White Noise Text and Criticism Author:Don DeLillo, Mark Osteen (Editor) Winner of the National Book Award in 1985, White Noise is the story of Jack and Babette and their children from their six or so various marriages. 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 from the ta... more »bloids 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.
White Noise: The Text --
from Matters of Fact and Fiction / Anthony DeCurtis --
from Don DeLillo: The Art of Fiction / Adam Begley --
"'I Never Set Out to Write and Apocalyptic Novel'" / Caryn James --
from Americana ; from End Zone ; from PLayers ; Silhouette City: Hitler, Manson, and the Millenium / Don DeLillo --
Stories on the toxic leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India / Newsweek --
Fleeing Death in a World of Hyper-Babble / Sol Yurick --
Death by Inches / Albert Mobilio --
Conspirators / Diane Johnson --
A Connoisseur of Fear / Pico Iyer --
Closing the Loops: White Noise / Tom LeClair. Don Delillo's Primal Scenes / Frank Lentricchia --
The Last Things Before the Last: Notes on White Noise / John Frow --
The (Super)Marketplace of Images: Television as Unmediated Mediation in DeLillo's White Noise / John N. Duvall --
Don DeLillo's White Noise: The Natural Language of the Species / Cornel Bonca --
THe Figure in the Static: White Noise / Arthur M. Saltzman --