Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
His most outstanding work by far - a masterpiece, 17 April 1999
By A Customer
Reading this book staggered me: the phrasing is so spot on, the themes so unusual yet compelling, the dialogue so full of witty, off-the-wall observation that I was left marvelling at the author's magical ability to put words together in unusual yet telling combinations and searching bookshops for more of his books. But having read three others from different periods of his career (the vastly overrated 'Underworld', the execrable 'Ratner's Star' and the mixed 'Great Jones Street') I am left in little doubt that this is his chef d'oeuvre. By some fortunate inspiration, DeLillo discovered his perfect theme for this book: fear of death. He takes this theme and looks at it from all possible angles; yet this is not at all a morbid book. It is instead the funniest black comedy around: the exchange between Jack and his wife when preparing to have sex made me explode with laughter. I found the latter so hilarious that I even shared it with one of my advanced English as a foreign language classes, whose eyes were standing on stalks by the end! Last but certainly not least, DeLillo's understanding of the impact of popular culture on our minds and lives is remarkable: he forced me to make connections about the insidious influence of technology and the media that I would certainly never otherwise have made, and continue to bear in mind every time I read a newspaper or switch on my computer. If you only ever read one contemporary novel, read this one: this is the book that encapsulates our time, not 'Underworld'.
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19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
Complicated but accessible, 21 Feb 2003
White Noise can be a difficult book to read, though I suppose it can depend at which level you are reading this. There are many layers to this book, many things that University lecturers could pick at and write papers upon subtle little literary techniques although this is also a book that can be enjoyed just as a work of fiction.It deals with many of the more pressing issues of a modern American society, dealing especially with the issue of the fragmented family consisting of numerous half and step siblings while also looking into the massive cult obsession of the fear of death. While in many instances this novel can seem especially complicated, I found it to be a real page turner, and was always eager to turn to the next chapter. So why not give it a go?
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Amazingly overated, 21 Feb 2008
This was my introduction to Delillo and it was a huge disapointment, leaving me puzzled as to what people find so brilliant about him. The characters are awful cardboard contructs who nobody could ever care about for a moment. The plot is non-existent. I know, I know, it is a brilliant post modern satire on consumerist society and disaster as spectacle and plot is not the point. But you know what, it is not brilliant abd books do actually need plots or at least stories. Pretty much every theme in it had been dealt with by earlier writers so it felt curiously old fashioned for a mid eighties book. The philosophical musings are half baked and hardly insightful.
Oh and the humour, well, it just isnt funny. Didnt make me laugh anyway. I feel a bit bad slamming an author like this. He did his best no doubt and good luck to him but the critical acclaim is just astonishing.
The final thing that people talk about is his writing - the brilliant phrases and glittering sentences. Well, I will have to say the quality of the writing was what made me grind on for a hundred pages in the hope that something might happen or that the characters might somehow become more engaging and less one dimensional. It was pretty good. Not the prose of genius as it is sometimes described but he turns a neat phrase here and there. And to be ultra fair the idea of Hitler Studies was probably pretty clever in 1984 or so.
But really, who wants to read hundreds of pages of this sort of damp attack on consumerism. The praise heaped on it seems to typify what has gone wrong with literary fiction and the criticism of literature.
Worth a read if you are wanting to strike literary poses, if you want a story worth reading don't bother.
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