White Noise (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)

published	June 1st 1999 by Penguin (Non-Classics)
first published	1984
binding	Paperback
isbn	0140283307 (isbn13: 9780140283303)
pages	320
literary awards	1985 National Book Award
description	Something is amiss in a small college town in Middle America. Something subliminal, something omnipresent, something hard to put your finger on. For e...more [close] 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: <blockquote> 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. </blockquote> 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 [close]
date added	12-18-06 edit book

find at: Amazon | Half.com | Barnes & Noble | Abebooks | more...

discuss this book

topics	replies	last activity
White Noise	1	05/06/2007 08:23PM

new topic

groups with this book

friend reviews (0)

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

lists with this book

Best Books of the 20th Century

315 books | 885 voters

AP Literature

79 books | 3 voters

More...

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 8589)

David rated it:

03/30/08

bookshelves: intellectual-con-artist-at-work, read-in-2008

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 addresses why I s...more

Like this review? yes (8 people liked it)

19 comments

Shannon rated it:

09/21/07

Read in August, 2007

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 &am...more 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 SO LOST & ASSANINE & WARPED & DEEPLY FRUSTRATING & SELFISH & DIVORCED FROM REALITY!
So much of it drove me nuts.
BUT IT WAS THE CONVERSATION WITH THE NUN ABOUT FAITH & BELIEF THAT REALLY PUT ME OVER THE TOP! Some of it was painfully true: "The nonbelievers need the believers. They are desperate to have someone believe." "As belief shrinks from the world, people find it more necessary than ever that someone believe...Those who have abandoned belief must still believe in us. They are sure that they are right not to believe but they know belief must not fade completely. Hell is when no one believes. There must always be believers...We surrender our lives to make your nonbelief possible. You are sure that you are right but you don't want everyone to think as you do. THERE IS NO TRUTH W/O FOOLS." And then Delillo states his own view 2 pages prior "But you're a nun. Nuns believe these things. When we see a nun, it cheers us up, it's cute & amusing being reminded that someone still believes in angels, in saints, all the traditional things." I think it is true that our faith & belief are for others as much as they are for ourselves. But Delillo's presentation of this character was all over the place. I'm inspired by her strength & even by her resolve to devote herself to the good things in which she can't even fully believe. It freakishly draws our admiration & disgust at the same time. "We take vows. Poverty, chastity, obedience. Serious vows. A serious life. You could not survive without us." Winnie & this nun are the only 2 characters who have some handle on reality in the last section of the book. But this twisted commentary on faith, "dedication" & "pretense," really was the last straw for me in this book.
& WHAT WAS THE POINT OF WILDER RIDING HIS TRIKE ACROSS THE HIGHWAY? Was that supposed to be an allusion to the way we live life...ignorant of oncoming danger...absurd/foolish as children? Is it a commentary on Jack's remaining years cheating death? Thinking it's going by so fast...when really from proper perspective (reality's view or God's from the perch of the little old ladies) it's a snail's creeping pace. What was the point of that terrible ride? & why finish the book w/ a sunset & the check-out line? Both scenes are of anticipation/the inevitable/waiting which relate to death. But really I was expecting more closure. He DID just shoot a man, come home w/ a bullet wound, & left his neighbor's car full of bloody carnage!
I love the writing & don't regret reading it. There are still numerous passages that I find painfully beautiful & there R many surprising truths woven into all the crazy crap. But still that was not an easy read, & I had to power walk & pray for the depraved world at length before I could sleep with any sort of peace last night. This is how I felt both times I read The Awakening. Great writing, some amazing characters, I recognize that there were some valid points being made, but really I want to smack these characters, the author who created them, & then dedicate my life to fruitful action so I DON’T end up doing NOTHING & thinkin I’m deep....less

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

2 comments

Dorothea rated it:

05/18/08

Read in January, 2007

recommended to Dorothea by: My Dad!
recommends it for: negative hipster assholes

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 readin...more 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 reading this book, and I'm still recovering.

It had a lot of potential. It could have been a great commentary on life in a media-saturated society that worships safety and bright colors in the temples of grocery stores, a society that will suffocate in the toxic by-products of its own vain materialistic pleasures, conveniences and distractions.

But a great commentary would have been too meaningful and after all, this is the age of negation and disorder where everything is turned inside out, where to live fully without fear is to kill freely without hesitation. This is the age of futility wherein the best artists have to be indifferent or even hostile to supreme coherence and only depictions of anti-heroism will be praised and given National Book Awards.

This is a literary lunch of styrofoam, the very by-products of which seep into our drinking water and inform our cells to mutate and form cancerous tumors. This carcinogenic "art" permeates the spirit of this age. We consume it and breath it into our souls and the light that is within us grows darker, life becomes more absurd and meaningless.

DeLillo is a talented writer, but he wasted his talent in this work and missed an important opportunity to demand change. Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset with his depiction of a dystopic American setting. The Toxic Airborne Event was brilliant, timely and necessary, but he never asks his readers to take a good hard look at the causes and consequences of our toxin-producing lifestyle. And it was right there! I also take issue with his demonic proposal that there is liberation to be found in murder, that there is no immortality, that important "psychic data" can be gleamed from commercials and television programs.

Yeah, I know, it's only fiction, yeah I know, he meant something else entirely, turn it inside out and upside down and this is what he really meant, have a Coke and a Dylar and put a bullet in my head, it's opposite era!...less

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

1 comments

Christy rated it:

02/23/08

Read in January, 1999

recommended to Christy by: Someone who thought confronting consumerism was shocking.
recommends it for: Teenagers being raised in suburbia who totally hate it/their parents

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, and the dialogue is pain...more 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, and the dialogue is painfully contrived. I've decided the dialogue is so bad because this is just Delillo's inner monologue we are being subjected to. I'm not even suggesting that he really talks this way, but I am suggesting that he wishes he talked this way, because he thinks it sounds cool. I consider it "bad writing" when no character has a voice that is unique or even slightly different than everyone else's. It's like watching the Gilmore Girls, which, I think you'll agree, is a pretty bad show.

The characters are depressed and depressing. They are childish, ridiculous, and shallow. These had the potential to be statements in themselves, and one might be tempted to accept White Noise as some sort of literary experiment, albeit an untimely (read: embarrassingly late) one. Unfortunately, all of his writing seems to employ the same devices (shockingly frank, sparse writing about people with sparse souls - can you believe what's happened to America's values?) I was browsing through reviews of his (new?) book Falling Man, which apparently is a post September 11th character/civilization study, and it sounds like Delillo is up to his old tricks. Someone mentioned that it includes the line "The crowd was skilled at being a crowd." Do you sort of feel like that line might also be in White Noise? I can't say for sure, as it has been several years since I read it. But it certainly might as well be. I think it might be in every Delillo book ever written. It's the kind of statement that causes one to pause and think, "Yes, in its own way that is actually quite descriptive and possibly brilliant." But then you keep reading and realize this man is full of nonsense, and it really isn't insightful at all because his books are all full of similarly pointless one-liners that don't lead anywhere.

Don Delillo doesn't have anything to say that hasn't already been said in every disillusioned 15 year old's poetry journal. And he says it badly....less

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

Ethan rated it:

09/15/07

bookshelves: memebase

recommends it for: Americans

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...more

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

add a comment

Madelyn rated it:

07/04/08

bookshelves: pleasureread

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in June, 2008

"It's like we've been flung back in time," he said. "Here we are in the Stone Age, knowing all these great things after centuries of progress but what can we do to make life easier for the Stone Agers? Can we make a refrigerator? Can we even explain how it works? What is electricity? What is light? We experience these things every day of our lives but what good does it do if we find ourselves hurled back in time and we can't even tell people the basic principles much less actually...more "It's like we've been flung back in time," he said. "Here we are in the Stone Age, knowing all these great things after centuries of progress but what can we do to make life easier for the Stone Agers? Can we make a refrigerator? Can we even explain how it works? What is electricity? What is light? We experience these things every day of our lives but what good does it do if we find ourselves hurled back in time and we can't even tell people the basic principles much less actually make something that would improve conditions. Name one thing you could make. Could you make a simple wooden match that you could strike on a rock to make a flame? We think we're so great and modern. Moon landings, artificial hearts. But what if you were hurled into a time warp and came face to face with the ancient Greeks. THe Greeks invented trigonometry. They did autopsies and dissections. What could you tell an ancient Greek that he couldn't say, 'Big deal.' Could you tell him about the atom? Atom is a Greek word. THe Greeks knew that the major events in the universe can't be seen by the eye of man. It's waves, it's rays, it's particles." (142)

"Two more nuns appeared, wizened and creaky. My nun said something to them and soon all four of us were charmingly engaged in a childlike dialogue. We did colors, items of clothing, parts of the body. I felt much more at ease in this German-speaking company than I had with the Hitler scholars. Is there something so innocent in the recitation of names that God is pleased?
Sister Hermann Marie applied finishing touches to the bullet wound. From my chair I had a clear view of the picture of Kennedy and the Pope in heaven. I had a sneaking admiration for the picture. It made me feel good, sentimentally refreshed. The President still vigorous after death. THe pope's homeliness a kind of radiance. Why shouldn't it be true? Why shouldn't they meet somewhere, advanced in time, against a layer of fluffy cumulus to clasp hands? WHy shouldn't we all meet, as in some epic of protean gods and ordinary people, aloft, well-formed, shining?" (302)

...less

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Adam rated it:

(review of isbn 978-0140077025)

05/16/08

Read in May, 2008

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 find thi...more 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 find this sort of set-up fascinating--and Delillo avoids most of the problems inherant here (a big one can be that characters become alienating types that are hard to empathize with---many many people read for empathy).

2: Development (II): Systems take a long time to set up. In a more traditional book one would have an exposition which would last from 10 to 50 pages. A system only starts clicking once patterns start being perceptible---here it takes up the entire part I of the book (the first third of the novel). This requires the reader to hold on and have faith that the book is going to "go somewhere." Delillo has this problem---I can tell you that the book definately does pay off, but a lot of readers won't stick along to see it.

3. Fragmentation: Delillo uses fragmentation masterfully---with bad pomos the fragmentation never adds up to anything---the reader is presented with a series of disconnected scenes that don't create a body. Delillo's fragmentation is like putting together a puzzle--each piece seems meaningless, but as the picture comes together you start seeing greater things afoot.

4. Themes of disconnection/artificiality: Definately present (as well as a more classical theme--death). Strangely enough, I feel these themes--while still valid--seem very stuck in their times. Perhaps I'm optimistic, but I don't see commercialism having unquestioned power (oh it still has power alright, but people are uneasy about it---maybe this book is one of the reasons why).

In any case read it. It's a necessity!...less

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Matthew rated it:

04/23/08

Read in April, 2008

I read this book in Nairobi, and I think that my reaction to it was mixed as a result. At times, I couldn't but feel that the book was already dated, something so desperately modern that it was doomed to age in a kitchsy way. Very prescient, very astute for its time, and probably one of the first good commentaries on the intrusion of technological networks and signals into a world of human networks and communication. It foreshadows the pre-millenium tension of the late 90s so well. And yet, ...more I read this book in Nairobi, and I think that my reaction to it was mixed as a result. At times, I couldn't but feel that the book was already dated, something so desperately modern that it was doomed to age in a kitchsy way. Very prescient, very astute for its time, and probably one of the first good commentaries on the intrusion of technological networks and signals into a world of human networks and communication. It foreshadows the pre-millenium tension of the late 90s so well. And yet, its commentary on the fetishization of death and its blurring of the simulated and the real rings so false in a country where death is very much real and very much a legitimate, daily concern. I wouldn't go so far as to say that this is a book for an exclusively American audience, but it probably helps if you read it while in the US. Reading it from Africa, it took on the feel (at times) of a futuristic dystopia. Albeit a really funny one.

The narrator works so well because we are at once laughing with him and at him. For much of the book, I wasn't sure which was the stronger reaction. The last few chapters are an emotional roller coaster. In fact, the last chapter really threw me for a loop. I thought I had made up my mind on the takeaway from this book after getting through the penultimate scene at the hospital, but there's something so redemptive about that last chapter... it's so easy and cheap in a way, but perhaps the suggestions is that a simulated redemption is all that's afforded us anymore.

I also found this book charmingly retro, in a way. A world with SIMUVAC is infinitely preferable to a world of the TSA and Gitmo. It allows us the possibility of situating ourselves as observers to televised events that we are ourselves participants in, a view that I now find naive and almost quaint, Baudrillard notwithstanding. And you know what? Baudrillard is dead, as in actually dead and buried in the ground, which is pretty much the most fitting critical response to his body of work.

Anyway, recommended....less

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Doctorteeth rated it:

01/12/08

bookshelves: audiobook, fiction

Read in January, 2008

When I read The Disappointment Artist by Jonathan Lethem, he mentioned Don DeLillo as being an influence, so I picked this up as an audiobook to see what it was like. And I didn't like it. The plot, which doesn't really matter anyway, is kind of obtuse. Jack Gladney, the main character, is a teacher of Hitler Studies at a college in a small-town. We see the events of the novel through his eyes: his bizarre family life with his bizarre family; the "airborne toxic event" that...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

amber rated it:

10/08/07

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: for people who take pills for a reason

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

Like this review? yes (7 people liked it)

2 comments

Aly rated it:

(review of isbn 978-0140077025)

04/22/07

Daniel's been after me to read this for a while, as part of his campaign to persuade me that there is such a thing as "contemporary literature" beyond Jonathan Safran Foer.

Let me say that I enjoyed it for the vast majority of the book, and I can't quite tangibly explain what turned me off to other portions. I think it was a subtle distaste for the narrator whenever he revealed himself to be an fatty, bewildered, middle-aged man who turns to a fellow professor to interpret all the e...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Nathan rated it:

09/14/07

bookshelves: great-lies-of-the-20th-century, lies

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: people who die

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

Like this review? yes (3 people liked it)

add a comment

Louis rated it:

12/26/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in July, 2006

recommends it for: masochists suffering from an acute case of ennui

I do not like feeling like an idiot because I think fiction should be synonymous with story.

Don DeLillo, to judge from White Noise at least, does not share my thinking. And he is a highly acclaimed writer. Apparently even a 20th century great in the judgment of a penguin. The novel here is a long, long, long - well I wouldn't even call it a narrative - it's a 200-plus page first chapter, I guess. Emphasis on "i guess."

Some middling professor who's been faking his way t...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Sam rated it:

04/09/08

recommends it for: smart people who don't get fat on American Idol.

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 academic satire.&quo...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

Aaron rated it:

03/16/08

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: Masochists. No, really.

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

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

Becky rated it:

08/31/07

Read in August, 2007

I remember reading books in high school and being fairly awed to discover the themes and underlying messages that were hidden within. I guess I was so busy being entertained by the writing and thoroughly engaged with the characters that the themes didn't really jump out at me until after the book was finished. That is not a problem I would have had with White Noise. Rather than revealing his themes through characters' ongoing actions and words, DeLillo beats us (well, lots of people love this...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Elliot rated it:

04/04/07

Read in November, 2001

recommends it for: People experiencing feelings of detachment or dread

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

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

add a comment

Christina rated it:

(review of isbn 978-0140077025)

04/18/07

The family is the cradle of the world's misinformation. There must be something in family life that generated factual error. Overcloseness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps something even deeper, like the need to survive. Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into the nature of things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The family process works toward sealing off the world.

Ever...more

Like this review?