So, it’s the twenty-fifth anniversary of Don DeLillo’s breakout, modern classic, White Noise, and Slate.com apparently have a small roundtable discussion going both for and against the book in their ‘audio book club.’
First of all, it’s one of those books that always crop up on modern literary lists as new classics, and it’s been loaded up with so many accolades and awards over the years that it’s achieved an almost mythic status in the book world. Not everyone stands by the work, and it’s most recognized features are often also derided as it’s greatest flaws.
I first came across the book as a off the cuff suggestion from a friend who was then enrolled in college. I was curious what the literary load at a university would consist of, and, naturally, it was typical college level basics.
Not to say that White Noise is a bad novel!
I read the book quite a few years ago and can absolutely remember many moments where I was captivated by the humor and satire, and I can still remember exactly how I was sitting in my bed when I read the final pages (I was propped up on one arm, after reading for many hours, and had headphones plugged into my little iBook; the song was ‘Love On a Real Train’ by Tangerine Dream from the film Risky Business).
I was prepared to not like the book, perhaps, even mock it, as anything suggested by a scholastic curriculum often tends to be the most obvious, basic and boring end of literature without any real risk or thrill attached to the simple pleasure of reading, and my working theory is that books read in schools often do the opposite of their goal and can easily kill one’s love of reading before it ever gets a chance to grow.
So, I was very surprised when I came away rather amazed by White Noise. In fact, after I read it I thought it was one of the best books I had ever experienced, and was disappointed that I had to line-up behind the establishment and give an OK on it.
Interestingly enough, it’s also become one of the literary world’s biggest living cliches, as it’s now more fashionable to pick apart and dismantle the book for it’s obvious (read as: heavy-handed) trappings, as it’s become part of an assumed background in a highly critical, and often condescending establishment.
I’m going to go ahead and reiterate that I very much loved the book, though other discoveries have now eclipsed it’s importance for me, but I’m nervous, as I don’t want to fall into what the book’s critics undoubtedly must refer to as it’s naive and gullible base. With White Noise, it’s almost cheeky to say you either read it in the 80s or you read it in your twenties. It lives on as a book that speaks to the impending doubt and insecurity of jaded youth, and gives solemn and understood substantiation that the suburban ‘nightmare’ is overrated, if not a trap.
I can’t remember when exactly I read the book, but I was probably eighteen, or nineteen, maybe twenty. Now at twenty-eight, I’m considering giving the book another go, but I do remember loving it greatly years ago (by maybe a decade!), but I can understand the founding source for the book’s criticism, as it’s a bit too satirical (even kitschy?) for it’s own good, but then, I thought, and still do think, that it’s also one of the best satires I’ve ever read. White Noise is funny that way: what some love it for, others will find despise in it and everyone will still be talking about the same thing.
I remember it, however, as I great book, with one hell of an ending, and I remember reading those last pages to ‘Love On a Real Train’ and remember that it left me feeling emotional and electric for about an hour after I put it down.
“This was the day Wilder got on his plastic tricycle, rode it around the block, turned right onto a dead end street and pedaled noisily to the dead end…”
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The book is currently celebrating it’s twenty-fifth anniversary, and now is as good a time to get acquainted with it as any other, or rediscover it for it’s writing, it’s reputation or just the bragging rights to say, “I read it, too.”
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White Noise, by Don DeLillo, first published by Viking January 21st, 1985, 326 pages
Slate’s ‘Audio Book Club’ featuring a discussion on White Noise can be found at the following:
