Rating: 
Summary: Grimly funny, always witty, elliptical turns of phrase
Review: I've re-read this book at least a half-dozen times, and each time, I've always found myself grinning at the cleverness of DeLillo's satire of late 20th century mass culture and academia. White Noise is effectively about an academic family (the Gladneys) living in a fictitious college town somewhere in middle America, a family that's morbidly obsessed with televised representations of death and disaster on the evening news. Eventually, dramatic irony intervenes in the form of an "airborne toxic event" in the Gladney's hometown, and the family is forced to confront a "real" disaster and its impact on a world where all death and feelings are seemingly mediated by the conventions of blockbuster movies and television.Of course, a plot summary of White Noise is kinda beside the point. DeLillo isn't really interested in developing characters that you empathize with (if you're looking for characters to live and die by, this isn't a novel for you), but really in exposing the supposed emptiness of modern life. Consequently, one of the common criticisms of White Noise is that it ultimately resembles more an extended cultural studies essay on the "meaning" (or lack thereof) of pop culture, rather than an actual novel per se. This is arguably true, but in my opinion, the book is elevated by the fact that it never chooses the easy answer (simply caricaturing all modern life as beyond redemption, as you'd find in plenty of left-leaning cultural theory textbooks or Frankfurt School journals). Moreover, White Noise strongly critical of a detached academic perspective that proposes to distinguish between a high and low culture, using the main character (a cultural studies prof) to suggest that we're all in pursuit of fame and image, no matter which side of the academic fence we live on or however high-minded we think we are. Anyways, this is a great book, filled with fantastic observations about modern life (my faves include a discussion of why it is that disasters filmed in California are far more watchable than those elsewhere in the world, a brief analysis of why car chases and accidents in American movies are superior to those of European films) written in carefully staccatoed and opaque sentence fragments (in part thanks to DeLillo's editor, Gordon Lish). If you like your social criticism served in a pointed and self-aware fashion, with a sense of humor, you'll probably appreciate this read.
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Summary: Ahh, the wonders of Postmodern Lit
Review: "White Noise" is the book most successful, for me, in capturing the barrage of information that modern society now involves. DeLillo captures the brand-names and jargon that now permeate casual speech. He uses this dialogue in a very interesting and provocative narrative.
Rating: 
Summary: Elusive
Review: I find "White Noise" somewhat difficult to evaluate. It's attained something like classic status as a major work in the American techno-paranoid school of fiction. I certainly enjoyed reading it, and I come back to certain parts repeatedly. At the same time there's something shallow and self-consciously clever about it, and what makes evaluation difficult is that I don't know if it's a result of authorial intent or authorial failings. The identical speech patterns of everyone in it, the aimlessness of the narrative, the superficial characters--I can't tell if that's what DeLillo was aiming at, or if he misfired. This book has been classed as an academic satire, but the academic stuff (Hitler Studies, etc.) is thin, unrealistic (yes, even for academia) and not developed in much detail. It's really just a fence behind which DeLillo hammers relentlessly on his themes of the fear of death and the "white noise" (everyday junk and trivia) that we use to anesthetize ourselves. The story's immersion in trivia comes dangerously close to making the work seem trivial in itself. However, there are some wonderful scenes that keep me coming back: the "Is it raining?" scene and the bits where the pop-culturist academics are quizzing each other are examples. DeLillo seems to be pioneering a concept of the novel as comedy routine, and frequently it works quite well. Whether you will like it may depend on your own appetite for "white noise" either in art or life.
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Summary: After a while, irony is painful
Review: If you're into postmodernist writing, this book is for you. As for me, I find highly ironic books like this one make me anxious: they're so ironic that you never know whether you're getting the point, or whether the book is making fun of you for getting the point, or whether there really is no point and that's the point. But then, if the point of the book is to abandon all meaning, then ... and my head starts to hurt, and I wonder whether I'm just the sort of [person] that the author is making fun of. _White Noise_ makes fun of the state of technological- and media-saturation that we've landed in. There's a possible chemical spill in a nearby town, and all the people nearby decide whether they're sick based on whether the local news broadcast tells them they should be. The narrator is the founder and head of the Department Of Hitler Studies at his college. Just from this, you can discern the kind of book that it will be. The book focuses on the alienation and frustration and low-level confusion that everyone feels but no one can put his or her hands on. It ``documents the postmodern condition", a phrase that I write while fearing that I'm a wanker for writing it. But being that kind of documentarian is clearly DeLillo's goal. The problem is that a lot of postmodern writing - this book included - immunizes itself against criticism. _A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius_ by Dave Eggers is the height of this phenomenon, to me anyway. Eggers makes fun of those who would try to hunt for meaning in artistic works, and clearly lays out all that's wrong with his book at the very beginning. Those who would criticize Eggers can do no more than he's already done. Does Eggers really believe that his book is heartbreaking, or a genius-level work? It's hard to tell, because his postmodernness disguises all statements under a sheet of irony. Ditto for _White Noise_: am I even allowed to criticize it, or is criticism and meaning-discovery a woefully modernist thing to do? David Foster Wallace makes the point in an essay from _A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again_ that irony is not a constructive thing. In high doses, irony is alienating, tiring, and ultimately deeply saddening. Irony doesn't tell us how to solve problems - it's just a way of pointing out what's wrong. So when we get a book like _White Noise_ that is essentially 200 pages of pure irony, we leave it feeling confused and slightly afraid - but not because we're afraid of the things that the author is being ironic about. After a while, irony makes it hard to see anything in a clean light. So I give _White Noise_ a thumbs-up with some reservations. Perhaps I've just not read enough postmodern works to find them beautiful yet. Or is finding them beautiful even the point?
Rating: 
Summary: very surprising.
Review: I had no Idea that Dom dilluise could write!I mean this is some rather exceptional stuff considering that his most known gig was to play second fiddel to a toupee toting moustache.Bravo Dom!
Rating: 
Summary: Value depends on your interpretation
Review: After reading other reviews, it seems to me that some people found "White Noise" insightful and funny, and others boring and hollow. I can conclude that, like many works of experimental literature, how you will feel about this book depends on what you bring from your own personality.
At most I got a few chuckles and didn't find much funny about the book. This is because that, while a talented attempt at a satire, the absurdity reached such a level that the characters seemed to inhabit a world like our own, but completely skewed. A department of Hitler Studies at a college? Elvis studies? Though professor Murray is a wild character, his insistence on watching car crashes in movies for what they say about the culture of the U.S. was more silly than funny. And that's only a fraction of Murray's bizarre look at life. Delillo deliberately makes everything out of whack, but for me it was too far out of whack to be enjoyable. I could see him straining and writing talented prose with a good idea on demonstrating the omnipresence of the consumer culture, the fear of death, and what they mean, but no one I've ever met acts as silly and horribly insecure as his characters. Ultimately, I just couldn't enjoy this, but I appreciate the attempt.
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Summary: I can't stop rereading this novel.
Review: The narrator, Jack Gladney, is a professor of Hitler Studies, a program he created in order to be a sort of celebrity figure and even an American icon. Of course his ambition is an absurd one. To erect Hitler studies as a "product" like Panasonic and Lexus is to be morally disconnected from the meaning of Hitler. But of course Jack is drunk, like most Americans, on commercialism. He believes, erroneously, that commercialism at its best converts mundane things into icons, giving them the power to transcend the one thing that nags Jack above all else--death. His misguided attempt at transcendence results in an amazing final scene that I cannot divulge for fear that the current reader has not yet read the novel. Final note: The book contains priceless aporphisms that are for me the real treasure of the novel.
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Summary: Many funny ideas trying hard to be a novel
Review: I love the Hitler Studies department, and the way the main character tries to dress like he knows how to speak German! This is all too realistic in academia, and is just hilarious to me. A few other cool ideas are floating around in this book (toxic cloud)... But for all that I tried, I just couldn't get myself to care about any of these characters. They all seemed flat, almost statistical abstractions. (The protagonist's wife seemed like a poll-driven sketch of a soccer mom.) They seemed much more obsessive and fearful about life's petty poisons and rivalries than most people. Convenient, I suppose, for the purpose of the plot. I come away saying, "Nifty jokes," but without any sense that deep themes were plumbed or that I had gotten to know any interesting characters.
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Summary: Worth the first 2 parts
Review: The novel is written in 3 sections. The first 2 are brilliantly written. The third section is dreadful. What makes the first 2 so fantastic is that even when DeLillo borders on the outrageous and the absurd, there's still enough truth in his satire to keep us engaged, if not riveted by the precision of DeLillo's language to describe the roller-coaster of sensory data and emotions that fill contemporary, everyday life. The farces of academia and family life are depicted in hilarious, unforgettable scenes. The humor is cut with just the right amount of seriousness and pathos, and then vice versa in the form of comic relief. Worth buying and reading for these first 2 sections alone by far! However, the third section, 'Dylaramma,' destroys the careful chemistry of the first 2 sections and blots out the importance of their messages with a totally unbelievable series of events. At this point I found myself severing ties with DeLillo: this is not the voice of truth or direction we want or need. I even tried skipping past the intolerable to the climax and found it even less bearable. If you can stomach reading section 3 and either like these kinds of endings or would like to read one far superior, pick up Nathaniel West's 'Miss Lonelyhearts'.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious!
Review: Beautifully written, hilarious book. Cutting insight, sharp wit, concise prose. A modern classic. Yes, it's more about details and commentary than action, but this isn't a movie, it's a book. Go see Armageddon again if you want action. But if you've got issues with the general "modern" outlook on life and are looking for some meaningful critiques, this book's for you.
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