[A Sip of Books] Disasters and Deaths Caused by Science and Technology... 'White Noise'

Some sentences encapsulate the entire content of the book itself, while others instantly reach the reader's heart, creating a point of connection with the book. We excerpt and introduce such meaningful sentences from the book. - Editor's note

One day, a thick black cloud of smoke rises over the small American town of Blacksmith. A tanker carrying toxic substances derails on the outskirts of the town, covering the entire city in a black cloud. This incident brings hardship to Jack Gladney and his family, who had been living a peaceful life as the head of the "Hitler Studies" department at College on the Hill University.

The author sharply perceives that the fundamental problem of American civilization lies in the post-industrial society's tendency to bury social and political issues under pleasant signs such as rumors, gossip, and product advertisements. He also depicts the characteristics of material civilization, represented by modern American civilization, as a "blind faith in technology," criticizing humanity's reckless, alternative-free race. Furthermore, he explores the spectacle of the media and the trivialized disasters and modern meanings of death that have been reduced to corporate profit-making.

"Professor, why do decent, kind, and responsible people get drawn into disaster scenes on television?"

"Because our minds are becoming clouded. Sometimes, a major disaster is necessary to cut off the constant bombardment of information. (...) Only a major disaster can capture our attention. We want it, need it, and depend on it. As long as it happens somewhere else, that is." p123~124

Family is like a cradle of all the world's misinformation. There is certainly something in the daily life of a family that produces errors of fact. Overly close relationships, the noise and heat of existence?perhaps something deeper like the necessity of survival is the cause. Our minds tell us that we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world full of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and safety. The deeper we delve into the nature of things, the looser our structure seems to become. The process by which a family functions works to block out the influence of the world. p153

"That is precisely the nature of modern death," the mind said. "Modern death has a life independent and separate from us. It grows grandly and extensively. It is spreading more actively than ever before. We study it objectively. We can predict its emergence and track its path inside the body. We can take cross-sectional images and record its pulses and waves on video. We have never been this close to it, nor this familiar with its habits and attitudes. We know it very intimately. But it continues to grow, gaining breadth and width, acquiring new exits, new passages, and means. The more we learn about it, the larger it grows. Is this some kind of physical law? Each time knowledge and technology advance, a new kind of death, a new variant, appears accordingly. Like a virus vector, death adapts." p273~274

White Noise | Don DeLillo | Translated by Kang Mi-suk | Changbi | 604 pages | 18,000 KRW