I first read White Noise for Charles Harris' postmodern literature class and at that time was obsessed with the book's code, simulacra, representations, and data. It seemed to mean that in mid-1980s middle-classed life, information was supplanting experience in the texture of postmodern life. There are numerous examples in the book of representation superceding experience, the funniest being The Most Photographed Barn in America, the most poignant being Jack's experiencing his own death as statistical data, letting this information overwhelm him, despite experiencing no sickness, symptom, trauma, or sensation of ill health. Of course, the narrative voice tends to present lists of products, voice-over soundbites, and the warning on a medicine bottle in ways that increasingly seem to intrude on the narrative, so clearly information (of the sort we sometimes seek but are often bombarded by) is something the reader is meant to notice.

The second reading was more rewarding because I appreciated the family dynamics, especially Jack's descriptions of his as father: as with his role as professor and department head, he is stoic figure of authority, but backstage he is just as confused and insecure as everybody else. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. The family dynamics, including his creeping obsession with his wife's infidelity, are funny and subtle and touching and I tend to read them on the surface level, as straightforward description communicating moods rather than a linguistic artifice whose primary purpose is to encode theoretical ideas. Maybe I'm missing something. On the other hand, maybe I get it.

When Graham Greene writes:

"Castle sat down on the edge of the great white bed, and the white owl glared at him beside the white telephone as if it recognized him as an illegal immigrant who had just perched on the edge of this strange continent of snow-even the walls were white and there was a white rug under his feet. He was afraid-afraid for Sam, afraid for Sarah, afraid for himself-fear poured like an invisible gas from the mouth of the silent telephone." (136-7, The Human Factor 1988 pocket Books edition) I groan.

When DeLillo writes:

"We... buttered our bread in the manner of technicians restoring a fresco," (118) I laugh, raising eyes around the cafe. But the difference is not exactly because DeLillo's metaphor is better than Greene's, it has more to do with the context the lines appear in. In Greene's case, the writing is a weird betrayal of an otherwise careful and unaffected narrative voice. In White Noise, the narrator overwrites to a degree that is conspicuous but appropriate for the chair of the department of Hitler Studies: a ponderous and uncertain man given at inappropriate moments to abrupt pontifications about death, an intellectual whose immersion in academia and constant exposure to radio and television has built his consciousness into a lattice of recondite knowledge, a dense accumulation of factoids. Also, in the scene in White Noise where the fresco line appears, the line fits the timing perfectly, somehow conveying the tension of that moment.

An implausible narrative voice conveys a (mostly) plausible sequence of events (see Suttree), and it doesn't make sense to speak of White Noise as having a plot. What is communicated is communicated through language accumulated around mostly unimportant events. I don't know whether to call this good writing, or concede that I am probably the proper narratee. Even if I could explain away the effectiveness of the prose, I doubt I could explain why I think so much of this book is so funny (more funny than touching).

The book has three parts. The third part is the weakest, despite involving drugs, guns, and nuns in a scene that seems like a sort of Hollywood-fixed flourish, as if it is the author's desperate bid to draw an unraveling story to a close by introducing rising tension, a climax, and a resolution tinged with religious associations, all in the last 30 pages. The drug Dylar becomes the only major plot detail founded on humorous incredulity (it is unlikely and funny that such a drug would exist), although realistic domestic life and a toxic airborne event are all that seem necessary to make the first two parts unputdownable. Maybe the novel suffers from a compulsion to introduce deeper themes (sex and death) and more typical plot engines (infidelity and attendant sexual jealousy, clandestine research, and murder). All plots move deathward, we have been warned, Still, the prose surrounding the particular handgun that is introduced on page 252 and finally fired on page 312 is the most vivid writing about a firearm I can remember. I have been exposed to no end of firearms in books and movies yet this gun seems to mean something. Until it is fired, and then finally the world speaks more loudly than its signifiers.

Good novel. Read it for a class. Then read it again. Definitely make your students read it. Read the shopping scene (82-84) out loud to someone in bed or on Christmas.