White Noise
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
White Noise
| Author | Don DeLillo |
|---|---|
| Published | 1985 |
| Pages | 326 |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Don DeLillo’s National Book Award winner about Jack Gladney, a professor of Hitler studies, and his family’s saturation in television, supermarkets and pharmaceutical hope — until “The Airborne Toxic Event” turns ambient dread into an evacuation. Its subject is the fear of death and the noise a consumer culture generates to drown it; the standard text for teaching American postmodern fiction. |
Where I heard about it
- Brendan McCord — on his Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, late in Literature and Societal Critique, after Wolfe and Girard and before Houellebecq — a run reading contemporary novels as diagnoses of what mass culture does to attention and belief. Shared March 2026; full transcription on The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.
Connections
- Consumerism — the culture the novel anatomises.
- Postmodernism — the movement the book is the standard American example of.
- Rhetoric — the novel’s recurring subject, the language institutions use to manage fear.
- The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the curriculum this came from.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.