London Book Club: June

Posted on June 27, 2011 in Uncategorized

On Tuesday 7th June, the SYP London Book Club came together to discuss Don DeLillo’s White Noise. The group took place in the top-floor bar at Waterstone’s Piccadilly (where you can find us every month), with the background hubbub of another event involving speeches, clapping and synchronised laughter particularly apt for the topic at hand.

A 21st Century disease?

DeLillo’s novel is a satirical take on the rise of hollow academia, the omnipresence of the media and the elevation of theory and simulation over action and practice in modern times. Although the book was published in 1985, a good ten years before the internet started on its march to world domination proper, we all felt that so many of DeLillo’s observations and messages were equally applicable 25 years on. The family life of the book’s protagonist Jack Gladney, Head of Hitler Studies at The-College-on-the-Hill, is continually interrupted by meaningless sound bites from the television and radio. This led us to the distinct impression that the media is a more significant character in the book than some of Jack’s own family. Some were irritated by how strained these interruptions as a literary technique became the longer they went on, but others felt that annoying the reader was probably the name of the game.

Simulation vs. reality

While the book is certainly not heavy on plot, its two main events – the arrival of the Airborne Toxic Event and Jack’s confrontation with a researcher trying to cure man’s fear of mortality – certainly deliver DeLillo’s main message about the true plight of mankind with a thick coating of irony. While Jack’s relationship with his wife seems to crumble due to their mutual phobia of dying, it’s a fear of truly living and acting, not dying, which pervades the novel. In the aftermath of the chemical spillage, drills are simulated for future disasters. Three days after a simulated evacuation for a noxious odour, an actual noxious odour arrives:

There was no sign of official action… People avoided looking at each other directly… As time passed, the will to do nothing seemed to deepen, to fix itself firmly. There were those who denied they smelled anything at all.

Throughout the book, characters make their plans and design their elaborate personas, but never achieve anything more than a poor imitation.

Role models or implausible characters?

In true postmodern, meta-fictional tradition, we felt that DeLillo had done an excellent job of making the book itself a poor imitation of reality. Some of us came close to admiring Jack and his family for their rationality, and for questioning and analysing more than you’d expect a comfortable middle-class American family to do. But they never come close to seeming like real people. Their purpose is always to provide a satirical portrait of a media-crazed nation on the search for miracle cures, so characterisation never really enters into it.

Split opinions

Unusually, no one in the group took a strong disliking to White Noise, but opinions were rather divided over how enjoyable DeLillo’s writing was. Some of us were impressed by how his long lists and intense dialogue put the information overload that dominates our lives into novel form. Others understandably found the style wearisome as the book went on. Interestingly, none of us could really identify with the fear of death theme, but perhaps this was influenced by the average age of the group members!

With scores ranging right from 6 to 10, we gave this one 8.1 out of 10 overall.