Rating: 
Summary: three reasons to read white noise:
Review: (i) there may never be as humorous a presentation of american life (don't get me wrong, movie-wise 'american beauty' was exceptional, but it's just the tip of the iceberg) as this. between the husband/wife "competition" over who fears death more, the attempt at concealing jealousy when the need for it arises, and the reaction to "the cloud," one can't help but stand back and marvel at the success enjoyed by this country.(ii) professor of hitler studies. no, delillo's not a nazi, he's a comedian of outstanding proportions. hot on the heels of this particular position, we are introduced to the friend who is a prof. of television. together these had me in tears. that television is a real major at various universities and colleges is, well, let's just say it enriches the reading experience. (iii) the most photographed barn in america. the scene at the barn, two academics having a bit of a chat about the barn itself, makes for amazing reading. basically, white light is some of the best writing you'll find. the symbolism (and everything that comes along with it) is wonderful, but the truth is the book stands up exceptionally well as nothing more than an in-and-of-itself comedic read.
Rating:
Summary: Welcome to the suburbs
Review: To say this book lacks a narrative structure, as another reviewer has, is to state the obvious truth, but it is also to miss the point of how this book works in the grossest sense. Also, to pretend that any work's validity comes from a complex narrative is to be stuck in the George Eliot school of literary criticism. "The novel" has thankfully moved beyond being simply a plot-vehicle; DeLillo has helped urge us down this path. The inheritor of similarly "unploted" authors as Proust and Nabokov, DeLillo's works read something like sprays of words; it is up to the reader to pick up the pieces. Here our narrator makes that task extraordinarily familiar. Set amidst American suburbia at its most mediocre, White Noise draws ironies and truth that a more traditional narrative would force into existence. In this book they emerge naturally from delicious verb-less sentences that string together such non-entities as brand names and un-happenings. If it strikes us as pedestrian, it is only because it hits points remarkably close to us as readers; products of post-war Americana, we _should_ know all that it contains. To have done this, and have done it with as much comic gusto as DeLillo has, is something of a feat. It is not an outright funny book--but Jack Gladney's demi-struggle is staged with such perfect wit that it recalls that other great, comic suburban exploration, Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49. Yet even Pynchon uses mystery to drive us along--DeLillo employs no such artifice. Funny for a book which points out so much artifice in the everyday.
Rating: 
Summary: Black Noise
Review: The protagonist is a professor who intellectualizes his family, his career, and his experiences into existential angst, like a college sophomore strung out on Sartre and Camus. Characters talk alike, and the plot reminds me of static between radio channels. If this is satire, it rings hollow.
The protagonist's father-in-law, the most lively character, makes a brief appearance, delivers snappy parting lines, and disappears forever. The book gets two stars because of that character and because the descriptions are good.
Spare me another "modern" novel like this, limp in spirit, vapid in plot, short on progress toward meaningful resolution.
Rating: 
Summary: Occasionally brilliant, but heartless and cold
Review: I suppose any serious reader of post-modern fiction has to come to grips with Don DeLillo, one of the most celebrated novelists of the past 20 years in the U.S. You have to give the author credit, no two of his books are remotely alike, and he tackles some heavy themes in White Noise, including death and fear of dying, as well as the emptiness of contemporary culture. I also appreciated the fact that White Noise does have some semblance of a plot, unlike the meandering mess Underworld. In White Noise, we are presented with the lives of Jack Gladney and his family, a modern American family complete with stepchildren from other marriages, adolescents and toddlers, etc. Jack teaches Hitler Studies at a small college, and is secretly ashamed that the nation's foremost Hitler expert cannot speak German. His wife Babette teaches such esoteric topics as good posture and eating habits (ie. don't recline right after eating, and avoid swimming for at least an hour, etc.). Babette also reads to the blind, although in a nice ironic twist she reads supermarket tabloid magazines to her blind listener. Both Babette and Jack are gripped with an intense fear of death, and their battles to deal with mortality provide a good part of the novel's action. While Babette suffers quietly and intently with her fears, lapsing into depression and forgetfulness, Jack walks around the campus having scholarly debates with his colleague Murray as they discuss the problem. The appearance of a huge toxic cloud in their town, referred to as the "Airborne Toxic Event", brings all these fears to the forefront. So why the lukewarm response? Even though I thought certain passages of the book were brilliant, I couldn't help feeling frustrated at large passages of White Noise. The characters all talk in a wooden, stale dialogue style that frankly got old very fast. Jack and his son Heinrich have philosophical dialogues such as one maddening discourse as to whether it is raining, including wondering "what is rain? How can we tell it is raining here when we are in a moving car?," etc. Enough is enough! Plus, except for the little tyke Wilder, all of the characters sounded the same to me. The kids seemed too smart and cynical for their age, and they all sounded alike. Every time a character makes an observation, the other characters in the scene attack the point from all angles, asking a series of questions as if you were back in Philosophy 101. There is never any small talk, noone ever lets a point go unchallenged. When Jack wishes to get intimate with his wife, the two of them sit in bed arguing over who will read erotic passages from books to whom, and what will they read. It sounded something like: "What should I read? Whatever you like. I want to read whatever pleases you. I like whatever pleases YOU." After a while you want someone to grab a gun. Jack also refers to his wife in the third person constantly, telling her: " This is not why I married Babette." Can the dialogue of two people, even a professor and his wife, possibly be this dull? I know the novel is a satire, and so certain allowances have to be made for a novel attempting to trivialize American society, but some of the plot devices just struck me as odd and ineffective. During a climatic trip to Germantown late in the novel, we are presented about seven times with a point by point summary of Jack's great "plan" for revenge. You are constantly confronted with these little eccentricities, which seemed at times like a novelist trying a little too hard to be clever.
Rating: 
Summary: it's obvious
Review: I enjoy this book by Mr. Don DeLillo (b 1936). WHITE NOISE is a bona-fide classic written by a U.S. born author. It is a credit to this book that it reminds me of watching television. As I turn the pages, I feel as though I am watching my favourite family sitcom. Events happen without a plot line. Further, none of the main characters are affected by them in a significant way. The people are characters, some very eccentric, yet, there is no character development. There are commercials, too. Subtle product placement ads. Adults exist with children without any active parenting. The children, for their part, are idealised. They are capable of "moments of splendid transcendence" merely by reciting the names of automobiles in a TV voice while sleeping. For the protagonist, security represents a "long and uneventful life." Which is probably a good description of this book. I personally enjoy this type of humour, and appreciate the poetry. If you are interested in classic novels from twentieth century US, or in dry humour with biting satire, this book will be interesting to you.
Rating:
Summary: Drowning In DeLillo
Review: What a stubborn, perplexing book. If I had any kind of life, I might resent the time this novel extracted from it to afflict me with its arch, dark-gray worldview. I know, I know. Being that I didn't go to an Ivy League college, don't visit the Guggenheim for relaxation, or work out while listening to atonal music, I probably had little chance making any headway here. Don DeLillo is just out of my league. I'm like an ant trying to learn brain surgery reading this book.
So here's what happens, as best I can figure. A college professor named Gladney who chairs a department on Hitler studies in a nameless college finds he has contracted a strange contamination and finds himself unable to face the prospect of his death. He is befriended by a visiting professor who wants to form his own academic discipline around Elvis. Meanwhile, his wife takes these strange pills, and assorted children run about, having hyperliterate conversations about nucleotides and the perils of sugarless gum. The point of the novel, as best I can figure, is that we are all surrounded by waves and waves of meaningless sounds, images, and information designed to prop us up through our brief sojourns along this mortal highway. "We need an occasional catastrophe to break up the incessant bombardment of information," one of Gladney's colleagues says, before they get one courtesy of an "airborne toxic event" that afflicts Gladney with his sad condition. Sad, except you never buy any of these people as real. Instead, they seem two-dimensional philosophic constructs designed to trot out some of DeLillo's often fascinating but always depressing ideas about the nature of man in a Godless universe. I couldn't get close to any of these people, not that I didn't try. There are those like the New York Times reviewer who describe "White Noise" as comic, and there are some archly amusing lines. One professor congratulates Gladney thusly: "Nobody on the faculty of any college or university in this part of the country can so much as utter the word Hitler without a nod in your direction, literally or metaphorically...He is now your Hitler, Gladney's Hitler. It must be deeply satisfying for you." That's irony, in case you didn't guess, even more pronounced because the speaker's Jewish. "White Noise" is certainly surreal. When a plane is about to crash, the voice on the address system informs the passengers: "We're a silver gleaming death machine." People fleeing the deadly cloud complain about the lack of media coverage. A friend of one of the children plans to insert himself in a glass cage with deadly mambas for 70 hours, to break the world record. There are moments of amusement, more dry chuckles than anything else. Certainly not engagement. I've read a couple of other DeLillo novels and liked them. "Underworld" was also surreal, but I cared more about the characters and the situations they found themselves in. "Libra" is a solid examination of the Kennedy assassination, a tour de force of imaginative historical reconstruction. But I found "White Noise" a mess. If you find otherwise, congratulations. Just don't say I didn't warn you.
Rating:
Summary: Mixed reaction
Review: This was a strange book. I was impressed with both the beginning and the end, but tired of the endless theme of mindless consumerism and personal despair. At first I was impressed by DeLillo's sardonic wit and ability to form a plausible tale about a professor of Hitler studies afraid of death. The ending effectively wrapped up the themes and the story and left me with a satisfying read. Maybe he intended this, but I found myself frequently questioning when it would end and feeling tired and frustrated with the world that composed the bulk of the novel. It was interesting that the main character did demonstrate human concerns and emotions, barely visible through the rubble of material and cultural garbage.
Rating:
Summary: Archetypal Arch, Anarchic Americana
Review: Reading Don DeLillo, I couldn't keep from imagining the author sitting sequestered in his home tapping out his aren't-I-so-clever story without ever really going out into the world to find out how people act, talk, feel, or think. His sometimes interesting style is forced upon us rapid-fire at the sacrifice of real characters that, through their interactions with one another, actually make something interesting happen. This book reads that way: way over-rated and tiresomely 'clever' after about one hundred pages. You will feel nothing for any of the characters because you will recognize that they are just sloppy cartoon sketches of contemptible middle-class American nitwits. Of course, we are supposed to identify with them--wink, wink-- because they are meant to mirror our silly and meaningless lives. (Are you tired, yet, of that angle?)
In real life, (American) people may act silly at times, but to suggest that they are all distracted fools who don't ever pause in their stupid routines to contemplate how sad and pathetic their lives really are is truly an arrogantly sophomoric theme to carry throughout the length of a novel.
Honest-to-goodness laughs?: Two.
New insights into life and human behavior: None
A re-tread of that other over-rated 'clever' stinker "Crying of Lot 49?": Yes
Rating:
Summary: Archetype of Arch and Anarchic
Review: Reading Don DeLillo, I couldn't keep from imagining the author sitting sequestered in his home tapping out his oh-so-clever story without ever going out into the real world to find out how real people act, talk, feel, or think. His sometimes interesting style is forced upon us at the sacrifice of real characters that through their interaction with one another actually make something happen as we look forward to in a plot-driven story. This book reads that way: way over-rated and tiresomely 'clever' after about one hundred pages. You will feel nothing for any of the characters because you will recognize that they are just sloppy cartoon sketches of contemptible middle-class American ninnies. Of course, we are supposed to identify with them because they are meant to mirror our silly and meaningless lives. (Are you tired of that angle, yet?) In real life, (American) people may act silly, but to suggest that they are all distracted fools who don't ever pause in their stupid routines to contemplate how sad and pathetic their lives really are is truly an arrogantly sophomoric theme to carry through the length of a novel. Honest-to-goodness laughs?: two.
New insights into life and human behavior: none
A re-tread of that other over-rated stinker "Crying of Lot 49?": Yes
Rating:
Summary: A Classic Novel
Review: Is DeLilo being too "clever," as many readers are saying in their Amazon reviews? Maybe it's just me, but I don't see the point in trying to look inside the head of the author and figure out ways he might be trying to impress me, finding chinks in his armor and ultimately disregarding his work because I see him as nothing but a pretentious man preaching down to me. It's enough that "White Noise" is intelligent, entertaining, and original. Above that, having read it three years ago, I can attest to the fact that it's memorable as well.
Most of the other reviewers have clued you in on the plot, and I don't want to ruin the book, so I'll quit while I'm only slightly behind...
This should strike a chord with readers somewhere in between the George Orwell and Chuck Pallaniuk set. Fans of those authors shouldn't be disappointed. It's one of my favorites.
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