Prompt 1: Jack (J.A.K.) Gladney and Heinrich

Note: Pick one of the following four prompts about White Noise (Jack (J.A.K.) Gladney and Heinrich, The Most Photographed Barn in America, Try a Toyota Supra, and The Cradle of Misinformation) and write a well thought out, analytical response.  200-400 words, due by midnight on Monday 4/4.

1)      Analyze the following quote from Ch. 4 in the context of the novel at large thus far:

“I am the false character that follows the name around” (17).

In Ch. 6, Jack and his son from another marriage, Heinrich, have a conversation about the weather.  Well, Jack attempts to have a simple conversation about the weather, and Heinrich turns it into a phenomenological debate.  Here’s an excerpt:

“Just give me an answer, okay, Heinrich?”

“The best I could do is make a guess.”

“Either it’s raining or it isn’t,” I said.

“Exactly.  That’s my whole point.  You’d be guessing.  Six of one, half dozen of the other.”

[…]                                                                    

“It’s the stuff that falls from the sky and gets you what is called wet.”

“I’m not wet.  Are you wet?”

“All right,” I said.  “Very good.”

“No, seriously, are you wet?”

“First rate,” I told him.  “A victory for uncertainty, randomness, and chaos.  Science’s finest hour” (24).

At the end of the chapter, we have this scene of Jack lecturing about Hitler:

“When the showing ended, someone asked about the plot to kill Hitler.  The discussion moved to plots in general.  I found myself saying to the assembled heads, ‘All plots tend to move deathward.  This is the nature of plots.  Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers’ plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children’s games.  We edge nearer death every time we plot.  It is like a contract that all must sign, the plotters as well as those who are the targets of the plot.’

“Is this true?  Why did I say it?  What does it mean?” (26).

There’s no need to frame this prompt further.

Prompt 2: The Most Photographed Barn in America

In Ch. 3, Murray (the pop culture professor who wants to establish Elvis Studies in the same way Jack’s formed Hitler Studies) takes Jack to THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA.  He explains:

“We’re not here to capture an image, we’re here to maintain one.  Every photograph reinforces the aura.  Can you feel it, Jack?  An accumulation of nameless energies” (12).

And:

“They are taking pictures of taking pictures” (13).

How does this scene shape the novel at large, and what is DeLillo saying about postmodern life through this scene?

Prompt 3: Try a Toyota Supra

There’s a complex relationship between consumer goods and the characters in this novel.  Further, TV and radio ads insert themselves into the narrative as if they were characters themselves; often advertisements (mostly catch-phrases, jingles, etc) appear as dialogue within an ongoing conversation.  Consider Ch. 17 (though it happens throughout the novel, not just in this chapter), when the catch-phrases “Try an Audi Turbo” and  “Try a Toyota Supra” pop up on in a conversation about, well, nothing really.

Analyze the role of consumer goods, TV, radio, and commercial advertisement in White Noise.

Prompt 4: The Cradle of Misinformation

Following that Ch. 17 conversation, we have Murray’s theory of misinformation:

“The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation.  There must be something in family life that generates factual error.  Over-closeness, the noise and heat of being.  Perhaps something even deeper, like the need to survive.  Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts.  Facts threaten our happiness and security.  The deeper we delve into the nature of things, the looser our structure may seem to become.  The family process works toward sealing off the world.  Small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate” (81-82).

No framing necessary here, either.

Mirroring and Alterity

Note: Pick one of the following three prompts to answer (Mirroring and Alterity, Badiou and Identity, or Everybody Knows).  As always, 200-400 words, due by 10pm Monday 3/14.

We discussed the concept of "Mirroring" and "Alterity" in lecture yesterday, specifically w/r/t the scene in which Nelson Primus berates Coleman ("Faunia is not from your world" p. 80).

What other examples of mirroring do you see throughout the novel?  What role do these mirrors play?  What might Roth be saying about self-awareness through the dramatic irony of so many mirror characters/scenes?  Further, we discussed how Primus's attitude toward Faunia mirrors Coleman Silk's attitude towards Tracy Cummings, but does Primus's condemnation of Coleman's association with Faunia mirror something else, as well?

Prompt Two "Badiou and Identity"

Analyze/react to the following argument:

As pointed out in Badiou’s Metapolitics, “All resistance is a rupture with what is.  And every rupture begins, for those engaged in it, through a rupture with oneself” (7).  It can certainly be argued that Coleman’s fight with the department over the “spooks” incident—the other event which changed the course of his life—began with his fight against himself, his resistance against, or avoidance of the problems in early to mid-twentieth century America with respect to the race he was born into.  This rupture wasn’t just over fighting against being born black, it was fighting to be free of such labels of race at all.  That he chose to live the lie of a white (Jewish) man was due to the outside world’s insistence on such labels.  He had to have one, so he picked the one that allowed him to live more freely than had his previous label; the label that alleviated some of the oppression he felt by being a member of a small group by no choice of his own.

                In effect, by the end of his life, Coleman Silk’s identity is hardly able to be broken down to one simple, direct answer.  Rather, much like in Badiou’s “ontology of pure multiplicity,” he is not a one, Coleman Silk is instead a multiple “radically without oneness, in that [he himself] comprises multiples alone.  What there is exposes itself to the thinkable in terms of multiples of multiples… in other words, there are only multiples of multiples” (Theoretical Writings 47-48).  He remains a Classics professor to some, a Jewish man to others, an ex-lightweight boxer undefeated in the gyms of Newark to those who knew him in high school, a racist to two perhaps misguided students, a black man who turned his back on both his family and race, a father who was making a fool of himself with a younger woman, a man who could never get over the grave injustice done to him by the university, and so on and so on. 

Can there be one singular, consistent identity for such a man?  Or, as it seems, should the critic trying to make sense of it all relent and give up on trying to establish a singular identity?  In the ontology of pure multiplicity, Badiou states, “We will not concede the necessity of reintroducing the one.  We will say it is a multiple of nothing.  And just as with every other multiple, this nothing will remain entirely devoid of consistency” (48).  Coleman Silk’s identity, then, becomes that of a chimera—a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-experiential being conflated into a multiple of nothing.  Or, in other words, a human being.

Prompt Three "Everybody Knows"

"Three rows down from me, Coleman, his head tipped slightly toward hers, was talking to Faunia quietly, seriously, but about what, of course, I did not know.

Because we don't know, do we? Everyone knows... How what happens the way it does? What underlies the anarchy of the train of events, the uncertainties, the mishaps, the disunity, the shocking irregularities that define human affairs? Nobody knows, Professor Roux. 'Everyone knows' is the invocation of the cliche and the beginning of the banalization of experience, and it's the solemnity and the sense of authority that people have in voicing the cliche that's so insufferable. What we know is that, in an uncliched way, nobody knows anything. You can't know anything. The things you know you don't know. Intention? Motive? Consequence? Meaning? All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing."

-The Human Stain, 208-9

Analyze this quote in terms of the novel at large.  Things to focus on might be: 1) The role of speculative narration and mirroring (w/r/t Nathan Zuckerman).  2) How this quote shapes the narrative.  3) How the role of the speculative narrator complicates/adds to the reader's conception of Coleman Silk.  4) The knowing/not knowing paradox.