White Noise (novel)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Men have tried throughout history to cure themselves of death by killing others [...] The dier passively succumbs, the killer lives on."--White Noise (1985) by Don DeLillo "I see these car crashes as part of a long tradition of American optimism. They are positive events, full of the old 'can-do' spirit. Each car crash is meant to be better than the last. There is a constant upgrading of tools and skills, a meeting of challenges. A director says, 'I need this flatbed truck to do a midair double somersault that produces an orange ball of fire with a thirty-six-foot diameter, which the cinematographer will use to light the scene.' I tell my students if they want to bring technology into it, they have to take this into account, this tendency toward grandiose deeds, toward pursuing a dream."--White Noise (1985) by Don DeLillo |
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White Noise (1985) is the eighth novel by Don DeLillo, and is an example of postmodern literature. Widely considered his "breakout" work, the book won the National Book Award in 1985 and brought him to the attention of a much larger audience.
In 2022, the novel was adapted into a film of the same name by director Noah Baumbach.
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Plot
Set at a bucolic mid-western college known only as The-College-on-the-Hill, White Noise follows a year in the life of Jack Gladney, a professor who has made his name by pioneering the field of Hitler studies (though he has not taken German lessons until this year). He has been married five times to four women and rears a brood of children and stepchildren (Heinrich, Denise, Steffie, Wilder) with his current wife, Babette. Jack and Babette are both extremely afraid of death; they frequently wonder which of them will be the first to die. The first part of White Noise, called "Waves and Radiation", is a chronicle of contemporary family life combined with academic satire.
There is little plot development in this first section, which mainly serves as an introduction to the characters and themes which dominate the rest of the book. For instance, the mysterious deaths of men in "Mylex" (intended to suggest Mylar) suits and the ashen, shaken survivors of a plane that went into free fall anticipate the catastrophe of the book's second part. "Waves and Radiation" also introduces Murray Jay Siskind, Jack's friend and fellow college professor, who discusses theories about death, supermarkets, media, "psychic data," and other facets of contemporary American culture.
In the second part, "The Airborne Toxic Event," a chemical spill from a rail car releases a black noxious cloud over Jack's home region, prompting an evacuation. Frightened by his exposure to the toxin (called Nyodene Derivative, Jack is forced to confront his mortality. An organization called SIMUVAC (short for "simulated evacuation") is also introduced in Part Two, an indication of simulations replacing reality.
In part three of the book, "Dylarama", Jack discovers that Babette has been cheating on him with a man she calls "Mr. Gray" in order to gain access to a fictional drug called Dylar, an experimental treatment for the terror of death. The novel becomes a meditation on modern society's fear of death and its obsession with chemical cures as Jack seeks to obtain his own black-market supply of Dylar. However, Dylar does not work for Babette, and it has many possible side effects, including losing the ability to "distinguish words from things, so that if someone said 'speeding bullet', I would fall to the floor and take cover".
Jack continues to obsess over death. During a discussion about mortality, Murray suggests that killing someone could alleviate the fear. Jack decides to track down and kill Mr. Gray, whose real name, he has learned, is Willie Mink. After a black comedy scene of Jack driving and rehearsing, in his head, several ways in which their encounter might proceed, he successfully locates and shoots Willie, who at the time is in a delirious state caused by his own Dylar addiction.
Jack puts the gun in Willie's hand to make the murder look like a suicide, but Willie then shoots Jack in the arm. Suddenly realizing the needless loss of life, Jack carries Willie to a hospital run by German nuns who do not believe in God or an afterlife. Having saved Willie, Jack returns home to watch his children sleep.
The final chapter describes Wilder, Jack's youngest child, riding a tricycle across the highway and miraculously surviving.
Film adaptation
The rights to film the novel were acquired by HBO and later by James L. Brooks's Gracie Films, and then again in 1999 by Sonnenfeld/Josephson with Barry Sonnenfeld set to direct, but the option lapsed. In 2016, Uri Singer acquired the rights and pushed the project into development.
In 2021, it was announced that Noah Baumbach would write and direct the adaptation for Netflix starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig.
Characters
Jack Gladney is the protagonist and narrator of the novel. He is a professor of Hitler studies at a liberal arts college in middle America.
Babette is Jack's wife. They have seven children from previous marriages, and they are currently living with four of these children. Babette has an affair with Willie Mink, whom she calls Mr. Gray, in order to obtain Dylar.
Heinrich Gerhardt is the fourteen-year-old son of Jack and Janet Savory. He is precociously intellectual, prone to be contrary, and plays correspondence chess with an imprisoned mass murderer.
Denise is the eleven-year-old daughter of Babette and Bob Pardee. She suspects her mother is a drug addict and steals the bottle of Dylar to hide it.
Steffie is the nine-year-old daughter of Jack and Dana Breedlove.
Wilder is Babette's two-year-old son, and the youngest child in the family. Wilder is never quoted for dialogue in the novel (however, at one point, it is said that he asked for a glass of milk) and periodically Jack worries about the boy's slow linguistic development.
Bee is the twelve-year-old daughter of Jack and Tweedy Browner. She lived in South Korea for two years.
Dana Breedlove is Jack's first and fourth wife and the mother of Mary Alice and Steffie. She works part time for the CIA and conducts covert drop-offs in Latin America. She also writes book reviews.
Janet Savory is Jack's second wife and the mother of Heinrich. She manages the financial businesses of an ashram in Montana, where she is known as Mother Devi. Before that she worked as a foreign-currency analyst for a secret group of advanced theorists.
Tweedy Browner is Jack's third wife and the mother of Bee.
Mary Alice is the nineteen-year-old daughter of Dana Breedlove and Jack's first marriage.
Eugene is Babette's eight-year-old son who lives with his unnamed father in Western Australia. His father is also Wilder's father.
Murray Jay Siskind is a colleague of Jack's. He wants to create a field of study centered on Elvis Presley in the same way that Jack has created one around Hitler. He teaches a course on the cinema of car crashes, watches TV obsessively, and cheerfully theorizes about many subjects, including media saturation, mindfulness, and the meaning of supermarkets.
Orest Mercator is Heinrich's friend who trains to sit in a cage with vipers.
Vernon Dickey is Babette's father who visits the family in chapter 33 and gives Jack a gun.
Willie Mink is a compromised researcher who invents Dylar.
Winnie Richards is a scientist at the college where Jack works, to whom Jack goes for information about Dylar.
See also
