Protocol March 8

Before class started, Ben brought two posters in from our archive (which had been taken down and almost thrown out weeks ago). He noticed that the DeLillo mind-map poster from last week had been taken down, but everything else that we’d put on the walls remained.

As class started, we noticed that several people were missing, though a couple had told Ben that they were sick. Ben told us to not move the chairs yet, because more people might be showing up.

The program on the board said:

-Lots o’ Housekeeping

-Isolation—Solitude—Loneliness à reviewing and extending

-DeLillo: reflections, connections, conclusions

-Mid-course evaluation

Ben said that we have a lot of housekeeping to do today. On Thursday, there will be a writing workshop, so everyone should bring his or her drafts. It’s recommended to begin your meta-commentary, though it’s not required. There is no reading for Thursday; the rough draft is our only homework. At this point, Ben said that in the beginning, the protocols are very detailed, which always makes him very conscious of what he says in the beginning of class. But back to the housekeeping: Ben will not be in class on Thursday, because his classical choral group is going to Chicago. We will still have class, and it will be taught by Robin Brown, Ben’s friend and an accomplished writing teacher.

Over break, we will be reading a couple of pieces by Carl Schmidt. Ben has decided to add a couple of readings to what’s already in the course packet, and he passed around handouts. Whoever ends up with the extras should bring them on Thursday for the people who weren’t there today. But don’t worry, Ben said: it’s still not very much reading. Be sure to take note of context when doing the reading: Schmidt and Strauss link in important (though not obvious) ways. Strauss was an important thinker (at the University of Chicago), and popularized the term ‘read between the lines.’ So read between the lines in this essay! There’s a lot there, he said. There are three different theses in the Strauss reading, and each gets closer to what he’s actually saying. Annotate where the question and theses are (like we did in class last week). We’ll probably play context boggle when we get back from break.

Also, if you have time over break, you should begin Vince Flynn, which we’ll read two weeks after break. It’s about 400 pages, but it’s an easy read.

For the writing workshop on Thursday: Ahmed already sent a draft, but there are still three slots open. If you’d like to submit yours to be read and reviewed by the class, send it to Ben and Robin (brown004@umn.edu). Remember, you’ll get extra credit for this, and it will be very helpful.
Ben promises that all of our grades will be sent out by tomorrow. He wishes that he could just give us all A’s, but he can’t because it’s an economy and we need incentives.


The housekeeping is finally complete. Ben has all of us stand up, and puts out a sheet of butcher paper for an activity similar to what we did in last week’s difficultation. We are to write key words and draw lines to connect them, though we also have to explain the connection on the lines. We are to do this in complete silence. Ben began by linking loneliness and solitude; next, Heidi linked isolation to both. After we were all finished writing, we all stood to look at it and make any additions that we thought necessary. We noted that it was interesting that Mink was in the center of solitude, isolation, and loneliness.

We all then were given about thirty seconds to think of important moments in the book, which we feel are necessary to discuss or draw attention to. Our moments were as followed:
Hallie: when Jack and Babette finally talk about Dylar (187)

Hillary: when Jack talks to doctor about tests (263)

Liz: all the stuff from the past (6)

Brittany: the fact that the nuns pretend to believe (291)

Sophie: Babette’s body and Jack’s connection to it (282-3)

Kate L: fear of death, Dylar

Jordan: Whole last chapter, especially when Jack went into detail about the potential death of Wilder

Rachel: idea that disasters only affect poor people (112)

Mandy: the Mink scene (298ish)

Heidi: there is no media in Iron City (92)

Mariana: Disaster only affects poor people- she was shocked when she read that because it isn’t how she sees things, though she thinks that it’s an interesting (but kind of cocky) perspective (112)

Tam: when they wonder who will die first (15)

Shukery: Babette’s memory loss (82)

Elissa: Winnie and the idea of death as a boundary (217)

Kate G: when Murray asked, true or false, do you have to know when you’re going to die to live life to the fullest? (272)

Hongfa: when Orest is asked if death scares him (253)

Gina: Murray’s idea of Killers vs. diers (277)

Ben exclaimed that this is our collective intelligence about the book!

For the rest of the class period, we had more of an open discussion, so I apologize if some of this is disjointed- that’s probably how it happened in class.

We began by examining the last chapter. Jack never really says anything about Wilder dying: he is obsessed with thinking about death, but when someone close to him might actually die, his mind is somewhere else. The incident with Wilder serves to show us the other side of the fear of death: Wilder is young and doesn’t even know what death is, as opposed to his parents who are paralyzed by fear of it. In the book, Wilder serves an interesting purpose. Wilder is Babette and Jack’s escape, and Jack envies Wilder’s forgetfulness. Babette and Jack feel good when they’re with Widler (198), since Wilder is free from limits and doesn’t know what death is (276). Maybe Wilder is the product of waves and radiation: he talks less and less as the book goes on. Have the waves and radiation stunted his emotional and intellectual development? Wilder is the ideal consumer because he goes from one pleasure to the next. He is exempt from death and has no history; he is eternally present and history does not affect him. This relates to Nietzsche’s idea that sheep live happy lives and are happier than we’ll ever be because they’re not weighed down by the past.

We then talked about how weird it is that this book is already ‘dead’ and considered a classic. The only other books that we can think of that have this pagination are The Odyssey and The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which is very interesting. Ben told us that the original name for White Noise was The American Book of the Dead.

We turned the topic to Mink (Mr. Gray). Jack clearly laid out his plan to shoot him three times, etc., but then Jack skips the third bullet and ends up getting himself shot (298). What makes him diverge from his plan? Is it better to do something good and then bad than to lead a neutral life, Jack wondered? We were reminded of when Jack said ‘this is what Ornest is about’ (253). He also says ‘this is what Babette is about’ many times throughout the book, as well a variation of the phrase when he talks to the nuns. He is holding onto how things ‘should’ be; Jack needs to be reassured that things are the way that they should be: he is concerned that the nuns don’t actually believe what they are supposed to believe. Similarly, in Babette’s eating class, people need to be reassured that they’re doing what they should be (163).

We jumped to the question of whether or not you can change a harmful condition by reducing it to its simplest parts. Hallie mentioned that Babette always tries to sound smart and philosophical, but it just doesn’t work. Like the scene in the car on page 80-1: their information is wrong and they sounds stupid. This is an example of beurocrat truth. Ben wondered how this is related to Zernike on the Tea Party. The characters in White Noise are using charismatic truth, and they keep going further down that train of thought (basing an idea on the last charismatic ‘truth’ and so on), and until they get to a point where what they’re saying is completely untrue (beurocratically speaking). Maybe truth is imbedded in belief: does truth provide a comfort? Is there another way to get to truth other than belief? Truth, and the comfort gotten from believing, is what draws a lot of people to religion. This reminded us of Jack’s conversation with the nun: a nun’s job is to believe so that other people don’t have to; she’s not there to believe, but to give the impression that she believes (303).

Ben told us that this book is often taught as an example of post-modern literature, which is the idea that there is nothing certain anymore. No narrator is reliable and there are no fixed truths. Ben posed the question of to what extent is your world like this? Religious people (and devout Rankians) may not resonate with this as they have truths that they live by. But does it resonate with other people?

Ben gave a few closing remarks. First, he noted the connection between this book and Network. But no one is Mad as Hell in this book; no one is questioning this world anymore. Also, is the world of this book led by the Iron Fist? Is everything moving in one predetermined direction? We can go back to Loughner on some level: how does Jack (a professor with many socioeconomic advantages) become a killer? How does history make you a killer?

We ran out of time, but Ben told us that we’ll keep talking about this book after break, in conjunction with other things that we’re discussing.


As the final exercise, we were told to stand up and think one thing that’s stuck with us from this first half of the semester (something from the class which we’ve been thinking about) and one hope that you have for the rest of the semester. The vast majority of the class chose some variation of ‘what is truth?’ as an idea that has stuck with them.