White Noise

Authorities evacuate the grade school Denise and Steffie attend after children complain of headaches, eye irritation, and a metallic taste in their mouths. Men in breathing masks and suits made of “Mylex”—a fictional material suggestive of Mylar—search the school for the source of the problem.

At the supermarket, Jack learns from Steffie that Denise reads the Physicians’ Desk Reference constantly in search of a drug she claims Babette takes in secret. This is the first Jack hears of the mysterious drug but it doesn’t concern him at present. Murray runs into the Gladneys and explains that the supermarket is a place of spiritual rebirth, “full of psychic data” (37).

In the parking lot, the Gladneys hear a rumor that one of the men in Mylex suits collapsed and died while inspecting the school.

In the Gladney family kitchen, Denise berates Babette for chewing sugarless gum containing chemicals that are harmful to rats. Meanwhile, Jack talks to Heinrich, who plays chess by mail with a convicted mass murderer named Tommy Roy Foster. Jack asks Heinrich if he wants to visit his mother, Janet Savory, this summer. After divorcing Jack, Janet left her job at a clandestine think tank, rechristened herself “Mother Devi,” and moved to a cultish ashram in Montana.