In the 234 years since Boswell knocked at Hume’s door, we have moved, if only in the way we talk about it, from death’s centrality to its banality.
Robert Zaretsky talks death and religion.
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And listen – If it’s banal talk about death you want, there’s no better door to knock at than Don DeLillo’s White Noise.
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“Cotsakis, my rival, is no longer among the living.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Lost in the surf off Malibu. During the term break. I found out an hour ago. Came right here.”
[ … ] “Poor Cotsakis, lost in the surf,” I said. “That enormous man.”
“That’s the one.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“He was big all right.”
“Enormously so.”
“I don’t know what to say either. Except better him than me.”
“He must have weighed three hundred pounds.”
“Oh, easily.”
“What do you think, two ninety, three hundred?”
“Three hundred easily.”
“Dead. A big man like that.”
“What can we say?”
“I thought I was big.”
“He was on another level. You’re big on your level.”
“Not that I knew him. I didn’t know him at all.”
“It’s better not knowing them when they die. It’s better them than us.”
“To be so enormous. Then to die.”