So, the book was about death?

When I first read about Jack and Babette's fears about who would die first, I thought it was sort of charming and incidental -- just another layer of proof about how much they loved each other. I missed the boat that the fear of death could be called the theme of the book. (Would you agree?)

The Murray-Jack exchange on death made up all of chapter 37. To sum up, here were Murray's suggestions to "beat the system" as I understood them:

1. Put your faith in technology ("lust removed from nature"). It can prolong life and the quality of it.

2. Concentrate on the life beyond (or faith?). Reincarnation, heaven, etc.

3. Have a near-death experience

4. Become a killer, not a dier. "Think how exciting it is, in theory, to kill a person in direct confrontation. If he dies, you cannot. To kill him is to gain life credit."

Anyone have any thought about this? I think this was the summary of the book -- that Jack would try all of these options to overcome his fears. I have been thinking since whether it's human nature to embrace some or all four of these ideas with different label. Yes, even number four ... maybe people aren't taking actual lives, but if materialism or one-upping their neighbors is buying them the life credits in a way that society deems more acceptable.

Murray

What did you make of Murray? He was my favorite character -- or in any case, the most pithy -- through most of the story, maybe until his final treatise on dealing with death, when he took such a cheerfully academic approach to how people can avoid death (or fear of it) that his lack of a conscience took sort of a menacing turn. Or that could have been my reservations about his audience's (Jack's) state of mind. A separate question -- is he culpable at all for the lack of ethics he espouses?

Toxic buildup

I thought there were indications, from Wilder's delayed speech development to Heinrich's receding hairline, to the school evacuation and the description of the unnaturally bright/attractive supermarket produce (making me think of preservatives, hormones), that toxic buildup had been long in the making. Was the author making a case on an environmental level that we live in an unhealthy world?

(By the way, despite his many observations, I didn't find DeLillo to be preachy. If I'm getting preachy, let's move on.)

Point of crisis

I am chewing on whether Jack's world was turned upside down by the airborne toxic event or Babette's Dylar confession. I'm inclined to think it was the second crisis. The toxic event seemed to be a modern threat the family unit was able to manage, not without casualties but that sort of worked within the grid of fears they'd already set up for themselves.

Or perhaps he already was in crisis mode when the story began?

Ben's pick

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett. I hope it isn't too short.

What the 20th century is all about

Why do you think a character like the awkward, elusive Winnie Richards was included in the novel? She's the chemist at Jack's university.

They have this conversation:

"Have you been hiding from me? I've left notes, phone messages."

"Not from you, Jack, or anyone in particular."

"Then why have you been so hard to find?"

"Isn't this what the twentieth century is all about?"

"What?"

"People going into hiding even when no one is looking for them."

The mystique of Wilder

I never resolved the mystery of Wilder, a small, vulnerable and lovable little boy in a wild and dangerous fictional landscape. The scene where he inexplicably cries for hours and hours resonated deeply with me. It reminded me of my youngest nephew and the frightening two years he spent adamantly crying, but not talking, like children his age should do. For that reason this storyline touched me, but I think it has broader significance: In a world that is a communicative and sensory blitz, Wilder grabbed attention for what he didn't say.

"I Want a New Drug"

Would you rather try Dylar or the Stanford Linear Accelerator 3-Day Particle Smashing Diet?

Really, if we could be fed a pill, what would it do?

Toxic denial

In the creepy and somewhat slow-paced passages about the actual toxic airborne event, I was struck by how Jack was slow to respond because of his certainty that no major catastrophe could touch his town's well-bred and white-bread existence. That disaster only struck in other places; that's what TV was for. I thought that was a fair critique. I haven't read up on how much of the Katrina mess was terrible emergency planning versus the accusations by some (like Kanye West) that the poor minorities barricaded at the stadium didn't get the same treatment as other Americans would. (I have seen some VH1 special that quoted Kanye and then brought in a comedian speculating what the Bush administration would have done if a natural disaster touched down in an investment banking neighborhood in Connecticut.) And Jack lives in a variation of that Connecticut neighborhood.

This post is signed by CL. Of course, the relevant tagline would be: "The wire editor who missed an urgent late-night advisory in December 2005 that a tsunami's death toll had just moved into the thousands ..."

Hitler?

What do you make of Gladney being a Hitler scholar — and one who doesn't know German? (cl, this may be somewhat related to your observations on pop culture in academia — and the superficial nature of some "studies").

Rebel flags

"White Noise" has plenty to say about academia, but my favorite exchange was the pop culture throwdown about what faculty could remember about the day James Dean died. But how often have I been asked what I remember about Princess Di's death? What makes this kind of crap the moral zenith of pop culture? I don't know, myself ... what are the highlights in our time of cultural significance? What makes them special? Would DeLillo agree?

A bite of Apple

"White Noise" is valued in part for the nature of its prophetic story-telling, visualizing a world where we're wrapped into a multimedia orgy of television, talk radio and other colorful messages. I thought it was interesting that the author obtained a copyright for "White Noise" in the same year that Apple aired its commercial for the first mainstream PC, the Apple:

"On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984."

But "White Noise" offers little foray into computers; they don't even make an appearance until Jack has his survival stats analyzed at the toxic airborne event shelter. Did DeLillo write an already dated novel by making TV the chief enemy? (It being my opinion -- which is debatable -- that computers, or the Internet, have superceded TV.) Or is this relatable in a world now dominated with IM, e-mail, Facebook, PDAs? What a multimedia orgy we live in today.

Family values

I don't want to give this particular element of the story more importance than some of the broader issues of "White Noise," but what would you describe as values in the Gladney household? The parents might borrow porn from their son for a little bedtime foreplay (and for some reason their well-stocked erotica collection from various times, genres and proclivities amused me), but judgment rains down upon Babette over the brand of her chewing gum. Maybe self-worship, self-preservation, self-gratification are the key values of the white noise family life.

If so, does it extend beyond the Gladneys?

First impressions

Did you like the book? Was it what you expected?

I thought it was funny, incisive and oddly touching at times. I thought the characterization was particularly strong, maybe the best part of the book. "Babette talks to dogs and cats. ... She plans ski trips that we never take, her face bright with excitement." Or, "Steffie became upset every time something shameful or humiliating seemed about to happen to someone on the screen. She had a vast capacity for being embarrassed on other people's behalf."

And, I'm sure worth a few separate discussion threads, there's DeLillo's oddly prophetic multimedia blitz. He's like a Nostradamus of pop culture.

While I found it to be an entertaining and absorbing read, I sometimes found the writing to be a little oversaturated, like the author was working in every witty observation in the course of his life into one story. Sometimes a novel lets you breathe a little bit in the course of the plot, and this one seemed to pack in facts, witticisms, philosophy into each page. It made it a slow read for me as I tried to pick through all of the codes to decipher a message ... of course, that would make this one of the cleverest facets of the novel -- to drown out the reader with its own white noise.

What did you think?