White Noise – Book Review

by practicalspactical

White Noise — Don DeLillo proving himself to the New Weirds, I can write too, he says, well nothing wrong with that — it’s a good book, a powerful book — about middle age mediocrity, about the ring of fat that accretes around one’s midsection during one’s midsection (of life) — float away upon the seasection — premonitions of Bhopal, the power of TV, and the chilling naming that goes on in this new world where we invent new horribles everyday — “Airborne Toxic Event” / “Black Cloud” / the deaths we carry within ourselves — secretly not wanting to die first — however, me, knowing I will die, perhaps do — White Noise perhaps being the picture of a man who still yet hasn’t accepted the reality of —

Me — I accept it and don’t accept it, alternating by the day and hour.
What else?

The preternaturally clever child.

The massive eroticism of a modern-day supermarket.

Children’s cartoons.

All in all a good book — echoes of Pynch’s Vineland, but maybe better — still — the fat middle-aged — the fallen hero — he did leap out of the car — paterfamelias — pumped the gas so that they could continue their evacuation.

College-on-the-hill. Late-stage academic capitalism. Hitler Studies. I want to do to Elvis what you did to Hitler. Lampooning cultural studies and the raising of the low.

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