John Frow The Last Things Before the Last: Notes on White Noíse The edges of the eanh trembled in a darkish haze. Upon it lay the sun, going down like a ship in a burning sea. Another postmodern sunset, rich in romantic imagery. Why try to describe it? It's enough tosay that ever¡hingin ourfreldof vision seemed to exist in orde¡ to gather the light of this event. -Don Delillo, Whiæ Noise À lúaærdammerung. why try to describe it? It's been written alread¡ by Conrad, among others. Postmodern writing always comes after, the postmdetn sunset is another sun- set, an event ìáithin a sedes, ne-ver an origi- nating moment but mass-produced as much by the cosmological system as by the qys- tem of writing. But the word postmodern here means more than this: this passage from Whiæ Noise refers back to an earlier one about the effects of an industrial (or postin- dustrial) disaster: The Sou¿h ¡4.tløntic Quarærly b:2, Spring r99o. Copy.ight @ r99o by Duke Universit¡r Press. ccc oosS -287 6 I go/$ r. So.