“Cult of Personality” (Living Colour ft. Don DeLillo)

“The future belongs to crowds” (16). Could it be that Mao II’s crowning point did not even make it into the first chapter? I would surmise that to be so, as Don DeLillo’s novel paints a more colorful representation of cult logic than Andy Warhol’s silkscreen painting of the Chinese Communist leader.

Writing this with only an exposing up to the 5^th chapter, I can already develop the issue of crowding (and further, cults). Initially, what struck me as intriguing was not even regarding the plot itself, but the point of view. Unlike our previous novel (and thank God for that), the POV displays the third person. However, DeLillo does not just leave the POV as third, but he treats the reader to free indirect discourse. The reader gets a sense of 3^rd person description told in the idiom of each character (Karen, Karen’s parents, Brita, Scott, and Bill – so far). As a book on crowds/cults, I found this extremely evocative toward the overall plot as the POV itself indicates a matter of crowding. The line between narrator and character is blurred, which allows a continual movement between the interior and exterior qualities of each viewpoint. The metaphysical nature of the novel allows the reader to exhaust his or her invisibility throughout each character’s persona and not have have to centralize a certain voice. Depicting some of the characters’ thoughts in fragments rather than complete sentences presents the characters with senses of authenticity and accessibility that breathe life into their typeface lungs. The characters seem to have a position of reality. This blending of interior/exterior qualities also becomes prevalent in chapter 4 of the book with the interaction between Brita and Bill, “Her hand on his face, how surprised he’d been to feel so affected by the gesture, the entireness of simple touch” (DeLillo 55). Bill’s dissecting of Brita’s existence in his house and his life allowed the intrusion of Rabinowitz’s Rules of Signification to reinforce the idea of crowds in my reading. This interior monlogue is significant in satisfiying a portion of Elias Canetti’s “Crowds and Power” when Brita’s touch forces Bill to a self-conscious/anxious mentality,

“Any free or large gesture of approach towards another human being is inhibited…no man can get near another, nor reach his height. In every sphere of life, firmly established hierarchies prevent him touching anyone more exalted than himself, or descending, except in appearance, to anyone lower” (Canetti 18).

Bill’s ability to let Brita “in” is what Canetti labels a “discharge”, which, removes the hierarchies within a crowd and promotes equality. The successful intimacy with an outsider forges an advancing chronology as the reader will start to see the development of the crowd and later the cult. A fair assumption, right? Unfortunately, Karen’s presence after Bill’s discharge made me question if she was the leader,

Brita: “And you hate me for leaving here with all that film.”

Karen: “It’s just a feeling of there’s something wrong. We have a life here that’s carefully balanced. There’s a lot of planning and thinking behind the way Bill lives and now there’s a crack all of a sudden” (57).

Karen’s urgency to remain secluded (geographically and communally) seemed to reflect the idea of the closed crowd, “The closed crowd renounces growth and puts the stress on permanence. The first thing to be noticed about it is that it has a boundary. It creates a space for itself which it will fill” (Canetti 17). While she lives to serve Bill, could it be that she is the epicenter for this crowd transforming into a cult? Is it because of her that the three have been secluded for so long? Karen’s dominance in the prologue and in Bill’s household will push me to consult the Rules of Signification throughout the entire novel.