low and painful as it is. Yeah, I don't think that is, that's, that's too hyperbolic by any means either. We're at 1.2 degrees of warming from pre-industrial levels.

The initial threshold was 1.5 degrees. We've got to keep it below that. Well, we're going to blow past that in the next decade or two. And now that the new threshold is, is two degrees of warming. And that is going to be rough. These are nonlinear processes, so it's not precisely double. But, you know, we're at roughly around one degree of warming so far, two degrees. you can just think of this sort of compounding effect of the wildfires and the droughts

and, you know, all the terrible things happening. And that's already going to be an utter catastrophe that humans have never lived through in human history. And it is the best case scenario. And I don't think people fully grasp this. But once you start talking about three degrees of warming, four degrees of warming, you're talking about triggering the release of methane from under the ocean and permafrost. You're talking about feedback.

loops. In some sense, the Amazon, no longer being a carbon sink, but being a net emitter, at least a portion of it, is an example of a feedback loop. And now it's emitting. Now it's actively, instead of taking carbon out of the air, it's actively putting more into the air. That's a classic feedback loop. We're already seeing that at 1.2 degrees of warming. And so the stakes are fucking high, and people really don't understand that when we talk about every degree of warming, we are talking about almost exponential growth. in the catastrophic effects that it'll have. Anything over, and I truly believe this based on hours and hours and hours of deep research.

I take this stuff incredibly seriously. I obsess over it. Anything over four, five, six degrees of warming, it's game over for civilization. Human societies all over the planet will collapse. And the rate of warming is unprecedented. So, for example, at the end of the last ice age, roughly 10,000 years ago, as the earth is coming out of this glacial period, period into an interglacial period. There's obviously this dramatic warming that melts all the glaciers and the ice that came down from North America. New York City was covered in

3,000 feet of glacial ice, et cetera. That's a dramatic warming period by any stretch of the imagination. It took roughly 900 years in that process of thawing out, 900 years to raise the global average temperature 1 degree. We've done that in 65 years. So the rate of warming is utterly unprecedented and then there's this lag effect so that the consequences of even 1.2 degrees of warming still have not fully been felt and if we stop carbon emitting magically tonight

there's still going to be decades of a continual warming that's already baked into the system. So I mean this is the stuff that absolutely drives me drives me fucking crazy and scares the shit out of me. Oh absolutely and as it does and it is very real

I mean just talking about Seattle having an absolutely terrifying heat wave and the same goes for various sections in Canada currently like floods in Europe so it's it's terrifying it's awful there's no real exaggeration to it to calling it as a disaster an ongoing disaster

an ongoing apocalypse and ongoing collapse it's it's just a stronger interpretive or naming framework to it. Exactly. That grants it the emergency and sense of urgency that it rightfully deserves. Exactly. In the time when that grows all the more crucial by the day. So, yeah, yeah.

I feel like this is definitely a good point to spend quite a bit of time talking and thinking over because, you know, it's about the relationships and the stakes to all of us and to all that we want or that we find important. So to consider, interpret, and take the time to understand this is pretty important, even if incredibly difficult to handle. Absolutely. Yeah, and I think that's one of the benefits of analyzing a book like this, right? You might think, you know, what the hell does a book written, a postmodern work of literature by Don Delillo from the 80s have to do with anything that's relevant today, and that could lead some people to say this is solipsistic nonsense. But it's like, well, we're in the process of extracting

meaning from it and elucidating things that our themes shared in the book that then we can apply to our own situation and have, I think, an important and urgent talk about an important and urgent crisis that organically just flows forth from us discussing and otherwise, you know, nondescript a book that most people haven't even heard of. yeah and like i think it's i guess one of the things especially as we were mentioning it earlier and about the this postmodern work and this idea of irony and sarcasm and this idea that this is the best way to understanding this and i i don't agree i am i very much am against like sort of this idea of like this irony poisoning or this extreme

irony although that can be fun and entertaining at times for more extensive critique and for more deep, be creatively or intellectually and critically, I think this certain sincerity is more important or more useful. And that's why a lot of the time I've been engaging and questioning the sense of like dystopias as, you know, literary fiction. Because, and understanding these effects, and this book has a sort of realist aspect of this, but also as like, what do these endless stories, endless dystopias that have been

publicized and marketed and continue to be a share about a condition and how can they be so much in a sense that it stops being useful. I'm thinking of a few different things but amongst them a text

by King Stanley Robinson where he talks about that I'll link it in the show notes and a discussion on Coffee with Comrades with The Future is a Mixed tape talking about this idea of utopia, anti-utopia and anti-utopia and how to engage with this very notion of, like, hope

and this idea that, like, in order to struggle, in the small sense of every day, of, like, a better tomorrow or, you know, the things that we fight for in what we believe, in what we act upon, and that it is important to have some sense as well of what is it we're after, what is it we're trying to create beyond also or just side by side with what we're trying to avert in terms of this disaster and apocalypse

and I mean discovering this idea of hope this idea of utopia as or even as anti-untaropia as an interesting framework to interpret and to understand that allows and I think it's important in terms of climate change but or in climate disaster but or end in other works or in other ideas that it can help like move on or that it can help carry on step by step because this terror, this horror can be paralyzing at times and especially

on an individual aspect that can be that can be horrifying that can be really really scary really painful and I think that last section on this fear of death as it being a sort of there is no action against that it's an interesting parallel to even take that a lot of the time how do we act how do we consider acting upon these horrors when the fear of them is so immense and I think to me and that has been helping me face it like even in terms of like understanding climate disaster because I think that this this utopianism is very critically so of course, can help push forward this notion of hope because I'm thinking, for example, like at a very young age, and this was like, I don't know, seven, eight years old, I was aware of this idea of like global warming and climate change and greenhouse effect, but it was very much a sort of alarmist sense of like, oh, this is what's going to happen, this is what's going to be. And it terrified me in a very deep level to the sense for me to

engage with it critically in a sense where I just don't, where I am just left terrified and without action. It took, it took some, over a decade and a half to get where I am now and like, okay, I understand this. And it still terrifies me on a very, very deep level because of that and especially learning more of it now. But the actual critique and the effort and like connecting all this, understanding how this happens, the way this is happening, the way this has happened and why this is so important.

And even more so, this is important in order to achieve that, or X or Y, and it will achieve something better, something, you know, this new world in every and any sense of the word. So, yeah, I,

that's something that I always find important and that I'm finding really key in all that I'm doing to have it some sense of hope, some sense of a little thing beyond or at least through. Yeah. Yeah. I love what you said right there. And I have a couple things that dovetail exactly with what you say.

The 13-year-old me, I remember watching, it was a TV show, like Discovery Channel or something, in the early odds. And it was talking about the scenarios of climate change. It was one of the first times that I have any memory of being presented with the reality of climate change. and it was, you know, it was visually presented to me in the form of this show. It's like, this is what's going to happen by, like, 2015 and 2020, and it was just, it was a horror show. Now, in retrospect, it sort of was hyperbolic in its presentation of what actually was going to happen. Like, 2015, they were like, you know, Miami's going to be underwater and stuff like that. And so that, it didn't pan out exactly in the time span, but I remember it's shaking the hell out of me and scaring me to my absolute core.

And, yeah, so I share that childhood. sort of experience of confronting that reality and then as I get older, learning the nuances and the outline of it more deeply. And then your point about irony, I think is incredibly true. And that's a weakness with postmodern literature more broadly. It played its role, right? In this certain period of time, it did what irony does, which is deconstructs, mocks, satirizes, tears down.

That's what irony is there for. But what irony can't do is build anything, right? It can't offer a vision. It can't work towards that utopia that you're talking about. And that's where sincerity comes in. And that's where postmodernism fails. It's now hit its limits. And now there's talk of metamodernism, right?

Or this new synthesis and incorporation of modernist sincerity with postmodern irony and putting them in their proper places and not overemphasizing one over the other where sincerity steers into sentimentality and irony steers into utter detachment and a lack of really identity because if your whole identity is being ironic, you're not building anything, you're not presenting anything constructive, you're just tearing things down. And so maybe that tearing down process, right, is necessary for the new building up process. So again, postmodernism plays his historical role on that front. But now it's time to move on and I could not agree more. And I heard a quote recently that I think gets at what you and I are just talking about here as far as hope goes, right?

Because you got to have hope and you got to keep fighting. You can't just, you can't be a defeatist. And I heard somebody recently say that the defeatist takes comfort in inevitability in the same way that the denialist takes comfort in uncertainty. But both are delusions, right? Both are sort of a bargaining with the world. Well, if it's going to happen anyways, then what the fuck good is it to care about anything or do anything? Screw it. Let it all burn.

That's nihilism. That's reactionary misanthropy, and it doesn't get us anywhere. So defeatism is the other end of denialism and both have to be combated within ourselves and within our body politics. Yeah. It's understanding these both potentially good postures in a truly dialectical sense. There's like, how do we engage with both the deconstructural. that irony allows us to do and at times it can be really, really good

and really interesting with the sincerity without falling into this sentimentality which can blur the lines or help lose ourselves in that too. So it is in engaging both these aspects

and going beyond what this main core of postmoderners was to engage with it in a sense like, okay, you've been useful in this sense, but like how can we take from what you were doing in order to engage with this building aspect. I mean, I think one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about in terms of critique and everything I do, really, critique is building something, is building something more

in, from the very literal small sense that's like, it's not just a retelling of a story, it's just not like, oh, this is what the, the things it does wrong, but like, oh, what is doing right what is it doing wrong what is it doing how can it do that why understanding these intricacies and then building this analysis and then building something further so and in that sense i can engage like at times the because it is kind of amusing this ironic deconstruction while also working with this sincerity in order to like okay so what are we understanding here what are we trying to do and why does this work or why this doesn't and putting both to you to good

criticisms to good analysis to good intellectual work in order to engage as well with good practice ideally none of these things are separate yeah yeah incredibly well said I could not

could not agree more and and that that that weakness of postmodern irony is present in the book right because it is a critique of everything America it's a critique of capitalism

of the eco crisis of the shallowness of the culture of consumption all of these things, but, you know, the book doesn't and can't offer a solution. It doesn't even pretend to try. And I think that in and of itself shows the limitations of that postmodern ironic posture. Yeah, it can't offer any type of solution in any front, not in terms of sociability, not in terms of economics, not in terms of politics. There's no type of solution in no sphere. It is just, yeah. Exactly.

Exactly right. Yeah, I think this, oh, I don't know, I think we've been pretty thorough, or at the very least, we've talked about some of the more interesting kind of key aspects of, you know, what we were talking about and what we were considering about the novel. Yeah, is there anything else that you want to add that we didn't touch on exactly? I mean, there was a lot about the family relationships which we didn't touch on and that are, in a sense, these other aspects of, you know, the breaking down of communication. being affected by

technology, by the television, by the radio. Yeah, there's a lot to it and there's more to this novel than we can do in an hour and a bit. But yeah, is there anything else that you want to add? Is there anything else that you want to mention

from what we talked about from the things we didn't either? Sure, yeah, there's two quick points that we didn't really get a touch on but I think are important. One, it's just interesting because throughout the book there's this idea that Jack puts forward

I think during a lecture, it just sort of comes out of him, and he doesn't even know where it came from, this idea that all plots tend toward death. And that is a little foreshadowing because this book itself ends in this gruesome bloody act of violence, whereas the entire rest of the story is really sort of comforted away in a home setting. There's no bursts of violence, and even the toxic airborne event sort of is very subtle and its impact on the human body. It's not like people are vomiting out poisons or anything like that. So just a little interesting note to carry with you. If you are listening to this and decide that you have some time to kill and might want to go through this book. But the last thing I did want to say that I thought was kind of important is this fear of death circling this lack of identity. So Jack clearly, he lacks any fundamental sense of self and has to resort to this cultivated image, particularly in times of distress.

or anytime he's on campus, for example, he wears these dark sunglasses and this academic gown. And that shows that he is an important person. He's a chair of a department. And those are sort of his things that when he's walking around on campus, people know that's who he is. And in moments where he feels like he is in danger, or even when the toxic airborne event is just happening and he's trying to convince the rest of his family, this isn't going to impact us because I'm an academic. I'm a professional upper middle class. This thing happens. to pour people in ghettos on the fringes of town. It can't possibly hear literally hiding behind his status as if it will literally protect him from a chemical exposure.

And we also notice this lack of identity is intimately tied in with his fear of death. He's clinging, he's grasping onto this constructed sense of self, but it's really hollow. And that hollowness sort of is the abyss that when he looks into it, he sees his own mortality and it terrified. him. And he has this one interesting encounter, and this weaves together the consumer culture with the fear of death and lack of identity. And in this hardware store, he's not wearing his gown and his glasses, right? And so somebody from the university notices him. It's like, damn, I barely noticed you, you know, without your glasses on, etc. They have this little back and forth at the checkout counter. And the guy says to him, you know, I hope you don't take offense to this. But without your glasses and without your gown, you look like a big, harmless, aging, indistinct sort of guy. Just like a throwaway comment. And Jack acts, because he's a narrator, he acts like it doesn't bother him. But the next passage, he goes on this manic shopping spree, which I thought is really a hilarious passage where he's just talking about just throwing money around and his kids are like super happy because he's like, buy anything you want, buy it all, you know. And he's like just in this feverish mania of buying. And there it is, right?

That's one of the main themes of the book. in the abyss where something like a self could be, that hole in your soul, right, that void that you feel, American society offers you nothing but consumption to fill that void. Now, that act of consumption presented to us as the cure-all for existential despair doesn't ever and can't possibly solve the problem. And in fact, the shopping spree is followed by a crash where everybody sells. isolates in their room and have to like, you know, sort of regain their composure without talking to one another for a couple hours. And, you know, nothing is fundamentally solved. But in that

moment of acute anxiety surrounding who he is, it's very telling that he goes on this insane shopping spree. And I think that that really, you know, highlights the main theme. And at the end, he's talking to Winnie, the, I think she's a neurobiologist or some very smart person on campus in the field. He's asking her to study this pharmaceutical pill, blah, blah, blah. But he talks a little bit about his fear of death. And they're sort of having this back and forth. And Jack is like, so you're saying that fear is self-awareness raised to another level. Like, becoming too self-aware can result in this fear and this anxiety. And then the other character, Winnie, she responds, self, self, self. If death can be seen as less strange and unreferenced, your sense of self in

relation to death will diminish, and so will your fear. And I don't know if Delillo's point here was the point that I'm about to make, but as somebody who comes out of a Buddhist context and has been practicing Buddhism for over a decade and really into Buddhist philosophy, there is this idea that enlightenment, right, in simplest terms in the Buddhist context, is this collapse of the false sense of self, this center of attention that appropriates all experience and references is all experience back to an assumed core within you, right? If I asked you, where is your sense of self? Like, where is yourself really at?

If people think about it enough, they'll say it's like behind my eyes and between my ears, somewhere up in the head, sort of, you know, controlling my body like a machine or something. And this is a Cartesian dualism, a false sense of a psychological split. And when that sense of self becomes the orienting principle of your life, and it's false, right? It's not actually there. That creates a bunch of anxiety. And one of the main ways that that anxiety is expressed is through your fear of death. This trembling little self, which on some subconscious level you know is an illusion,

but though you can't come to explicit grips with that, is trembling in the face of its own annihilation. And to die before you die, in a spiritual context, to eradicate that false. sense of self through spiritual practices, sometimes through large doses of psychedelics momentarily, is to release that trembling sense of a self and therefore the fear of death dissipates with it. So if you ask any, you know, highly achieved or enlightened Zen master or Tibetan Buddhists through the ages, they will see, they will continually say in their own way, one of the things achieved by enlightenment is a complete eradication of any sense of fear of death. It just no longer makes any sense to be scared of death because the self that I was scared

that was going to die, I've seen through that illusion and it's not even there. So that might be taken quite a bit further than DeLillo himself. I wanted to take it, but that little passage really reminded me of that. And that's been crucial in my overcoming of my existential anxiety around death that I mentioned earlier in this episode that, you know, has really brought to a boiling point at my mid-20s, where I was really for many months obsessed with the thought of my own mortality and radically depressed and anxious because of it. And it was only through a sort of spiritual breakthrough in which myself, my sense of self dissolved and what replaced it was like a connection to the whole, a sense that I was much bigger than me. I was all of

humanity and perhaps even all of nature. My relationship to death has ever since that little breakthrough been dramatically changed and it all revolves around these concepts so again probably too far afield but i thought it was worth mentioning at the end here oh absolutely and i mean i think this extensive focus on the self by these characters and by the whole story um to be broken up such as this regardless of intention and how far the book itself can take us or not uh i think it's still a brilliant point to be made so yeah going further or understanding beyond the self or fracturing what

the self is or can be is definitely a good discussion and because we're mentioning multiple podcasts on this episode, I will also mention the collaboration that Horror of Anger did with Labour Kyle on Nightbreed, where that discussion comes up as well

and in an incredibly interesting way that like the self is not one thing. Nice, nice. So yeah, lots lots of take from this episode and from beyond, of which I'm very grateful for. So yeah, anything else? Or shall we wrap this up? Let's wrap it up. This was a really great discussion. And I don't think I could have brought all these points out without having this back and forth with you because reading a book

in isolation is one thing. But actually working through it and talking with somebody else who might have a different perspective on the book, it brings out so much more. So I'm really humbled and honored to be able to come on your show and talk about it. Oh, thank you, Brad. Like, that's sort of the point it's when we read something we think even when we write about it it's still not the same as like spending some time with someone else and like thinking and considering and reflecting and bringing other things it's it's sort of it was the original idea of this show all along and especially now it's like bringing more guests and doing this even as I do this myself but bringing others is it's definitely the best thing to have these conversations have these moments of like friendship of learning of camaraderie. It's pretty amazing. What can I say? Absolutely. So yeah, thank you for listening everyone. Now, I believe most people know of Red and RevLeft, but where can people find you and support what you do? And if there's anything in particular that I've been doing or people can look forward to, I know you're always doing a lot of different fun projects. So, you know.

Yeah. So everything that I do, you can find at Revolutionary Left Radio.com that has all three shows Rev Left, Red Menace, and Guerrilla History, our Patreon, our Twitter, ways to support us and everything else. So if you're at all interested in pursuing that, definitely check that out. And as for upcoming stuff, lots of stuff is always boiling up to the brim here. Nothing particularly stands out, but like I say, guerrilla history, we're really focused on proletarian and decolonial history, on Red Menace. We talk about political theory and philosophy, and Rev. Left is just my vehicle to explore whatever I'm obsessed with at the moment.

So that constantly is taking on new shapes and forms. So yeah, whatever fits your fancy, particularly, go check it out. Yeah, and there's a lot to Rev Left and a lot of different people, a lot of different guests, a lot of different conversations. I was there at one point many years ago. I have to have you back on soon. Yeah, oh, yes, always. And especially one that I remembered at the beginning, but I forgot to mention one on mourning and death, an amazing conversation as well. so, you know, RevLeft itself can give you further tools to this conversation itself.

So definitely go support and follow and listen to RevLeft, Red Menace, and Guerrilla Radio. All amazing shows with content that, like, it's so good. What can I say? There's a lot to it, and it's very different and very good. So, yeah, go listen, go listen. Thank you, my friend. Of course. And from me, like, we have the reading corner, which,

is a sort of, I go over a text, either academic or fictional that I've read or thought about this past month and write a bit about it, so a bit kind of half academic, half the creative aspect, but share a bit about my writing too, and also

what I've been dubbing the writer's desk, as I've been considering this relationship between from the point of view of writing that, of writing fiction and the question of politics in that, how do you engage with that in your own writing beyond the analytical, which is very difficult to do. And I wanted to do this episode before I did this month

because especially this idea of the irony and the postmodern narratives is what I want to talk about this month for it. I don't know what I'm going to do, but it's going to be fun. Awesome. So keep an eye out for those. And yeah, you can find me on Twitter at left page pod or at Frank Gothic and on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash left page. And yeah, we have some interesting stuff that I've been working on, some other great guests and ideas and books, and I'm always planning something fun, something interesting, and some amazing people to talk about box and fiction and politics and everything. So yeah, thank you so much, Brett. Thank you so much, everyone. It's been a pleasure to have you on, and I hope people enjoyed, and we'll listen

to Rev. Left, we'll listen to Red Menace and Gorilla Radio, and we'll carry on listening to the left page. Thank you so much for listening, everyone. Love and solidarity. Love and solidarity. At the airport we waited in a mist of plaster dust, among exposed wires, mounds of rubble. Half an hour before B was due to arrive,

the passengers from another flight began filing through a drafty tunnel into the arrivals area. They were gray and stricken. They were stooped over in wariness and shock, dragging their hand luggage across the floor. 20, 30, 40 people came out without a word or look, keeping their eyes to the ground. Some limped. Some wept. More came through the tunnel. Adults with whimpering children, old people trembling, a black minister with his collar askew, one shoe missing. Tweedie helped a woman with two

small kids. I approached a young man, a stocky fellow with a mailman's cap and beer belly, wearing a down vest, and he looked at me as if I didn't belong in his space-time to mention, but had crossed over illegally, made a rude incursion. I forced him to stop and face me, asked him what had happened up there. As people kept filing past, he exhaled warily. Then he nodded, his eyes steady on mine, full of a gentle resignation. The plane had lost power in all three engines, dropped from 34,000 feet to 12,000 feet, something like four miles. When the steep glide began, people rose fell collided swam in their seats then the serious screaming and moaning began almost immediately a voice from the flight deck was heard on the intercom we're falling out of the sky we're going down we're a silver gleaming death machine this outburst struck the passengers as an all but total breakdown of authority competence and command of presence and it brought on a round of fresh and desperate wailing objects were rolling out in the galley the aisles were full of drinking

glasses, utensils, coats, and blankets. A stewardess pinned to the bulkhead by the sharp angle of descent was trying to find the relevant passage in a handbook titled Manual of Disasters. Then there was a second mail voice from the flight deck, this one remarkably calm and precise, making the passengers believe there was someone in charge after all, an element of hope. This is American 213 to the cockpit voice recorder. Now we know what it's like. It's worse than we'd ever imagined. They didn't prepare us for this at the death simulator in Denver. Our fear is pure, so totally strict of distractions and pressures as to be a form of transcendental meditation. In less than three minutes we will touch down, so to speak.

They will find our bodies in some smoking field, strewn about in the grisly attitudes of death. I love you, Lance. This time, there was a brief pause before the mass wailing recommenced. Lance? What kind of people were in control of this aircraft? The crying took on a bitter and disillusion tone.