52 Books in 52 Weeks, it's called. The challenge is simple: read a book every week for a year.
15. White noise.
1. I expected this book to be historical and deadly serious, in the vein of Underworld. I think, upon research, that I based my expectations on some algorithm comprising the subjects of Libra and Falling Man and the title of Mao II. I was sorely mistaken: this is primarily a novel about structure and words, and though serious it is deadly funny.
2. While reading this book, which concerns in part The Airborne Toxic Event and includes a chapter by the same title, I heard a song on the radio by a band calling themselves The Airborne Toxic Event, of which I’d never heard before that day.
3. David Foster Wallace’s archives went to UTexas this past month. Among his effects are heavily (heavily!) annotated copies of many of DeLillo’s novels. This novel bears the suggestion that he was a fan.
4. SPOILER. White noise is about death by a thousand cuts. The field of information junk we traverse every day literally and figuratively sucks the life and identity out of us. Jack Gladney, the first and preeminent scholar in Hitler studies, and with a hodge-podge family borne of various marriages, finds that his current wife Babette has had an affair with a rogue researcher in order to gain access to an experimental drug, Dylar, which treats Fear-of-Death. When Jack is exposed to a toxic cloud and faced with his own imminent death, he becomes increasingly desperate to procure the drug himself, ending in complete and vague dissolution.
5. What a rich book. The modern condition comprises a toxic cloud, which literally materializes in the novel and chases the main characters around their county. I wasn’t prepared for how inventive and funny it would be. Disarming. Probably launched a couple dozen careers. Canonical for a reason.
