Are some people too smart for their own good? Or are they just good at rationalizing? Author Don DeLillo introduces a community of philosophical buffoons in his hilarious satire, White Noise.
Jack Gladney is chairman of the Department of Hitler Studies at his college. His colleagues are pseudointellectuals with crackpot theories. His friend Murray says that people can be divided into two categories: killers and “diers”. Killers, he explains, stow up credit like bank interest because their victims die while the killers live on. When asked how he knows so much Murray explains, “I’m from New York.”
The atmosphere affects even Jack’s family, evoking solemn discussions: Do people know all the parts of their bodies? Do sheep have eyelashes? How do astronauts float? Some consider television a psychic medium, and the TV in their house is always active, an electronic guru emitting poisonous non sequiturs.
Though Jack claims his department is internationally known, he seems to spend little time on Hitler except for a dueling conversation about Hitler’s mother and Elvis Presley. Jack has been head of the department since 1968, but he doesn’t speak German and is secretly taking German lessons from a man obsessed with meteorology as a way to recover from his mother’s death. Jack is also concerned about his wife Babette, who teaches posture classes in a church basement and whose memory seems to be failing because of her gum-chewing habit.
Jack is obsessed with death. He and Babette agonize about which of them will die first. Meanwhile, their son’s best friend is trying to break the world record for sitting in a cage with poisonous snakes. One day a toxic cloud erupts from a train derailment. Jack assures his family that the poison won’t affect them because you never hear of disasters happening to college professors.
White Noise dates from 1985, but I discovered it only recently. I would have enjoyed it more without the sexual references and a particularly disgusting passage I’d rather not dwell on. Otherwise, DeLillo’s writing is first-rate, with a madcap stream-of-consciousness style that’s irresistible.
Chevron Ross's novels include Weapons of Remorse, The Seven-Day Resurrection, and The Samaritan's Patient. Click here for more information.