Before Marilyn Manson caused Columbine, before the internet brought about paedophilia, television was one of life's great evils. Sucking away at people's souls, brainwashing them, inhibiting their ability to develop and function in society. So the theory went anyway, especially if you listened to Mary Whitehouse and her ilk. You can trace the story back further, at least through the bile of punk and the swagger of rock 'n' roll, but pretty consistently in the post-war world, television has been the chief symbol of consumerism, mass media and all that comes with it, both good and bad.
It is this symbolism that is of chief importance in White Noise, Don DeLillo's perspicacious commentary and satire on contemporary life. It may now be over 25 years since it waas written, but its ideas, thoughts and fears remain just as relevant today. Indeed, in these times of man-made catastrophe, total media immersion and unrestrained consumerism, it is showing that it has some legs, and like the best works of art, speaks through the ages. For despite all of these thoroughly modern aspects, it's beating heart is that of a relationship between man and woman, husband and wife, mother and father, plus their various offspring.
Jack and Babette's relationship is touching and heartfelt, one that perhaps they have been looking for all their lives and only reached having lived through several others. The first central point is universal, that of love, in various guises – familial, companionable and true. The other is that of death, the spectre that one days gets us all. And they fear it, do our heroes, as do we all in some way I suppose. Fear of the unknown, fear of loneliness, abandonment, lack of purpose. As the novel reflects, of those two great powers, death will always win.
A cheerful thought then, but there is also hope in there. Fall and redemption at the climax, and glorious hope right at the end. Slotting neatly in as the missing link between Heller's Something Happened and Coupland's Generation X, this social commentary-cum-family portrait is worthy of all the plaudits that have been heaped on it.
Book number: 61
Title: White Noise
Author: Don DeLillo
Category: Books with colours in the title
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