White Noise

I accidentally read White Noise in one day.  I’m not sure how I managed it, because it’s not that unputdownable and I had a lot of things to do on the day that I read this book.  I’m going to chalk it up to procrastination.  That’s how I read a lot of books.  So, I shirked my responsibilities for an entire day to read this book, and I’m shirking them again now to write about it: that’s how you succeed in life.

Don DeLillo’s novel is a hard one to describe plot-wise.   It’s about university professor Jack Gladney, creator of Hitler studies, who is happy.  He has a happy family life with his wife and various children from each of their various marriages and there’s no tension caused by the blended family.  He is happy, they are happy- there is no other word for it.  The only thing that blights Jack’s happiness or his wife Babette’s is the fear of death.  Although say they want to be the first to die so as to not have to live without the other, Jack wants to live for as long as possible.  He fears death to the point that he almost craves immortality.  After nothing major happens to the characters for 120 pages or so, there is The Toxic Airborne Event.  Despite sounding like a sketch from That Mitchell and Webb Look, this is a plot device to make Jack confront the horrible reality that he, too, is mortal.

It’s the second half of the novel that really contains the entire plot, but somehow I enjoyed the first half more.  There’s a very good chance that I was a little burnt out (it has been a while since I read almost 400 pages in a day), but I liked the charm of nothing happening and hanging out with this pretty quirky family.  Instead of actually writing about the book properly, I might just pick out bits that I liked.  Jack has a fairly fun conversation with a doctor in which he is lying about everything in an attempt to have the doctor tell him he is healthy, as though the doctor’s words and his actual health are intrinsically linked and he can be cured by being told he is well (this is better put into the actual thematic context of the book, but funny out of context).  There are a fair few off the cuff remarks about Hitler that appeal to my sense of humour too.

One of the more obscure bits that I really enjoyed is near the end.  There’s this hospital run by German nuns and none of them believe in God.  Their faith is a pretense set up to reassure the world.  The fact that they are there are keeping up the faith, the old ways and traditions, means that others are free to abandon them and keep the comforting knowledge that tradition lives on.  And in turn instead of a life dedicated to God, the nuns live a life dedicated to the lie.  It’s brilliant stuff. 

I have little else to say about the book, maybe I read it too quickly, but it’s a really enjoyable read and highly recommended.  Go and try it yourself. 

I’m now moving on to The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler.  Spoiler: I love Raymond Chandler.