Quiz: White House Pool Report or Don DeLillo’s “White Noise”?

Friday, January 21 2011

Quiz: White House Pool Report or Don DeLillo’s “White Noise”?

Today’s White House pool report about Obama’s visit to a General Electric plant, is—not to oversell it—a work of heart-wrenching and haunting postmodern genius. See if you can tell the difference between today’s pool report, by Kathleen Moore of the Daily Gazette, and lines from Don DeLillo’s National Book Award–winning novel, White Noise.

A. “A great echoing din, as of the extinction of a species of beast, filled the vast space.”

B. “They all moved quietly from room to room, watching him distantly, with sneaky and respectful looks.”

C. “Yellow tape marked the paths amid the generators. We passed at least four, and we were only in a small segment of the long, echoing, warehouse-like building.”

D. “He spoke to them for more than a minute, and shook their hands, but that was all that could be heard.”

E. “With the sound down low we couldn’t hear what she was saying. But no one bothered to adjust the volume. It was the picture that mattered, the face in black and white, animated but also flat, distanced, sealed off, timeless.”

F. “He pointed out a steam turbine made of rippled metal. [Redacted] touched it, then squeezed it as the manager explained it (inaudibly, sadly).”

G. “It was a period of looks and glances, teeming interactions, part of the sensory array I ordinarily cherish. Heat, noise, lights, looks, words, gestures, personalities, appliances.”

[For answers, and more stirring prose.]