White Noise (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)
by Don DeLillo

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Book Reviews of White Noise (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)

Book Review: DeLilio masterpiece
Summary: 4 Stars

As a novel in comparison with other modern fiction, White Noise has failings. The narrative is often bandaged together, and particularly towards the end you can feel it start to crank and grind as Delilo pushes it towards a cadence (the ending, by the way, is rather puzzling).

And characterisation is limited. Jack and Murray, for instance, are two sides of the same coin (and if I ever met Don DeLilo I wouldn't be surprised if they were sides of him). But it's what the characters say that's so fascinating.

Delilo has his finger on the zeitgeist. If you read lots of comment about him then you'll be bored of this phrase. But it's true. He makes summing-up everyday life and everday existence seem easy. The chemical spill that dominates the plot of the book is just one example -- nobody knows what it is, or how it's going to affect them. Even the doctors and scientists don't know. The more knowledge we have and the more we invent then the less we know. Jack's son Heinrich asks his father how he would explain radio waves to a primitive man. Radio waves fly through air, you might say. But how? Like a bird?

As I read the book, I kept wanting to highlight lines with a marker. If anybody was nearby as I was reading then unlucky them because I kept quoting them lines.

I've never read a book like White Noise. I look forward to Millennium. Note of warning to older readers: White Noise has postmodern leanings and there's a chance those of a certain age just might not 'get it' -- when I studied postmodern literature, one of my fellow students, a retired lady taking a degree for fun, just couldn't get it and soon came to hate the topic.)

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