I'm not sure where to begin with this one. This novel is very disjointed and at times rambles on with no real focus. There are several themes that are visited: death, family life, consumerism, media culture, but nothing particularly profound is said about any of them. None of them pay off. The protagonist is unlikable, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but he isn't very interesting either, which is unforgivable. However, I don't want to completely trash the book. There are funny moments and at least a few interesting passages. I'll keep it spoiler free until I note otherwise.
The story revolves around a "Professor of Hitler Studies" named Jack Gladney, who narrates the novel. He lives with his fourth wife with their children from numerous marriages, who are all various levels of wunderkinds. His colleague Murray is a professor of American Environments (apparently what they called "Popular Culture" in the 80's) at the same college and is the source of most of the novel's half-assed observations about society. The novel is split into three parts, the first simply introducing the characters and themes, the second depicting an "Airborne Toxic Event" which causes their town to evacuate, and the third part making stumbling attempts at paying off the themes without really paying them off.
For a college professor, the protagonist of this novel is pretty stupid. I lost count of how many times I rolled my eyes at him pretty early on. Numerous times he identifies some aspect of human behavior or society that he imagines himself to be above, all the while drowning in his own variant of that behavior. Perhaps that was a part of the point, but it gets grating fast. At no point did I feel invested in his character. Murray acted almost as a foil to this, reveling in the dredges of society instead of imagining himself above them. Frankly, he might have made a more interesting protagonist.
The themes about consumerism and media culture do the least to pay off. If anything they form a backdrop: a setting for the story, not the purpose of it. This does strike me as odd, given that the title of the book is White Noise, a culmination of all the gadgets and shows and machines that form our backdrop every day. Why is it just a backdrop? Why doesn't it affect the story in any meaningful way?
The theme of family life probably does the second least to pay off. Murray puts forth the hypothesis that family units serve a function of warding off reality, that "small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate." He claims that societies with strong family units tend to be societies of superstition and mysticism, while rational societies tend to have weaker family units. I'm not sure about the veracity of this claim. Personally, I tend to be more pedantic around my family, not less. I probably let my friends get away with half-truths and incorrect statements more than I do my family. But there does seem to be some kind of truth to it, if only in an archetypal way. In any case, Murray's theory is never really confirmed or refuted in the text.
I don't know. Maybe I'm too accustomed to Science Fiction and Fantasy, where the themes that form the subtext tend to literally become the text in some meaningful way before the story is over. Maybe I shouldn't be looking for that here. But at least one of the themes does kind-of sort-of pay off in this way: death.
Spoilers. Skip down to the final paragraph if you want to avoid them.
The theme of death is so prevalent in the story I'm surprised it wasn't the title. It's central to the books second and third parts. The second part of the story sees an entire town running for its life from a toxic spill. Jack (once more being an idiot) exposes himself to it without thinking. Once at the refugee site a medical screener tells him that because of his exposure he will certainly die - some time in the next thirty years. The toxin can take that long to take effect. Jack does the math and realizes thirty years would put him on the other side of eighty. This, at least, is an interesting predicament. After all, aren't we all (statistically) due sometime before eighty? But now he has a certain confirmation instead of a nebulous idea.
Not long after, Jack learns that his wife Babette had been taking an experimental medication in secret: a medication meant to alleviate fear of death. She learned of it through an advertisement in a tabloid, but the company shut the trials down before she had the chance to try it. However, her fear of death is so soul-engulfing that she agrees to have an affair with one of the scientists to get her hands on the pills. They work for a while, but eventually they stop. After she confesses all this to Jack she stops taking the pills.
Meanwhile Jack has a conversation with Murray where Murray hypothesizes that there are two kinds of people in the world: diers and killers. Diers accept their death. They may try to distract themselves from it with things like religion or hobbies, but ultimately they accept that it will happen. Killers, on the other hand, attempt to prolong their life by ending others. They commit murders simply because it means they live longer than their victim. Jack takes to this idea a little too eagerly, and decides to track down his wife's lover and kill him.
The murder attempt does not go quite how Jack envisioned it. He attempts to make it look like a suicide, but he places the gun into the victims hand before he's even dead. This ends in a predictable way and Jack gets shot back. This seems to snap Jack out of whatever crazed mindset he was in and he drags the man to a nearby hospital, where a Nun gives him a monologue about how none of the nuns in the hospital actually believe in God. They just pretend they do to make everyone else feel better. This seems to upset Jack, but he accepts it and leaves.
The final chapter seems to indicate that life goes on regardless. Apparently there were no consequences to Jack's actions. He never says how he explained his injury to his wife, or why he didn't get brought up on attempted murder charges. His suburban life just goes on. And this is what bothered me. Actions have consequences, but apparently no one told Don DeLillo. I understand that the book is more focused on theme than plot, but damn it, if the theme doesn't affect the plot in a realistic way then any point you're trying to make gets undermined. I just can't quite suss out what DeLillo is trying to say about death. The best thing to do is ignore it? That's kind of a weak ending after so much fuss. If any of you have read the book and have a different perspective, feel free to comment. Just mark spoilers as such.
End Spoilers.
Despite my problems with it, White Noise does have redeeming qualities. The character of Murray is a lot of fun, as is Jack's son Heinrich. It has funny moments, and at least a few of the observations are interesting, even if they aren't fully explored. It's not an overly long book, so if it sounds like your kind of thing, I'd say go for it. I don't think I'll be buying my own copy, though. This one is going back to Ashley.
Next time: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.
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