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Best novel of the eighties? Nov 26, 1999 (72 of 80 found this helpful)
White Noise was the first DeLillo I ever tried to read, a few years ago, and I was disappointed; I thought it was thin and heartless and clever-clever. Then I got older, visited America for the first time and read it again, and suddenly it seemed true, oh so true. The book is full of dark pleasures: the family's hilariously misinformed conversations about everything under the sun; the now-classic episode of The Most Photographed Barn in America (it's not especially beautiful or old, it's just been photographed over and over again); the description of a cloud of poisonous gas as an Airborne Toxic Event; the narrator's manically argumentative son Heinrich; his daughter's mysterious utterance in her sleep of the magical words "Toyota Celica". And much, much more. The crisp beauty of DeLillo's writing can seem cold on first reading, but this is a function of the eerie ambiguity of the book's tone; it's neither satirical nor celebratory, it's just looking hard at these lives and the world around them. White Noise is, for my money, DeLillo's funniest book and his most death-haunted; that he balances the ever-present fear of death with a (for him) new compassion for his characters is maybe the most amazing thing about it. It gets better every time it's read, which is the mark of a classic.
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Comedic Campus Chronicle Clicks Nov 24, 2002 (33 of 35 found this helpful)
Technology is changing the inner experience of human beings. In White Noise, Don DeLillo shows us how this is done. Waves and radiation. Television serves as kind of new collective unconscious, creating a new inner frame of reference. Jack Gladney says at one point, "His skin was a color that I want to call flesh-toned." Stephie murmurs, "Toyota Celica," in her sleep. The TV is now a member of the family. We are moving toward a post-modern mentality.
Jack Gladney is, at best, an unlikely hero, I think. He is professor of "Hitler Studies" at a great American college; an academic who is comically humanized off of the pedestal of academia to the reader. He teaches the incarnation of death and national propaganda, and then comes home to a mundane and motley family crew of ditzy third wife, step-children, and biological children deeply rooted in the national propaganda of America. The extreme superficiality of his life is astounding. Everything is meant to *seem* significant...Hitler studies, the robes and sunglasses, the most photographed barn in America. Like so much of what we see and hear nowadays...what it's about is *sounding* like it's about something important. Everything is sense impression. Never mind what a word really means...if it *sounds* solid and strong, then that's reason enough to use it. In this way we escape from nature. We create lives that "protect" us from the things that are "out there" somewhere. "I'm not just a college professor," says Jack. "I'm the head of a department. I don't see myself fleeing an airborne toxic event. That's for people who live in mobile homes out in the scrubby parts of the country, where the fish hatcheries are."
As a metafictional Heidegerrian test, White Noise is a cross between life and narrative, death and narrative closure. Delilloýs narrative closure is that death may go a little way toward explaining why some are dissatisfied with his endings.
As DeLillo puts it, "All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers' plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children's games. We edge nearer death every time we plot." If one accepts this, or accepts that DeLillo believes this, then it's hard to imagine how his endings (death) could be "satisfying" or why they (it) should be.
In light of this, can the narrative interruptions that pepper the text ("Krylon, Rust-Oleum, Red Devil") be seen as attempts to stave off the death that the narrative compels us toward, that the end of the book will bring? And what to make of the fact that most of these narrative interruptions are drawn from TV and advertising?
I wonder about the role of children, particularly Wilder, in White Noise. Murray suggests a couple of times that the way to deal with the onslaught of TV is to view TV as a child views it. Children's consciousness, he seems to believe, has evolved to a state where they can absorb this onslaught without being troubled by it. If this is true, though, why does Wilder (remember his crying jag) seem to be the most sensitive individual in the book? And why do the other children seem less like children than like small adults?
Even our language is adulterated and attenuated to protect us from confronting horror directly. In the Gladney household each family member corrects another with a further error. An exaggerated chronicle of the ludicrousness of modern America.
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One of the best novels to explore contemporary life May 3, 2003 (54 of 65 found this helpful)
In fifty years, White Noise by Don DeLillo will perhaps explain our almost demented times better than any other novel. The story centers around Jack Gladney, the chairman and founder of [German dictator] Studies at a rural university. He lives with his fourth wife, Babette, two children and two step-children in a labyrinth of junk hauled home from the local[store]. After a toxic waste spill in his neighborhood, Jack is overwhelmed by his fear of [end of life], one problem that no commercial product can solve --- or so he thinks. Throughout the story DeLillo shows almost frightening understanding of contemporary life. Supermarkets are churches; brand names are mantras; Elvis is worthy of academic interest; truth is buried by the endless hum of the (over)information age and the family as an institution struggles to hold on amidst the onslaught of changes, each more absurd than the last. One of the most unabashed and insightful dissections of life at the end of the twentieth century, White Noise is a masterpiece.
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BLEAK, FUNNY, SHOCKING: ONE OF DELLILLO'S FINEST MOMENTS Jul 7, 2000 (24 of 27 found this helpful)
White Noise is probably one of the best books I have ever read. It does not serve as entertainment; you don't pick this up for a read on the train. Instead, it serves as a slap in the face, disposing traditional conventions and giving way to his admirably ironic and philosophical view of modern day consumerism and death. It is vitamins for the brain.
This satire about modern day society poses thought provoking questions. Our obsession with pop-culture is peerlessly examined and the results are enlightening. And why are we afraid of death? Delillo shows us the way to our graves and gives us a chance to attempt to understand demise and doom. White Noise is so sad, so full of eloquence and so deep. I read this book nearly a year ago and to this date it remains fresh in my mind. It is so well written and artful. There are so many piercingly shocking observations into modern day America. The idiosyncracies are so lovable yet disturbing and they ring true. The narrative is fresh and powerful, overwhelming and explosive; the main character and his family so eerily familiar, the dialogue so evocative and perplexing. Every chapter shines in its brilliance, every sentence has words carefully chosen for maximum psychological impact.
The plot itself borders the line of being ridiculous and shallow, so people who want their thrillers and mysteries, you might wish to look elsewhere. But those of you who want something more challenging and rewarding, look no further. White Noise is a mind blowing trip to the finish. You will never look at life the same way again.
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Occasionally brilliant, ultimately unsatisfying Dec 4, 1999 (35 of 41 found this helpful)
I'm not sure what to think of Don DeLillo. White Noise, like Mao II, like Underworld, like End Zone, is a book bursting with ideas and observations about people, the world and modern life. And some of these observations will make you see things in a new way, or at least crystallize your thoughts so perfectly that you nod your head and say, "Yes, that's exactly what I think. Now why didn't I say it like that?" Well, because you're not Don DeLillo. So give the man credit, because that's something few people can do. At the same time White Noise shows up one of DeLillo's bigger flaws: he doesn't really create characters you care about, even a little bit. Indeed, in White Noise I'm sure he didn't want to. They're not real characters at all, only a group of signifiers and commenators who all speak with the same voice and even use the same expressions, whether they are ex-sportswriters, housewives, sulking teens, or nine-year-old girls. By page 300 this gets tiresome. Intellectual insights are more memorable when they are hung on interesting and engaging characters. So while I enjoyed White Noise and am impressed with the mind behind it, I found it ultimately unsatisfying.