White Noise (Contemporary American Fiction)

Rating:
Summary: Highly, highly overrated.
Review: The reason so many professors of late 20th century fiction teach this book is the same reason that I feel that it's ultimately unsuccessful: it's a completely paint-by-the-numbers rehashing of an extrapolative social critique that's been done to death. That the narrative assumes that these observations are new to the reader indicates how pedestrian of a work it truly is. Its "content" allows professors to feel as if they're contributing to students' liberal education, yet its narrative structure is about as complex as that of an episode of "Father Knows Best," so no students complain about how hard it is to read. The wide praise this book has received as a great postmodern novel is completely undeserved, and is evidence of how simplistic a view academia takes toward modern fiction.

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking
Review: DeLillo can write, and needles the reader incessantly to wake up and look at the commercial world we live in. Many humorous parts, but over all a novel that can make you think without boring you to death.

Rating:
Summary: When I read Delillo, I almost wish I were American.
Review: Ironic humanism. Delillo's a bloody genius.

Rating:
Summary: Engaging!
Review: I was engrossed by this book from the moment I picked it up. While I can understand whyintellectual snobs will inevitably lambast this work and its cartoonish characters and absurd plot, I applaud this book for its genuine charm and quirkiness. After all, the purpose of writing is to entertain and enlighten the reader, not to win the prestigious and elitist praise of over-educated literati. A wonderful, fresh and entertaining book worth every moment spent reading it. I will read it several more times.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful, bizarre, intellectual book.
Review: Delillo has managed to write a book that combines a continuing idea - that of death - with an intriguing plot and crisp prose that is witty enough to make you burst out laughing. This book is not for the reader who is too lazy to make an effort to THINK but intensly rewarding to reflect upon.

Rating:
Summary: A Highly Overated Author
Review: Boring!! Chock full of unfunny (but absurd) observations. The author lacks the gift of humor. An average writer at best. read Helprin, Wolfe, Vonnegut, Robbins for more entertaining insight.

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious & poignant observations of American life
Review: DeLillo has a genuine feel for how it is to live in America, especially the sounds & sights of contemporary life. He brings this to the reader in a lively, satirical plot that does not bore while, at the same time, ringing familiar bells in your "head" about your own experiences. I liked this the best of the DeLillo books I've read.

Rating:
Summary: The archtype of everything wrong with modern lit.
Review: If you enjoy books where a faceful of minute observations takes the place of a plot, where the main character is a lunatic wandering around in a lunatic world, where the author is so involved in constructing some type of difficult to discover meaning that when you figure it out, you realize that his 'insight' was so inane that it wasn't really worth five minutes of effort. Yes Don, modern life is kind of odd and confusing sometimes, can we please move on. I would only recommend this book to you if you are the type of psuedo-intellectual who reads estoric books to reveal your superiority to an uncaring world, the type of person who bores others for hours about the beauty of modern art when you couldn't tell the difference between a Jackson Pollack painting and a painters dropcloth, this is the book for you. All others, you have been warned.

Rating:
Summary: A snoozefest...zzzzzz....
Review: Funny? Maybe for about a chapter and a half. This book is a monotonic bore. The prose is lackluster, the characterizations cartoonish, the so-called portrayal of the absurdity of modern life (there's a new concept!!!) obvious at best. I could not have cared less about anyone in this over-rated piece of junk. A complete waste of time.

Rating:
Summary: A strange but dazzling novel.
Review: The title of this book, peculiarly, is a good description for the culmination, at its end, of all that it contains. Jack Gladney is a middle-aged professor in "Middle America" who, odly, teaches a course about Hitler. He lives with his effervescent wife, Babette, and their four perceptive children from previous marriages. The main trait of Babette and Jack is that they fear death and are obsessed by it; the generic, white-labeled food items and tabloids in the supermarket and the increasingly banal programs of the television in the Gladney home becomes a symbol of a lifeless world. The Gladneys are surrounded by it and thus fear it more and more. This is a very complicated book, and it culminates in an unexpected crime by Jack. But nothing changes afterwards; life stays the same. All of the rambling philosophies of the characters and the weird plot concerning a fear-curing drug called Dylar dissolve into the background, into "white noise," a clever device by the author. The language in the book is beautiful, the characters are well-developed, and there are bits of great humor sprinkled throughout the whole novel. Read it.