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White Noise

Don DeLillo

Start date: November 12, 2021

Finish date: December 16, 2021

Discussion: AMERICAN POSTMODERNISTS

Discussion leader: Traveller

Why we're reading this: There has been a request for us to revisit our discussion of White Noise. We never completely finished th…more
[close] There has been a request for us to revisit our discussion of White Noise. We never completely finished the book, so for the sake of newcomers, one of the mods is up for re-reading and starting up comments again.

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AMERICAN POSTMODERNISTS

* 1. WHITE NOISE by Don de Lillo. Chapters 1-10.
By Traveller · 91 posts · 91 views

last updated Sep 01, 2022 04:01AM

4. White Noise by Don DeLillo Chapters 31- 40
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last updated Nov 21, 2021 06:56AM

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What Members Thought

Jul 16, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: post-modern, american-20th-c, national-book-award, fiction, novels

One of DeLillo's early masterpieces, White Noise is about a professor of Nazism in a midwest town in America that is mysteriously covered by a toxic cloud. The tone is black comedy and the writing is superb. I risk spoilers by talking about the plot as the book is rather short and reads very quickly. In my opinion, it has the same rank of Libra and Mao II as the other great books he wrote besides his masterpiece, Underworld. ...more

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Jul 03, 2015 Peter rated it it was amazing

Jack Gladney, the intelligent and ironic narrator of White Noise by Don DeLillo, is the leading figure of Hitler studies in North America. Throughout the book, he clutches Mein Kampf, attempts to learn German, and wields a German-made handgun. It's not that he's obsessed, it's that Hitler gives his life meaning in a very strange way (1). It is an attempt to solve the central problem of this novel—the fear of death—that we see revolving around everyone and throwing many characters into downward s Jack Gladney, the intelligent and ironic narrator of White Noise by Don DeLillo, is the leading figure of Hitler studies in North America. Throughout the book, he clutches Mein Kampf, attempts to learn German, and wields a German-made handgun. It's not that he's obsessed, it's that Hitler gives his life meaning in a very strange way (1). It is an attempt to solve the central problem of this novel—the fear of death—that we see revolving around everyone and throwing many characters into downward spirals (2). In White Noise, death lurks dangerously close, both in reality and in Jack's headspace.

The name of this novel comes from the endless buzzing of technology that many characters confront. The radio and television are constantly on in the house, and the effects of media are made painfully clear by Jack's children. Take, for example, Heinrich, Jack's 14-year-old son who denies that it is raining unless the weather channel has forecasted and broadcasted it. Or when Jack finds his daughter muttering "Toyota Celica" in her sleep. White Noise shows how television and advertising subliminally shape unconscious behavior. Additionally, a lot of meditation on society happens in a supermarket, and these trips show us that, basically, rampant consumerism is another type of white noise.

After a toxic cloud (3) settles over the town, and Jack's exposure realizes his fear of death, a sudden tangible white noise is ubiquitous in the novel. He attempts to escape death in various ways (i.e. consumerism, Hitler, drugs). These different forms of paranoia about death and technology come together beautifully when medical devices analyze Jack's condition and he sees his death blinking on a screen—a series of numbers and stars, ones and zeros determining his fate.

Most of all, White Noise is meant to be an exploration of emerging themes from the late-twentieth century. It exposes many of the flaws of technology, academia, consumerism, and the modern family, and it does it exceptionally well. White Noise is a complex, beautiful, and gripping novel, my new favorite.

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(1) This phenomenon is very similar to Antoine Roquentin's study of Marquis de Rollebon in Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre. Things play out a bit differently though.

(2) Keyword: attempt. We learn how these subconscious efforts fall through toward the end of the novel and result in some destructive behavior.

(3) Radio stations are unsure whether to call it a "black billowing cloud" or a "feathery ploom," eventually settling on "airborn toxic event." ...more

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