[stylist] Book Review: White Noise by Don DeLillo

[Adventures in Low Vision]

Hello All,

First time submitter! I'm Susan, I love writing, and I have low vision. I
joined NFB this year. For those interested, I review books on my blog from
time to time. I'm always looking for a good read.

Here's my review of White Noise by Don DeLillo:

*****

Routine gives us security. Routine keeps us busy. Routine allows us to
ignore the existential crisis: what does a life mean?

In *White Noise*, Don DeLillo constructs characters that embrace or shun
routine as much as they need to deny their fears. He weaves humor into his
description and dialogue to mock them. Jack Gladney, the father, the
published scholar who leads Hitler Studies at a university, still can’t
speak German after years of lectures, so he “wore an academic gown and dark
glasses day and night whenever I was on campus.” He hoped no one would find
out about his recent German language lessons, valuing impressions over
meaning.

Gladney’s friend, Murray, lives in an opposite fashion. No secrets, no
fears. He relishes in the grocery store when he spots generic food
packaging, devoid of marketing. “This is the new austerity,” he says.
“Flavorless packaging. It appeals to me. I feel like I’m not only saving
money but contributing to some kind of spiritual consensus.”

I tend to look for blind characters in books now. DeLillo features Old Man
Treadway, a secondary character in the novel. He exists as a distraction,
to give Gladney’s wife someone to help, someone to read tabloid stories to,
someone to check in on, and someone to search for when she finds his house
empty one day. When blind people are portrayed as unable to find a way out
from a kiosk in a mall for days, I pause. That doesn’t build an accurate
portrayal of people living ­with vision impairments. I’ll take the Treadway
character as a joke and laugh instead.

One day, a plume of black smoke rises into the air from a chemical spill
and wafts over the town. Gladney’s family falls into shock, and he says:

“These things happen to poor people who live in exposed areas. Society is
set up in such a way that it’s the poor and the uneducated who suffer the
main impact of natural and man-made disasters. People in low-lying areas
get the floods, people in shanties get the hurricanes and tornadoes. I’m a
college professor. Did you ever see a college professor rowing a boat down
his own street in one of those TV floods? We live in a neat and pleasant
town near a college with a quaint name. These things don’t happen in places
like Blacksmith.”

Bad things don’t happen to good people like him. Until they do. As the plot
advances, DeLillo plays with tone. He flips from hysterical conversation to
mundane label instruction narration to contrast life from the white noise.

One criticism. Gladney sees colored spots in the periphery of his vision,
conveniently at times when change occurs. Instead of noting the urgency of
this vision change, DeLillo uses it metaphorically. In real life, vision
changes aren’t white noise.

I like DeLillo’s writing style. I think I will pick up new things with each
reading of this book. I recommend *White Noise *for anyone interested in
human behavior, dark humor, or an ironic read. You might notice yourself in
some of the characters or routines.

Have you read *White Noise *or any other novel by Don DeLillo? What do you
think?


****

Happy Reading and Writing,

Susan
http://adventuresinlowvision.wordpress.com/