On the Road: (Penguin Orange Collection)

Product Information

Si todo es falso, si es imposible conocer la verdad, y además nos da pavor descubrirla y que se trate de una revelación terrible, solo nos queda conectar los puntos —acontecimientos, imágenes, fechas, datos aleatorios— con la esperanza de que aparezca un dibujo que desvele el sentido, si no de la vida, al menos de la información con que nos bombardean los medios. That's what it all comes down to in the end," he said. "A person spends his life saying good-bye to other people. How does he say good-bye to himself?" The airborne toxic event. Cool name for a band? These guys thought so. Not if you look like that it's not. There is an "airborne toxic event" caused by a train accident that forces the Gladneys to evacuate their home for a short period. According to the book flap, this was supposed to be a central event in the novel, but this novel has no center. It just sort of meanders on, a supposdedly razor-sharp satire of our consumer-driven culture. Desde aquel infausto día a principios del siglo XX en que a un humilde emigrante judío de origen austriaco afincado en los Estados Unidos llamado Edward Bernays se le ocurrió aplicar las novedosas teorías de su tío —un tal Freud— al mundo de la publicidad, el consumismo se ha convertido en rasgo principal de la sociedad occidental.

The reason I think that I moved in that direction was that it was simply impossible any longer to discuss what was happening to us in contemporary terms. There had to be some distance, given the phenomena. We were all going slightly crazy trying to be honest and trying to see straight and trying to be safe. Sometimes there are conflicts in these three urges. I had known this story since my college years and I’d never understood why it was so attractive to me. Now it suddenly made sense. It seemed to me that the hysteria in Salem had a certain inner procedure or several which we were duplicating once again, and that perhaps by revealing the nature of that procedure some light could be thrown on what we were doing to ourselves. And that’s how that play came to be.

Success!

The hostility of the Kazans toward the project came from Elia Kazan’s decision to be a cooperative witness before the Committee and thus to identify by name those who, in his judgment, had been members of the Communist party in the 1930s. By a strange irony Miller was returning from Salem, where he had been researching the play, when he heard on his car radio news of Kazan’s testimony before the Committee. Kazan had offered names: Harry Elion, John Bonn, Alice Evans, Anne Howe. He was the first of a number of Miller’s colleagues and friends to capitulate to the Committee’s demands and blandishments. The following month Miller’s role model, the radical playwright Clifford Odets, also named names; in June of the following year, six months after The Crucible opened, so did Lee J. Cobb, who originated the role of Willy Loman on Broadway. They did so partly out of fear for their careers—uncooperative witnesses would almost inevitably find themselves dismissed from their jobs-and partly because they genuinely felt guilty about the naïveté of their earlier commitments. The Committee thus offered what religion offers: the opportunity for confession and the grace of redemption. As he becomes much more intimate with the advent of his own death Gladney begins finally to glean wisdom from information. “The air was rich with extrasensory material. Nearer to death, nearer to second sight. I continued to advance in consciousness. Things glowed, a secret life rising out of them.” No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.’

Ken Kesey’s bracing, inslightful novel about the meaning of madness and the value of self-reliance, and theinspiration for the new Netflix original series Ratched Deadly Don: Ha! The system is invisible, which makes it all the more impressive, all the more disquieting to deal with. The toxic event had released a spirit of imagination. People spun tales, others listened spellbound. There was a growing respect for the vivid rumor, the most chilling tale… We began to marvel at our own ability to manufacture awe.’ It is surely possible to be awed by a thing that threatens your life, to see it as a cosmic force, so much larger than yourself, more powerful, created by elemental and wilful rhythms.’

Become a Member

I initially enjoyed the book, and indeed, the opening chapter describing the line of station wagons pulling up to college at the end of summer is timeless. Written in the 80s, it is still perceptive today. However, the book gets more tiresome as it goes on. There are countless trips to the grocery store, where DeLillo's characters, including the insufferable Murray, can wonder zombie-like down the endless aisles, exchanging self-important banalities with each other. I guess the grocery store is some sort of symbol for our rampant consumerism? White Noise takes place in a realm one small step removed from an easily recognisable reality – or “just outside the range of human apprehension”, as DeLillo puts it. On face value none of its characters or events are quite credible – the characters are too eloquent, the scenes too stage managed. Why, for example, would people choose to go out in the open on foot to escape from a toxic cloud? Why not get in their cars or simply stay barricaded in their homes? So DeLillo can give us an image of a nomad biblical exodus because Delillo wants to strip down humanity to its rudiments in this novel – the fear of death and subsequent gullibility it induces to submit to all kinds of generalised information that will keep us safe. He wants to show us how information is used to cower us into a herd mentality. The Hitler warning always stalking the outer corridors of the novel. “Put on a uniform and feel bigger, stronger, safer''. Non mancano avvistamenti bizzarri, UFO, la gente sembra propensa al delirio: cos’altro è, in fondo, quell’andare a vedere il tramonto dal cavalcavia sull’autostrada? Luogo dove si raduna molta gente, anche in sedia a rotelle, grandi e piccini, ad ammirare i colori del sole calante, che “l’evento tossico aereo” - quello che ha riempito la cittadina di gente in tute e caschi dall’aspetto minaccioso sparsi a rilevare perdite e contaminazione, quello che ha portato all’evacuazione di massa prima di riappropriarsi della vita di prima – ha reso acuti e intensificati. Bella rilettura