White Noise in What's the Name of That Book???

Dec 13, 2015 El rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: society-went-boom, 20th-centurylit-late, 1001-books-list, science-fictiony, library-borrow, biddles

I originally read this book in 2006 and rated it three stars. I re-read it now for my book club (which seems to just have me re-reading books all the time, wassup wit dat) and I have to say I am having the worst time deciding between three stars again and five stars now.

Let me explain why.

I remembered very little about this book before I started re-reading it. When it came up in book club I was like "Oh, yeah, I remember that... there's... a thing about... a station wagon? And another thing?" So I originally read this book in 2006 and rated it three stars. I re-read it now for my book club (which seems to just have me re-reading books all the time, wassup wit dat) and I have to say I am having the worst time deciding between three stars again and five stars now.

Let me explain why.

I remembered very little about this book before I started re-reading it. When it came up in book club I was like "Oh, yeah, I remember that... there's... a thing about... a station wagon? And another thing?" So it's actually good this book was nominated because clearly I had a faulty memory about the other, more important details. Like... the actual events.

What makes this book so good, and a National Book Award winner, and causes everyone to scream about the awesome-sauce-ness of this book is (I'm guessing) in the social satire. DeLillo comments on how stupid society is becoming, which is fantastic because it's so true, even more so in 2015 than when the book first came out in 1985. (I think, anyway. I was like seven years old in 1985.) Have you seen some of the shit on TV these days? Don't get me wrong, I watch some of it. But I make up for it by reading a lot, and paying attention to the news (which is also dumb-making, so let's not get it too twisted), and having conversations with people (and my dogs). There was a lot of concern amongst certain people in 1985 about the lasting effects of things like telephone wires and microwaves and radiation and acid rain and whatnot, and I think DeLillo did a really good job of talking on that without being expressly obnoxious about it. It's there, and it's important, but it's much more insidious. DeLillo was all "Here's the real worry, folks" and those of us paying attention are like "Oh, shiiiiiiit."

We're fucked, guys.

There's this major event happening throughout the story, but in a way that's the backdrop, a distraction from the real problems. The moral of the story is that we're worrying about the wrong things all of the time, destroying ourselves and our environment, and one day we will reap what we sow.

But the other part of this book that makes me lean towards three stars is that DeLillo really writes just to hear himself write, I am convinced of that. The book (as short as it is already) didn't need to be nearly as long. I don't even think the bit about the Dylar needed to be in this book (rather that it should have been it's own book). It all works together and yet it doesn't.

The other issue with this book is the clunky dialogue and the awful characterizations. Here's another white dude with too many self-important thoughts that then wanted to share them all with the world, and these characters are just cardboard images created to move things along. No one has conversations as ridiculous as some of these conversations. And, yeah, I get that's part of the satire, look how dumb people are, how boring they are, how navel-gaze-y they are. But it really is a bore to read.

The book is held up on some pedestal as being a contemporary masterpiece, and I see it now (more than I did in 2006), but I'm also tired of these white American authors everyone loves to rave about because they're so "important". A part of me wants to rage against that with all of my being because I hate to be a part of that particular problem. But I also like to give credit where credit is due.

I land now on four stars, but it's a begrudging four stars. It's a good book. But a slog at times, and when I find myself thinking about too much as being a good book, I get angry at all the parts about it I didn't like. It doesn't read as quickly as it appears that it ought. It's arrogant and sometimes frustrating to read. But the social commentary is also worth checking out. Is it more relevant today than it was when it was first published? What are DeLillo's thoughts on these issues today?

There are probably interviews with the author out there about those exact questions, but I'm much too busy watching reruns of Dance Moms to search them out. ...more

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Jun 15, 2007 Liz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: award-winners, lent-or-borrowed

Lent: to Ingrid.

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Jul 30, 2008 Marigold rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: five-stars, fiction-1980s, national-book-award, satire

I love this book! This is a crushingly sad but laugh-out-loud funny look at life in America today. I felt like I sort of knew the characters – though they are all pretty pathetic – but aren’t they all us, just struggling to get through life? Pretending to know German when we don’t? Having to go to classes in posture and walking techniques? (No kidding – I think I need one of those classes!) Watching other people in supermarkets & being alternately amused & horrified by them? And above all, don’t I love this book! This is a crushingly sad but laugh-out-loud funny look at life in America today. I felt like I sort of knew the characters – though they are all pretty pathetic – but aren’t they all us, just struggling to get through life? Pretending to know German when we don’t? Having to go to classes in posture and walking techniques? (No kidding – I think I need one of those classes!) Watching other people in supermarkets & being alternately amused & horrified by them? And above all, don’t we all have some fear of death? (Well, maybe if you’re over, say, 35.) Jack and his wife Babette share an intense, crippling fear of death – their own, or the prospect of the other’s. Part of the plot centers around Babette who starts taking an experimental drug to help her deal with this fear. Meanwhile, Jack is (maybe) exposed to a toxic substance during an “airborne toxic event.” He goes to an official who tells him he has numbers and statistics that show he (may) die as a result – but they don’t know when. The characters in “White Noise” get all their information from TV, radio, gossip magazines, and the mis-information we all get from one another. They live in a world of brand-name products, sound bites, advertising, and a world where media reaction to an event defines its importance. A plane nearly crashes – but there’s no media presence – so the survivors have no way to process the experience – and it disappears from the plot-line as if you just changed the channel! A previous reviewer here had a great way to describe this, which I’m going to steal – “joyful absurdity.” Jack Gladney, chair of the department of Hitler Studies at his college, gains weight and wears dark glasses on campus to give himself an air of authority – at the suggestion of his chancellor. He even adds an initial to his name, and comments on himself, “I am the false character that follows the name around.” How great is that?!

Read this:

“Size gave her tousled aspect a certain seriousness. Ample women do not plan such things. They lack the guile for conspiracies of the body.”

“Murray was dressed almost totally in corduroy. I had the feeling that since the age of eleven in his crowded plot of concrete he’d associated this sturdy fabric with higher learning in some impossibly distant and tree-shaded place.”

“War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.”

I could go on….there’s great stuff on every page. DeLillo discusses life, death, killing, horror, children, secrets, family life, work, and the possibility of terrors like “airborne toxic events” with humor and profound understanding, putting it all in the context of the modern American world, where the supermarket is a temple, and what’s on TV helps us define our lives.

Oh yeah - and for those who found the book depressing - I find it really hopeful that writing like this exists!
...more

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Apr 11, 2016 Chrissie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

So readable that at first you don't realize that you're reading about the way that we and "society" try to cope with/distract our selves from the fact that we're all dying. All composite things are subject to decay. Yet we keep making them. ...more

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