Full Description
The National Book Award-winning classic from the author of Underworld and Libra, soon to be a major motion picture starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig
White Noise is the story of Jack, his wife, Babette, and their four ultramodern offspring. They live in a college town where Jack is Professor of Hitler Studies (and conceals the fact that he does not speak a word of German), and Babette teaches posture and volunteers by reading tabloids to a group of elderly shut-ins. They are happy enough, until a deadly toxic accident and Babette's addiction to an experimental drug make Jake question everything.
White Noise is considered a postmodern classic and its unfolding of themes of consumerism, family and divorce, and technology as a deadly threat have attracted the attention of literary scholars since its publication. This Viking Critical Library edition, prepared by scholar Mark Osteen, is the only edition of White Noise that contains the entire text along with an extensive critical apparatus, including a critical introduction, selected essays on the author, the work, and its themes, reviews, a chronology of DeLillo's life and work, a list of discussion topics, and a selected bibliography.
Contents
White NoiseIntroduction
Chronology
I. White Noise: The Text
II. Contexts
ANTHONY DECURTIS, from Matters of Fact and Fiction
ADAM BEGLEY, from Don DeLillo: The Art of Fiction
CARYN JAMES, "'I Never Set Out to Write an Apocalyptic Novel'"
DON DELILLO, from Americana
DON DELILLO, from End Zone
DON DELILLO, from Players
DON DELILLO, Silhouette City: Hitler, Manson and the Millennium
Newsweek, Stories on the toxic leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India
III. Reviews
SOL YURICK, Fleeing Death in a World of Hyper-Babble
ALBERT MOBILIO, Death by Inches
DIANE JOHNSON, Conspirators
PICO IYER, A Connoisseur of Fear
IV. Critical Essays
TOM LECLAIR, Closing the Loop: White Noise
FRANK LENTRICCHIA, Don DeLillo's Primal Scenes
JOHN FROW, The Last Things Before the Last: Notes on White Noise
JOHN N. DUVALL, The (Super)Marketplace of Images: Television as Unmediated Meditation in DeLillo's White Noise
CORNEL BONCA, Don DeLillo's White Noise: The Natural Language of the Species
ARTHUR M. SALTZMAN, The Figure in the Static: White Noise
PAUL MALTBY, The Romantic Metaphysics of Don DeLillo
Topics for Discussion and Papers
Selected Bibliography
