Reliving the airborne toxic event
The Culture Vulture blog is reliving Don DeLillo’s White Noise, with the events of Sunday recalling its tale of the (always unspecified) Airborne Toxic Event.
I have nothing to say on the subject, other that it’s a wonderful blackly comic book, and recommended reading. In an effort to encourage you to buy it, here’s an excerpt, in which a passenger is recalling an air distaster they’ve just walked away from:
Objects were rolling out of the galley, the aisles were full of drinking glasses, utensils, coats and blankets. A stewardess pinned to the bulkhead by the sharp angle of descent was trying to find the relevant passage in a handbook titled “Manual of Distasters”. Then there was a second male voice on from the flight deck, this one remarkably calm and precise, making the passengers believe there was someone in charge after all, an element of hope: “This is American two-one-three to the cockpit voice recorder. Now we know what’ slike. It is worse than we’d ever imagined. They didn’t prepare us for this at the death simulator in Denver. Our fear is pure, so totally stripped of distractions and pressures as to be a form of transcendental meditation. In less than three minutes we will touch down, do to speak. They will find our bodies in some smoking field, strewn about in the grisly attitudes of death. I love you, Lance.”
