White Noise
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4.0 • 281 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A brilliant satire of mass culture and the numbing effects of technology, White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, a teacher of Hitler studies at a liberal arts college in Middle America. Jack and his fourth wife, Babette, bound by their love, fear of death, and four ultramodern offspring, navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. Then a lethal black chemical cloud, unleashed by an industrial accident, floats over there lives, an "airborne toxic event" that is a more urgent and visible version of the white noise engulfing the Gladneys—the radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, and TV murmurings that constitute the music of American magic and dread.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Chairman of the department of Hitler studies at a Midwestern college, Jack Gladney is accidently exposed to a cloud of noxious chemicals, part of a world of the future that is doomed because of misused technology, artifical products and foods, and overpopulation. PW appreciated DeLillo's "bleak, ironic'' vision, calling it ``not so much a tragic view of history as a macabre one.'' January
Customer Reviews
DeLillo’s Frightening Crystal Ball
He never disappoints. While I’m sure he intended every page to be bristling with satire, this Reader, re-encountering those pages almost forty years later, finds it to be an insightful commentary, a piece of Non-Fiction depicting Suburban Consumerism in Pandemic, Facebook America.
White Noise captures every nuance of our technology-driven lives as our Death-obsessed Anti-Hero tries to cope with the day-to-day realities of Professional, Social and Family Life under the damaging influence of a Plague and the realization of his wife’s and children’s exposure to the Modern World’s overwhelming noise.
This novel could have been written in 2020. DeLillo’s prescience earned him Four Stars. ****
A must read
I loved this book the first time I read it, it's by far DeLillo's best work. If you like clever, witty books this will surely become your favorite. I wish they'd make a movie out of this book -- get the Coen brothers to adapt and direct it. Instant best picture of the decade. Yet as great as that would be to see, just reading the book, with DeLillo's brilliant prose, is the best entertainment to be found. I assure you that your iPad is woefully incomplete without "White Noise" in you iBook-shelf.
Meaningless to this reader
Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Lots of babble, lots of bull s….
Maybe DeLillo has something to say to someone is this dirge on life, but I couldn’t find it.