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Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Better than any book I can think of, White Noise captures the particular strangeness of life in a time where humankind has finally learned enough to kill itself. Naturally, it's a terribly funny book, and the prose is as beautiful as a sunset through a particulate-filled sky. Nice-guy narrator Jack Gladney teaches Hitler Studies at a small college. His wife may be taking a drug that removes fear, and one day a nearby chemical plant accidentally releases a cloud of gas that may be poisonous. Writing before Bhopal and Prozac entered the popular lexicon, DeLillo produced a work so closely tuned into its time that it tells the future. From Publishers Weekly Chairman of the department of Hitler studies at a Midwestern college, Jack Gladney is accidently exposed to a cloud of noxious chemicals, part of a world of the future that is doomed because of misused technology, artifical products and foods, and overpopulation. PW appreciated DeLillo's "bleak, ironic" vision, calling it "not so much a tragic view of history as a macabre one." January Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. Book Description Jack Gladney teaches Hitler studies at a liberal arts college in Middle America where his colleagues include New York expatriates who want to immerse themselves in "American magic and dread." Jack and his fourth wife, Babette, bound by love, fear of death, and four ultramodern offspring, navigate the usual rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. Then a lethal black cloud floats over their lives, an airborne "toxic event," an industrial accident. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladney family - radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings - pulsing with life, yet filled with dread and danger. "A stunning performance from one of our most intelligent novelists...also, tremendously funny." (The New Republic) --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
It is a satiric look at the consumerism of American society through a very postmodern lens. Make no mistake, this is surreal writing. You can relate to some of the characters, but in any full, deep sense of the way like you could with a book of more traditional style. In White Noise, the characters are mere products of society, purposefully built up to be spiritually empty and mentally limited. DeLillo's narrator is Jack Gladney, and ends up being the sole voice in the novel, an intentional device to monotonize the speech of the characters in the book and fully illustrate the dulling effect (DeLillo says) consumerism has on people. Philosophy is spouted not just from adults but from EVERYONE except the child, Wilder (an important detail) and it echoes throughout the prose. The chatter of faxes, radios and televisions pervades the text, creating a veritable literary prosopopoeia of the Title. One should know going in, however, the DeLillo's prejudices are as numerous as his influences, and anyone who is easily offended by alternative takes on American society better get ready to be offended. Just like Pynchon, DeLillo is intent on deconstructing the idea of any sort of unified national, historical or existential persona, and the sarcasm he thrusts at concepts and norms that we are so familiar with and perhaps attached to will easily instigate anger in many. Still, no one can deny the depth of this novel's architecture and the breadth of its commentary. I don't care if you hate intellectualism to death or if you call all postmodern authors writers of pretentious, turgid tripe--there is absolutely no denying that DeLillo's work here is complex, original and worthy of praise. (...) If you hate postmodernism, fine. It's not everyone's cup of tea. Maybe you'll like White Noise's commentary, maybe you'll hate it. It's not everyone's cup of tea. But a potent cup it is, rich, dark and complex in its nuances and sources. Hate it all you want, White Noise is a (at times coldly) intellectual tour-de-force of satire and commentary. But don't worry; it's no Gravity's Rainbow. Was this review helpful to you?
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Maybe you're familiar with THE AWFUL GERMAN LANGUAGE by Mark Twain. Well, someone restated The Ugly Truth in a new way: "The German tongue. Fleshy, warped, spit-spraying, purplish and cruel. One eventually had to confront it. Wasn't Hitler's own struggle to express himself in German the crucial subtext of his massive ranting autobiography, dictated in a fortress prison in the Bavarian hills? Grammar and syntax. The man may have felt himself imprisoned in more ways than one." Hey. Tell me about it. I couldn't help but notice that German word-order is the linguistic equivalent of a straitjacket. Murray Jay Siskind says: "I understand the music, I understand the movies, I even see how comic books can tell us things. But there are full professors in this place who read nothing but cereal boxes." Okay. Here's the thing. Before I die, I wanna see DeLillo's face on a box of Wheaties. Is that too much to ask? --This text refers to the Paperback edition Was this review helpful to you?
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Works as a commentary, but not really as a novel, October 6, 2004
Excellent on all levels; anti-post-modernists beware, September 22, 2004