Crackers Are Kind of Like the White Noise of Foods, Right?

Don DeLillo ends each of his chapters with a sentence that's heavy with self-importance. He's an amazing writer, obviously, and I love his work more than most, but sometimes it's hard for me to get beyond that.

• "A series of frightened children appeared at our door for their Halloween treats."

• "Who will die first?"

• "I am the false character that follows the name around."

• "Technology with a human face."

• "Although we are for a small town remarkably free of resentment, the absence of a polestar metropolis leaves us feeling in our private moments a little lonely."

They just feel so concrete, so conclusive. It seems odd when set in contrast with the larger text which is fluid and often ambiguous. His novel White Noise (1985) deals with one of the most inconclusive subjects: deaths. So much has already been written about DeLillo's portrayal of mass mentality, the influence of technology, and the struggles of the individual. He's often described as things like "prescient." This is all true and valid and worth considering, but what I am interested in is his depiction of motherhood in White Noise.

Brandi and I discussed White Noise over peanut butter crackers. We talked about the difference between classes and concerns. How are parental problems similar and different depending on your level of income? Jack Gladney and his wife, Babette, are a solidly middle class couple. They support their (greater than or equal to) 4 children off of his income as a professor and department head. They don't seem to stress about bills, but they cant afford greater luxuries. They live in a nice school district. Their children are healthy.

So why is Babette so worried?

Babette is both a feature player and a marginal plot line in the novel, but as DeLillo's protagonist, Jack Gladney, tell us: "all plots move towards death." Babette moves us towards death while also tightly clutching at life and vitality itself. She is committed to living right so that she might never die, but she doesn't know what right is. She tries a bit of everything: miserable diets, rigorous exercise, various volunteer work, and more. She is absolutely dedicated to her children and to her step-children. Her role as mother is primary, whereas Jack is a father but he is equally the leading Hitler Studies scholar. Babette is an embodied maternity. Fleshy, soft, welcoming.

Jack's colleague and friend comments on Babette's maternal energy during an exchange at the grocery store. He confides to Jack:

"She has important hair."

"I think I know what you mean."

"I hope you appreciate that woman."

"Absolutely."

"Because a woman like that doesn't just happen."

"I know it."

"She must be good with children. More than that, I'll bet she's great to have around in a family tragedy. She'd be the type to take control, show strength and affirmation."

"Actually she falls apart. She fell apart when her mother died."

"Who wouldn't?"

"She fell apart when Steffie called from camp with a broken bone in her hand. We had to drive all night. I found myself on a lumber company road. Babette weeping."

"Her daughter, far away, among strangers, in pain. Who wouldn't?"

"Not her daughter. My daughter."

"Not even her own daughter."

"No."

"Extraordinary. I have to love it."

Babette's maternal identity is partly physical, which makes sense. Isn't traditional motherhood founded on a biological transformation? The physical conversion of nothing into something, into life? Like skinny chefs, society finds thin mothers suspect. How do create and nurture life with a tiny body? We want child-rearing hips, ample bosoms, enveloping hugs. We want mom haircuts: effortless but serious. Think of how often magazines judge a mother's haircut. Remember Kate Gosselin? Out of all the things to criticize that woman for, we chose her hair. It was too serious. God forbid a mother has a tough hairstyle.

But Babette is not all blonde mop and warm body because she isn't just a biological mother. She is a woman who cries over the pain of her stepdaughter. Weeps on a highway as they drive to rescue her. It's important to remember that this is a novel about a blended family. Throughout the novel, anxieties are expressed about chemicals in the air, toxic waste catastrophes, sugar-free gum, mass murderers, child development, death itself, vertigo, diet, professional ability, sex, and more. That's why I chose this book, to be honest. I thought that there would be something illuminating about our anxieties regarding death and how we channel them through mothers. And, sure, that's there but not in any sort of meaningful or specific way. Instead what is interesting is what is missing. What's missing is the anxiety about the fusing of a family.

The children (along with their parents) function as a family unit. They draw one another in to their activities and interests. Jack comments to Steffie that Denise wants to be her sister. They all take turns lugging around the youngest, Wilder. Jack and Babette refer to all of the children as "my children." In the midst of the airborne toxic event, Jack watches his sleeping family and considers, "I sat a while longer, watching Denise, watching Wilder, feeling selfless and spiritually large. There was an empty air mattress on the floor, but I wanted to share Babette's and eased myself next to her body, a dreaming mound." There is an intimacy to their family dynamic, a fluid and welcoming chaos.

The biggest family strife initially comes to when "outsiders" join. For example, Bee--one of Jack's daughters from a prior marriage who lives primarily with her mother--joins them for a weekend. They don't resent her presence and aren't wary of her as some sort of threat. Rather she "made [them] self-conscious at times, a punishment that visitors will unintentionally inflict on their complacent host . . . We began to see ourselves as a group that acted without design." So Bee's presence has a two-fold effect upon the family. Firstly, it affirms their identity as a family; she creates a subdued "us vs. them" mentality. She is a visitor intruding upon a group, a family. Secondly, and perhaps counter-intuitively, she reminds them that they are not a "natural" family, but a recently formed blended family. She makes them self-conscious of their dynamic. It's important to note, though, that this isn't hostile or aggressive. It's simply a reminder of a group's past as a subtext to their present. It's the first form of self-consciousness that is primary.

Babette is the maternal hub of this family dynamic; she is both concerned and concerning. One of her volunteer activities is to teach posture to the elderly. It goes so well that they want to teach another class, Eating and Drinking: Basic Parameters. Babette is a communal mother, teaching others how to behave--even when the lesson seems obvious. While Jack tries to become larger than death through Hitler Studies, Babette tries to avoid death through care. Caring for herself, caring for her family, caring for her community. Babette's activities are dedicating to the preservation of what already is.

Babette wants to preserve so badly that she starts taking an unfamiliar drug, Dylar, which promises to end your fear of death. Babette is so overwhelmed by this fear--so desperate for help--she trades sexual favors for access to Dylar. There's a surprising lack of jealousy between the couple. Babette is Jack's fourth wife and Jack is at least her third husband. The two often get sexy while discussing domestic life, fully comfortable with their settled lives of husband and wife. They drive one another to different errands, touch each other in the kitchen, and discuss their past marriages openly. As Babette tells her story, Jack first compares to her to his previous wives, asserting she was supposed to be different. She was supposed to share the details of her life with him. As she confesses to the sex, he "felt a sensation of warmth creeping up [his] back and radiating outwards across [his] shoulders." But Jack isn't as upset over the affair as he is over her fear of death.

Jack declares to Babette, "Baba, I am the one in this family who is obsessed by death. I have always been the one . . . You are the happy one. I am the damned fool. That's what I can't fogive you for. Telling me you're not the woman I believed you were. I'm hurt, I'm devastated." Babette's betrayal is not a sexual one but rather an emotional one. She has unmoored the anchor of their family and changed their dynamics. As the mother, she was supposed to be "a joyous person," the generator of life. She is the perpetuation of life and family. But Babette is unable to fulfill the obligation, and rather obsesses over death. She sees it everywhere.

She is the mother of a blended family that has everything they want or need--except a guarantee of their survival.

White Noise is an examination of, yes, technology and science and death in America, but it goes beyond that. Science is telling us all the things that will cause us to die, but it doesn't tell us what we can do to live. It tells us everything that can go wrong--radiation, chemicals, nutrition, natural disasters, exercise, etc.--but does it actually give us any more control over our lives and our ability to live? We tell pregnant women what they can or cannot eat, but ignore that it will not guarantee them a healthy baby. We tell parents the family activities they should promote and the toys that are safe for their kids--but that does not guarantee them healthy, happy children. We tell adults how many times a week to exercise, but that does not guarantee us a longer life. Science tells us just enough to remind us that we know nothing. White Noise is full of these moments: college researchers who admit not understanding the human brain, pharmaceutical experts who don't know how medication will affect a subject, and so forth. Can knowledge ever truly protect us? Our families? Apparently not.

And so Babette worries and worries and worries about death while her children keep living. The novel consistently hints the obvious notion that sex and death are inextricably linked. Sex is an escape from death but also a reminder of death. But sex also creates life, and this novel is overflowing with children. It sometimes feels as if we are introduced to a new child every couple of chapters. Wilder almost dies in the end, but doesn't.

What are families supposed to do when death is around every corner and they know that they have every means to survive? What are families supposed to do when they know that it isn't enough?

#family #death #whitenoise #dondelillo #science #blendedfamily