White Noise
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3.9 • 297 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
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.
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
See AllDeLillo’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.
Is that all there is?
This book was about as interesting as its Title. Lots of White Noise,..that’s it.