Post-Print Fiction

Keeping in mind Rabinowitz’s rules and making special note of how Delillo chose to finish his novel, I agree with cmckenz7’s assessment that Delillo is purposefully trying to foster an ultimate solidarity with Brita Nilsson’s character.

This makes perfect sense when we consider that throughout the novel, we are introduced and witness the development of characters which serve as some kind of archetype for the various influences of human consciousness, for reclusive and group behavior, as well as the oft-mentioned relationship between art and terror.

Ultimately, Brita’s character is the one that takes the time to take a step back from the activity and notice the “picture” set before her. There is a period of reflection and seemingly, a resolution of sorts in her observations “The city is quiet for the first time since she arrived. She examines the silence.” (240)

Brita’s character throughout the novel was a sympathetic one. And she serves as an intermediary in the dialogue in several ways. Her trade, as a photographer is significant in this way when we consider the photograph can be art (novel) as well as news (terror).

In her stated intentions of photographing writers, particularly reclusive ones, Brita is presented as a character with a desire to bring things out into the open, to reveal what seeks to be hidden. “If someone’s not well-known, so much the better. Given a choice, I prefer to search out writers who remain obscure.” (25)

On the same page, Brita states her independence when discussing her love for traveling and photographing writers. The independence of her own character and her desire to expose in some way reclusive writers, serve to position her, once again, as an intermediary between, in this case, reclusive and group, behavior.

In terms of the relationship between the novelist and terrorist, Karen states her inability to fully assimilate with either.

A professed and avid reader, Brita does state that she feels “like an outsider” when compared to writers, as cmckenzy7 pointed out. In the novel’s last chapter, Brita states she is no longer interested in photographing writers only. Instead she says she photographs on assignment, which also comes to become laborious for her. “She has come here already tired of these stories…” (228).

Ultimately, Brita’s character represents in my estimation, the independent soul who broadly read and observant, is hesitant to invest too much of herself in the conventions of the novelist or terrorist.

 

 

I am surprised by how little the character of Karen changes from beginning to end of DeLillo’s Mao II – in her final scene, she is still child-like and dependent, with no notable thoughts or beliefs apart from her faith in the Reverend Moon.  I think it is significant that the Unification Church is cited as making its followers more child-like. “What does the church teach? Be children again” (80).  Although endowed with an adult body, Karen is portrayed as a child at many points.  For example, Scott observes a theme of underwear in Karen’s life in Chapter 6.  If DeLillo wished to present Karen as a sexy young woman, nudity might be a more effective motif; underwear seems more appropriate for a child.

Karen is presented not as an adolescent nor as a growing girl, but rather as permanently child-like. Her final lines in the novel cement this impression: “They can own the house,” Karen said. “But they should let us live here. And we keep the manuscript and we keep the pictures” (223).  Karen’s wishes are hopelessly naive and quixotic, and rather self-centered.  Scott has speculated that the matter will ultimately be in the hands of lawyers, while his companion demonstrates her lack of a mature understanding of their situation.  According to Rabinowitz’s “rules of notice” as described in Before Reading, the last sentence (and last appearance of a major character) are “privileged,” and a valid interpretation of the text should be able to account for those privileged elements.  By this measure, any interpretation of the character of Karen ought to explain the ultimate simplicity of her thoughts.

Karen does not judge or evaluate, but rather accepts everything around her as equally important.  She is the embodiment of a member of a crowd after the “discharge” has taken place, and all become equal and lose their fear of being touched, as described in Canetti’s Crowds and Power.  In Karen’s case, not only is there no fear of being touched, but she practically must be touched to exist, to be experienced.  She is constantly seeking to connect with other people.

Pictures play a large role in Mao II, and Karen emphasizes their importance in connecting with members of the crowd.  Karen’s mind is mostly a blank slate. She rarely reads books, and did not come into Bill’s presence through any familiarity with his writing, unlike Scott and everyone else around the writer. Although she doesn’t read, she frequently watches television as a way of connecting with the crowd even while sitting in an isolated house.  While watching TV, she seems to absorb the pictures, often with the sound turned off.  Continuing this theme, in Karen’s final chapter she is looking at photographs of Bill, as she and Scott view contact sheets using a lightbox.

Karen seems to be a sort of hologram, unaffected by her surroundings, and untroubled by deep reflection.  I am tempted to assert that Karen exists only when someone chooses to see her, which might account for her interactions with Bill and Scott, but would not explain her time among the homeless in New York City.  Although it is stated in the novel that Karen is like a character out of Bill’s writing, she is left alive after his demise.  At the end of the novel, she is a child of the future, completely dependent on the crowd, with no use for independent thought, or writers like Bill.

      From the beginning of the novel, I really didn’t like Bill Gray’s character. If I had to pinpoint one particular reason for my dislike it would be because I found him not just to be afraid, but living in fear, which in turn had him not really living at all.

        By being afraid, I mean to say that his character seemed cowardly to hide his identity as a novelist from the world, even though terrorist acts were occurring at the time. But it seemed to me that he didn’t stand up for what he believed in, writing, and fear played a role in him being able to finish his book/publish it.

        I think that by the end of the novel, I wanted to change my insight of Bill, but I still saw him as a coward. I thought that throughout the novel, he seemed to progress out of his fear, little by little, first by going to New York to have his picture taken, and then going to London to give a reading for a poet held captive by terrorists. This was a transformation in my eyes, initiating a response to the terrorist acts against writers.

         But then when Bill is traveling and encounters the British vets, he denies his true identity as a writer once again saying: “No, no, I’m not that kind of a writer,” in response to the men’s skeptical question of whether they would know of him. Even while on a mission to give a reading about a trapped poet, he is still fearful of anyone knowing who he is.

        In his final scene, Bill is still en route to get to get to the poet in Beirut, hoping that his novel will mean something to someone; his finally finished novel. As he is traveling on the ferry to get to Beirut, he asks for advice on how to get about once he’s there. The clerk told him to tell the man from the Lebanese Forces that he was a writer, and Bill responded “Okay, I’m a writer” (214). Whether he was just saying this in confirmation to what the man was telling him, or it was his way of finally affirming who he was, was unclear to me. Bill goes on to state that “it was writing that made his life disappear” (215). Once again, I wasn’t sure if he was referring to himself, or the boy imprisoned, or perhaps both. Writing had made them turn to a life of hiding, but I saw the trapped poet as stronger and fearless compared to Bill.

       Bill spent his whole life pretending that he wasn’t a writer, afraid to publish another novel, afraid to show face, afraid to tell people that he was a writer, and at that, one that they may know. He died on the ferry and never got to get to the boy held captive, which I still saw as another expression of fear; like death gave him the easy way out. Because now he no longer had to run, and only his identity would be sold to a militia in Beirut.

      On a literal level, I think this ending of Bill’s character was the death to his book, the death to his fear, and the death of some hope for other writers. Thus, I felt that it evoked a sense of incompleteness, a lost identity, a cowardly disposition, and gave the presumption that fear is too great for some people.

Launching into part 2 of the text I was somewhat worried about the ending given Professor Sample’s characterization of it being “anti-climactic,” and while after finishing the novel I feel that certainly holds true, I think it holds up in light of some of the novel’s themes. The idea of author’s being replaced as shapers of public or societal narrative is well served in Bill’s unceremonious death, and particularly Brita’s decision by the novel’s photograph “the interesting things” (229) instead of photographers – who are distinct from the former subject  – is the culmination of this theme. Terrorists don’t literally replace authors, but figuratively, in the context of our understanding of the narrative of our world. If this is the case, I can better understand why the author chose Mao II as the title for this novel, especially considering the many allusions to that man.

In fact this idea is made explicitly clear during Bill’s discussions with George Haddad. As George states, “In China the narrative belonged to Mao. People memorized it, and recited it to assert the destiny of their revolution.” (162). When we think of narrative, we may instantly think of a story in a book or something of the like, but DeLillo and George use it discuss how revolutionaries use it to shape their own ideal culture. This theme is reinforced by DeLillo’s recurrent allusions to Ayatollah Kohmeni, who in the middle east could be seen as a figure analogous to Mao. Kohmeini and the terrorists however do not frame the narrative as Mao did with his Little Red Book of Quotations. Instead, they use the media. Abu Rashid had originally planned to release the captured author after Bill attended a press conference where he affirmed the goals and ideals of Rashid’s group. And we see that Karen’s whole outlook on the world is informed by what she watches on television, from the football riot earlier in the novel to the televised burial of Kohmeini. Where are the authors, meanwhile? The two writers of Mao II meanwhile? Dead and all but forgotten.

The captive dies in captivity, and it is implied by Brita’s discussion with Rashid and his interpreter that the world has forgotten the terrorist had even held him, while Bill dies on a boat completely unknown to those present. When Bill meets with the British veterinarians he never gives his identity, and insists that they’ve never read anything by him or seen him in passing on television appearances (that point being fairly likely given Bill is a recluse). He is, to the vets, an unknown quantity, more importantly one that has had no impact on their lives. Finally, in his conversations with them, he constructs a situation that seemingly mirrors the absurdity of his insistence to continue on to Beirut. His hypothetical character hit by a car should, by the all testimony given by the vets, go see a doctor, and certainly not go on a cruise or journey as Bill suggests. In spite of all the injuries Bill wants his character to carry on, as he does to Beirut. It seems to me that Bill is trying to lay himself to rest, or to hide from the grotesque specter of his novel which seems to be dogging him throughout the novel.

Although initially Brita doesn’t seem to be as important of a character as Bill, Scott or Karen, there are many details (seen through the application of rules of notice) that suggest otherwise. For example, Brita’s sections of narration are always more unbiased and clear than any other character’s. This is especially true in her final scene of the novel. True, we know that she feels “detached” from Rashid and his translator, and that “she wants to stand inside” the chaotic city of Beirut, but these perceptions don’t seem to cloud the reader’s sense of reality the way Karen or Scott’s narrations do(237-238). The scenes are mostly dialogue, which is unbiased in itself, but especially so because we know what both the translator and Rashid say. Rashid is not speaking in English; Brita can’t understand him, but we can because the narration isn’t so closely tied to her perception. The narrator also rarely slides into using Brita’s idioms and thoughts as narration, and thus we are left with descriptions of scenes and characters as they naturally are.

I think this style of narration is a testament to Brita’s character. She is somewhat in the happy medium of admirers of terrorists and leaders of massive religious movements like Reverend Moon. Scott is obviously a follower of terrorists, if we can assume that Bill is considered a terrorist. Scott wants to follow Bill because Bill is an individual. Scott admires everything about Bill’s solitary life and despises the idea of Bill being among and available to the masses. Karen, ( like the crowds of people surrounding Khomeini’s gravesite) is conversely a follower of massive movements. She kind of floats around, spreading the words of unidentified “masters.” Karen also admires Bill, though, for the impact he has on the masses. Though he works as an individual with his own aims, Bill has the power to control the thoughts of the masses, and Karen admires this. Brita is somewhere in between Scott and Karen. She loves Bill’s work, and the fact that he’s an author, but she doesn’t let it consume her thoughts the way Scott and Karen do. She “loves writers” but at the same time she “feels like an outsider” because she has thoughts and perceptions independent of them(37).

I think the fact that Brita is such a reliable narrator and because her last scene is the last scene of the entire novel, we can assume that Delillo wants people (readers, more specifically) to be like Brita. He wants people to have an appreciation for art and literature, but not in a way that makes us lose our identity.

Since nobody else has bitten yet, I’ll go ahead and look at the final scene for the character Jean-Claude Julien. I found Julien’s role in the novel to be incredibly complex and elusive, but since we’re only asked to try and make sense of it, I’ll do the best that I can.

Rabinowitz’s Rule of Notice can be applied even further to Jean-Claude Julien; not only is his final scene significant for its finality, but each of his scenes seem to carry a heavier weight since there are so few of them. As we mentioned in class, this same phenomenon happens when we read poetry and each word seems to play a greater role in making meaning (perhaps it is fitting that Jean Claude is also a poet).  Julien’s sections themselves are brief and concise, but full of meaning. Jean-Claude Julien is the character who drives Mao II’s plot—without his hostage situation, DeLillo would have no concrete plot to drive the story. The other characters would simply exist, motionless and meaningless. In a way, DeLillo’s creation of Julien holds the book–and DeLillo’s writing–hostage in its significance. The few sections where we are privileged to see from Julien’s perspective remind the reader that there is a plot here, something that at least three characters (Bill, George and Charlie) seem to be working toward, and the rest of the characters follow suit. In this way, the hostage is holding the other characters (and their actions) hostage.

Going off of this, Julien’s final appearance in the novel makes several reflections on some of the larger themes that the other characters are grappling with throughout the novel. Earlier in Mao II Bill makes the bold comparison of terrorists to novelists; with Julien we see a direct interaction between the two, and it makes us reflect on their similarities and their relationship with each other. I don’t know if it’s necessary or not to distinguish Julien as a poet and not a novelist—perhaps for the sake of my blog post, I’ll pretend that Bill compared writers to terrorists in general. In fact, it wasn’t until Julien’s final narrative that I began to really see what Bill was getting at with his comparison.

While being held hostage, Julien begins to obsess over being able to write. I use the word “obsess” intentionally, because it strikes me as a characteristic that writers and terrorists both share. Without the ability to write, Julien becomes anxious, and on page 203 he mentions that “There were thoughts he could not formulate without writing them down.” This seems similar to the relationship that “terrorists” have with the senseless acts of violence and destruction that they commit. They need it to make sense of the world, and without it, their conceptions of reality begin to break down. On page 204, it is mentioned that “Written words could tell [Julien] who he was,” much in the same way that Mao II’s terrorists use terrorism to define their existence. Everyone’s understanding of the world around them is linked to some ideology…writers, through their craft, strive to make sense of their ideology. Terrorists, too, try to test it or stretch it, and both writers and terrorists make some attempt to push their ideology onto unwitting Others. Writers tend to do it peacefully, yet subconsciously, whereas terrorists are violent and obvious in their methods. That right there may be the fine line that differentiates the two.

Besides the connection between writers and terrorists, Jean-Claude Julien’s section also had me drawing parallels between Julien and the other writer, Bill. Both seem to be obsessed with the more grotesque imagery of their bodies (the mention of vomit, fever, waste, serous fluid, is mentioned all throughout the passage). Julien echoes Bill’s suggestion that a writer’s work in inextricably bound to their bodies. Obviously, without their bodies, the writers cannot produce their work; even further, the connection that the authors feel to their writing is similar to the connection that a parent might feel for their offspring. This is not meant to be sentimental, but only to emphasize the reproductive aspects of writing, as opposed to seeing it as purely a productive act. Throughout this class, we have come to understand how writers cannot help but write themselves, their perspective, and their ideologies into their works. By writing, they are reproducing their vision, not producing an altogether original one.

Also, if I can completely turn on everything I just said…maybe I’m a little dim when it comes to really obvious-but-unspoken plot twists in novels (which Mao II seemed to be full of) but are we supposed to believe at the end that Julien was entirely made up by Bill? Or at least the Julien that we read. Bill mentions several times that he is ‘writing’ about the hostage, and then on page 215, when he’s looking at what he’s written, he asks himself “Who is the boy.” I assumed this was the same boy that Julien constantly refers to, the one who is holding him hostage. But how could Bill have known about this? Are the passages we read from Julien’s perspective actually written by Bill? Just curious to see if anyone else drew this connection.

From the start of the epilogue where Karen is in the midst of her wedding ceremony to Kim in Yankee Stadium, to her last scene in the novel where she ends up together with Scott, one thing can be said about Karen – she lacks as Mark Osteen would describe “a singular identity”. “Instead acting as what Mark Edmundson calls a “conductor, a relay point for currents of (penetrating) force”. (656) Although through such witty comments as “I just had enough money for the taxi and the tip and I wanted to arrive totally broke” (219), and the fact that she cried and admitted to missing Scott, we see a more vulnerable and open Karen, she is still the same woman she was before she came into Bill’s and Scott’s life.

Prior, to joining Scott and Bill, Karen was a person who looked into men such as Moon of the Unification Church for guidance. She was and is a person who relies on others to make decisions for her, and to give her life authorship. In the article Becoming Incorporated: Spectacular Authorship and DeLillo’s Mao II, Osteen writes that “But with Bill gone, she (Karen) is a character in search of an author, and so travels to New York City, stays in Brita’s apartment, and roams the streets around Tompkins Square Park, mingling with the homeless and disenfranchised”(656) .While it can be argued that Karen is capable of being an independent individual as she was able to live in Brita’s apartment alone, it is important to acknowledge that during the time that she stayed in New York, Karen relied on and was emotionally invested in Omar, although he is only fourteen years old. Karen even grew to love Omar as she felt jealously towards the woman that he was having a child with.

After Bill left, Karen transferred the responsibility of authoring her life from Bill to Omar, and then back to Scott. She had already given Scott this responsibility before when she chose to get in the car with him in Kansas. Throughout the novel, Karen develops an emotional and/or sexual relationship with each of the men including Kim, Bill, Scott, and Omar in an attempt to find the right author of her life. Karen, eventually, decides to come back to Scott because she knows that he is the one person that would not leave her unlike Bill, Kim, and Omar. She is so armament about remaining in the house because she is scared of the possibility of living alone, and subsequently without Scott. Scott and Bill’s house provide a safe haven for Karen where she is protected from the outside world, and where she can easily have someone author her life without feeling that sooner or later someone will come to “deprogram” her.

Above Scott is Bill, who she views his images and manuscript as sacred. To Karen, Bill is almost god like. She proclaims in the last scene while talking to Scott that Bill’s family “can own the house, but they should let us live here. And we keep the manuscript and we keep the pictures.”(223) For Karen the images and the creation that Bill created are more important than anything else because there is where Bill manifests himself. In holding on to the images and manuscript, Karen is able to hold on to the Bill that she knew, and to the person that she looked up for guidance and authorship in not only novels, but also her life. Being that Karen and Scott live in Bill’s household, they are consumed with his image, however, whereas Scott is able to distance himself from Bill, the same cannot be said about Karen as while she is New York she chases a man that resembles Bill and in the fact she “sort of kept seeing Bill.”(219) Bill is the ultimate author of Karen’s life, and part of the reason why she chooses to come back to Scott is because he is the closest person that she has to Bill.

DeLillo concludes Karen’s and Scott’s final scene by writing, “the nice thing about life is that it’s filled with second chances. Quoting Bill” (224). Now, Karen and Scott are able to start a new chapter in their lives where Scott does not have to worry about Karen having an intimate and sexual relationship with Bill. Instead, they can focus on being exclusive to each other. Also whereas in the epilogue, Karen marries Kim and he leaves her to work abroad, in her last chapter, Karen has the opportunity to start a new live with someone else – in this case, Scott. Even though, Kim and Scott were chosen at random, with Scott things are different as their relationship is more genuine, and has the potential to make it last. The relationship between Scott and Karen comes to a full circle when “they drove twenty-two miles to buy a light box and magnifier, and twenty-two miles back” (220) because it is similar to how they started their relationship, only with the exception that this is their second time at doing this – their second chance.

I chose to look at Scott’s final scene in Mao II.  He remains at Bill’s house, despite the fact that Bill has gone missing.  Hurt that Bill is gone, and refusing to acknowledge that he might not come back, Scott goes through the motions of everyday life as if everything was still the same.  Scott continues to do mundane tasks of making lists and completing the items on the list.  Scott’s obsession with Bill is prevalent throughout the novel; Scott tracks Bill down when Bill does not want to be found.  Scott also keeps Bill confined to the house, wanting him to continue writing.  Mark Osteen points out that “we can’t be sure whether Scott belittles the book because it really is weak or because in writing it Gray has dared to alter the fetishized image that Scott worships” (Osteen 649).  But by keeping Bill in this state, Scott can continue to maintain the same image of Bill.  Osteen sees Scott creating Bill into a god-like figure.  Scott remaining in Bill’s house shows how Scott is “keep[ing] the faith” until Bill returns (Osteen 658).  Scott is also the only person who knows Bill’s real name, Willard Skansey, which he cherishes as his little secret.

Once Karen comes back, however, Scott and Karen find comfort in one another and realize they need to move on without Bill.  Scott, however, only does this by freeing himself of the “real” Bill, not the Bill he has always imagined (Osteen 658).  We see this when Scott “put his face to the keys and blew,” erasing all traces of Bill from the typewriter (DeLillo 141).  Instead Scott has Bill’s books and photographs in his possession so he can manipulate Bill’s image into the one he wants. He will not let the public see Bill’s last work but he will allow Brita’s photographs to be shown to the public.  Brita’s photographs are her interpretation of Bill, not Scott’s.  Scott sees Brita as “trying to deliver her subject from every mystery that hovered over his chosen life…that erased his seclusion” (22).  That seclusion is precisely what Scott is striving to keep.  By withholding the last book from the public, Scott maintains the image he has of Bill, which will collect “aura and force,” while giving the public Brita’s interpretation instead (DeLillo 224).

 

I appreciated a classmate’s comment about Bill being the hostage. The question that occurred to me, was: “Who exactly is he hostage of?” Is it Scott? Is he hostage of his own celebrity? Then I wondered, who else is a “hostage” in the novel? Is Scott hostage to his idea of Bill and Bill’s genius? Is Karen hostage to some cosmic-consciousness, bound to any and everything that flies through the universe and enters her head? Who is Brita hostage to?

What I thought about, as I continued to mull this idea of captivity over and specifically Bill’s captivity, was the contrast between the romantic idea of a writer as a terrorist and the reality of Bill as a hostage. But I realized that Bill was a hostage to himself – not just to his fame or his celebrity, or Scott, or even his novel, groping around every corner and scraping at every door. When Bill disappeared to “lose himself,” I actually think he was on a quest to find himself. The hostage in Beirut, the writer, was a symbol of himself and I believe he believed that in freeing the hostage, somehow he could free himself.

Unfortunately, Bill could not save himself (nor free himself) and that is why he died – a type of freedom, if you look at it that way. Bill was hostage to self-consciousness, a realized hell on earth if it is psychological, emotional, or physical. For example, when you are in physical pain, you are terribly conscious of yourself and it is impossible to “get out of yourself.” When Bill was “in the zone” (I can’t think of a better way to describe it), he was free of himself. When his gift was flowing and he was flowing with it, then he lost the consciousness of “Bill”, per se. But as his fame increased, and the circumstances of his life changed as a result of his success, he became more and more conscious of his own gift, muchly as a consequence of others being conscious of it. Their consciousness magnified his own and therefore he fled in order to hide from the unbearable burden of himself. Of course, the opposite happened and the “idea of Bill” grew into mythical proportions, taking on a life of its own…

Interestingly, the other leaders or public figures in the novel form a stark contrast to Bill’s situation:  Moon, Mao, Warhol, Khomeini, and Rashid. These men formed an image of themselves that they put, face-out, to the world and controlled the world’s consciousness of them. They were very deliberate about how they saw themselves and how others saw them. When the world’s idea of Bill (for me epitomized in Scott), leaked into Bill’s world, it destroyed him. He became hostage to himself. The freedom he had before to write outside so clearly what was inside got twisted and deformed in the darkness of his isolation. The hellish weight of “Bill” and “The Gift” crushed him. He lost who he was, and the final thoughts as he is dying are very telling: it is a process of returning to a time, and a place, where he was someone he was trying to remember? He died in anonymity, his identity stolen – poetically ironic. The terror which killed him in the end was the terror of meaningless.

“The anxiety of meaninglessness is anxiety about the loss of an ultimate concern, of a meaning which gives meaning to all meanings. This anxiety is aroused by the loss of a spiritual center, of an answer, however symbolic and indirect, to the question of the meaning of existence. . . The breakdown of absolutism, the development of liberalism and democracy, the rise of a technical civilization with its victory over all enemies and its own beginning disintegration — these are the sociological presupposition for the third main period of anxiety. In this the anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness is dominant. We are under the threat of spiritual nonbeing.” – Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be

They: a pronoun that illustrates a crowd in and of itself. Remove the t and the y and you are left with he. Or, remove the e and you are left with thy (a little archaic, but still representative of your).  Perspectives of his, yours, and theirs are evident. What’s missing? I. Mine.  A personalized sense of ownership. My point? Karen’s first and final scenes in this novel are paralleled with the involvement of they. We see her initial scenes of the novel reflecting the linking of individuality with collectivity/fragmentation with unity,“They all feel the same, young people from fifty countries, immunized against the language of self.  The stand and chant, fortified by the blood of numbers,” (8).  Karen’s final scene in the novel vocalizes a different sentiment,“They can own the house,” Karen said. “But they should let us live here. And we keep the manuscript and we keep the pictures,” (223). She finally acknowledges a desire for individual ownership. While she does include Scott in her use of the first person plural, she finally expresses a language of possession. While we were technically only supposed to interpret the final scene of the novel, I think Karen’s final scene has to be interpreted in relation to her first scene. As Rabinowitz indicates in “Before Reading,”

“…the first and last sentences of most texts are privileged; that is, any interpretation of a text that cannot account for those sentences is generally deemed  more defective than a reading that cannot account for some random sentence in the middle” (44).

Karen’s purpose in the beginning of the novel is to present the individual of the self through the context of the community. However, the end of the novel serves to show how the benefits of the community progress the individual self. Within a literal standpoint, her final scene in the novel serves as a catalyst to Bill’s legacy and her (and Scott’s) involvement in it. Although this conversation with Scott is at the end of the novel, it proves that her involvement in the novel and in Bill’s life has a continuity over time and space. In Chapter 12 of the novel, Karen’s voyeurism of the Chinese crowd provokes her to begin looking for Bill, “She followed a man who looked like Bill but he turned out on further inspection to not be a writer type at all” (178).  Through this, Karen’s involvement in the novel also introduces the issue of surveillance or crowd control that is common in within large groups of people. Even though Bill is no longer with them, Karen and Scott can still maintain Bill’s reclusion from being a public figure. This fight for reclusion within seclusion becomes cyclical with her urgency to exclude Brita from their threesome at the start of the novel. In a more evocative sense, Karen’s final scene in the novel blends the collectiveness of a crowd with the independence of an individual. The scene implies that a crowd cannot be successful without its individuals. Her desire to keep Bill’s manuscript and pictures is also interesting, as Mark Osteen’s “Becoming Incorporated: Spectacular Authorship and DeLillo’s Mao II” highlights that,

“Even Karen, who thinks of marriage as a “channel to salvation” as if she were watching it on TV (10), unconsciously registers how Moon manipulates the discourse of images by diverting his children’s addiction to consumerism into his own capitalist religion.”

Similar to Reverend Moon’s “manipulation” of photographs for his own capitalist gain, Karen’s wish for Bill’s items almost illustrates how a crowd is born. She needs Bill’s house, Bill’s manuscript and photographs, and Scott’s help to maintain Bill’s isolation. Crowds become a dependence on space, manipulation, and individuals. Thus, a crowd is not just an issue of “they”, but a combination of individual elements as Karen’s involvement in the novel suggests.

I read Cawelti’s essay between my readings of Mao II. As soon as I started reading the novel again I started jumping back to what Cawelti had written particularly with in the final portion of his essay regarding what he defined as “interpreter” and “representative” roles of the author-celebrity. I automatically associated the character Bill to the examples Salinger and Pynchon Cawelti gave, and Scott’s description of how he felt when he read a novel seemed to match exactly the experience a reader would have when reading something written by what they perceive as a “representative” author. “That book was about me somehow… I saw myself. It was my book. Something about the way I think and feel.” (DeLillo, 51) That seems to be pretty close to Calweti’s definition, and definition of vicarious.  When discussing the Bill’s writing dilemma on the following page, one (I had a hard time following who Scott was talking with) the mention that should the author publish, it would be the end of his myth, that is the end of Bill’s mythical persona, which sounded exactly like the mythic celebrity persona of some actual writer’s that Cawelti described.

Something I also noticed was the use of “Bill” in place of the title of any book he might of reading. When Scott mentions reading one of Bill’s books he says “when I was reading Bill” or “something out of Bill Gray.” It’s a motif in line with the text’s obsession with the concept of the author. After all the narrative thus far seems to be centered around the aforementioned author. At this point its seems that the text is constructing the author of the source of information and experience, not the novel (generally speaking). Bill’s inability to finish a novel adds an interesting aspect to this notion; by endlessly working on his work, Bill reflects the idea that inspiration  (or experience, maybe?) is constant. This may be at odds with the nature of the book as discussed at the dinner between the characters, in which there is some debate over whether “books are never finished.”  (DeLillo, 73)

Thus far I’m not sure how this plays into the larger context of the novel. In fact I’m not really sure where the text is going at this point. As far as I’ve read, the plots about Bill’s struggle as an author, Brita’s photography of Bill, and Karen’s deprogramming haven’t impacted each other. That said the plot of photographing bill seems to play toward his “mythic” status along the lines of what is discussed by DeLillo, for example when he discusses author going on talk shows, exposing themselves to public scrutiny & etc. But I just can’t tell for certain where everything is going.

After reading John Cawelti’s article The Writer as Celebrity, I started to think about how I as a reader respond to the “celebrity” author. I think the distinction between fame and celebrity, as Cawelti notes, is very important.

“Celebrity is brief and intense; fame tends to be slower in growing and is relatively permanent” (Cawelti 164).

Famous authors are those we can almost always recognize even though we may not have read any of their work; Cawelti notes famous authors such as Wilde, Poe, and J.D. Salinger. I think also of authors such as Shakespeare, Dante, and Homer. All of these authors carry a “brand name” but it is important to note that their fame is something that they have earned, whether they like it or not or sought it intentionally.

If we look at authors like Poe and Dickinson, we can see that their celebrity was largely a posthumous creation. It is not the author who decides that they are a celebrity (at first) but rather the reader. It is unlikely that these authors would have anticipated their fame, so I am inclined to believe that “fame” and “celebrity” are created not by the author but by the reader.

If the readers or the consumers of literature are the chief deciders of celebrity, then can we really blame a famous author for her popularity resulting from obnoxious books about sparkly vampires? While I can’t stand those books, I’m going to say no. While some authors embrace their celebrity and milk it for all it is worth, we have to remember that these authors would be no where without their readers. I think this is truly a reflection of how powerful the readers can be in shaping the popular literature that we see in the bookstores. The influence of the reader on the celebrity author can either be a motivational factor in the production of their work, or it can be completely ignored as is the case with J.D. Salinger.

            I remember the class talked about how terrorists are the new novelists. So, I found it interesting to hear Bill say it himself (41). I think that there is an underlying story going on in Mao II, about how the writers, or at least the publishers, are trying to take the” human conscious” back from the terrorists. One thing I asked myself was what is Bill’s last name? I would think an author, even a fictitious one, would have a full name. Maybe DeLillo was trying to enhance the idea that the authors have lost so much pull in our culture. This idea became even more apparent to me when I heard Charles’s plan at the end of part one. Interestingly, this is the moment when Bill’s last name is first mentioned; Charles says, “But I want Bill Gray…There’s an excitement that attaches to your name and it will help us put a mark on this event, for people to talk about it and think about it long after the speeches fade” (99). Bill’s participation in saving the unknown writer will certainly increase his celebrity status to new heights because it will be televised, and it will be, as Charles puts it, so “beautifully balanced.” Of course Charles is Bill’s editor, so he may just want to make a fortune off Bill’s upcoming book. Cawelti says in The Writer as a Celebrity, “The importance of celebrity as a means of contact between writer and audience is further intensified by the degree to which the writer aspires to address himself to the widest possible audience” (165). If Bill reemerges to the public in the innovative way in which Charles wants him to, then according to Cawelti, Bill Gray’s stock would shoot through the roof.

            There was a line at the end of part one that gave me more reason to believe another related idea I was thinking about. After urging Bill to read the unknown writer’s poems in front of a live audience, Charles says, “It’s something I think you need to do. Remember. One less writer in the hands of killers” (102). After I heard this line, I thought to myself although the terrorists are holding the unknown captive, aren’t Karen, Scott, Charles, maybe even Brita holding Bill captive? How much different are they from the terrorists holding the unknown writer? Several times Scott is almost forcing Bill to get to his room and write his book. And, at the very end of Chapter 6, there is even a description that made me think of Bill as that fairy tale prisoner locked up in a dark tower: “[Brita] looked back again and thought she saw the faintest trace of silhouette centered in the window, man-shaped and dead still, and she kept on looking until the house slipped into the distance, lost in trees and shifting perspective, in the spacious power of night” (75). It is as if Bill is being held hostage until he finishes that book, so that the people who know him well enough, such as Charles and Scott, can bank on him. It makes me wonder if Bill and this unknown author share a more distinctive connection or comparison. Is Bill going to be a sacrificial lamb of some sort?

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.

It seems as though most people are concentrating on the theme of crowds in Delillo’s Mao II, and for good reason, as it seems to be one that dominates the novel. It starts with the mass marriage that includes Karen, amongst thousands of others taking part in the ceremony of the Unification church. Here, the narrator describes the crowd with a foreboding tone, suggesting the dangerous implications it might have. Though, not in the mob-mentality type of danger one would instinctively associate with dangerous crowds. No, the narrator is referring to a much more subtle kind of danger in the fact that everyone is losing their identity, their ability to reason in being a part of this crowd. Delillo describes this crowd as made up of “living beings” who “are a nation…founded on the principle of easy belief.”(7) At the end of the prologue, Delillo also eerily claims, “The future belongs to crowds.”(16) These words on their own are not so eery, but when juxtaposed with the photograph on the following page of a tightly packed and anxious crowd of young boys.

Though not so many literal allusions to crowds persist in Part One, we can still see it in the narrative style of the novel. It is third person omniscient in that it knows all the perceptions of each character, but unlike most third person omniscient narratives, this narrator is allowed deep within the thoughts of each character, no matter how insignificant or important they might be. These different perspectives are not neatly contained within their own chapter as in other novels that play with omniscience in this way, but all jumbled up, sometimes within the same paragraph. In the opening of chapter six, we are guided through the flashback by Scott’s perspective, as it is he who, “wonders,” “remembers” and “was glad.”(76) And then, without any warning, Karen is owner of the story, because we know that she “often thought of her husband, Kim” and that “she believed deeply in Master.”(78) And then Brita’s perspective dominates and then Bill’s, and the perspective changes back and forth constantly until it is so mixed up that it becomes everyone’s story. In doing this, Delillo is creating the sense that the crowd is narrating the novel, the most creepy effect of this being that the reader feels as though the crowd is inside one’s own mind. I also get the sense that this is how Bill Gray must feel as an author, and is the reason for his intense seclusion. He tells Brita that  he feels “One of my failings is that I say things to strangers…that I’ve never said to a wife or a child, a close friend.”(38) I interpret this to mean that because speaks to crowds (or audiences) full of strangers, he has nothing to say to the people about whom he really cares. In this sense, Bill is somewhat similar to Karen, in that he loses his identity to massive crowds.