Clearly, the theme of “the crowd” looms large in our reading this week, as found in the chapter “The Crowd” from Canetti’s 1962 book Crowds and Power as well as in DeLillo’s 1991 novel Mao II. The excerpt from the 1962 book begins by positing a “fear of being touched,” while the 1991 novel introduces the same concept on the second page of Chapter I, expressed by a man purporting to be there to sign his books before being ushered out of a bookstore by security, telling the guard, “Watch the hands. There’s no right that you should touch my person. Just, that’s all, don’t put no hands on me.” Canetti cites two situations in which a person suspends the fear of being touched: first, when they are attracted to someone, and second, when “the discharge” occurs and the members of a crowd meld together as equals. Thus, crowds are defined as opposed to individuality, while the writer seeks to make his mark through his individuality.
With all the other references to crowds in Mao II, I cannot help but wonder whether DeLillo was familiar with Canetti’s book. DeLillo frequently refers to crowds in a negative sense, such as the crowd of devoted disciples of Reverend Moon in the opening section. Writers such as Bill Gray (and the man escorted from the bookstore) stand apart from the crowd. Given this negative view of crowds, the final line in the prologue may be intended as a warning: “The future belongs to crowds.” The ‘reclusive writer,’ who probably has elements of DeLillo himself, is the ultimate anti-crowd character: he does not participate in them, does not follow them, and takes pains not to attract them. Yet attract them he does, as his admiring fans invade his mailbox with their epistles. Curiously, the author acquired his power by publishing a few works, yet he now chooses not to publish his latest novel, so as to maintain his power and avoid the risk of losing it. The truth is that his crowds of fans empower the writer, just as they empower the Reverend Moon, and as they empowered Chairman Mao.
Likewise, the terrorist attains power over the masses through their attention to him. On page 41, Bill Gray states, “There’s a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists…. Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.”
The writer’s optimism, Bill Gray’s hope for revealing truth, comes through the writer’s craft of rewriting. On page 48 of Mao II, Gray describes his philosophy of rewriting: “Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it, and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there…. There’s a moral force in a sentence when it comes out right. It speaks the writer’s will to live.” Of course, he says a lot more in that paragraph, but I’ve selected those two sentences to emphasize Gray’s belief that writing can be a force for good in the universe. In light of this novel’s linkage of authors and terrorists, I suspect that DeLillo’s hope for combatting the evil and hopelessness of terrorism may lie in the writer’s ability to project truth, good, and hope. DeLillo may wish that not a single writer’s voice will be silenced by the force of hostile crowds.