White Noise

So blobblog has begun to look like a piece of internet (non)history with no updates other than a new design! So I thought, seeing as I'm unable to get to the painting at the moment (being in Japan) I'd use the blog to write art stuff - things that I find inspiring or influencing or interesting things that I have read.
So I'm starting with a small section from the book I'm reading at the moment - White Noise by Don DeLillo. I hear it's being made into a film by the guy who made classics such as Men In Black 2 so I can't wait to see it! I first heard of the book last year when I was writing an essay on a documentary about air hijackings called Dial History, which often quoted the book.

"It's like we've been flung back in time," he said. "Here we are in the Stone Age, knowing all these great things after centuries of progress but what can we do to make life easier for the Stone Agers? Can we make a refrigerator? Can we even explain how it works? What is electricity? What is light? We experience these things every day of our lives but what good does it do if we find ourselves hurled back in time and we can't even tell people the basic principles much less actually make something that would actually improve conditions. Name one thing you could make. Could you make a simple would match that you could strike on a rock to make a flame? We think we're so great and modern. Moon landings, artificial hearts. But what if you were hurled into a time warp and came face to face with the ancient greeks. The Greeks invented trigonometry. They did autopsies and dissections. What could you tell an ancient Greek that he couldn't say, 'Big deal.' Could you tell him about the atom? Atom is a Greek word. The Greeks knew that the major events in the universe can't be seen by the eye of man. It's waves, it's rays, it's particles."
"We're doing all right."
(Page 147 of the Picador 2002 edition, ISBN 0 330 29108 4)

It's maybe not the best book I've ever read although I haven't finished it yet so my opinion could change but it's definately interesting and often funny, so if your thinking what to read next, maybe try this?