Don DeLillo’s White Noise might be the best example of the postmodern novel, but it certainly is not devoid of relevance to its readers. Disintegrating nearly every modern convention from the family to academia and throwing catastrophic events into the mix, DeLillo’s novel examines modern life without grand narratives, like God or love, giving it a purposeful direction.
DeLillo’s main character (I won’t dare call him a protagonist) Jack Gladney is professor of Hitler Studies at The-College-on-the-Hill in the town of Iron City. Jack is on his fifth marriage (to four women) and has a large number of children and stepchildren. Gladney's friend Murray, the source of many insights on life and postmodern identity, is also introduced. This section has little to no plot because, in DeLillo’s mind, plot seems to be another antiquated convention. This section focuses on a recurring theme of the book is Gladney’s, and his current wife, Babette’s, fear of death. Death is scarier these days, DeLillo says, because this is it--nothing follows this life.
Babette and Jack should fear. The second part of the book called “The Airborne Toxic Event,” details what happens to Gladney and his clan after a chemical spill releases toxins near his home. Gladney’s sensitivity to his death is only more heightened as he comes closer to it. SIMUVAC (simulated evacuation) is also introduced in this section to show how real events in life are often simulated, with emotions and actions having no connection to real feeling.
In the last section of the book, Gladney finds out that his wife has been cheating on him to gain access to the drug Dylar, which quells the fear of death.
Television is a constant, post-innovative force in peoples’ lives in White Noise. Television is an equalizing force—catastrophes, jingles, etc…--are all meshed together in an apparently random flow of images. Additionally, the people of Iron City look to it as a source of meaning in their lives, as well as seem to think of TV as creating truth rather than just covering it. DeLillo creates a society where TV is so ubiquitous that it is life, rather than just mirrors it.
After years of an influx of programming, all variety of types of television—from sitcoms to news—have become only a series of images on a level playing field. Television becomes a higher meaning in itself—it is the source of the grand narrative. For Jack’s family, Friday night TV nights with Chinese is what binds the family together. The television itself—not the specific show or any other activity—is what creates this bonding. In addition, Murray says that one can “find the codes and messages [in watching TV],” or, that television, rather than life out in the world, is the way to find meaning and patterns in the world.
Television is what makes life real and worthwhile, rather than television being a mirror of real-life. A near plane crash near Gladney's house had no purpose because there is no television station covering events in Gladney's hometown. Television not only gives purpose to all events and catastrophes in life, but also, because television has become the medium of life (in the home and the world), it is the only way to make real-life into reality.
White Noise won the National Book Award in 1985 as well as Time Magazine’s 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923-2005.
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