It's so difficult to coherently express my thoughts when I am in two minds about a book. Don DeLillo starts with an innocent picture of contemporary family life, with snippets of incidents at school, at home, amongst parents, teachers and friends; continues through an unnerving event involving a chemical spill and a black noxious cloud; and ends with the story of modern society's obsession with death as much as chemical cures. So. Did I like this post-modern snapshot of a degrading society or did I not? Hm. Ok, here goes...
I liked the basic concept of a society that is slowly breaking down into all-pervading white noise. However, this would probably have been more appreciated in the 80's when the book was published and social media was not as "obvious" a presence as it is today. I think every age of mankind has had its demons and its dependencies, and the current age is not a special case that calls for an especially negative depiction of it.
Added to that, the fact that (to match the theme of breakdown in society, I suppose) the narrative style was a random, broken down one - it drew my attention away from the story, to its telling, where I was tripping over the style, which was just that - stylistic, and nothing more.
That said, there were some concepts that did make me pause and think for a moment. Greatest amongst these was the section on the German nuns who talk about how they do not believe in god or heaven or angels, but feel the need to keep up the pretense for the sake of the non believers. Their contention that that's how non believers feel safe - that as long as someone was keeping up the faith, as a human race we are okay - that was such a brilliant concept.
I also really liked the character of Heinrich. His constant questioning and his stubborn refusal to accept such common truths as whether it was raining or not, opened up such a refreshing line of thought. At one point he asks, of what use is all our knowledge / how are we any better than cave man, when we can't even make fire or even recognize lint if we saw it; that when it comes down to it, all our knowledge just passes from computer to computer … Heinrich really made me think!
Overall though, all this talk of Hitler Studies, people marrying multiple times, people getting lost in mundane things such as the sights and sounds of the TV, chemical spills, modern society's dependence on drugs ... all this incessant pounding into the reader's head, of the message of a breakdown of society ... no, I just couldn't get into it.
When I was at university, I took an American Literature course, and the course curriculum had optional reading spots. This guy put up his hand on the first day and asked if we could have this novel, "White Noise" as an optional read on the course material. Now at that point, especially in this university in Canada, I had become familiar that there was a certain number of students in each class who were more of a "style-over-substance" sort, and this guy struck me as one of those, so I did not actually read the novel, but kind of always wondered what it was like. Thank you for finally answering that question for me!
ReplyDelete