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Winner of the National Book Award in 1985, Don DeLillo's postmodern masterpiece is about Jack and Babette, a middle America couple with children from previous marriages. After a deadly toxic accident and Babette's addiction to an experimental drug, Jack is forced to question everything about his life.
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. |
Worthless, fiendishly turgid, self indulgent ultra pretentious bollux
| Customer Rating: | 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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sucks
| Customer Rating: | | I had to read this book for my contemporary literature class and it was horrible. It has good ideas and themes for a literature class if you look at it from that perspective but as a book it lacks everything that a good book has. don't pick this one up for entertainment i can save you a ton of time by telling you what happens. he goes to the grocery store about 4 times, they go through an airborne toxic event in which they refuse to believe that it's happening and he goes crazy. there you go. whole book in one sentence. hope this helps |
It was so well-advertised all day on channel nine
| Customer Rating: | Consumerism is all around us. See? Here are some random brand names. It shapes and warps our personal lives. Late capitalism! Deeper meaning is lost! Booyah! The past is reduced to dehistoricized simulacra! Don't believe me? Check this out: Elvis. Hitler. Hitlerelvis! See? Are you taking notes?
Yes, Don, I see--how could I not?--but I'm afraid I'm not taking notes, because this is all Postmodern Theory 101. Everything in here is very basic, and DeLillo just plonks it down in front of us in a big, undigested mass. You might as well just read Fredric Jameson and be done with it. Other writers' works are informed by postmodern concepts; DeLillo's just tells you, right up-front, "look--here are some postmodern concepts," and then apparently expects you to look impressed, even though he doesn't do anything interesting or different with them. How many scenes do we need in shopping centers before we get the picture? A LOT, is apparently how many. Seriously: many times you will think, well, that's probably enough scenes in grocery stores, and then there'll be ANOTHER one. The book ENDS in one. DeLillo is absolutely OBSESSED with these scenes, and what is the sum total of their purpose? I'll tell you: there is consumerism; it has become a sacrament; we use it to hide/cover up death. Honest to god, that is ALL. Nothing deeper than that. And yet he seems to think it's the most profound thing in the world.
Take also the whole "Hitler Studies" conceit. Okay, so this is emblematic of how historicity works, or fails to work, in a postmodern environment. It's also (relatedly) how the main character tries to escape his fear of death. Fine. I'm tentatively interested. So tell us more: what exactly goes on in these classes? What leads students to major in this field? What further implications does it have for a postmodern world? Don't bother asking these questions, because you won't get an answer. DeLillo seems to believe that the basic germ of an idea is enough. But it's not. Barring any further development, it's just unbearably trite.
I suspect all of this would be a lot less bothersome if it weren't all so...unadorned. You needn't be a super-deep, probing, original thinker to write a successful novel in the postmodern idiom. It helps, of course, but even if your ideas themselves aren't all that clever, you can make them engaging by placing them in an interesting context or putting an unusual spin on them. DeLillo, sad to say, is simply not interested in doing anything of the kind. I honestly started to feel a kind of rage every time another random product name was inserted into the narrative: you think that's good enough? You think that's all you have to do? You actually, no joke, think you're being CLEVER? JAYSUS, but you are one smug, self-satisfied little git.
Does he make up for this by populating the novel with interesting people? No. DeLillo's characters never have conversations; they just endlessly circle around each other. Okay okay, they live in a world in which communication has broken down. Point taken. I do not see, however, how this justifies the fact that they all--from small children to highly educated professors--talk in exactly the same elliptical pseudo-profundities. Other writers are able to present this same sense of disconnection without making all the characters into identical sockpuppets for their oh-so-clever (but they AREN'T particularly clever!) ideas. One really gets the impression that DeLillo is using this idea of disconnection as an excuse to hide the fact that he's just lousy at writing character.
Does he make up for this with interesting plotting? Again, I hate to sound negative, but no. The book gets marginally less irritating after the first hundred pages, when things actually start HAPPENING, but the first section, which almost literally consists of nothing more than a LOT of "look at all this postmodernism! See? Isn't it postmodern? Here's some more! Postmodernism!" is pretty rough going. And even when it gets less bad, I still don't know that I'd quite call it "good." The narrative remains pretty enervating throughout. The climactic act of violence at the end is certainly the most vivid part of the book; the only time it breaks out of its self-satisfied inertness and feels at all human. Honestly, though, given the tone set by the rest of the novel, it seems more jarring and out-of-place than anything.
People allege that DeLillo is funny. I beg to differ. He has a few amusing lines here and there ("he regarded me with the grimly superior air of a combat veteran. Obviously he didn't think much of people whose complacent and overprotected lives did not allow for encounters with brain-dead rats"), but the large bulk of the "humor" in this book is pretty impoverished. The gruesomely precious, oh-so-clever-clever family conversations in particular are just about more than a man can bear.
And this lack of humor is really what it boils down to. I enjoy postmodern fiction because, even at its most reactionary (see Williams Gass and Gaddis), there's a sense of exhilaration to it: we've lost our historical narratives, meaning has been flattened, and we're all disconnected, but hey, we're also liberated! We can do whatever we want! Let's party in the ruins! DeLillo is the big exception to this. There is nothing exhilarating about White Noise. It's just a series of numbingly banal ideas, repeated over and over, with no engaging story or characters to support them.
One might argue: White Noise was written in 1985. "The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" had just been published the previous year. Perhaps all of the novel's ideas didn't seem as self-evident then as they are now. I think it's the best argument you could make, but the fact remains, there are any number of writers more or less of DeLillo's generation--Pynchon, Barth, Coover, Doctorow, Reed, Bartheleme, and on and on and on--who, at this time and well before, were writing postmodern (broadly-defined) books that are smarter, more thought-provoking, and just plain more enjoyable than White Noise. In light of that, there's just no excuse for this kind of plodding mediocrity.
I'm sorry if this review seems insufferable, but I think an alternate viewpoint on DeLillo is sorely needed. I'm a postmodernist. I love the attendant literature. I have no instinctive revulsion here; quite the opposite, in fact: I WANT to like DeLillo, and I know some very smart people who do. But while I'd be all ears If someone could give me a cogent reason why I should join them, I haven't heard it yet. In the meantime, if you have to read him, I would recommend the opening section of Underworld (you can safely skip the rest of the novel unless you're a serious glutton for punishment). It's surprisingly smart, and suggests that the man isn't as talent-deficient as he seems, even if that talent doesn't translate very well into novels. Otherwise, I recommend the Psychedelic Furs song "Soap Commercial." It pretty much does what White Noise does, only much more succinctly. And it's a rockin' tune. |
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