The Loud Noise
Postmodern is defined as certain tendencies in post World War II Literature. Similar to modernist, the postmodernist concept relies heavy on fragmentation, paradox, and questionable narrators. It coincides with meta narrative and little narrative being characterized by the rise of industry, technology, urbanization, and the belief of no absolute truth. In this context, the stance of the characters in White Noise, moral ambivalence as well as discussing the characters moral choices in relation with man’s “death fear”, and the artificial relief provided by the never ending technological process which are slightly referred to as moral ambivalence. ‘Death fear’ and the ‘ technological process are conveyed as the extension of man’s pursing a concrete life in today’s world where man faces various unexpected problems he is unable to deal with, since they don’t fit the patterns of the rationalist order and reason. Don Delillo uses his own narrative technique and expresses with a specific sense of humor, mans disappointment of being left helpless and alone despite the “Grand Narratives of the Era”.
Even early as Chapter six Jack infers, “Mans guilt in history and in the tides of his own blood has been complicated by technology, the daily sleeping falsehearted death. At the beginning of Chapter 6, Jack considers his son’s premature hair loss and wonders if he or Heinrich’s mother might be responsible for their son’s thinning hair, by having unwittingly consumed toxic foods or raising the boy in the proximity of industrial waste. Jack begins with a specific, particular observation but soon brings the problem of Heinrich’s thinning hair into a wider, universal context. Heinrich’s relatively insignificant hair loss illustrates the novel’s greater concern with the way technology has unwittingly changed fundamental aspects of life. Jack’s individual genes might be responsible for Heinrich’s balding, but, given the pervasiveness of chemicals in the modern world, it’s impossible to determine who or what, exactly, is at fault. Man’s culpability is no longer obvious in many situations, since to some degree technology has begun to operate outside of man’s control. Technology has not only blurred the lines between what we are and are not accountable for, but it has also eroded away, like Heinrich’s hairline, some essential part of our lives. This passage sets the stage for the airborne toxic event and for Jack’s eventual confrontation with his own technologically induced death, Nyodene D. This passage represents a few of several themes that represent ‘post-modernism’, underground conspiracies, and the role of technology expansion in it.

Additionally another theme streaming in Post-Modernism and throughout the text besides death is consumerism, and media saturation which is ever-present towards the end of chapter ten. Jack says, “The system was invisible, which makes it all the more impressive, all the more disquieting to deal with but we were in accord, at least for now. The networks, circuits, streams, and the harmonies.” At the close of Chapter 10, Jack goes to an ATM and finds that the bank computer corroborates his personal accounting. For Jack, this represents a significant victory, arrived at by hard work and good fortune. The vast, complicated network of technology that underlies everything from the supermarket scanners to the ATM machines has, to some degree, validated Jack and his sense of personal identity. The data have told him that he is indeed who he thinks he is. The value Jack places on such a seemingly small thing reflects both the importance of numbers and technology in defining identity, as well as Jack’s deep-seated insecurity about what that identity is. He seeks confirmation wherever he can, and if the ATM can confer a temporary sense of security, then he is all the happier and stronger for it. However, the quote also hints that this accord won’t always be the case, and that at some point in the future, the networks and the technology they represent will turn against Jack.
Don DeLillo has published thirteen novels since 1971, along with several plays and numerous stories. I believe he is one of the most distinctive and interesting American writers of our day (not to mention that he can be very funny). His sentences are utterly his own. That’s why this is a definitive postmodern novel.

Works Cited
Don Delillo, White Noise
Class Notation
http://www.perival.com/delillo/ddbiblio.html.

Gaston Mclemore
AML 3041-02
Dr. Jordan
December 1, 2009

Jamaica Kincaid
“I was always being told I should be something, and then my whole upbringing was something I was not: it was English.”

The word culture is defined as the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought. With that being stated it’s safe to say that Kincaid’s colonial upbringing plays an important role in her life as well as her writings. She was born in 1949 as Elaine Potter Richardson, on the island of Antigua, located in the Caribbean, and later changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid due to disapproval of her parents for writing. From 1983 to today, Kincaid is best known for her Caribbean novels, poems and short stories such as Annie John, A Small Place, At the Bottom of the River, and Girl. The major themes of her writings tend to put independence, gender relations, and colonization in a paradox, battling with the admiration yet resentment of the British colonizers. Along with this written detail of the novelist, I will be presenting a clip of Kincaid reading and discussing excerpts from, Annie John.

Annie John, a novel written by Jamaica Kincaid in 1985 depicts the growth of a girl in Antigua, an island in the Caribbean. It covers issues as diverse as mother-daughter relationships, sexism, racism, clinical depression, and education. The independence of the chapters makes their compilations seem episodic, which is to say that each chapter involves a series of episodes about certain times in a young girl’s life. During this close-reading she touches on her start in print with “Talk of the Town” column in the New Yorker, specifically the irony that her submissions in the 1970s, just preceded the period of celebrity culture. Kincaid says, “It was time when rich people in America wanted to be known for working, doing something other than being rich, and they would get jobs or something like that.” Also, she speaks on wanting to write differently from anyone else at the magazine, “a vanity or arrogance of her youth.” Her piece about a book reception for economist Milton Friedman consists entirely of an inventory of the cost of the event to her and other participants, whom Kincaid rigorously fact checked. Her hostility towards Friedman is due in part by his advisory position, in those days to “a cruel government in Chile,” and Kincaid emphasizes that she wanted to express this but “didn’t want to just say it.” When “Mr. Shaw published it, it was amazing to me”, says Kincaid firmly.

Furthermore, Kincaid talks comically about a passage called “new”, which she expresses her passion for youthfulness while reading a conversation about two women discussing the nature of men, women, and the new celebrity culture emerging. Among some of her prestige awards are the Prix Femina Etranger for her memoir, My Brother in 2000, a Guggenheim fellowship in 1989, a PEN/Faulkner Award nomination and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award of the American Academy and Institute of Arts for her collection of short stories, At the Bottom of the River (1983).

Although Kincaid’s woks are short in length, they have never failed to elicit respect, if at times reluctantly. She is a forthright person who speaks candidly, and left the New Yorker in 1995. Kincaid is currently a professor at Claremont Mckenna College, and up until recently a visiting professor and teacher of creative writing at Harvard University. Over a career that has spanned more than two decades has earned a reputable place in the literary world for her personal, stylistic and honest writings.

Works Cited
Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Volume 13, Gale, 1994.
contemporary Black Biography, Volume 4, Gale, 1993.
http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/460
"Jamaica Kincaid," BBC World Service, http://www.bbc.co.uk (February 11, 2003).
www.wikipedia.org/Jamaica Kincaid