This is the first novel in some time to which I’ve had such an overwhelmingly personal, visceral response. It comes because of a multifaceted attack on my person – one, it’s a great novel, just a wonderfully intertwined work that invokes the phrase “everything in its right place” – it is uncanny how tight this novel is, how passing sentiments pop up in conversations here and there so naturally that I find myself questioning whether I read a certain line or whether it was spoken to me in real life recently. Two, there’s a combination of characters, namely Jack (the narrator) and Murray, whose banter may as well be the angel/devil on my shoulders; Jack’s trepidation at his world (and attempts to cover that trepidation) and Murray’s hyperanalytic tendencies that lend significance to every moment/aspect of modern life combine to hit proverbially close to home and make me feel like I’m hearing voices, schizophrenic. Three, the subject matter / themes of the novel, death, identity, modern life and its absurdity, modern life and its retained meaning, are impossibly huge but embedded throughout and pulse so thoroughly that you can’t help but drop the book and spend five minutes contemplating a given topic’s place in your own world / existence. And given that much of the novel is written in an a-narrative, just a smattering of conversations and events and vignettes, you could easily be putting down the book for five minutes every five minutes (indeed, this is the primary reason that I plodded through and took so long to read this book – it was not difficult to read but elicited pause throughout).
Four, and by far the most major effect, is that whatever form of nascent writer that I currently am and whatever eventual form I am imagining myself becoming, this is precisely the type of book I would want to write – strangely not in its form or voice or even necessarily its content, but I would just love to be available to maintain this level of authenticity, this straight-faced take on the world that embraces every inch of it and does not cower for a second. I would love to be able to construct something so simultaneously synthesized and real, heartfelt and analytical, absurd but finding meaning (and not by any cheap method). Something that takes turns through passages at once so funny and so despairing that the reader sets it down in fear of being overwhelmed. This is, maybe obviously, both enormously inspirational and enormously intimidating; I’m inspired for obvious reasons but intimidated by the two-headed notion that I’m no Don Delillo or worse, that he already has staked this territory. After reading this I can’t help but feel that many of my sentiments thought original would sound as sad echoes. The book says a lot and offers next to nothing as any kind of solution, just crafts a world perfect to itself (and in many respects perfectly reflective of the real one) and invites you to look – I am crushed by this aspect, and I can’t even begin to say whether this is because the book is this good or I’m just having an intensely subjective interaction with it.
All of this said, I have three big problems with the text itself. One, it is guilty at times of violation of the “show don’t tell” mandate for great writing. So many conversations throw out ideas that are key to the novel but feel inserted for sake of embellishing the theme – for example, Jack, the protagonist, verbally explains his fear of death despite an overwhelming amount of content that point this direction already. Some of these conversations feel like a flourish put on top of the text that is almost included for the sake of the hearing (reading?) impaired – an “in case you didn’t get it” element that was eerily reminiscent of my oft-cited target of literate loathing, Ayn Rand. Two, the book is so perfect, so calculated and economically written with everything serving its purpose that it largely comes off as clinical, sterile and worse, obvious. I found myself responding to certain passages with “Of course things would be like that.” The entire concept of the Simulvac “evacuation simulations” occurring after and being treated more seriously that real ones, Heinrich’s friend braving a roomful of snakes (and therefore death), the steady inclusion of phrases of commodities, and maybe the worst of all, the German nuns at the end. All of these things pointed to themselves as either super-irony or obvious, neon sign symbolism – I don’t for a moment think that nay of this overtness is accidental; Delillo is not being sloppy or thinking that he is cleverer than he actually is. He has GOT to be intentionally adorning a good portion of the book with a “For Dummies” logo for a reason.
Which brings me to my third problem with White Noise, something I would call the “slippery fish effect,” the “crutch / shackles of irony” or just the Vortex of Postmodernity. Delillo has peppered his work with intentionally overwrought and melodramatic aspects. He throws away the entire concept of an idea being good or bad, of an element working or not working. The first section rambles along intentionally plotlessly and serves to mimic his protagonist’s effort to avoid a trip toward his end (death), popping in and out of vignettes with no real attempt at a clear narrative. Jack even blatantly says “all plots head toward death” in something that could not possibly be a more “look-at-me” style quote. When the novel does eventually fall its way into a plot, it is the most contrived ridiculousness you’ve ever read in your life, but it’s told with such a perfect knowing wink that you know that it is intentionally so. The book’s structure is a comment on the book and the text itself is commenting on the structure and itself; parts that should be rendered uncontrived by a knowing author are rendered overly contrived. Ideas that should be left to be developed naturally are spat out in quotes but then smiled away by both character and author alike – the gibberish effect of a million voices, the white noise, is a part of the book but is the book, and Jack’s attempts at finding clarity lend him to find stupid amounts of cheap clarity that are then further rendered as stupid moments of cheap clarity as part of the style and text. The book itself is what it is – White Noise is white noise, and the sad attempt to pick your way through that noise is boldly reflected in the text. Slippery, relying on irony, and spinning down into itself until you have lost all ability to engage it.
White Noise is, in other words, absolutely perfectly crafted. Or is it? It’s hiding behind a big shield that defeats all arguments – if you say that something is overwrought or too obvious, it says it is intentionally so. It is to tongue in cheek and yet so serious that it evades honest analysis. So the effect of the book becomes the statement; you are left with a huge impression of the genius in the book’s craft but a lingering thought of “why did he use such pedestrian symbols?” It’s Miro, and he’s saying the genius is that he knows that you know that he knows how to draw better.
I hope I have conveyed at least an inkling of the impact this book as had on me; I think it’s remarkable that such a elegant and economically written comedic text can shatter all kinds of boundaries of book and reader as to render the whole narrative transcendent. More than anything, Delillo’s work points in two directions – one, the overt one, that the titular ubiquity is somehow oversupplying and destroying all meaning, and two, a question: will we ever be able to escape the finality of the statement that postmodern writing makes? Is the text that reads itself and dodges your commentary perfectly the end of the road?
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