Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
Something is amiss in a small college town in Middle America. Something subliminal, something omnipresent, something hard to put your finger on. For example, teachers and students at the grade school are falling mysteriously ill:
Investigators said it could be the ventilating system, the paint or varnish, the foam insulation, the electrical insulation, the cafeteria food, the rays emitted by microcomputers, the asbestos fireproofing, the adhesive on shipping containers, the fumes from the chlorinated pool, or perhaps something deeper, finer-grained, more closely woven into the fabric of things.
J.A.K. Gladney, world-renowned as the living center, the absolute font, of Hitler Studies in North America in the mid-1980s, describes the malaise affecting his town in a superbly ironic and detached manner. But even he fails to mask his disquiet. There is menace in the air, and ultimately it is made manifest: a poisonous cloud--an "airborne toxic event"--unleashed by an industrial accident floats over the town, requiring evacuation. In the aftermath, as the residents adjust to new and blazingly brilliant sunsets, Gladney and his family must confront their own poses, night terrors, self-deceptions, and secrets.
DeLillo is at his dark, hilarious best in this 1985 National Book Award winner, a novel that preceded but anticipated the explosion of the Internet, tabloid television, and the dialed-in, wired-up, endlessly accelerated tenor of the culture we live in. He doesn't just describe life in a hypermediated society, he re-creates it. His characters repeat phrases, information, and rumor gleaned from television, radio, and other media sources like people speaking in code. And DeLillo has seeded the book with short gemlike episodes that demand to be read aloud, and that haunt the imagination years after their first reading: a visit to the Most Photographed Barn in America. A plane that nearly falls out of the sky. An hour in a classroom, canonizing Elvis. These vignettes are vivid and unique, yet, like the phrases from television shows that interject themselves, out of context, into Gladney's consciousness, they are strangely unconnected to one another--reflections of the lives DeLillo is showing us we lead. --Jan Bultmann
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
great start but weak finish
Customer Rating:
I had great expectations for this book, and based on the first hundred pgs i thought it would be a classic. But the plot gets lost and over-reaches in it's twists, turns, and subject matter that it attempt to take on. I would still recommend it, but don't go into it with the expectations that the publisher's "(Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)" might imply.
My Favorite Book
Customer Rating:
There is something about this book that captured my imagination so well that I could not put it down. Don DeLillo is a poet who writes in novel form and each sentence of this novel is full of meaning. The conflict in the book itself creates a constant tension much like the white noise discussed by the protagonist and his wife. Then the tension is disrupted by a series of events, leading towards the climax. This book is very much a comedy but also has splashes of drama and science fiction. It has a classic structure complete with a beginning, middle, end. There's action, interesting dialog, and even a villain.
Give this book a try, you may love it.
This emperor is stark naked.
Customer Rating:
I had read three quarters of this and decided to chuck it, but last night my compulsive side won over, and I went ahead and finished it. I still can't wrap my mind around the notion that I should somehow regard it as a "great book of the 20th century", given its obvious, glaring deficiencies. Specifically:
(1) dialog that is clunky to the point of unreadability. It's so dreadful that I'm quite willing to believe it's done deliberately. But - assuming it's not just laziness and a tin ear - why? What's the point? Giving DeLillo the benefit of the doubt, and assuming he could have written believable dialog, what is the point of not using his gifts to the best of his ability, instead irritating the reader with substandard rubbishy 'conversations' that draw attention to their own grating lack of believability? You don't believe me? Try this -
"I've bought these peanuts before. They're round, cubical, pockmarked, seamed. Broken peanuts. A lot of dust at the bottom of the jar. But they taste good. Most of all I like the packages themselves. You were right, Jack. This is the last avant-garde. Bold new forms. The power to shock."
Nobody talks like this. Or how about:
"Your wife's hair is a living wonder." "Yes, it is." "She has important hair." "I think I know what you mean".
That "dialog" would never occur on the planet I live on. IMPORTANT hair? Regrettably, this kind of drivel clogs up every page of the book.
(2) "Satire" whose effect is similar to assaulting the reader with a blunt instrument. Whether it's the repeated use of such tired and obvious devices as the random scattering of consumer product names throughout the text, or having his protagonist lead the department of "Hitler Studies", there's nothing remotely smart about it. This kind of heavy-handed bludgeoning is the hallmark of a very inferior writer. It insults the intelligence. Authors are generally praised for demonstrating subtlety and wit - why should DeLillo be held to a lower standard?
(3) The abysmal dialog is symptomatic of a related problem - the characters are thinly developed cutouts, cartoonishly described, to the point of caricature. Not to mention aspects of the plot that don't even bother to approximate reality (did you know that just rolling up your car window will create a hermetic seal, preventing any and all gas exchange with the outside world?). Again, hardly qualities we associate with good writing.
So I'm left with the question - why is DeLillo, who was praised to the skies for this excuse for a book, given a pass? At best, (if one believes he is capable of writing well) in this book he's being incredibly lazy and just phoning it in. Another possibility is that he's genuinely incompetent and actually mistakes his cartoonish efforts here for genuine wit. Either way, why should he be held to a lower critical standard?
Because that's what seems to happen with this book. People acknowledge that it is poorly written, with characters that border on caricature, that it's hard to read, then go ahead and give it 4 or 5 stars anyway. Why?
If you are a fan of this book (and obviously they are legion), instead of reflexively giving this review a 'non-helpful' vote just because you disagree with its content, why not leave a comment instead, pointing out the virtues of the book that I am so obviously missing. Thanks.
DeLillo has unwittingly contrived the perfect speedy cure for even compulsive obsessive cabin fever. This is complete and utter garbage!!!! Even the seemingly only mildly ironic title of White Noise fails to convey just how juvenile and puerile these 300+ pages will so often be.
Even allowing for the mid 1980's publication date and the obviously now dated technology/consumer references this rubbish is supremely unamusing and frequently witless. The slobbering self appointed literary pillocks who assert that DeLillo 'anticipated' the internet and media age etc are just shameless fawning morons.
Unsurprisingly once again, supercilious lemming like literary - presumably uber liberal - freaks have tribally banded together to bestow rarefied literary honours on a wholly pointless, unredeemed concoction that is way beyond execrable. Happily DeLillo will all too swiftly lose this readers paltry royalty as this demented drivel is being returned forthwith. The cartoonish characters are about as credible as the windbag Biden is on foreign policy. This excruciatingly tedious literary (as if?) experience approximates a painfully extended, cliche spewing Barak Hussein Obama campaign rally with a decided similar lack of perspicacity. Offering absolutely nothing to the beholder but hapless, almost anal vacuity and tortuous dullardish navel gazing, all enmeshed in regular, almost Fred Flintstonesque postmodern hectoring with all the depth of a Hannah Montana puke fest.
The South Parkesque characters are ALL utterly repugnant, and frequently quite cretinous, except for the noble chemical sniffing German Shepherds - who at least have some plot resonance. DeLillo's creations could easily all die horribly on page one without in anyway coming close to ruining this oft magniloquent crap. The almost non-existent cardboard plot has all the sapience and bite of a typical self absorbed (still after all these years) adolescent Jackson Browne song. Proffering the reader nothing in the way of intellectual sustenance whilst puking up a gossamer thin veneer of an academic setting in some generic non-descript mid-western city. The endless repetition and seemingly unremitting tracts of tumid prose throughout the book compels even the most patient, increasingly concerned for DeLillo reader to begin feverishly skimming. I frequently found myself hoping both the Elvis obsessed professor and the supposedly nationally acclaimed Hitler professor's chubby wife would be mercilessly water boarded at Niagara Falls (geddit DeLillo???).
The absurd, sorry excuse of an ending is weaker and even more poorly written than the worstest (smirk) yet perpetrated by my fellow Brit Nick Hornby who at least has the irrefutable excuse of being an Arse-nal fan. Both the Sopranos and Anne of Green Gables will teach DeLillo much about plotting, characterisation, pacing, and scene setting etc, but then so would even Micky and Donald.
The author's ultra trite unimaginative obsession about death and dying and its insipid, clichéd treatment is more than quite irritating after the first five (hundred) instances. There really is NOTHING WHATEVER to recommend this worse than wretched novel. Other than as a superb real life case study in how to cynically inveigle your way into back slapping post modern literary freak heaven. Penguin should be deeply, deeply ashamed of suggesting this is one of the "great" books of the 20th Century. ZERO STARS!!
Timeless
Customer Rating:
There's a reference in "White Noise" to an Instamatic camera. There's a reference to station wagons. There are one or two other commercial product artifacts in "White Noise" but this is a book that could have been published today with very few edits. (And perhaps one addition--the J.A.K. Gladney family would no doubt be talking about the information they were getting from the Web as the "airborne toxic event" bore down on their town.)
But "White Noise" is timeless. I read it as the October 2008 Wall Street meltdown went from worse to horrendous and I marveled at out DeLillo captured the essence of how we react to fear. Having just read "Falling Man," I was struck by the common themes of displacement, dread and, of course, death.
"All plots to tend move deathwards" is line from early on in "White Noise" and of course this book follows that assertion--and deals with death, in the end, in uproarious fashion.
What DeLillo does so well in "White Noise" is embed the characters and plot with low-grade paranoia. It's grinding and it's ever-present. Weaving in and out of the Gladney's life are "the sub-literal drone of maintenance systems," burnt toast as a "treasured scent" to some, flavorless packaging, orange cheese, "vaguely defined food," bad posture, and the "sad, numb shuffle" of footsteps. Even the mysterious "Mr. Gray" is, of course, "Mr. Gray."
More than anything, "White Noise" left me thinking about how we react in a crisis, how we get our information as the crisis unfolds, and how our predispositions to be fearful plays a role in what we do and how we behave.
There's a long conversation near the end of "White Noise" (those looking for an action sequence at the end will be rewarded, but they need to make it through this interesting exchange) about the pros and cons of death. For those who don't like long, philosophical exchanges to halt the march to the plot's final turning points, you might steer clear of "White Noise." Those who don't mind some thinking and pondering on the road to the "move deathwards," you might find "White Noise" to be a treat, even a quarter-century (almost) since it first made waves.
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