Rating: Summary: I suppose you had to be there...in 1985 Review: "White Noise" is a frustrating work. The baroque and entirely too self-consciously philosophical dialogue in which the characters speak mirrors the style of the prose, or is commenting upon the prose, or is meant to satirize academic discourse but in any case when embedded in the surrounding narrative it simply doesn't work as satire. One can write complex dialogue yet retain a measure of realism, but Delillo steps over the bounds many times and it became annoying (although I like the way he wove in the "chatter" of information overload in his protagonist's consciousness). As like the fiction of Pynchon, we are kept at a distance from caring about the characters by a veil of transpersonal forces and psychological Everything is layered, laden with double meanings. Delillo is a master at the terse and evocative description; the writing itself is excellent, and he does accomplish some zingers. The second part, "the Airborne Toxic Event" is compelling, and the scene at the end in which the protagonist spars with a German nun on religion is the best. But the plot is forced, I thought, with an ending which mirrors the murder of Clare Quilty in "Lolita." In all, a flawed but occasionally interesting work...
Rating: Summary: Levity's Rainbow? Review: After reading Underworld shortly after its appearance, this is the second work I read by DeLillo. I thought that Underworld was a book that contained a number of strong scenes/vignettes, but ultimately failed to show a level of coherence that it's length required. While I appreciated White Noise's satire, brevity and improved focus better, I still feel a lack of coherence between the various themes of the novel.The two main themes of White Noise are consumerism and fear of death. At the interface between both subjects DeLillo has inserted a prophetic toxic emission incident, in which poisonous side products threaten the lives of the main character and his family, thus augmenting their fear of death. While these three elements seem entirely appropriate to make this story work, the author inserts a couple of extra themes that really prove detrimental to the story. Jack's chair in Hitler studies and the discussion of other fields of study at his faculty provide material for highly amusing satirical puns. Yet, in the end attempts to imply and provide a link between Jack's academic interests and his fear of death are shallow. Babette's Dylar episode resulting in Jack's assault on Mink, again starts out great but makes you shrug at the end. The quality of the prose is as high as it is in Underworld. Again some of the scenes deserve a "classic status". The satire often approaches the Swiftian level. Yet again, in my personal opinion, DeLillo leaves the full potential of the individual ingredients of the novel unmet. Powerful observations on many aspects of modern life, yet maybe a little too smart for it's own good.
Rating: Summary: How little things have changed since 1985 Review: Although DeLillo wrote White Noise 20 years ago, it is the most profound representation I have read of how we are bombarded with information, communications, opinions, threats and fears still today in 2004. A lot of things have obviously changed since 1985, but DeLillo put his finger on the effects of this white noise before any of us knew what impact it could have. This book is especially relevant today when we are told to constantly fear death: death from terrorists, death from bird flu, death from SUVs, death from uncooked meat, death from global weather patterns. There were several chilling images in the book that suggested an amazing foresight in DeLillo's imagination, especially mention of a highjacked jumbo jet crashing into the White House. I also found White Noise easier to read and more interesting than his more recent and popular Underworld, perhaps because I grew up in the 80s and 90s of White Noise rather than during the Cold War 50s and 60s of Underworld and felt closer to the characters.
In a previous review of this book, a writer noted in wonder how a book about death could be so funny and engaging. Aside from the critical acclaim this book received years ago, it was this description that drew me to read it and I was not disappointed. A writer than can deal with very serious issues and subconcious feelings that everyone has, but can make it funny, engaging and, in the end, very enlightening, has a special talent.
Rating: Summary: Easily the best campus novel since BEOWULF Review: Baby, you can take yer Malcolm Bradbury campus-fics and slide them straight up David Lodge's lodge. Because DeLillo reveals those campus fictionists for the cheapjack punk-amateurs that they so indubitably are. What? You're telling me you're not even aware of the campus-novel genre? What are you---psychotically innocent or something? You're gonna sit there and tell me that you haven't wasted your sanity on Iris Murdoch? You lucky stiff.
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?
Rating: Summary: Finding the meaning of life Review: Being as young as I am, I believe I have figured out the meaning of life. Every so often I read a book, see a movie, hear a song or catch a funny smell that completely re-vamps my whole ideal of what I believe this meaning is.
This book certainly gave me something to think about.
Great books have to do something great, be it tackle the meaning of the universe, make you ponder the inner beauty of humanity, make you FEEL sorrow, etc. This book is great because it captures the feeling of dread about modern living. DREAD. That's such a scary word, dread.
The characters live their lives in an alternate universe. From the beginning of the book, you know that something is different, in this case, there is "Hitler Studies" at a made up college. You know this is different. And for the rest of the book, you think in the back of your mind "what else is different?"
What else is different?
Don's characters all seem like real people, and you inspect their prose, you inspect different paragraphs, re-read chapters, because you feel that something else has to be different. You notice how erie it feels reading it, how similar everything is, and how depressing his world feels. His characters have thoughts that heroic characters don't. His characters do things heroic characters don't. His characters act like real people act, even when no one is watching. Everything feels paniced yet dull. Safe but terrifying.
And you see how much it is like real life.
Read this book.
Rating: Summary: Brilliant but flawed Review: I'd give 3 1/2 stars but will charitably round up. This was my first exposure to DeLillo, and I'll read him again. He's a virtuoso writer, with a gift for dead-on descriptions of everyday experience, as well as offbeat, slightly dadaist comic dialogue. In these ways, he often reminded me of John Updike and Donald Barthelme, respectively. In general, I agree with many of the recent reviews - this is a work of brilliant and hilarious post-modern observation. Nonetheless, it took me over 2 months to read, in which time it was put aside several times in favor of other books. After a wonderful start, it definitely seemed to drag. I never really bought into the concept of the paralyzing fear of death, and thought that that whole theme became very redundant and overworked by story's end. In truth, I feel there was enough material here for a great 150 page novella. So while I can't rave about White Noise in its totality, there were so many moments of compact perfection that I'll probably be enjoying it in bits and pieces for years to come.
Rating: Summary: Magnificent in scope Review: Jack Gladney is the chairman of Hitler Studies at a quaint liberal arts college somewhere in leafy-green, suburban America. His wife teaches posture classes, his son--an astonishingly precocious young man at the tender age of fourteen--ponders such cerebral questions as the validity of our consciousness--do we really want the things that we want, or are our neurons indiscriminately swimming about in our skulls and haphazardly giving us a false sense of yearning? Then a chemical spill brings about The Airborne Toxic Event, in which an amorphous black cloud hovers over Gladney's complacent little town, ominously darkening the splashy colors and phosphorescent whites of the super market which gives solace to so many of the local denizens, not excluding Gladney's family. The spill may also serve as a metaphor for what DeLillo calls the "white noise" in America, that insidious current in the air resulting from too many radio signals (t.v, radio, e.g.), the infatuation we as Americans have with consumerism--(note: this was written during the Reagan era). The novel also boldly deals with fear, particularly fear of death, another beast within the machine that many must eventaully face. One of the best parts of the novel occurs toward the end, when Jack Gladney has an edifying Q and A over death and the afterlife with a German nun at a hospital, a stark and unflinching illumination which I found great and daring, if not a little sad. This is a Don DeLillo book, and those not familiar with Don DeLillo and his sometimes abstruse connotations on American living might be chary upon entering his world. This one in particular requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief; it is a satire and although at times very earnest and serious, the comedy and absurdity are always there to remind the reader of the tongue-in-cheek nature, which is expertly employed. The complaints that most people have with this novel are fairly obvious to anyone who has read DeLillo before. Though a master word craftsman, stringing along beautiful sentences on every page, DeLillo seems to struggle with creating believable dialogue, and this struggle to me is plainly obvious--the man is just too smart to understand how the majority of average people talk. But. Unquestionably a classic read. Brilliantly plotted, with its portentous admonitions and grave illustrations of a picture-perfect community on the precipice of total disaster, DeLillo has tapped into the throbbing heart of the system, exposing it for all that it really is: waves and radiations.
Rating: Summary: Skims the surface, ultimately unsatisfying Review: Jack, the chairman of Hitler studies and his extended family, wife and children from multiple marriages, live peaceful lives in Middle America. Yet they're terrified of death, and oddly estranged from the world. When an "airborne toxic event" forces a town evacuation, it gives their fears shape - even after life returns to "normal," the consequences linger inside them. This novel has passages of great black humor and touches a very real nerve in American modern life. DeLillo is like an alien looking rather fearfully at American pop culture through a telescope. Who else would describe the crackling noise of frozen plastic wrap as "strange"? I have to say my previous
critique of DeLillo, from Underworld, holds in this novel too - the dialogue is all much of a sameness: all the characters firing academic questions at one other, referring to themselves in the third person, using the same stylistic phrasings, even adolescents. Only Jack's visiting father-in-law has his own voice (perhaps because he is a nomad, a worker with his hands, removed from the "white noise"). I also find it beyond credibility that Jack, the chairman for 20-odd years of a department he invented, could not speak German. This isn't like claiming a degree you don't have. People would know. It's a funny conceit, but it doesn't ring true. This is a recurring theme in the book. All the characters are literally baffled to shock by the most quotidian disturbances in their routine - a visit from the father in law, a familiar face on TV - but why? These over-reactions grow kind of tiresome, really. DeLillo should go under the surface, beyond supermarket kitsch and TV ads, to show the real "white noise:" the pollutants, the political machinations, the incompetence behind the toxic catastrophes. It reads well: the pacing is good, and the observations keen, but due to the sameness of the dialogue and tone I found it a bit unsatisfying.
Rating: Summary: Fear, Death, American Culture Review: No one is tapped into the dark underside of contemporary American culture like Don Delillo is. In White Noise, Delillo explores death and humanity's fear of death in an insightful and uniquely contemporary way. This may sound boring, but Delillo is an absolutely hilarious and fascinating writer. His philosophical dialog, while utterly unrealistic, is entertaining and astonishing in its complexity of ideas and connections. It is pure pleasure to read what his characters have to say about culture and all that it implies, especially in Delillo's conception of the new forms of dying unique to our time.
Rating: Summary: Great in Spots & Good Cultural Commentary Review: Overall, the book is worth reading. It's a good commentary on the modern world. Also, I think DeLillo writes well, and his insights were thought provoking. There are many great snippets which deserve to be underlined and reread (or read aloud, as some have said). But if you want a good plot & well developed characters, you won't find it here. It's good, I don't think it's one of the best books of the 20th century, as some critics have claimed. The book has three main plot points. Jack Gladney is a professor at a small liberal arts college. He specializes in the academic study of Hitler. The first third of the story is somewhat slow, but in it Jack begins to wonder, "Who will die first?" -- him, or his wife? He also has several witty conversations with his academic colleagues, his wife, and his children. The second third of the story is devoted to a chemical spill that releases a large, black, toxic cloud of gas, and this forces Jack and his family to evacuate town. Eventually, they return home. Moving into the last third of the book, Jack learns his wife is taking an experimental drug to control her fear of death, a fear that Jack shares. Finally, without giving away the ending, finds consolation about his fears of death talking to semi-atheistic nuns in a hospital. As I see it, there are two major themes running through "White Noise." The first is fear of death, and the second is a satire of the commercial culture we live in. A fascination with and fear of death is woven into many of the aspects of the story. For example, in the start of the book Jack wonders who will die first -- him, or his wife. More tellingly, Jack made his academic career on academic studies of Hitler, a mass murderer. He also converses with academic colleagues who find cultural significance in the large number car crashes in movies. The deadly, toxic, chemical cloud released in his town is huge, ominous and black, and follows them as the wind shifts. Finally, Jack's wife takes an experimental drug to control her fear of death. The second major aspect of the story is DeLillo's running cultural commentary on many subjects, but mostly on commercial/media culture and modern living. For example, in many scenes there are TV's or radios turn on, constantly interjecting random words, thoughts, jingles, and ideas. One of Jack's academic colleagues revels in TV's message, in the slice-of-life commercials, in product jingles & mantras; he also wants to make a career out of studying Elvis. In another scene, Jack sees his sleeping daughter murmuring quietly -- he leans in to listen, to realize that is young one murmuring, "Toyota Celica." Those reassuring words are part of the subconscious static of kids' minds, he muses. Scenes like this are typical of DeLillo's commentary on commercial culture, and there are too many other scenes to list here. Overall, DeLillo's observations are sharp, witty, satiric, insightful and fun to read. The downside of this is that DeLillo's commentary seems to take over the novel at times. All characters seem to speak in the same voice, the voice of a wisecracking cultural critic. Also, the novel isn't plot driven; the characters move through events that give DeLillo opportunity to make his comments on death & commercial culture. Jack Gladney's character is the only one with any internal dialogue; the other characters are merely clever props. Overall, the book is worth reading. It's a good commentary on the modern world. Also, I think DeLillo writes well, and his insights were thought provoking. But if you want a good plot & well developed characters, you won't find it here.
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