White Noise

Don DeLillo

Jun 1999 · Sold by Penguin

About this eBook

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • An “eerie, brilliant, and touching” (The New York Times) modern classic about mass culture and the numbing effects of technology.

“Tremendously funny . . . A stunning performance from one of our most intelligent novelists.”—The New Republic

The inspiration for the award-winning major motion picture starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig

Jack Gladney teaches Hitler Studies at a liberal arts college in Middle America where his colleagues include New York expatriates who want to immerse themselves in “American magic and dread.” Jack and his fourth wife, Babette, bound by their love, fear of death, and four ultramodern offspring, navigate the usual rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism.
 
Then a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives, an “airborne toxic event” unleashed by an industrial accident. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the “white noise” engulfing the Gladney family—radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings—pulsing with life, yet suggesting something ominous.

Ratings and reviews

This book was an engaging and interesting read, focusing on the life of a professor, his wife, and their large extended family. The narrative is packed with ironic and often very humorous descriptions of the absurdities of modern life. The story focuses on the characters, their relationships, and their psychological torments. Specifically, the book tends to dwell on the characters’ feelings about death and destruction. It also contains many humorous scenes revealing various shortcomings concerning education and disinformation. Although the book begins with a lighthearted tone, it becomes darker and darker as the story progresses. Overall, the vivid descriptions and exaggerated situations make this book very fun to read.

Why did I waste my time? There is no emotion in this book. The story is superficial. The characters are unbelievable and unlikable.

This didn't have anything to do about the game white noise but if it doesn't can someone explain?

About the author

Don DeLillo has written seventeen novels, including White Noise, which won the National Book Award. It was followed by Libra, his bestselling novel about the assassination of President Kennedy; Mao II, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction; and the bestselling Underworld, which in 2000 won the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the most distinguished work of fiction published in the prior five years. In 1999, DeLillo was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, given to a writer whose work expresses the theme of freedom of the individual in society. His other books include the novels Cosmopolis, Falling Man, and Point Omega and the story collection The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories. He has also written occasional essays and three stage plays. In 2010 DeLillo became the third author to receive the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction. He was awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction in 2013.