White Noise

White Noise is a novel about the overwhelming amount of data, information, static, interference, distractions, and media interactions we receive every day. It’s remarkable that DeLillo wrote this novel in an era before the Internet, when The Ubiquity of Technology and Mass Media seems mild compared to today.

How would Jack’s view of reality be different if he lived in today’s volatile media environment, with corporate networks presenting fractured and frequently competing ideas of basic facts? How would these characters respond if they had smartphones buzzing with updates throughout the novel? Most importantly, has the problem of the “white noise,” the static that keeps us from seeing reality, gotten better or worse?

Below are observations that Jack makes about the mass media surrounding him. Discuss how relevant each one would be if White Noise were set today, rather than in the early 1980s. How relevant does each quote remain today? Are there any revisions you would make to these quotations to adapt them to the present day?

• Jack wonders, “Why is that if a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is” (Chapter 14). How true does this remain today?
• Murray teaches that “we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts.