Review of White Noise by Don DeLillo

J.A.K. Gladney is my hero. The post modern warrior. The first fifty pages or so I wasn't sure what to think about him, but I started to see how great a character he was. Observant to a flaw, but either fails to see the irony/humor in his life or completely ignores it.

Usually when I read a text I try to break it down. Find the flaws, the weakness, the lies, the truths, and if it is worth a damn. I have choose not to do this with White Noise simply because it would lose some of the magic. Looking to hard at any of these takes away the feeling of impending doom, or makes the post modern rifts seem to thick. Honestly I just do not want to find the flaws. I like the space this book occupies in my mind.

I read the book without checking the date something I'm glad I did. I, for whatever reason, assumed this was written in the last five years or so and it really felt that way. With the advent of 24 hour media coverage and Fox news this all consuming fear of everything really undertones the book. Then I see the book is written around the time of my birth and it makes me think how forward thinking the author was in his post modern thinking. His views on the Regan era are valid, but I feel it holds more true now than ever. This double speak language of advertising/propaganda. Everything is presentation, the only reality is the reality you allow through language. A less direct 1984.

I'm not sure if Dylar is a MacGuffin. The entire time I am reading this book I do not know if it is the Dylar driving the story, the fear of death everyone has, or them both revolving around one another: chicken egg? I love when Jack finds out he is officially dying through the simulation. It is such a hum-drum moment like a tax return. With this information he feels like he is the walking dead simply waiting for someone else to notice and put him in the ground. Death is a physical thing and now it is inside him waiting for some moment to finish the job his birth started. Death is so real to the people in this book. Hey only thing that could soothe their fear would be a drug like Dylar. They taste death, they see it at the store, it watches them when they sleep, once it bumped into them and kept walking. Life has become less real than the force they fear so much.