I thought there were indications, from Wilder's delayed speech development to Heinrich's receding hairline, to the school evacuation and the description of the unnaturally bright/attractive supermarket produce (making me think of preservatives, hormones), that toxic buildup had been long in the making. Was the author making a case on an environmental level that we live in an unhealthy world?
(By the way, despite his many observations, I didn't find DeLillo to be preachy. If I'm getting preachy, let's move on.)
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You're right -- everyone was poisoned and didn't seem to think much of it. The most amazing one was that one of the guys who was cleaning up the school died! Can you imagine that in real life? The outrage over toxins in the school would have been deafening.
Interesting! I hadn't made those connections. But yeah, the mysterious fumes in the school, the airborne toxic event, the noxious odor -- it's like he's saying we've filled our environment with toxic materials right and left. Which parallels what he's saying about the intellectual toxins constantly distributed via the airwaves.
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