White Noise (novel)
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| Author | Don DeLillo |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Viking Adult |
| Released | 21 Jan 1985 |
| Media Type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 326 (hardback first edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-670-80373-1 |
| Preceded by | The Names |
| Followed by | Libra |
White Noise is the eighth novel by Don DeLillo, and is an example of postmodern literature. Widely considered his "breakout" work, the book won the National Book Award in 1985 and brought him to the attention of a much larger audience.
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[edit] Plot summary
Set at a bucolic midwestern college, White Noise follows a year in the life of Jack Gladney, a professor who has made his name by pioneering the field of Hitler Studies (though he doesn't speak German). He's been married several times and has a brood of children and step-children with his wife, Babette. In its first half, White Noise is a chronicle of absurdist family life combined with academic satire.
In the second half, a chemical spill from a railcar releases an "Airborne Toxic Event" over Jack's home region, prompting an evacuation. Frightened by his exposure to the toxin, Gladney is forced to confront his mortality. Soon the novel becomes a meditation on modern society's fear of death and its obsession with chemical cures as Gladney seeks to obtain a black market drug called Dylar, which is said to allay the fear of death.
[edit] Themes
White Noise explores several themes that emerged during the mid-to-late twentieth century, e.g., rampant consumerism, media saturation, novelty intellectualism, underground conspiracies, the disintegration and re-integration of the family, and the potentially positive virtues of human violence. The title refers to the "white noise" produced by consumerism, the media, novelty intellectual, advancing communications technology and reduced personal space.
In White Noise in particular, I tried to find a kind of radiance in dailiness. Sometimes this radiance can be almost frightening. Other times it can be almost holy or sacred.... Our sense of fear—we avoid it because we feel it so deeply, so there is an intense conflict at work.... I think it is something we all feel, something we almost never talk about, something that is almost there. I tried to relate it in White Noise to this other sense of transcendence that lies just beyond our touch. This extraordinary wonder of things is somehow related to the extraordinary dread, to the death fear we try to keep beneath the surface of our perceptions."
[edit] Trivia
- DeLillo wanted to call the book Panasonic ("The word 'panasonic', split into its component parts—'pan,' from the Greek, meaning 'all,' and 'sonic,' from the Latin sonus, meaning 'sound'—strikes me as the one title that suggests the sound-saturation that is so vital to the book...."), but was denied permission from the Matsushita corporation.
[edit] Film adaptation
Barry Sonnenfeld was preparing a film version of White Noise for 2006. However, pre-production appears to have ceased as of the fall of 2006 and the Internet Movie Database has removed all references to this movie.
