White Noise

Don DeLillo

21 November 2011
9780330474023
384 pages

Synopsis

Now a major new Netflix film from Noah Baumbach, starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig

How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn’t they paralyze us?

Jack Gladney is the creator and chairman of Hitler studies at the College-on-the-Hill. This is the story of his absurd life; a life that is going well enough, until a chemical spill from a train carriage releases an ‘Airborne Toxic Event’ and Jack is forced to confront his biggest fear – his own mortality.

White Noise is an effortless combination of social satire and metaphysical dilemma in which Don DeLillo exposes our rampant consumerism, media saturation and novelty intellectualism. It captures the particular strangeness of life lived when the fear of death cannot be denied, repressed or obscured and ponders the role of the family in a time when the very meaning of our existence is under threat.

‘America’s greatest living writer.’ – Observer

Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.

America's greatest living writer.
An extraordinarily funny book on a serious subject, effortlessly combining social comedy, disaster, fiction and philosophy . . . hilariously, and grimly, successful.
An astonishing novel . . . unforgettable . . . nearly every page crackles with memorable moments and perfectly turned phrases . . . dizzying, darkly beautiful fiction.