Chaos Reading discussion

2016 Group Read #1: WHITE NOISE by Don DeLillo

GROUP READ DETAILS
*Reading starts: As soon as you're able. I'm allowing around 4 weeks for this one: two weeks to get the book, plus two weeks to read it.
*Discussion Starts: 26 February 2016
*On the day, I'll add a note to the title of this thread to let people know the discussion's started. In the meantime, people can stop by this thread to chat, and read/post bonus material about the book - but please flag or hide any spoilers until discussion opens.


FACTS & TRIVIA
*Length: 320 pages
*First published: 1985
*Author: Don de Lillo (US)
*White Noise is an example of postmodern literature. It is widely considered DeLillo's "breakout" work.
*De Lillo was initially a well-regarded cult writer, but the publication in 1985 of White Noise brought him widespread recognition and brought him to the attention of a much larger audience. Time included the novel in its list of "Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005".
*DeLillo originally wanted to call the book Panasonic, but the Panasonic Corporation objected.
*The band Airborne Toxic Event took their name from the novel. Also, in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "What's My Line, Part 1" (season 2, episode 9), Principal Snyder (Armin Shimerman) tells Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon), "Whatever comes out of your mouth is a meaningless waste of breath, an airborne toxic event."
*In August 2015, DeLillo's US publishers Simon and Schuster announced that his seventeenth novel, titled Zero K, will be published in May 2016.
*Paul Auster dedicated his books In the Country of Last Things and Leviathan to his friend Don DeLillo.
*Ryan Boudinot and Neal Pollack contributed humour pieces to the journal McSweeney's satirizing DeLillo.
*A fictionalized DeLillo blogs for The Onion.
*A fictionalized version of DeLillo makes a few appearances as a minor character in A.M. Homes' 2012 novel May We Be Forgiven.

I've dusted off my copy of White Noise.

I'm going to try and read this along with the book I have to read for a class. Call me weird but it really bugs me when I have more than three books on my currently reading shelf.

My copy arrived today!

My copy will be at least a week away, maybe two. Hurry up, hurry up...!

I've ordered a copy.

My copy just arrived today! This is my first group read since high school, so it's been about 10 years. Looking forward to chatting with all of you! :)

My copy is a week away.

White Noise is available as an ebook.

12$US on Google Play as of January 31, 2016. In the US at least.

Well, I've started reading it... I'll try and pace myself so I'm still here for the discussion. I'm a slow reader, anyway. For what it's worth, I was expecting to hate it, but am actually finding it quite compelling.

i'm not in the group read but I read white noise a few years back. it's quite a wonderful slice of urban uncertainty.

Richard wrote: "i'm not in the group read but I read white noise a few years back. it's quite a wonderful slice of urban uncertainty."

No reason you can't jump in when the discussion starts, Richard!

I've already read it a few years back, but I will skim/read along with you all.

The 26th seem a long way from now . . .

I know, I know - patience.

My copy arrived today. Running off to start.

Are you guys reading this??!!

Yep--almost done. The discussion kicks off on the 26th of this month! (Be wary of those Dylar memory side-effects... )

Yes, about halfway through.

well... I'm getting to it ;-)

I finished re-reading it a couple of days ago.

This was a time period I lived through and too many things ring a bell, but I'm not sure. 'Dylar' wasn't the only bad chemical floating around in the 80's in America. You could smoke anywhere for example. And people did!

Yep, they sure did. Right at the dinner table while we were eating dinner. Smoked that it is.

Jennifer wrote: "Yep, they sure did. Right at the dinner table while we were eating dinner. Smoked that it is."

Yes the 80's were different, some people ate at the dinner table too.

Personally, I was never sure whether one ate while smoking or smoked while eating. A question worthy of one of the children in White Noise . . .

I am sure they would make a grand conversation of it.

CD wrote: "Jennifer wrote: "Yep, they sure did. Right at the dinner table while we were eating dinner. Smoked that it is."

Yes the 80's were different, some people ate at the dinner table too.

Personally, ..."

By the 80s most in the smokers in my family were starting to quit. I smoked briefly. I believe it was usually an after dinner activity.

Well, most of us didn't smoke while we were eating. But lighting up before everybody else had finished was not at all uncommon.

I quit on November 4th, 1984, but who's counting... for the first ten years I could tell you to the minute.

I remember asking my mum not to smoke in my bedroom (in the late 70s) and she utterly refused to be told what to do!

I'm loving the book, but not sure whether I'll get it finished by the 26th. It arrived quite late..

Can you even purchase ashtrays any more?

Jennifer wrote: "Can you even purchase ashtrays any more?"

I miss all the promotional matchbook covers. I have a huge collection going back to my youth. The matches were discarded, obviously, or I would have lost the collection long ago to an errant spark or something!

Ruby wrote: "I remember asking my mum not to smoke in my bedroom (in the late 70s) and she utterly refused to be told what to do!

I'm loving the book, but not sure whether I'll get it finished by the 26th. It ..."

It reads faster the further you get in the book.

Jennifer wrote: "Can you even purchase ashtrays any more?"

With greater difficulty than you might think! I had to go to a bong shop!

CD wrote: "I miss all the promotional matchbook covers. I have a huge collection going back to my youth. The matches were discarded, obviously, or I..."

My parents had an oversize coloured glass goblet with hundreds of them in. I used to pinch them as a sneaky teenager. Can't believe they got thrown away!

Ruby wrote: "Jennifer wrote: "Can you even purchase ashtrays any more?"

With greater difficulty than you might think! I had to go to a bong shop!"

I remember making ones in art class...

I remember going to see a Bond movie with my mother when I was about 9. she lit up as soon as we sat down and a woman behind us said "excuse me, this is the non smoking area"

non smoking was about 3 rows, the entire rest of the cinema was clotted with smoke. we moved and I watched a roger moore bond through a haze that I thought was perfectly natural

to this day the smell of stale morning after cigarette smoke reminds me of being a kid

There is a scene in the movie Super 8, the town is meeting at the community center. There is this haze of smoke. It brought about a huge sense of nostalgia. Crazy. I know.

Good night everyone. Just greeting you all, as i have just joined good read and also this group and trying to get familiarized with this site

I'm still like a little kid when we leave a restaurant and they have promotional matchbooks (fire & graphic design--what's not to love?!!).

My grandmother smoked regularly though never at the dinner table. She'd sit in the kitchen smoking, drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer poured into one of her adorable little glasses with flowers on the side, doing the crossword puzzle in the Baltimore Sun, and listening to the Orioles baseball game on the radio. Very sweet woman... unless you hid her cigarettes.

Julie wrote: "Good night everyone. Just greeting you all, as i have just joined good read and also this group and trying to get familiarized with this site"

Welcome to the group--feel free to introduce yourself on our intro thread or just dive into the discussions!

Discussion is now OPEN!
That means spoilers are allowed (proceed with caution if you're not done reading)...

A few discussion questions to get us started (feel free to raise your own or touch on topics of interest):


- What makes this book postmodern?

- How many of its topics/themes/predictions still seem relevant to today's world (some 31 years after its publication)?

- How do each of the characters deal with their fear of death?

- Why do you think the book is broken up into three parts (I: Waves & Radiation; II: The Airborne Toxic Event; III: Dylarama) and how do these parts differ and relate to one another?

- What is Hitler's significance to this novel?

- What role does humor play in the writing?

Darn good thing I just bought the book.

Did you just say "postmodern"? I wish you hadn't said that... ;-)

Personally, I think there are really two types of "postmodern" books--ones that experiment with form/experimentation in a certain manner and ones that deal with the contemporary disconnect between technology/capitalism and society (topics/issues that exist whether you call them "postmodern" or not). This one seems more like the latter. But now I've lowered your expectations, thereby increasing the degree to which you will enjoy this book :p

I'll hold you to it!

Derek, I love this book.

Well....I am not sure about the whole post modern thing. Actually, I could care less as to how books are labeled...so I tend to not pay any attention.

We do have a current airborne toxic event happening in California. There is a natural gas plant that is leaking hundreds of...gallons (however they measure that) natural gas into the air. Here is a link to an article.

http://news.discovery.com/earth/calif...

Jennifer wrote: "Well....I am not sure about the whole post modern thing. Actually, I could care less as to how books are labeled...so I tend to not pay any attention.

We do have a current airborne toxic event ha..."

That must make for some interesting reading, then! I've done most of my reading so far (as I'm not quite finished) in the middle of a shopping mall. This too feels right somehow!

As for the Hitler thing, did anyone see this week's episode of Shameless? Chucky gets suspended for writing an essay at school on "what makes Hitler such a great American". :)

While I'm not quite ready to answer the questions yet, I would also like to point out that there's (what I consider to be) a Blackstar reference in it. Did anyone else spot it?

Jennifer, Did the airborne toxic event start after you finished reading the novel or during... ?!!

Ruby, I saw that episode (they continually manage to make me feel unsympathetic toward Chucky, which must be some higher art at work 'cause he's got everything going against him). The shopping mall seems like an ideal setting for reading this novel (if you can't find your own airborne toxic event under which to take shelter with a good book). Did the Backstar reference deal with ritual? I think I missed it.

There are so many little gems and angles to this book--like how we look to the state or authority to label and/or allay our fears:

"The airborne toxic event."
He spoke these words in a clipped and foreboding manner, syllable by syllable, as if he sensed the threat in state created terminology.

Marc wrote: "Discussion is now OPEN!
That means spoilers are allowed (proceed with caution if you're not done reading)...

A few discussion questions to get us started (feel free to raise your own or touch on ..."

If anything, White Noise is satire on Postmodernism as it isn't obscurant enough to be as empty as the Postmodernist construction needs.

It is nihilist on many of topics and skewers the postmodernist disenchantment with the accepted and traditional. An example is the examination of the contents of the family's trash compactor contents which literally completely tosses into the philosophical garbage bin Derrida's entire deconstructivist concept. A rather clever tongue in cheek or pinched nose assault.

If anything, I've always maintained that DeLillo is Gonzo Journalism on Seconal. It is muted and sleepy while remaining pointed and insightful to the discussion or topic at hand. DeLillo is serious about what he is writing (I think) while not becoming as obsessed with the angst driven self-ideation and observation that most of the 'Post-Modernists' require their audience to belive is necessary.

DeLillo's very use of the anxiety laden story element of the inventor of 'school of study', i.e. Hitler studies, that he himself can't or hasn't fully participated in due to lack of a seeming basic skill, German language proficiency, is a modernist (not post) construction of irony.

Now that I've got that out of my system, I'll take a deep breath and return later to the rest of themes in the story!!

Marc wrote: "Jennifer, Did the airborne toxic event start after you finished reading the novel or during... ?!!

Ruby, I saw that episode (they continually manage to make me feel unsympathetic toward Chucky, wh..."

The airborne toxic event has been going on for several months. families evacuated the whole whole nine yards. Not sure if there are German shepherds and men in Mylex suits....

When I was in high school I experienced this :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEPCON_...

We lived about near the plant.

How many of its topics/themes/predictions still seem relevant to today's world (some 31 years after its publication)?

I found EVERYTHING to be relevant. Nothing has changed.

Except the packaging of the generic items from the grocery store. They are no longer black and white and obvious. Now they have brightly colored packing, carry names like "Private Selection".....

Here's a PDF with bonus reels for anyone having trouble finding the book. I thought I had it on my shelf, but when I went looking for it, I couldn't find it! Must have checked it out of the Library.

http://webdelprofesor.ula.ve/humanida...

- What is Hitler's significance to this novel?

A. Hitler's manifesto, and really only known major work, is title Mein Kampf. That is of course German for My Struggle.

Isn't this book at least partially about the struggle of one Jack Gladney against all things? What better field of study to invent for a man who is trying to find his Nische than 'Hitler Studies'?