White Noise Cyber-Compendia

Here are some resources for you re: White Noise:

...here, from Time's 100 All-Time English-Language Novels, a brief summary and a review from when the book came out.

...here's the NY Times review when the book came out. Also the NY Times DeLillo page on its "Life & Times" section.

...here's The New York Review of Books review when the book came out.

...Last but not least, here is a study guide. (Horrors!)

We'll talk about how to use this material to augment your understanding of the book. I'm primarily interested in using the novel as a springboard to exploring the ways media and consumer culture influences us: our fears, our loves, our hopes, dreams, and aspirations. And we're going to go through it fairly quickly (no more than a week when we get back -- ideally three days). I don't intend to "cover" White Noise in total. It's too complex a book for that. I want its ideas, its preoccupations, "in the room" with us as we think about the big ideas listed above. I also want us to think about the fact that this book was written in the mid-1980s -- the Internet didn't even exist in anything like its current form. No e-mail. Cell phones. Facebook. None of that. How does it hold up a generation after its publication?

It should go without saying (but I'll go ahead and say it anyway) that I don't want you to use the links above as a substitute for reading the book. I want you to use them to help you read the book better, both in terms of efficiency and depth.