White Noise: Text and Criticism

“One of the most ironic, intelligent, grimly funny voices to comment on life in present-day America . . . [White Noise] poses inescapable questions with consummate skill.”—Jayne Anne Phillips, The New York Times Book Review“DeLillo’s eighth novel should win him wide recognition as one of the best American noveslists. . . . the homey comedy of White Noise invites us into a world we’re glad to enter. Then the sinister buzz of implication makes the book unforgettably disturbing.”—Newsweek“A stunning book . . . it is a novel of hairline prophecy, showing a desolate and all-too-believable future in the evidence of an all-too-recognizable present. . . . Through tenderness, wit, and a powerful irony, DeLillo has made every aspect of White Noise a moving picture of a disquiet we seem to share more and more.”—Los Angeles Times “White Noise captures the quality of daily existence in media-saturated, hyper-capitalistic postmodern America so precisely, you don’t know whether to laugh or whimper.”—Time“DeLillo is a prodigiously gifted writer. His cool but evocative prose is witty, biting, surprising, precise . . . White Noise [is] arguably [his] best novel.”—The Washington Post “Its brilliance is dark and sheathed. And probing. In White Noise, Don DeLillo takes a Geiger-counter reading of the American family, and comes up with ominous clicks.”—Vanity Fair“A stunning performance from one of our most intelligent novelists . . . Tremendously funny.”—The New Republic “DeLillo’s love and flair for language unite to tell us […] something discomforting about mortality and something profound about the way we deal with it. It may be a novel superabounding with words, but none of them are wasted.”—The Guardian