White Noise

In Chapter 9, the novel introduces the mysterious drug Dylar. This is significant because of the role Dylar plays in the plot. More than that, however, the discovery of the Dylar bottle is the earliest indication to Jack that Babette may not be as guileless as she appears. Jack’s love for Babette is tied to her open nature, and the revelation that she may be hiding or plotting something will threaten the very foundation of their relationship. Babette is once again contrasted against Jack’s ex-wives, whom the reader learns more about in Chapters 10 and 11. Dana Breedlove, whom Jack married twice, is a contractor with the CIA. Of greater concern to Jack, however, was her tendency to involve him in “household plots” (49) of the kind Denise now suspects Babette may be conducting.

Chapter 9 also describes another rendezvous at the supermarket between the Gladneys and Murray. While Jack views the supermarket’s consumerist rituals as a form of comfort that shields him from thinking about death, Murray likens the supermarket to a Tibetan realm where the soul transitions between death and rebirth. The automatic sliding doors sense our presence, he says, inviting us into a well-lit realm full of symbols and colors. He tells Babette, “Here we don’t die, we shop. But the difference is less marked than you think” (38). While Murray’s perspective differs from Jack’s, consumerism serves a philosophical purpose for both men, adding meaning to a life destined to end.

As before, Jack’s conversation with Heinrich in Chapter 10 touches upon the theme of how mass media warps our perceptions. Heinrich says that the only regret his mass-murdering chess partner Tommy Roy Foster possesses is that he didn’t commit a crime more worthy of media attention. He tells Jack, “There is no media in Iron City. He didn’t think of that till it was too late. He says if he had to do it all over again, he wouldn’t do it as an ordinary murder, he would do it as an assassination” (45). There’s also a cyclical quality to Foster’s crime. The television itself convinced Foster that he must do something to go down in history. For Jack especially, “going down in history” is a way of cheating that which he fears most: death. Jack’s status as the originator and most important voice in the field of Hitler studies is in part an effort to establish a legacy that outlives his mortal body.

This idea that something is only worth doing if it ends up on television is akin to Murray’s idea about “The Most Photographed Barn in America.” In both cases, what matters is not the reality of the thing itself, but rather that people see it and document it. The book explores Murray’s thoughts on television when Jack and Babette visit his home for dinner in Chapter 11. When Babette mentions that her son Eugene lives in the Australian outback with no access to television, Murray explains his enthusiasm for the “waves and radiation” (51) that emanate from the American television set. Television commercials in particular, he says, connect open-minded viewers with data that speaks to the human brain on a level transcending everyday consciousness:

 “Look at the wealth of data concealed in the grid, in the bright packaging, the jingles, the slice-of-life commercials, the products hurtling out of the darkness, the coded messages and endless repetitions, like chants, like mantras. ‘Coke is it, Coke is it, Coke is it’” (51).

The television’s role in the American household is revisited in Chapter 14 after Jack is perturbed by his family’s appetite for disaster footage. In narration, Jack observes, “Every disaster made us wish for more, for something bigger, grander, more sweeping” (64). At school, he asks the head of the popular culture department, Alfonse Stompanato, about this disturbing revelation. Unlike Murray, Alfonse believes the deluge of signals emanating from the television set have a numbing effect on viewers. It is therefore only through ever more shocking disaster footage that viewers can overcome the “brain fade” (65) caused by more trivial television programming. Murray counters that a dishwasher commercial has “deeper waves, deeper emanations” (66) than footage of a forest fire. The problem is that most Americans have forgotten “how to listen and look as children” (66).