[Tyr Zalo Hawk]: 712.Essays.There's Something About Murray

Who is Murray Siskind? Is he a murderous tempter, intent on bringing down Jack’s empire to impose his own? Is he a great and powerful philosopher, trapped by circumstance and choice in a world too small for his grand ideas? Is he, perhaps, just some eccentric guy? Whatever impressions a person might have of Murray on their first reading of Don Delillo’s White Noise the fact remains that he is arguably the most important secondary character in the entire novel. He’s the one who influences Jack, uses J.A.K., and befriends Gladney come the end of the novel. And, if you believe everything you read, he’s even become a person in real life. So, is Murray only the champion of the static background? Just the hero of perverse power plays? Or is he merely the reigning king of all that was ever metaphysical about explosions? Is he a thinker or a dreamer? Is he just another colleague of J.A.K.’s, or is he the Anti-Christ of this novel? Only one thing can be certain about Murray Jay Siskind: he is a character, through and through.
When I first encountered Murray, I thought of him as many of my classmates did, as a pretty weird guy; “He’s a creeper,” one of my classmates said on a cheery Wednesday morning, “He’s not the kind of guy I’d want to run into in at night” (Experience 2010). Admittedly, Murray does come off this way pretty strongly. First off, there’s the not-so-subtle way that he flirts with Jack’s wife, Babbette. He’s constantly making innuendoes, trying to get closer to her, and openly suggesting that they be more than just acquaintances when he takes Babette’s hand and says “I’d ask you to visit my room but it’s too small for two people unless they’re prepared to be intimate” (Delillo 20). He’s a self-described womanizer, and he has a habit of appearing out of nowhere, just to get himself into an awkward conversation or two. Further proof of Murray’s rather unconventional personality evolves during the airborne toxic event, when he pays a prostitute to let him do the Heimlich maneuver on her. More than a little bit weird? Just a bit too far out there? Even the experts have claimed the same: “To focus on Murray’s role might well seem unproductive. He is comic, a man who sniffs groceries” (Duvall 139). So, how are we to take this man just on the edge of owning a large van with ‘Candy’ written on the side? Well, there are quite a few possibilities.
The first possibility is to accept Murray just as Duvall describes him, as “the true villain of White Noise” (139). After all, what other sort of man would use another’s professional career to further his own? What kind of colleague would “seduce Jack with his interpretive skills, all the while waiting for the chance to seduce Babette” (Duvall 141)? And what sort of protagonist would ever suggest that Jack murder in order to obtain “life credit” (290)? If it seems a bit fishy, Duvall would argue that’s because it is. Murray is plotter and a conniver through and through, dedicated to taking over Jack’s position in college and in life. The most telling aspects of his maliciousness can be found in two separate scenes: the burning of the asylum, and the conversation he has about death with Jack. At the asylum burning, Murray appears only to shake Jack’s hand, as if congratulating him for a job well done, or accepting congratulations for the same thing. He then disappears, and only reappears pages later to discuss the nuances of life and death. Of course, he hides his evil intentions behind words like ‘theory’ and ‘supposition,’ but he’s clearly a proponent of murder, and near-death experiences. Duvall doesn’t seem to be far off in his claims, and it can’t be denied that there’s certainly something up with Murray. But does that mean he’s evil?
Murray is full of oddities that pure evil wouldn’t explain. I first noticed this in his final Socratic walk with Jack. Murray and Jack meander along, mostly discussing death. Here, more than anywhere else, there’s a deep look into Murray - not as a man intent on erotic fantasy or death, but a man obsessed with thinking about the world, and making others think:
I’m only a visiting lecturer. I theorize, I talk walks, I admire the trees and hours. I have my students, my rented room, my TV set. I pick out a word here, an image there. I admire the lawns, the porches. What a wonderful thing a porch is. How did I live a life without a porch to sit on, up till now? I speculate, I reflect, I take constant notes. I am here to think, to see. Let me warn you, Jack. I won’t let up. (Duvall 293)
This is, not surprisingly, the conversation that threw me for a loop when it came to Murray’s character. How could it be someone who flirted with married men’s wives and thought of car explosions as symbols of American ingenuity be so entranced by porches and lawns? No, something didn’t make sense about him being evil. For example, why would Murray care about the existential experience of ‘The Most Photographed Barn’ if he was intent on taking J.A.K.’s position at the university? Could it be that it’s all just Murray seeing “the possibility for institutional power and control by plugging into the aura” of something grand, as Duvall suggests (141)? I’m doubting it. More importantly, what would be the purpose in his taking part in the otherwise innocuous conversations that J.A.K.’s other colleagues seem to enjoy so much? No, it doesn’t make enough sense for him to just be an evil being, so then what is Murray’s big thing? Well, perhaps Murray himself can shed some light onto the subject.
Jay Murray Siskind once submitted a review of the literary stylings of David Foster Wallace to a notable literary journal (Modernism/Modernists to be specific) and, in November of 2004, it was published. But how can this be? Murray’s only a fictional character, and his name isn’t ‘Jay Murray Siskind,’ it’s ‘Murray Jay Siskind.’ So how can he be submitting an article into a journal that’s peer-reviewed? Surely someone would notice. Well, that’s not the issue here, the real issue is that we have documented evidence that Murray isn’t quite as evil as Duvall might’ve made him out to be. In the review, Murray expounds upon the almost supernatural nature of Oblivion (Wallace’s most recent work, at the time). He explains that “Wallace’s sentences have the epiphanic white glow of generic food packaging” which is Murray’s favorite style of food, and even goes as far as to name him the “last avant-garde” (821). It must be noted that Murray’s review isn’t without dismissive remarks as well, for he does dedicate some time to Wallace’s noticeable lack of powerful women, which Murray finds himself attracted to. What’s most noteworthy of this section is that he actually uses the same phrasing in his review as he does when he speaks to Jack about the female persuasion:
I admit that I’ve always been partial to them, i.e. women. I fall apart at the sight of long legs, striding, briskly, as a breeze carries up from the river, on a weekday, in the play of morning light. And what fun it is to talk to an intelligent woman wearing nylon stockings as she crosses her legs (Siskind 821 & Delillo 11).
Fascinating, isn’t it? But, of course, this isn’t actually Murray. It is, however, someone’s close interpretation of Murray. Someone (the author is, to my knowledge, unknown) cared enough about Murray and his personality to actually adopt it as their own, write a review, and submit it to have it published. Was it all a joke? Perhaps, but through this review it can be seen that not everyone views Murray as a psychopath bent on bringing down Jack Gladney; he even references several false titles in his essay which include Jack as the author (and, in one case, the a co-author with Murray). So then, who is Murray Siskind and what does he want? Well, there’s one literary theorist who’s got an idea which may come as a bit of a shock.
Randy Laist is something of a Delillo expert. He’s read the books, the essays (Like Duvall’s), studied them, and then published a paper that not only says previous ‘experts’ are wrong, but that there’s a lot more to Murray than anyone gives him credit for. A whole book more. Murray is Delillo’s singularly intertextual character (one character which appears in two different pieces of literature). That’s right, Murray didn’t get his literary start in White Noise; no, it was in Amazons. Several years before Delillo introduced Murray as a college professor with a mysterious agenda, he introduced him as a sportswriter with ambition. Murray is just as quirky, just as odd, and just as detached from the concept of normality that many people hold true in their hearts. He, not surprisingly, comes off as more than a bit different in comparison to the other, more central characters. In moving Murray from Amazons into a novel like White Noise, Delillo knows that people who’ve read the former will connect to it in the latter. He knows that anyone with a good memory will notice that Murray’s just rejecting reality, living in the fantasy world that he set out to create near the end of Amazons. Because of this, Laist argues that nearly anything Murray says is, quite frankly, almost inconsequential “If Murray gives gives Jack advice that would be appropriate only to a fictional character… his doing so is simply an extension of the fictionality of the world he strives to live in” (Laist 117). In reading this, I’d found the answer to Murray’s personality.
While initial impressions of Murray Siskind are often troublesome, and even deadly, a closer look will reveal that he’s not the man he appears to be. He’s not just Murray Siskind the college professor, or even Murray Siskind the sportswriter, he’s Murray Siskind the both. Sure, in White Noise he’s just trying out a persona in order to further his own goals, living in a fictional and contemplative world, but that’s the way things work. That’s the way Murray works. He’s a man bent on his own goals, and nothing can change that, not even him being creepy.





Whirks Sighted:
A Bibliography

Duvall, John. “The (Super)Marketplace of Images: A Critical Reading on Delillo’s White Noise” in Arizona Quarterly. Vol 50, Issue 3 (Autumn 1994). Arizona Board of Regents.

Laist, Randy. “DeLillo’s Only Intertextual Character: Tracing WHITE NOISE’s Murray Siskind Back to DeLillo’s Pseudonymous Novel AMAZONS” in Explicator (Jan 1, 2008). Pgs 115-118. Heldref Publications.

Experience, Personal. “Life”. Occurred in Lit 201.80, at or near 11:24AM on October 20th, 2010. All rights reserved.

Siskind, Jay Murray. “An Undeniably Controversial and Perhaps Even Repulsive Talent” in Modernism/Modernity, Vol 11, Number 4 (November 2004). Pgs. 819-821. The Johns Hopkins University Press.