Rating: 
Summary: Over-rated, pompous and "post-modern" to a fault.
Review: This book has been on my to-read list for years, so it was with some eagerness I opened my used copy. And my final estimation--a shrug of the shoulders, a frustrated sigh, a chill here and there, but, overall: this book is obvious, trite, pretentious, labored, dated. In short, the kind of "literature" that is made to be broken, that appeals to the academic, the ivory tower, those swayed by popular "literary" opinion, those at home with the safe and the pigeon-holed. I really expected to like this, to find in it a new language, a new vision of fin-de-siecle America. I read this in amazement, unable to believe that an author could so blandly deal with marriage, conspiracy, drug addiction and chemical "warfare" in such a detached, unilluminating manner. question remains: who will be read still in fifty years? Which will withstand the fads and prejudices of the literati--a writer who presents the 20th century as an amalgam of Hitler and Elvis, or one who envisions it as a collision between technology and sexuality? Hey, you be the judge. Don't let my opinions sway you.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant, fun, ahead of its time
Review: This was first published in 1984? This book was ahead of its time, is a fun read and has a lot to say. Some people won't get it, and that's fine; they can go watch TV.
Rating: 
Summary: old-fashioned paranoia
Review: I was urged to read this book by someone who told me that it was his favorite book. It did not become my favorite book. I am willing to try another deLillo book, but I am not in a big hurry. This book seems really old-fashioned to me: corporations and goverment are the enemies of the people. How many times do I need to be reminded of this? The parody of academia was actually the funniest part of the book, but David Lodge is much funnier on this topic. There was a grimness and earnestness to this book that defused both the humor and the political perspective for me. I felt like I was stuck at a cocktail party talking to a person who really, really cared about nuclear waste dumping in the ocean and thinks that I don't care at all. For criticism and parody of government and corporate oppression I prefer D.F. Wallace's _Infinite Jest_, which by it's frantic 'too-muchness' suggests that the author is not untouched by the corruption he is describing. By contrast, deLillo is obviously quite above the foolishness he is describing.
Rating:
Summary: To criticize this book as unreadable is to misunderstand it.
Review: Having read this book, a reader should understand that DeLillo's writing is not meant to entertain the way that Dickens' is or popular fiction a la Memoirs of a Geisha is. It is, rather, a rumination, a statement really, on the state of modern cultural existence. For those who see it as an attempt to be witty, spend a few hours watching the television as a critic and not as a viewer, flip through the 60 channels of static, jargon, sales pitches, sporting events, disasters, etc, and then come back to this book. See if the writing doesn't strike you then as having a stark tangibility to it, the same hollow feel, as though mimicry with an ear for critique. This book means more to late capitalist society than nearly any other I can recall. Don't give up on it because it's not Grisham.
Rating:
Summary: odd how so many misunderstand the point . . .
Review: This book isn't about the author's being "cool," witty, or anything like that. It is a book about how contemporary American culture deals with and treats the concept of death. It seems as if either one loves the novel, or hates it . . . I think that those who hate it missed the point of the novel, and could not see how the sometimes confusing quotations and senarios develop the message.
Rating: 
Summary: Horrible read, weak characters, bad writing style.
Review: Biggest problems with this book is the overuse of quotations to tell a story. The author might as well have writen a screenplay. The result is a confusing and choppy read. I would have prefered he reserves quoting his characters only when it would add something to the story. The prose itself is also weak. The author's descriptions of the characters' relationships with each other, the surroundings, the events are clumsy and weakly staged. He is also inept at pacing the events to keep the reader intrigue and hungry to read on to uncover the plot. Lastly, this book fails to draw the reader into the events taking place because we don't care about any of its characters. The writer would have created more believable characters we can sympathize with if he had taken us into the secret recesses of their souls where emotions like fear, happiness, self-doubt etc. reside. A writer should write for his reader in mind and not for himself. For a good book try Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, Ms.Rowling's Harry Potter books or Memoirs of a Geisha.
Rating:
Summary: Eerie Brilliance
Review: Imagine it. The little snippets of everyday life located within the hurtling technology age. Eating, running, walking, and parenting all oddly but somehow aptly presented in a framework of statistics, Hitler, toxicology, and guns. Everything imbued with a vague, edgy sense that Something Is Not Quite Right. The modern world that exists around us laid bare. The ridiculous and the realistic intricately woven together until you can't tell the one from the other. In some ways White Noise reminds me of the music of the Talking Heads, but only in some ways. Panasonic. (DeLillo's original title, in fact, _was_ Panasonic)
Rating: 
Summary: A strange but good book
Review: I read through about half of this book without being sure if I liked it or not, but I realized that I couldn't put it down. All in all it's a great book that confusees you at times.
Rating:
Summary: Am I reading the same book as the rest of the reviewers?!?
Review: Neither funny nor brilliant as the reviews on the cover shout out. White Noise is essentially the work of an author who is trying to be thoughful, witty and cool; none of which you can try to be. You either are or you aren't, and as far as I can tell, DeLillo isn't. His dialogue reads like the conversations between the uber-pretentious art-punks I used to know in high school, and the characters are about as real as the art-punks' hair color. I suppose this is a good thing, as I would probably want to punch anybody that acted like these characters if I met them in the real world. It didn't make me laugh, it didn't make me think (at least nothing outside of, "Christ, 73 more pages..."). The only reason I finished the book was so I wouldn't feel as if I had thrown away my money. Don't throw away your money, find another book instead.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece from DeLillo
Review: This is one of the greatest contemporary books of our time! It is brilliantly layered, with both obvious and less than obvious themes woven throughout the novel. Also, DeLillo's use of metaphor (seemingly spontaneously) is par excelence!
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