"White Noise" by Don DeLillo (1985)

 

I honestly don't know how to rate this book. I simply lack the necessary emotions and energy to prompt me to express how I feel either negatively or positively. My thoughts are confused, disoriented, and blank.

 

I am awash in white noise.

The following points could be the reason:

a) I’m not smart enough to get it.

b) I read it in a different decade, so a lot of references flew over my head. 

c) Being in my 30s, I’m not ready to grasp and feel the true meaning of its themes and relate to them.

d) It's not my cup of tea.

At any rate, the plot-less story is about Jack Gladney, a head department professor at ‘the College on the Hill’, who singlehandedly founded the section of Hitler studies. He lives with his wife Babette along with a bunch of kids from different marriages (which sort of encapsulates the trending shift of composite families back in the 80s where traditional families of a husband and a wife and their own kids became a rarity, or at least not the norm anymore). Anyway, the book is divided into parts that chronicle the humdrum of everyday life of the family and their reactions to what is referred to as ‘the Airborne Toxic event’ and the aftermath of its proliferation and dissipation. 

This book is weird, absurd, and postmodern where the police consult gypsies and psychics… where mediums like the TV and the radio are characters which sometimes enter the scene unannounced with unrelated comments… where the protagonist’s word for awesome is ‘first-rate’… where characters always tend to redefine well-established concepts. For instance, 'What is ‘light’?' 'What is ‘night’?' 'wet?' 'radio?'... where conversations are deep and philosophical but also unnatural, forced, and jarring.

White Noise isn’t my entry book to Don DeLillo. I’m more familiar with his later works like Point Omega and Zero K. So it’s pure chance that I read two books with the same theme which is the fear of death. It haunted DeLillo when he was 49 (White Noise) and when he was 74 (Zero K) and probably still does. My point is I didn’t feel he added anything new to the table. The reason why most of his fans find his later body of work to be somewhat prosaic, bland, and thematically repetitive.

Otherwise, the book is so quotable and rich in ideas and begs for second reads. You can pick any statement and it will make you sink into deep thought.

The used language is purely poetic for prose, the diction well chosen, the ideas provocative, the humour subtle and dark.

________________________

Summary:

I’ve had high expectations for this book and I refused to watch the movie adaptation because I didn’t want to ruin my first impression of it. It just didn’t sink in me the way I hoped it should. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth reading. If you can tolerate divergent narrative and stylized, awkward dialogues and a plot wearing a camouflage jacket 24/7, then this is book is for you. Whoa! That came out sarcastically negative. Scratch that. What I meant was White Noise is a book that provides a deep analysis of Americans back in the late 20th century, touching on issues like consumerism, parenting, adolescence, finding identity, aging, etc.

DeLillo has proven himself to be a master of ‘show but not tell’ when it comes to social commentary in a subtle and guile manner. The main reason why some readers may find his narrative style to be challenging or even pretentious but otherwise quaint and rewarding.