Text and Criticism (Viking Critical Library) - White Noise

I found this book to be incredibly boring. Full disclosure--I didn't even get to the "good stuff" because I couldn't get past chapter 20. I know sometimes you have to wait a little bit for things to pick up, but if you've read half the book and still nothing is really happening, then I'm not sure it's worth it to push through. I know this is a well-respected book, and I can appreciate what it is doing in terms of commentary and style, it just wasn't for me.

DeLillo has a hypnotic way with his storytelling. A beautiful use of language that complements this narrative well. This is an enjoyable read that subtly makes you think about the day-to-day life we all live.

This is a brilliant book. The scene in the hospital towards the end when the narrator asks about the nun's belief in God is one of the very best I have ever read in American fiction. What makes this such a wonderful book is that there are numerous such scenes throughout the work.

Jack is genuinely the most obnoxious and annoying narrator I have ever read from the perspective of in my entire life. Delillo's writing is extremely well done, he puts a lot of thought into every word but, tends to get repetitive after the second section. Not a book I would pick up again and definitely not a book I would recommend.

I started listening to the band The Airborne Toxic Event, and had no idea that the lead singer had made the name of the band from this book. I learned it from my very knowledgeable, lit inspired friend. This writing style is just up my alley and the themes that he touches upon are some that I appreciate. Amazing band, and awesome book.

This is a truly great novel. Unfortunately, the formatting of the Kindle edition is not great: huge spaces between paragraphs and dialogue make it awkward to read, and occasionally paragraphs are broken in half. This needs to be corrected.

I repeatedly returned to this novel determined to find out why it was reviewed so favorably. I did manage to finish it and now consider that a poor use of my time. Just couldn't related to the characters, the flow of the story, the patheticness of the main character.

This book was awesome. I laughed all the way through. Jack's conversations with Heinrich and Murray made the book worth it for me. I loved the repeated nods to post-modernism theory. It's a smart and sharply witty book.

"Wake up sheeple!": The book. A postmodern novel that features incredibly awkward dialogue, annoying characters all around, and a boring message that lost its relevance a long time ago. I can't help but roll my eyes at DeLillo's pseudo-profound insights (the most photographed barn in America is the most photographed barn because it's the most photographed barn! Oh no, we're all so gullible!). The book does cleverly subvert some expectations, sometimes by giving you exactly what you'd expect when you in fact expect a twist, and sometimes by going in directions that seem counter-productive to the story as a whole.

The side story behind Dylar is boring, and forcefully tied into the major themes of the novel. The book struggles to create believable situations overall, but the Dylar plot seems more made-up and logically flimsy than anything else.

Jack as a main character is functional, though he suffers from being emotionally numb - though I'm used to characters in these novels being that way. He's mostly unrelateable, but it doesn't affect the story much. I couldn't imagine any human being able to deal with his idiot family without becoming frustrated. Perhaps it's because all the family members speak with exactly the same voice. It's all copies of Don DeLillo running around in kid and wife disguises.

I thought this book was going over my head - maybe I wasn't looking deep enough at the absurdity of DeLillo's universe. What's he saying when he creates a department of pop culture professors, when he makes shopping a religious experience, when he hangs the spectre of death over his characters, when he drops brand names between paragraphs? He's definitely saying something here, but it's nothing we haven't heard before. We know we suffer from information overload. We know we're consumerist. We know we're devoid of actual spirituality. In the end, who cares? Society has had much bigger problems throughout history, and to act like we've lost our humanity because of this modern economy and culture is overly dramatic. DeLillo would be a good read for a sophomore philosophy student who needs to get over himself, and his ideas about a crumbling modern society.

All this being said, I did appreciate DeLillo's unique angle on death. In a modern society with modern medicine, our relationship with death has changed. The unclear nature of cancer, toxic chemicals and sheer bad (or good) luck has made death something that is simultaneously unavoidable, unpredictable, and avoidable, and predictable. The toxic event was the highlight of the book, and made it easier to suffer through the characters' idiocy and the absurdity of the tangential commentary.

Interesting book in parts. But just when the reader gets into it, the author throws in random conversations which was very distracting and annoying to me. If not for my book club I would have put it down halfway through.

I read this because I was starting out in creative writing and thought that reading well known "literary" fiction would help develop my talents. I should have stuck to the Great Gatsby and the Sun Also Rises.

This book desperately avoids any of the conventional trappings of fiction: character, plot, setting, tension, etc. No one in it is convincing, I don't care about their problems, I'm uninterested in where they live.

Delillio uses their local supermarket as an extended metaphor for the characters' rampant commercialism as their shopping trips turn into orgasmic experiences of materialistic indulgence. At first I thought this was funny and in a sense true, i.e. we all spend a little more time worrying about having the latest and greatest "IT" gadget. But then I thought, wait, who the hell enjoys grocery shopping let alone REVELS in it? No one I know--it's a chore that we do because we have to.

Six months after reading White Noise, I remember nothing except for a lukewarm moral: don't be so materialistic. Great, I didn't need a book to tell me that. Theme is supposed to emerge from a work of fiction; White Noise is nothing but a (tepid) theme, with a few literary trappings about it to trick people into reading it. And that is what this book really is; a silly trick by a critic's darling to help us feel more self-rightous, i.e. I read this book so I'm smarter than the rest of you.

_White Noise_ is Don DeLillo's most commonly read work for good reason. The text presents a curious and compelling mix of intellectual inquiry and humor. Indeed, the novel serves well as a primer on most things postmodern.

Has some intersting passages but the characters are two dimensional. The dialogue is two ppl talking at, rather than to, one another (to paraphrase an earlier critic.) There are too many side characters to keep track of. SOME LINES ARE VERY FUNNY. But overall, a stupid book.

I hated this book with a violent passion. The characters were unlikable, the plot contrived, and the flow of the story stilted and unnatural. I read through the whole book, but I just could not get into it. It felt like the author was just using the characters and the plot as puppets to try and say something deep and meaningful about society. I understand the importance of trying to get a philosophical concept across via literature, but if in the process of doing so you create a book which is unpleasant to read, it doesn't matter how awesome your concept was.

I had to read this book for my contemporary literature class and it was horrible. It has good ideas and themes for a literature class if you look at it from that perspective but as a book it lacks everything that a good book has. don't pick this one up for entertainment i can save you a ton of time by telling you what happens. he goes to the grocery store about 4 times, they go through an airborne toxic event in which they refuse to believe that it's happening and he goes crazy. there you go. whole book in one sentence. hope this helps

THis product was exactly what I was looking for. The exact ISBN number, right version, and right edition. The product was also shpiped in a speedy manner. I got the book before the expected arrival range dates that were given to me.

I actually bought this book because I had read B. R. Myers' "A Reader's Manifesto" in the Atlantic Monthly of July, 2001, in which he soundly excoriated DeLillo's novel. I wanted to make sure for myself that it was really as bad as Myers believed. It was actually considerably worse. The chapters went nowhere, there wasn't a single character I cared about at all, and the whole thing was a cynical exercise in the basest triviality imaginable. Not being into self-abuse, I closed it about half-way through and tossed it into the trash. I would never recommend this to anyone, except to someone morbidly curious about the atrocious state of modern American fiction.

I've read two minor DeLillo novels, and they both, well, s*cked. But this work, and Underworld, are considered his masterpieces. This is quite a good book. DeLillo's humor and ironic distance from American culture are quite striking. The humor gives the book it's appeal, and redeems its darker obsessions with the vapidity of American culture. On one level, the fear of death is the theme at the heart of the book; but at a deeper level, the real fear is the emptiness of life and the "white noise" of our surrounding cultures.

DeLillo's characters are quirky, well-rounded, and appealing. His dialogue is masterful -- minimalist while conveying a great deal.

For much of the book, the plot is simply white noise. So this can be a difficult read. But by and by the plot picks up.

This book justifies DeLillo's reputation

I found this book both pretentious in its' writing style and unlikeable in just about every aspect. There is nothing redeeming in the story or the characters. It's as though the author just vomited out all his random musings and called it a book. Awful!

Why do I - having just finished WHITE NOISE - feel like a modern-day Rip Van Winkle who's just stumbled back into town only to discover a little thing called `postmodern literature?' It's rather disconcerting, to say the least.

Am I a fan? No.

Will I ever be a fan? No.

'Postmodern' has all the look of literature ... written by very smart kids. But I could no more become a fan of postmodern literature than I am, presently, of YA Fiction. Neither category interests me. Perhaps because I'm too old - or at least old enough to know better.

Postmodern literature seems to me to be one very long exercise in snarkiness. I like snark as much as the next guy, but I like it in small doses - and not for the length of a novel. That Don Delillo was born 14 years before I was and has chosen this category - or genre, or whatever it's called - remains to me a mystery.

I could cite thousands of examples. But perhaps one will suffice from this SIMULAC (simulated evacuation emergency) on p. 206: "All you rescue personnel, remember this is not a blast simulation. Your victims are overcome but not traumatized. Save your tender loving care for the nuclear fireball in June. We're at four minutes and counting. Victims, go limp. And remember you're not here to scream or thrash about. We like a low-profile victim. This isn't New York or L. A. Soft moans will suffice."

Smart? Yes. Amusing? Yes. Titillating? Certainly. But also soulless.

Because I have a soul, I can't very well take points (or stars) away from a work that is (1) flawlessly executed; but (2) not to my taste. If post-modernist is your taste, go for it. I'd be very surprised to learn that anyone can do it better. But if it isn't your taste - or, like me, you've been wandering in other literary fields for a few decades - I'd suggest you steer clear. The game is simply not worth the candle or its flame.

RRB
06/26/13
Brooklyn, NY