White noise

Topics for Discussion and Papers

GENERAL QUESTIONS

1. What are the chief characteristics of Jack Gladney's style? What kinds of sentences does he most often employ? Does this style change over the course of the novel?

2. DeLillo's dialogue has been much praised. To what degree is it "realistic"? In what ways does it depart from documentary realism?

3. Some critics and reviewers have perceived Jack and Babette's family as a typical American family. To what degree is the family typical in its structure and interactions? To what degree is it eccentric or unusual? What other families—for example, those in television sitcoms'—does it resemble? How is it different from such families?

4. Does the White Noise family watch a lot of TV? What kind of TV do they seem to watch? Consider the Friday night ritual of TV viewing. Does this help to bring the family together? Why or why not?

5. Compare the children's attitudes toward television with those of the faculty in the American Environments Department at Jack's college. Do any of these attitudes reflect your own views? Which of them seem most genuine or true?

6. Analyze the three-part lists that punctuate the narrative. Where do they come from? Are they Jack's commentary, or do they emerge from the "noise" around him? Could any of these lists be moved around, or does each seem to belong where it appears? Do any of them comment on the events that surround them? What does the presence of these lists of brand names and places imply about the role of advertising and television in the postmodern world?

7. What is the role of public spaces such as motels, supermarkets, and college classrooms in the novel? How are these places alike? Different?

8. Is Murray Jay Siskind right that the supermarket is full of "psychic data"? What kind of data does it present? Explore his notion that supermarkets are like temples.

9. One of DeLillo's working titles for White Noise was "Panasonic." Another was "The American Book of the Dead." Consider the appropriateness of all three titles. Which aspects of the novel does each emphasize? How does each open new avenues for possible exploration? Which title seems most suitable?
THINKING ABOUT THE CHARACTERS
1. Murray Siskind has been called the "villain" of the novel. What, if anything, seems "villainous" about him? What is attractive about him? How persuasive are his ideas or his ways of arguing?

2. Does Jack change in the course of the novel? Find evidence for or against this possibility.

3. To what degree does Jack see Babette clearly? What does he want from his relationship with her? How does she change in the novel, if at all?

4. Analyze each of the children's habits and behaviors. Why does each one act as he or she does? Do they change after the airborne toxic event? If so, how?

5. Is Wilder a realistically depicted child? In what ways does he seem realistic? What is his symbolic role? What does his presence provide for his mother and stepfather? Is it important that he can't speak?

6. What is Vernon Dickey's role in the novel's plot? Compare and contrast his and Jack's attitudes about mortality.

QUESTIONS ON EACH PART

"WAVES AND RADIATION"

1. Describe the various types of waves and radiation that the characters experience. Which ones are damaging? Are there any that seem beneficial? What kinds are we subjected to in our daily lives?

2. Why are the children so attracted to disaster footage? Why is it upsetting to them that the disaster that they actually experience is not televised?

"THE AIRBORNE TOXIC EVENT"

1. How do the various names given for the toxic spill change? What do these names do besides, or instead of, describing the toxic leak?

2. What does Jack mean when he says that he is a "stranger" in his own dying (142)?

3. How does Jack's attitude toward technology differ from Heinrich's? Are these just generational differences?

4. Why is Jack so impressed with Steffie's "ecstatic chant" of "Toyota Celica"? What could be perceived as "beautiful and mysterious" in her words (155)?

5. Why does the "TV man" at the end of part 2 become so upset? How might his attitude relate to Murray's comments on the "most photographed barn in America"?

"DYLARAMA"

1. Compare and contrast Murray's and Winnie Richards's comments about death. Do you agree with either one?

2. Is Willie Mink a symbol? What does he symbolize? How does his behavior resemble or differ from that of the other characters? Is Jack's confrontation with Willie Mink satisfying as a plot device?

3. Consider the nun's words about belief. Is she right that we need something to believe in? Why? Is she right that religious beliefs have all but vanished from today's world?

4. Consider the three main events in the final chapter: Wilder's tricycle ride across the interstate, the collective viewing of the sunsets, and the final visit to the supermarket. What does Wilder's ride signify? What are people looking for in the sunsets? To what degree are the novel's final words ironic? Do they show a change in Jack's attitudes about death or tabloids or supermarkets?
WORKING WITH "CONTEXTS"

1. In the interview with Anthony DeCurtis excerpted in this volume, DeLillo states that in writing White Noise he tried to discover and portray "a kind of radiance in dailiness." What do you think he means by this phrase? Find moments of such "radiance" in the novel. How is this "extraordinary wonder" related to "extraordinary dread"?

2. DeLillo states in " 'I Never Set Out to Write an Apocalyptic Novel' " that the tabloids are "closest to the spirit of the book." Test this statement by analyzing the role that tabloids play in the airborne toxic event chapter. Do the stories in the tabloids share any common features? Why do people read such stories? What is their "spirit"?

3. In the Paris Review interview DeLillo expands upon Jack Gladney's declaration that "all plots tend to move deathward" (26). Is Jack right? Think of examples that support or contradict this notion. If the statement is true, what may it suggest about our reasons for reading novels? What is the relationship between Jack's comments on plot and the plot of the novel in which he exists?

4. Consider the comment from the Americana excerpt on page 335 of this volume that television is "an electronic form of packaging." What does this mean? To what degree does this description ring true in White Noise or in your own experience?

5. What does the character in the Americana excerpt mean by "the universal third person" (see page 335 of this volume)? Do any scenes in White Noise depict this person?

6. Are there any characters in White Noise who share the views about disasters and technology expressed in the excerpt from End Zone on pages 339-41 of this volume? Who? How are the attitudes in the two novels different?

7. Compare how the characters in White Noise watch television to Lyle Wynant's way of viewing in the excerpt from Players on pages 342-43. Does he resemble Jack Gladney? Jack's children?

8. Does Jack Gladney's way of turning Hitler into a pop cultural icon do justice to Hitler's actions and effects? Does he take Hitler and the Holocaust too lightly? Does DeLillo? Read "Silhouette City" (pages 344—352 of this volume): what does this essay tell us about DeLillo's attitudes toward Hitler and Nazism?

9. Compare the millenníalists in "Silhouette City" to those whom Jack encounters during the airborne toxic event. Why do such people seem to welcome disasters? Are such beliefs and movements becoming more common? If so, why?

10. Read the news stories on the Bhopal toxic leak (pages 353-362).

a. How is DeLillo's treatment of the airborne toxic event different from a journalistic report? How is it similar? How is the behavior of his characters similar or different from the reality portrayed in News-week? How do you think you would react to such an event?

b. Compare the contents and effects of Nyodene D to those of methyl isocyanate. Would the novel be more or less effective if DeLillo had created a more obviously lethal toxin?

c. Many early reviewers were struck by DeLillo's seeming prescience. How likely do you think a toxic spill such as the one in Bhopal, or the one in White Noise, is today?

USING THE CRITICAL ESSAYS

1. Frank Lentricchia isolates two "primal scenes" in DeLillo's work: the discussion of television in the Americana excerpt (pages 335-37), and "the most photographed barn in America" scene in White Noise. How, according to Lentricchia, are these two scenes related? What makes them "primal" for Americans?

2. In his essay on pages 387-411, Tom LeClair describes the Gladney family's trash compactor as a "metaphor in the novel for the novel." To what degree does White Noise fit LeClair's description as a "nov-elistic heap of waste"? Docs DeLillo, as LeClair later suggests, find in the "seeming rubbish ... a kind of knowledge that would provide a more livable set of systemic expectations about life and death"? What knowledge is he referring to? What expectations, if any, about life and death would this knowledge seem to provide?

3. LeClair argues that the Gladney family is oppressed by uncertainty about nature, about their bodies, and about knowledge itself. In applying mechanistic or fragmented forms of thought to phenomena, he claims, they fail to see the "systemic nature of nature." What does LeClair mean by "systemic"? How can such an understanding transform uncertainty into a positive condition? What is the relationship between uncertainty and what LeClair calls "mystery," or what DeLillo, in the excerpt from the Rolling Stone interview (see pages 329-330 in this volume), calls a "sense of transcendence"?

4. John Frow analyzes what he calls a "new mode of typicality" in White Noise, and lists several scenes that dramatize this condition (see pages 421-424). What is this new typicality? Choose three scenes (drawn either from Frow's examples or from elsewhere in the novel) and analyze how each one exemplifies that typicality. Is this typicality truly new?

5. John Duvall ties together Jack Gladney's obsession with Hitler and the novel's treatment of consumerism by claiming that White Noise depicts an America implicated in "proto-fascist urges." (See page 433.) What does he mean by this term? How persuasive is his argument? Are there any other ways of looking at the conditions he describes?

6. According to Duvall, White Noise repeatedly demonstrates how televised or filmed images empty events of content and turn them into pure form. That is, television encourages us to perceive actual events in terms of prepackaged formulas. Discuss Duvall's argument. Can you think of examples from our own world that support his thesis? What sort of formulas do these examples follow? Why do we desire such formulas?

7. Frank Lentricchia and Duvall remark on Murray Jay Siskind's use of the word "aura." The current sense of the word in literary and cultural criticism derives from Walter Benjamin's famous essay. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," which is cited by Duvall and even by DeLillo in interviews. Obtain a copy and read Benjamin's essay. How does his use of "aura" resemble or differ from DeLillo's? Is his argument applicable to White Noise? How?

8. Frow's and Duvall's essays in this volume discuss the influence of Jean Baudrillard on White Noise. Like Lentricchia, they find the "most photographed barn" incident to be highly significant. Obtain and read Jean Baudrillard's writings on "simulations" and discuss why this scene is pertinent. Which critic provides the most helpful links between DeLillo and Baudrillard? How accurate is Baudrillard's notion that reality has been supplanted by simulacra?

9. According to Cornel Bonca, White Noise presents language as a "massive human strategy to cope with mortality." To what degree does language operate this way in the novel? How does Bonca's assessment contrast with the Baudrillardian ideas about language and representation advanced by the other critics?

10. Find the various definitions of "white noise" in the review by Yurick and in the articles by Frow, Bonca, and Saltzman. Compare their interpretations of the title. What thematic aspects does each one emphasize? Is there some significance to the title that all of these critics miss?

11. Saltzman cites DeLillo's admiration for art works that "absorb and incorporate the culture without catering to it." (See page 480.) How, according to Saltzman, does White Noise perform this difficult feat? Do you agree that the novel manages to avoid merely "catering to" our culture? Why or why not?

12. Saltzman believes that DeLillo's use of language counters the deadening effects of the clichés and "rutted assumptions" that the novel depicts. Find some examples of such formulaic language in the novel. Does DeLillo's style function as Saltzman suggests?

13. Maltby portrays DeLillo as adhering to a "Romantic" understanding of visionary moments. Is DeLillo a Romantic, as Maltby argues? Find instances in White Noise or in his other works—particularly End Zone, Great Jones Street, Ratner's Star, The Names, or Underworld—and show how they support or contradict Maltby's thesis.

14. How, according to Maltby, does DeLillo's depiction of children conform to Romantic ideas about childhood? You might begin by comparing his children to those of Wordsworth. Or, using Maltby's article as a guide, compare the role of Tap in The Names to those of the children in White Noise. Does anybody serve a similarly redemptive role in White Noise?
RESEARCH TOPICS

1. Read DeLillo's earlier novel Running Dog and compare the treatment of Hitler in it to the treatment in White Noise. You will also want to read "Silhouette City," the essay included in this volume on pages 344-52.

2. Compare the first-person narrative of Jack Gladney to those of De-Lillo's earlier novels Americana, End Zone, and The Names. What do the narrators have in common? How is Gladney's style and sensibility different from those of these earlier characters? What problems do they share? Do any of them discover a solution?

3. Read DeLillo's play The Day Room. Consider the fact that the "television" is played by an actor in a straitjacket. Does this character resemble anyone in White Noise? Why might it be significant that the television is "insane"? How does DeLillo's treatment of television here help us understand White Noise?

4. DeLillo has acknowledged the influence of Ernest Becker's book The Denial of Death on White Noise. Peruse Becker's book and find passages that DeLillo seems to have used. How does he shape Becker's ideas for his own work? The essays by LeClair and Bonca will be helpful here.

5. Read DeLillo's story, "Videotape" (also chapter 1 of Part 2 of Underworld). How does the depiction of the relationship between violence and television resemble that in White Noise?

6. Compare and contrast the treatment of waste and garbage in Underworld and White Noise.

7. Compare the relationship between advertising and religion in DeLillo's story "The Angel Esmeralda" (now adapted into Underworld) to that in White Noise. Would Underworld's Sister Edgar agree with the nun in White Noise?

8. Read other news stories on environmental disasters, such as Three-Mile Island or Chernobyl. How does DeLillo's portrayal resemble them? What has he emphasized? What has he underplayed?

9. Go on a shopping trip to the mall with a friend or family member. Take notes on the atmosphere, signs and kinds of purchases you make. List your purchases, distinguishing between those made for what Jack calls "immediate needs" and those made for their own sake (84). Which of the two kinds of purchases does the mall most encourage? How do the mall's signs, features, or special events attempt to promote a sense of community? What aspects of it seem to defeat that sense? Can you discover, as Jack says he does, "new aspects" of yourself by shopping in malls (84)? What, if anything, are they? Take notes on how you feel when you return. Do you too "wish to be alone" (84)? Write a brief account of your trip and what you discover.

10. Go on a half-hour shopping trip to the local supermarket with a friend or family member. List the different sounds that each of you hears. List the other forms of "psychic data." Compare notes. Write a brief account of your findings.

11. Collect three or four tabloid newspapers. What kind of stories predominate? Does White Noise offer an accurate picture of their stories or of the needs they seem to serve?

12. Read the works of other twentieth-century satirists such as Evelyn Waugh, Thomas Pynchon, or Joseph Heller. What are the satiric targets in each? How does DeLillo's humor differ from theirs? What underlying ethical, political, or moral values does each author seem to espouse?