White Noise
Don DeLillo (1985)
“The most American novel ever written — a family drowning in supermarkets, television static, and the certainty that they will die.”
At a Glance
Jack Gladney, chairman of Hitler Studies at a small Midwestern college, lives with his fourth wife Babette and their blended family in a comfortable consumer fog. When a toxic chemical spill — the 'Airborne Toxic Event' — forces an evacuation, Jack and Babette's shared, suppressed terror of death surfaces into the open. Jack discovers Babette has been secretly taking an experimental drug called Dylar, which is supposed to eliminate the fear of death, in exchange for sex with its developer. Jack tracks down the man and shoots him, then helps him to a hospital run by atheist nuns. Nothing is resolved. The white noise continues.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
Won the National Book Award in 1985 and immediately entered the canon of postmodern American literature. Often taught alongside Pynchon and Roth as the defining text of postmodern anxiety about consumer culture. Has gained rather than lost relevance with the rise of social media, 24-hour news cycles, and pharmaceutical solutions to psychological states — everything the novel predicted has come true and then some.
Diction Profile
Highly formal narration with intrusive brand names and institutional jargon — a constant tonal collision between the elevated and the commercial
Moderate but precise