White Noise

White Noise centres on Jack Gladney, who created and chairs the Hitler studies program at the College-on-the-Hill. He is a family man in Blacksmith, married to his fourth wife Babette, with four children. His absurd life proceeds comfortably until a rail car spill sends out an Airborne Toxic Event, and Jack must face the fear he dreads most, his own death. The novel blends social satire with metaphysical dilemma, examining consumerism, media saturation and novelty intellectualism, and asking what a family is for when existence itself seems threatened.

Why You Should Read?

• Follow Jack Gladney as an Airborne Toxic Event forces him to face his own mortality.
• Explore a story that mixes social satire with metaphysical dilemma as Jack confronts death.
• Gain insight into the novel's treatment of rampant consumerism, media saturation and novelty intellectualism.
• Experience a story that ponders the family's role when the very meaning of existence is threatened.

About the Author

Don DeLillo was born on November 20, 1936, and is an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, screenwriter and essayist. By 1985 he was a well-regarded cult writer. That year, White Noise brought him widespread recognition and the National Book Award for fiction. In 1988 he followed it with Libra, a novel about an assassination. He won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Mao II and the William Dean Howells Medal for Underworld. He received the 1999 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction and the 2013 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.