DeLillo News & Notes: a DeLillo-esque moment: Mitt Romney pumping his own gas

We knew that nothing is too absurd to happen in America.

-- End Zone

"It is pretty amazing that in such a short period of time you can go from missing becoming the leader of one of the most powerful countries in the world by a couple % to pumping your own gas like everyone else."

Image and passage reproduced from Reddit. See more HERE.

A Shared Event at a Coffee Shop: Living in a DeLillo-esque World

It is safe to say that I spend a rather disproportionate amount of my time in coffee shops (even as I write this post, I am sitting in one!). This summer I would estimate that on average I've visited a coffee shop at least once per day, sometimes even twice. I do this not only because I enjoy the atmosphere, the internet, and, of course, the coffee, but also, and perhaps most importantly, because there is so much to be observed here. Indeed, I have observed so much in my time at coffee shops, especially this summer, that I'm beginning to think it wouldn't be unwise for me to dedicate a blog solely to reading them as public spaces.

Most of us visit coffee shops on a regular basis, but what is the purpose of this space? Just off the top of my head, I can say that I, personally, have used the coffee shop this summer as a place for: caffeine; observation; homework; learning German; reading; Facebook; internet surfing; composing e-mails; blogging; writing; socializing; meeting new people; playing board games; hanging out with friends; breakfast, lunch, & dinner; working on a children's book; etc. And this is just me! Now, most of these may sound like rather trivial, everyday tasks, but for one person to be able to accomplish -- no, to want to accomplish -- all of these tasks in a single space is so endlessly strange and interesting to me. I fear that I've reached the point where I'm more addicted to the coffee shop itself than the coffee they offer.

Still, I've yet to mention the enigmatic "shared event" that titles this post. I'm drawing the concept from Don DeLillo, an American author whose ouevre I am currently working through. DeLillo often speaks of "events" and how they "gather force." One of his characters in The Names (1982) even speaks of feeling "involved in events." The idea has always been rather interesting to me, not only because I seldom find this idea mentioned in writing or everyday life, but also because it seems totally relevant to contemporary existence.

Anyway, the point is, I tend to feel a hidden tenseness in coffee shops, as if everyone who shares these spaces, this internet, and this air, everyone who chooses to have private conversations in a public place for all of us to hear -- it's as if we all still wish to maintain a separate space, our own privacy or secrecy, despite our behavior in this space. I often wonder what can be done to break down this sense of a wall. Why, I think, is it so difficult for me, or anyone for that matter, to engage the person who sits no more than two feet away from me, the person whom I openly allow to see what I'm doing on my computer and who provides me with the same freedom?

The other day, while sitting in this very coffee shop, this tenseness was alleviated somewhat. For over an hour, I had been sitting next to the same person, a person who, I think, attends the same university that I attend and was writing a paper for school much like I was. On top of this, we were sharing the same internet, the same air, both drinking coffee. As one says in English, there was something "in common" between the two of us. Yet I still felt that there was something inaccessible there, something unbridgeable.

The solution to this proved to be no less than a power outage, which was caused by a passing thunderstorm. It wasn't our sharing of internet or air that brought us together; rather, it was a "shared event" -- a power outage, a taking away, a negative -- that reminded us of our commonality. Consequently, we were able to engage in conversation, we were able to find "common ground," able to "break the ice." But the power outage did more than this. Ironically, the loss of power proved to be a spark of another type, erupting a chain of laughter throughout the coffee shop. The event "gathered force," we might say. The whole atmosphere of the coffee shop was affected, if only for a few moments. It wasn't long, however, before the generators were signaled, the power restored, and the measurable change, the realized community, was submerged once again.

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DeLillo, Don. The Names. New York: Vintage, 1989. Print.

DeLillo Interviews

In 1987, The New York Times published the following interview with DeLillo, which I like for a few reasons. It is straight to the point, and it discusses his work thematically (death, theater, culture, illusion v. reality, hospitals/motels, and television). And, as always, DeLillo here offers insights into his own work.

His comments on the relationship between death and theater are particularly interesting:

And I began to sense a connection, almost a metaphysical connection, between the craft of acting and the fear we all have of dying. It seemed to me that actors are a kind of model for the ways in which we hide from the knowledge we inevitably possess of our final extinction.

[...] I can't imagine a culture more steeped in the idea of death. I can't imagine what it's like to grow up in America today.

He always provides a few valuable notes about The Day Room, the highlights of which I have reproduced below:

But it's not the kind of play one can easily discuss because it doesn't involve interrelationships between characters--it involves a sense of theater, and of acting, and of human identity.

Act Two was a different matter completely--in a way, Act Two is an attempt to explain the first half of the play to myself; in a way it's the play about the play.

I guess I'm interested in the way the play forms a kind of unending circular structure--it bends back on itself. This has greater significance to me than any sense of what is real and what isn't.

I would simply say that a hospital room is an extreme condition, and much of the writing I've done, I think, is set in extreme places or extreme states of mind.

A motel is a peculiar reality [...] particularly motels in undefined parts of the landscape. You don't know quite where you are, and for a brief time perhaps not quite who you are.

Readers familiar with Players will remember, as DeLillo himself noted in a later interview, that "At the beginning of the novel we hear a discussion about motels, which is where the novel ends" (35). Perhaps the motel itself is one artifact -- both a contemporary and an American one -- through which to read DeLillo.

Update:

As I was rereading End Zone, I noticed that during Chap. 16, Major Staley lectures Gary Harkness about nuclear war, and it occurs in a motel, "a gray building, barely distinguishable from the land around it" (79).

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DePietro, Thomas, ed. Conversations with Don DeLillo. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2005. Print.
DeLillo, Don. End Zone. New York: Penguin, 1986. Print.