Don DeLillo

Mar 20 2010

White Noise by Don DiLillo

*I am experimenting with just using Goodreads to post reviews and cross posting them here. Let me know what you think*

White Noise White Noise by Don DeLillo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hard to describe my reaction to this “classic” after reading it for the first time on its 25th anniversary. It was surreal and hilarious and odd and dense and satirical and a host of other things.

For me this was a book that took some work. Not that it wasn’t enjoyable but there was a lot going on both in terms of language and in terms of the philosophical and the literary.

Consumerism, media overload, self-deception, family interaction, the slippery nature of language and communication, the role of our mortality in our daily lives, etc. All of this jumbled and interconnected within the story. Interesting, insightful at times, frequently quite funny but also almost overloaded.

I am glad I read it but I am not sure it made me want to read more DeLillo.

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By Kevin Holtsberry • Reviews • 0 • Tags: ,

Mar 4 2010

The Family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation

Dangerous radicalism? Subversive? Ironic commentary?

The Family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. Overcloseness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps something even deeper, like the need to survive. Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into the nature of things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The family process works toward sealing off the world. Small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate. I tell Murray that ignorance and confusion can’t possibly be the driving forces behind family solidarity.  What an idea, what a subversion. He asks me why the strongest family units exist in the least developed society. Not to know is a weapon of survival, he says. Magic and superstition become entrenched as the powerful orthodoxy of the clan. The family is strongest where objective reality is the most likely to be misinterpreted.  What a heartless theory, I say. But Murray insists it’s true.

– Don De Lillo, White Noise (Penguin Classics Deluxe Editio)

By Kevin Holtsberry • Views • 0 • Tags: , ,