Winner of the National Book Award in 1985, White Noise is the story of Jack and Babette and their children from their six or so various marriages. They live in a college town where Jack is Professor of Hitler Studies (and conceals the fact that he does not speak a word of German), and Babette teaches posture and volunteers by reading from the tabloids to a group of elderly shut-ins. They are happy enough until a deadly toxic accident and Babette's addiction to an experimental drug make Jake question everything.White Noise is considered a postmodern classic and its unfolding of themes of consumerism, family and divorce, and technology as a deadly threat have attracted the attention of literary scholars since its publication. This Viking Critical Library edition, prepared by scholar Mark Osteen, is the only edition of White Noise that contains the entire text along with an extensive critical apparatus, including a critical introduction, selected essays on the author, the work and its themes, reviews, a chronology of DeLillo's life and work, a list of discussion topics, and a selected bibliography.
Don DeLillo published his first short story when he was twenty-three years old. He has since written twelve novels, including White Noise (1985) which won the National Book Award. It was followed by Libra (1988), his novel about the assassination of President Kennedy, and by Mao II, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
In 1997, he published the bestselling Underworld, and in 1999 he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, given to a writer whose work expresses the theme of the freedom of the individual in society; he was the first American author to receive it. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
White NoiseIntroduction
Chronology
I. White Noise: The Text
II. Contexts
ANTHONY DECURTIS, from Matters of Fact and Fiction
ADAM BEGLEY, from Don DeLillo: The Art of Fiction
CARYN JAMES, "'I Never Set Out to Write an Apocalyptic Novel'"
DON DELILLO, from Americana
DON DELILLO, from End Zone
DON DELILLO, from Players
DON DELILLO, Silhouette City: Hitler, Manson and the Millennium
Newsweek, Stories on the toxic leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India
III. Reviews
SOL YURICK, Fleeing Death in a World of Hyper-Babble
ALBERT MOBILIO, Death by Inches
DIANE JOHNSON, Conspirators
PICO IYER, A Connoisseur of Fear
IV. Critical Essays
TOM LECLAIR, Closing the Loop: White Noise
FRANK LENTRICCHIA, Don DeLillo's Primal Scenes
JOHN FROW, The Last Things Before the Last: Notes on White Noise
JOHN N. DUVALL, The (Super)Marketplace of Images: Television as Unmediated Meditation in DeLillo's White Noise
CORNEL BONCA, Don DeLillo's White Noise: The Natural Language of the Species
ARTHUR M. SALTZMAN, The Figure in the Static: White Noise
PAUL MALTBY, The Romantic Metaphysics of Don DeLillo
Topics for Discussion and Papers
Selected Bibliography
Winner of the National Book Award in 1985, White Noise is the story of Jack and Babette and their children from their six or so various marriages. They live in a college town where Jack is Professor of Hitler Studies (and conceals the fact that he does not speak a word of German), and Babette teaches posture and volunteers by reading from the tabloids to a group of elderly shut-ins. They are happy enough until a deadly toxic accident and Babette's addiction to an experimental drug make Jake question everything.White Noise is considered a postmodern classic and its unfolding of themes of consumerism, family and divorce, and technology as a deadly threat have attracted the attention of literary scholars since its publication. This Viking Critical Library edition, prepared by scholar Mark Osteen, is the only edition of White Noise that contains the entire text along with an extensive critical apparatus, including a critical introduction, selected essays on the author, the work and its themes, reviews, a chronology of DeLillo's life and work, a list of discussion topics, and a selected bibliography.
Don DeLillo published his first short story when he was twenty-three years old. He has since written twelve novels, including White Noise (1985) which won the National Book Award. It was followed by Libra (1988), his novel about the assassination of President Kennedy, and by Mao II, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
In 1997, he published the bestselling Underworld, and in 1999 he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, given to a writer whose work expresses the theme of the freedom of the individual in society; he was the first American author to receive it. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
White NoiseIntroduction
Chronology
I. White Noise: The Text
II. Contexts
ANTHONY DECURTIS, from Matters of Fact and Fiction
ADAM BEGLEY, from Don DeLillo: The Art of Fiction
CARYN JAMES, "'I Never Set Out to Write an Apocalyptic Novel'"
DON DELILLO, from Americana
DON DELILLO, from End Zone
DON DELILLO, from Players
DON DELILLO, Silhouette City: Hitler, Manson and the Millennium
Newsweek, Stories on the toxic leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India
III. Reviews
SOL YURICK, Fleeing Death in a World of Hyper-Babble
ALBERT MOBILIO, Death by Inches
DIANE JOHNSON, Conspirators
PICO IYER, A Connoisseur of Fear
IV. Critical Essays
TOM LECLAIR, Closing the Loop: White Noise
FRANK LENTRICCHIA, Don DeLillo's Primal Scenes
JOHN FROW, The Last Things Before the Last: Notes on White Noise
JOHN N. DUVALL, The (Super)Marketplace of Images: Television as Unmediated Meditation in DeLillo's White Noise
CORNEL BONCA, Don DeLillo's White Noise: The Natural Language of the Species
ARTHUR M. SALTZMAN, The Figure in the Static: White Noise
PAUL MALTBY, The Romantic Metaphysics of Don DeLillo
Topics for Discussion and Papers
Selected Bibliography
White NoiseIntroduction
Chronology
I. White Noise: The Text
II. Contexts
ANTHONY DECURTIS, from Matters of Fact and Fiction
ADAM BEGLEY, from Don DeLillo: The Art of Fiction
CARYN JAMES, "'I Never Set Out to Write an Apocalyptic Novel'"
DON DELILLO, from Americana
DON DELILLO, from End Zone
DON DELILLO, from Players
DON DELILLO, Silhouette City: Hitler, Manson and the Millennium
Newsweek, Stories on the toxic leak at the Union Carbide plant in
Bhopal, India
III. Reviews
SOL YURICK, Fleeing Death in a World of Hyper-Babble
ALBERT MOBILIO, Death by Inches
DIANE JOHNSON, Conspirators
PICO IYER, A Connoisseur of Fear
IV. Critical Essays
TOM LECLAIR, Closing the Loop: White Noise
FRANK LENTRICCHIA, Don DeLillo's Primal Scenes
JOHN FROW, The Last Things Before the Last: Notes on White
Noise
JOHN N. DUVALL, The (Super)Marketplace of Images: Television as
Unmediated Meditation in DeLillo's White Noise
CORNEL BONCA, Don DeLillo's White Noise: The Natural Language of
the Species
ARTHUR M. SALTZMAN, The Figure in the Static: White Noise
PAUL MALTBY, The Romantic Metaphysics of Don DeLillo
Topics for Discussion and Papers
Selected Bibliography
Don DeLillo published his first short story when he was twenty-three years old. He has since written twelve novels, including White Noise (1985) which won the National Book Award. It was followed by Libra (1988), his novel about the assassination of President Kennedy, and by Mao II, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
In 1997, he published the bestselling Underworld, and in 1999 he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, given to a writer whose work expresses the theme of the freedom of the individual in society; he was the first American author to receive it. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
"Though it's pitched at a level of absurdity slightly above that of
real life, White Noise captures the quality of daily existence in
media-saturaated, hyper capitalistic postmodern America so
precisely, you don't know whether to laugh or whimper." -- Lev
Grossman, Time
"I can't think of a few books written in my lifetime that have
received such quick and wise acclaim while going on to exercise so
deep an influence for decades thereafter. I can think of even fewer
books more likely to remain essential guides to life in the
Information Age, another quarter century one." --Richard Powers
“One of the most ironic, intelligent, grimly funny voices to
comment on life in present-day America . . . [White Noise] poses
inescapable questions with consummate skill.”—Jayne Anne Phillips,
The New York Times Book Review
“DeLillo’s eighth novel should win him wide recognition as one of
the best American noveslists. . . . the homey comedy of White Noise
invites us into a world we’re glad to enter. Then the sinister buzz
of implication makes the book unforgettably
disturbing.”—Newsweek
“A stunning book . . . it is a novel of hairline prophecy, showing
a desolate and all-too-believable future in the evidence of an
all-too-recognizable present. . . . Through tenderness, wit, and a
powerful irony, DeLillo has made every aspect of White Noise a
moving picture of a disquiet we seem to share more and more.”—Los
Angeles Times
“White Noise captures the quality of daily existence in
media-saturated, hyper-capitalistic postmodern America so
precisely, you don’t know whether to laugh or whimper.”—Time
“DeLillo is a prodigiously gifted writer. His cool but evocative
prose is witty, biting, surprising, precise . . . White Noise [is]
arguably [his] best novel.”—The Washington Post
“Its brilliance is dark and sheathed. And probing. In White Noise,
Don DeLillo takes a Geiger-counter reading of the American family,
and comes up with ominous clicks.”—Vanity Fair
“A stunning performance from one of our most intelligent novelists
. . . Tremendously funny.”—The New Republic
“DeLillo’s love and flair for language unite to tell us […]
something discomforting about mortality and something profound
about the way we deal with it. It may be a novel superabounding
with words, but none of them are wasted.”—The Guardian
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