And you know, these ideas aren’t particular to Salvage—think about the types of people in our societies who sometimes have to kill others, like law enforcement personnel or soldiers. We change the language—they aren’t committing “murder,” it’s just doing what’s “right” for the national interest. We give them uniforms (costumes), ranks, sequestered fellowships, ceremonies, parades, and so forth. We call them by their last names, or by their nicknames. We do everything we can to help them overcome the aversion to violence in an organized fashion. And then we assure them that “what you did was right,” to assuage guilt in the hope that they’ll do it again.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not making a value judgment—in fact, I have great respect for soldiers and policemen, both of which run in my family—but all of these techniques we employ demonstrate, I think, that we don’t like bashing one another with two-by-fours or shoving people off of cliffs or shooting at them.
And maybe that, in the end, is what will redeem us.
S: Is that, ultimately then, what you want people to take away from Noise?
DB: No. I won’t say that Noise has no message (that would be naïve), but I wouldn’t cite redemption as a contender. I dislike redemption in literature because it’s more often a fairy tale than an aspect of meaningful existence. We may often hope for or seek redemption, but I think it’s a rare find, and celebrating (or even portraying it) in fiction feels like a scam.
I think the novel has a lot more to say about personal mythology and the mutability of self. We are each of us masterworks of fiction, nuanced by beautiful and terrible experience and powered by ambition. “Good,” “evil,” “right,” and “wrong” are just frame stories, and they’re rarely true.
S: Then, I think it’s safe to say this: What you did was right.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DARIN BRADLEY has taught courses on writing and literature at the University of North Texas, Furman University, and East Tennessee State University. He was also the founding fiction editor of Farrago’s Wainscot, an online magazine of experimental literature. He lives with his wife and their beagle, Lizzie. You can learn more at www.darinbradley.com.
Noise is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Spectra Trade Paperback Original
Copyright © 2010 by Darin Bradley
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Spectra, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bradley, Darin.
Noise / Darin Bradley.
p. cm.
“A Spectra trade paperback original” — T.p. verso.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52273-3
1. Broadcasting—Fiction. 2. Regression (Civilization)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.R342655N65 2010
813′.6—dc22
2010014910
www.ballantinebooks.com
v3.0
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