Review: White Noise

White Noise, Don DeLillo

[White Noise is the 8th novel by Don DeLillo, published by Viking Press in 1985. A famous postmodern novel.]

The wise person knows when to give up. The fool carries on after all enjoyment has gone. The complete fool reads to the end, contrives to make sense in it, and writes a review.

Chapter One:

There is a bit of this, a bit of that and even a bit of the other. A bit of an odd family life. A self made professor in a self made subject, married 4 times to 3 women (at different times), some children, young adults, babies still at home some not at home. Some odd friends and colleagues, random conversations, sum total? Zero. An ah-ha moment here. Of course - white noise!

Wikipedia describes “white noise” as;

In discrete time, white noise is a discrete signal whose samples are regarded as a sequence of serially uncorrelated random variables with zero mean and finite variance;

That is it.... “samples” “uncorrelated”, “random”, “zero”.

I think to myself, If the rest of the book is like this then “I shall waste no time reading it” (Clever me, that is a quote by Moses Hadas “Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it.” But I did read more.

I had not recognised this book as satire, because America is, to me, a weird (and wonderful) place and this book is a weird place so it might be real. But now I read, and smile at, his conversations with Murry, a fellow academic (ex-sports writer) trying to enhance his career with meaningless observations of society. And a scientist who flits from place to place trying not to be seen. Of his peers throwing food at each other while trying to be seem as superior. His own course of “Hitler Studies” (could such a course actually be allowed? And Murries parallel course of “Elvis Studies”. Yes a great parody. Chapter one has just introduced the characters!

In Chapter2, we get to the meat,...maybe.

Now that I have a grip on it, I see what is going on, and I like the book better.. His obscure talks with his son Heinrich are satire. Now I can smile at it. Yes I have had that sort of conversation with a teenager. Even his pre-occupation with death and the family hypochondria over the news and the “toxic event”. Yes,yes that all happens, the officials being officious, but not knowing what they are doing, but doing it anyway, doctors “doctoring” without real understanding And the German nuns at the hospital doing everything that a nun should do except believe in God. Because that was their job to persuade every one that they did believe so that the world would believe, but they did not. (eh?)

I wont spoil the story by telling why he was at the hospital, all I will say is that the circumstances are as bizarre as everything else, but believable, ...almost.

He pokes fun at family life his own marriages, his children growing up, he laughs at officialdom with their procedures after the event with SIMUVAC. Doctors parodied for their dependence on figures and high or low levels of this or that. The absurdities of academics and of minor, even minuscule, universities.

Part three takes us to his (and Babbettes) fear of death, of Murry expounding on Hitlers life after death, that killing gives the killer prolonged life, You really have to read that to get the drift.

And Part4: Wilders (his youngest) escapade. Actually I did not understand that at all.

Seemingly unconnected events but with a pattern, offering us the chance to take a different view of life and death.

I can hear the voices* talking to me.....I understand it all.....They are taking me away tomorrow.

Love from