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Jan 23, 2012

Ian rated it:

My Review

My more formal review as at 23 January, 2012 is here:

http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2905...

In the Ring with Deadly Don DeLillo

Compere: Yes folks, welcome to Gym Combat, Nottingham’s premier gym and home to Saturday Night Fight Night. Tonight …what…what…

Spontaneous applause breaks out as former undefeated Commonwealth & IBO Welterweight World Champion, Jav Khalik, enters the ring.

Compere: Jav, why don More...

34 comments like (27 people liked it)

Mar 30, 2008

David rated it:

Ooh look! It's a can. Looks like it might have worms inside. Let's open it up again.

Updated (i.e. "final") review: March 30th, 2008

So. 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", and none of the 19 comments in this thread to date really addresse More...

63 comments like (45 people liked it)

Oct 08, 2007

amber rated it:

My first Don DeLillo. Not for people who use the word postulate. My experience was almost entirely ruined by the used copy I received which had notes in the margins. It says "Help" when Jack Gladney talks about Hitler on multiple pages (Has this person never heard of Hitler?), it says "sheesh" when his son, Heinrich, goes into a long-winded ramble about brain chemistry and how he couldn't know what he really wants. The best of all the marginal note stupidity from anonymous th More...

8 comments like (40 people liked it)

Dec 29, 2011

Stephen M rated it:

After getting through this book for a third time, I'm still blown away by it. Although the social satire becomes more obvious on multiple readings, there are more than enough mind-blowing moments to make it worthwhile. I still have a few questions.

What does Wilder crying at the end mean? Is that him finally speaking? Or is it some semblance of hope?

Is Dylar real? Is it a placebo?

What happens to Mr. Gray at the end? At one moment he is about to die, then the ne More...

16 comments like (20 people liked it)

Jul 28, 2011

Dorothea rated it:

Reading White Noise by Don DeLillo is the literary equivalent of 18 paranoid hours of non-stop channel surfing while chain-smoking and nursing a migraine in a smoggy, over-crowded city. On meth.

Do you want to know why this is one of the most important books of the 20th century? Because it's a good example of the postmodern simulacra, absurdist philosophy that plagued the latter half of the 20th century and still plagues us today. I felt bleak and empty for several days after readi More...

4 comments like (14 people liked it)

Aug 23, 2011

mp rated it:

I am having a very difficult time trying to decide if White Noise is actually an intelligent work which I completely failed to understand. Or is it just one of those novels which try to sound all smart and deep and profound, but do not actually make much sense.

The characters are all strange, the dialogue and prose is weird. It is perhaps not rare for authors to create characters that are unsentimental, and totally incapable of having a normal conversation. But I find it difficult to More...

26 comments like (10 people liked it)

Aug 09, 2010

Christy rated it:

I noticed there is a "Don Delillo's White Noise: A Reader's Guide" out there. I find that funny, but also somewhat offensive.

I'll come right out a say that I don't like Delillo, and am shocked by people who claim that he is a "good writer." Is being a good author the same as being a good writer? Shouldn't an author have something worthwhile to say, and shouldn't he be able to keep us interested while doing so? His characters are terribly one-note, his dialogue pai More...

3 comments like (14 people liked it)

Sep 15, 2007

Ethan rated it:

We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the signs started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man More...

0 comments like (10 people liked it)

Sep 28, 2008

Rose rated it:

I'm so happy that I finally reached a point in this book where I could accept that I wasn't going to finish it. I stuck with it for a long time because I'd heard good things and because I actually enjoyed it a lot at the beginning. But after the toxic event, it's just really stupid.

Few writers could make a massive, deadly toxic gas leak boring. But somehow, I feel the Don DeLillo has done it here. Such an interesting thing to read about - potential for some serious action and dr More...

12 comments like (12 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2010

Kemper rated it:

A few years back, shortly after Katrina had her way with New Orleans, Time magazine did a cover story about how Americans prepare and cope with disasters. And we don’t do well with them. The story pointed out that while Americans love to obsess about all the potentially horrible things that can happen, we refuse to take actions to prevent or minimize their impact because we don’t want to admit that they’re really possible.

That’s why Americans will freak out if you try to spend a fe More...

3 comments like (23 people liked it)

Apr 09, 2008

Marco rated it:

This is probably the most accessible of Delillo's works, the one which I could pull off my shelf, dust off it's weathered skin, and hand to you, saying, "This is what the master does best." Or something a little less Masterpiece Theatre-y, but you get my drift.

It also contains a single line that probably sums up his entire literary career: "All plots move deathward."

Wikipedia talks about the book being a "absurdist family drama combined with acad More...

0 comments like (20 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Jonathan rated it:

Every so often you string together a series of stale intellectual months, your mind descending almost imperceptibly into fog as insights slip from sight before you ever quite see them and meanings merge with the things they're meant to make clear, and it may even begin to seem useless to bother with any cognition that concerns itself with more than the next paycheck, lay or meal – until you bumble into a book like White Noise and find yourself suddenly jarred back to something like clarity and More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 14, 2011

Paul rated it:

I saw to my consternation that I'd given two stars to this smirkfest yet stuck it on my Finally Threw it At the Wall shelf. This is a contradiction. So : One Star For You, Mr DeLillo. Fuck off.

9 comments like (15 people liked it)

Sep 14, 2007

Nathan rated it:

Unconnected with picking up "White Noise" (it's a book that I picked up for free when a friend of mine was liquidating his library upon moving - one of those books that you never had a chance to read in college and always meant to) I've been thinking a lot about death lately - not from a religious perspective (inasmuch as that's possible) but more in terms of my growing realization that I'm kind of ready to go. I don't mean this in any suicidal way - I don't WANT to go, and I don't ha More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 20, 2011

Ikra rated it:

No review. I just put a piece of conversation from the book between Jack Gladney and his son, Heinrich, that took place inside of Jack’s car. I assume people can weigh the quality of this book from there. So Heinrich started the conversation:

“It’s going to rain tonight.”

“It’s raining tonight.”

“The radio said tonight.”

“Look at the windshield. Is that rain or isn’t it?”

“I’m only telling you what they said.”

“Just because it’s o More...

4 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 23, 2010

Joshua Nomen-Mutatio rated it:

DeLillo is pretty quotable. Here's a few from White Noise:

"How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something w More...

3 comments like (10 people liked it)

Sep 21, 2007

Shannon rated it:

I had 2 cut this rant 7x b/c it was too long...I can't stand postmodernists, nihilists, & existentialists! I feel like they should all move to California, stew in their own self-possessed malcontent/overly intellectualized postulating that never incites any action besides high minded bitching & moaning. Why make hopelessness out to be so deep & profound, as if that was the final answer that offers any solution to ANY of the million problems raised in this book? It's SO DEPRESSING & EVERYONE WAS More...

7 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 04, 2007

Elliot rated it:

This is probably my favorite novel of all time, so I was a bit frustrated when a friend I recommended it to didn't like it enough to finish it. I think that you have to feel a bit isolated (but be maintaining your sense of humor) in order to enjoy this book. For me, it perfectly articulated the end-of-the-millennium dread I was experiencing (and periodically continue to experience). The themes that resonate with me the most are the quantifying of mortality (to be able to see your statistical od More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 25, 2011

Moonbutterfly rated it:

This is one of those books that is an acquired taste. It's more philosophical and thematic, rather than, driven by characters and plots. The structure of the book is not complicated and consists of three parts. First there is life before the toxic disaster, then the actual disaster happens, and finally life after the disaster. More importantly there are several themes and symbols in the book; television, commercialism, consumerism, plots, disasters, identity, and death. Death is actually the mai More...

12 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Sbate rated it:

This was the best book in the earth. It makes things so vivid he is a lucid storyteller. He is like a new prescription eyeglassess in this book. I love him. I wrote to him but the letter came back. - He predicted 9-11 in this book. This book predicts the internet and the cell phone. He knows our society and our fears. Incidentally Dylar is now a real chemical product. It is a flea contraceptive.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 17, 2009

Craig rated it:

probably more like 4.5 stars.
This book amazed me on several levels: philosophically, intellectually, and emotionally. Delillo presents many analyses of modern fear and society (this work holds up remarkably well over time and addresses a very similar social context as our current one). I may not have understood the ending as well as I expected to beacause I did not like the abrupt ending. I did thoroughly enjoy the dialogue between the father and the nuns in the hospital about belief an More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 01, 2009

Matt rated it:

I put this book on my 2009 Literary Resolutions List, which comprises 15 books culled from Time's List of the 100 Greatest Novels since 1920. I thought it was a novelization of that movie where Michael Keaton hears dead people. I was wrong.

I really didn't like this book. It annoyed, irritated, and grated on me.

The book follows Jack Gladney, who is a professor of Hitler Studies (a throwaway joke that is stretched throughout the entire book) at an eastern college. He's on More...

10 comments like (15 people liked it)

Sep 19, 2011

Lacey rated it:

I really liked this novel. Quite a lot. In fact, I would have given it 5 of 5 stars if a. I wasn't trying to be more discerning with my rating system, reserving 5's for only those novels I consider all-time favorites b. if the third and final portion of the book hadn't dragged on a bit too long. That is my only real criticism of the book, that that third part of the book is a bit too long because the rest if pure gold.

Some people seem dissuaded by this book because it is highly regarde More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 10, 2011

Mark rated it:

Because of Don's writing skill and the strange mixture of events that happen in the book, I'm sure there is a larger theme, but I wasn't drawn into the book enough to spend much time identifying it. I know it had something to do with the new economy of the 1980s and the fear of death, and if I'm really forced to hang out there and say what I mean, I might say the theme is that this new economy with its consumerism and irresponsible industry is killing everything, even the dignity of a natural d More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 04, 2011

Adam rated it:

DeLillo’s White Noise, in which the domestic drama, the academic satire, the apocalyptic drama, the crime novel, and the social satire meet and mingle, deals, among other things, with the difference and distance between experience and expression. This point is most eloquently written into the novel by DeLillo in his exploration of the representative nature of language, and the often severe [and, to our narrator Jack/J.A.K. Gladney, severely distressing:] lack of a concrete connection between the More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 28, 2008

Lavinia rated it:

The book contains some interesting themes and motifs: consumerism [really liked the episode when Jack is trucked by the shopping demon], fear of death [both jack and his wife have an (un)justified fear of death, being ready to be part of some experiments to obtain Dylar, the miraculous medicine that banishes fear], media [almost permanently there’s a TV or a radio opened somewhere in the house], disintegrated and reunited families [both spouses have children from previous marriages plus one toge More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 21, 2008

Lara rated it:

I think I loved this podcast as well as I loved the book itself...

I don't often read other people's reviews of a book after I've already read it myself, but this time was an exception. I feel strangely put-off by the conversation at hand, and my only real thought is that if you can provoke such a variety of strongly-held opinions with your work, you must be doing something right.

I felt neither belittled nor bored by Delillo's prose. I found the entire thing in tur More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 19, 2008

Dusty rated it:

White Noise is best read as an historical farce, like The Country Wife or The Taming of the Shrew. It's an anatomy in the Northrop Frye sense, where characters announce in dialogue all the clear ideas they're meant to embody. Which of course is classic DeLillo; it's a mistake to write this guy off because his characters don't speak realistically.

It's not a mistake to write him off entirely, though. I've prattled on about DeLillo before, how tired he makes me. All of his standard fa More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

May 16, 2008

Adam rated it:

This is probably the most accessible pomo book I've ever read. As such---however---it has a representative set of strengths and weaknesses as PoMo books go:

1: Development: White Noise does not develope linearly, rather it works as a system (every pomo novel does this to a point) the towns are not real places, but generalizations, people don't talk like real people but in this stilted diconnected manner. The book does not end after a crisis, but when the system has completed. I More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 16, 2008

Aaron rated it:

I suppose I'm still technically reading this book, though I am about 3/4ths of the way through when I moved to another country, so God knows if I will have the enthusiasm and/or desire to ever finish it. At first intriguing, even a bit exciting, then very very boring for a long period of time, even during the book's "climax," all the characters are well crafted and yet almost entirely unsympathetic, the plot is . . . is there a plot? Not really, not like you and I think of plots anyway More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)