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Guy teaches Hitler Studies but doesn't know German. There is a conversation about the similarities between Hitler and Elvis. the word "ultramodern" is used on the back of the book to hype it. white noise posted:When the showing ended, someone asked about the plot to kill Hitler. The discussion moved to plots in general. I found myself saying to the assembled heads, "All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers' plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of childrens's games. We edge nearer death every time we plot. It is like a contract that all must sign, the plotters as well as those who are the targets of the plot." Is this true? Why did I say it? What does it mean? white noise posted:"Elvis confided in Gladys. He brought his girlfriends around to meet her." white noise posted:They inserted me in an imaging block, some kind of computerized scanner. Someone say typing at a console, transmitting a message to the machine that would make my body transparent. I heard magnetic winds, saw flashes of northern light. People crossed the hall like wandering souls, holding their urine aloft in pale beakers. I stood in a room the size of a closet. They told me to hold one finger in front of my face, close my left eye. The panel slid shut, a white light flashed. They were trying to help me, to save me.
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Apr 14, 2014 23:24
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White Noise is pretty widely assigned so I'm sure plenty of people have read it. What did you think of it? How did you react to it when you read it? Personally, I'm not a huge fan. It's a brilliant satire of New Yorker-style academic fiction and the world of academic literature, but ultimately that kind of thing gets somewhat self-referential. At its best moments -- scenes like the daughter's nighttime muttering of "Toyota Celica" -- it's a powerful indictment of and commentary on late-twentieth-century American life. Unfortunately it's hard to to read it in the twenty-first century without thinking "wow, this whole book is chock the gently caress full of first world problems." Even when that inherent banality and triviality is precisely the point DeLillo is getting at, he's still ultimately spending a great deal of time talking about banalities and trivialities. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Apr 15, 2014 |
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Apr 15, 2014 00:08
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:White Noise is pretty widely assigned so I'm sure plenty of people have read it. What did you think of it? How did you react to it when you read it? I'm not well read enough to really get a feel for what the New yorker style academic fiction is especially back in the mid 80s, but i get the sense that the satire was much more broadly focused less on other works but more about how society is/was. I wouldn't call it my favorite of his books, thats probably the names, but it was still interesting and i wouldnt go far as trivialize it as a novel about white people problems. I mean a lot of novels could get that thrown at them, but i feel like yeah white noise does talk about this guys failed marriages and failing marriage and his just general malaise in society as one of the main thrusts of the narrative. That's cool I think! And while those may seem trivial and banal looking from outside as a reader I dont see it as something taking away from it. I guess its more about how much you enjoy Delillo's dialogue too since most of the conversations are not about how to save the world from the evil that is Aku. Not to mention that the industrial chemical incident gives a chance for some weightier things to be said/thought about. white noise posted:I fired the gun, the weapon, the pistol, the firearm, the automatic. The sound snowballed in the white room, adding on reflected waves. I watched blood squirt from the victim's midsection. A delicate arc. I marveled at the rich color, sense the color-causing action of nonnucleated cells. THe flow diminished to a trickle, spread across the tile floor. I saw beyond words. I know what red was, saw i t in terms of dominant wavelength, luminance, purity. Mink's pain was beautiful, intense. I feel like that's portraying something a lot more invigorating to read than the novel you're talking about but I can see some of what you're getting at.
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Apr 15, 2014 01:23
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AllanGordon posted:I mean a lot of novels could get that thrown at them, but i feel like yeah white noise does talk about this guys failed marriages and failing marriage and his just general malaise in society as one of the main thrusts of the narrative. That's cool I think! And while those may seem trivial and banal looking from outside as a reader I dont see it as something taking away from it. I guess its more about how much you enjoy Delillo's dialogue too since most of the conversations are not about how to save the world from the evil that is Aku. Not to mention that the industrial chemical incident gives a chance for some weightier things to be said/thought about. Yeah, Delillo's writing is masterful and I think that's where the work's merit lies. I'm not saying it's a bad book or anything, just my own personal reaction when I read it a few years ago. Even with the characters' obsession with death, it's almost like the only reason death matters is that it's the only thing that can reliably puncture the giant bubble of privilege the characters live within. Don't get me wrong it's a brilliant book. It's just the sort of book that when I read it I couldn't help but think "wow, this really speaks to the hardships and travails of tenured professors."
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Apr 15, 2014 02:31
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Even with the characters' obsession with death, it's almost like the only reason death matters is that it's the only thing that can reliably puncture the giant bubble of privilege the characters live within. I thought that was the point though.
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Apr 15, 2014 02:52
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Stravinsky posted:I thought that was the point though. did you ever make that poetry thread? or is there one that isn't real bad? only real poetry ive read is a book of poems by frank o'hara i got years ago which i enjoyed quite a bit.
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Apr 15, 2014 03:07
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Stravinsky posted:I thought that was the point though. It is! But even so, I'm still ultimately reading at length about the problems of massively privileged characters, and there's a limit on how much of that I have patience for in a single book. Does layering on the irony and the satire do enough to puncture that bubble? I can see how it would for a lot of readers (maybe most readers?) but when I read it, it came across as a novel that ultimately remains circumscribed within the worldview of the very ivory tower it satirizes. The satire illuminates the academic bubble but never really punctures it, at least from what I remember (again it's been a few years). I should probably give it another chance at some point but my to-read list is long enough these days that I doubt I'll get to it again any time soon. Anyway, I've talked enough -- what did y'all think of it?
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Apr 15, 2014 03:16
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AllanGordon posted:did you ever make that poetry thread? or is there one that isn't real bad? only real poetry ive read is a book of poems by frank o'hara i got years ago which i enjoyed quite a bit. Declan MacManus beat me to it: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3608630 Hieronymous Alloy posted:It is! But even so, I'm still ultimately reading at length about the problems of massively privileged characters, and there's a limit on how much of that I have patience for in a single book. Does layering on the irony and the satire do enough to puncture that bubble? I can see how it would for a lot of readers (maybe most readers?) but when I read it, it came across as a novel that ultimately remains circumscribed within the worldview of the very ivory tower it satirizes. The satire illuminates the academic bubble but never really punctures it, at least from what I remember (again it's been a few years). Ok, I can totally see where your coming from. The book is written from that viewpoint, and it makes fun of it but it is very insular. To make a terrible comparison, its like if you hang out with military guys and they are making military jokes and you get it but its really not the same for you as it is to them. I have a high tolerance for privileged white dudes complaining, because just glancing at some of the books I have its a bunch of privileged white dudes complaining about privileged white dude stuff.
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Apr 15, 2014 03:27
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It is! But even so, I'm still ultimately reading at length about the problems of massively privileged characters, and there's a limit on how much of that I have patience for in a single book. Does layering on the irony and the satire do enough to puncture that bubble? I can see how it would for a lot of readers (maybe most readers?) but when I read it, it came across as a novel that ultimately remains circumscribed within the worldview of the very ivory tower it satirizes. The satire illuminates the academic bubble but never really punctures it, at least from what I remember (again it's been a few years). I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was interesting set up and there were quite a few scenes that I can remember now even though its probably been half a decade since I read it. Definitely worth a read though I can't think of any of his books I've read that wouldn't be. I think you're getting too invested in the idea that the book was mainly written as a satire about this educated wasp dude bullshitting his way into a professorship. I mean that is definitely a component but I wouldn't really put the full emphasis on it. Maybe its because I read it before I really got a view of the world of higher academics or something I dunno. Im also finding the argument about these characters being privileged somewhat troubling though as if that is a criteria that novels should be judged by. I mean I rank what I read based on if I think its interesting or not. Is this case about this being a book about privileged characters you keep bringing up your way to say you didn't find it interesting because they were privileged?
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Apr 15, 2014 03:34
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Stravinsky posted:Declan MacManus beat me to it: Yeah, that's a relatively good way of phrasing it. At the time I was hanging out with a lot of literature professors and grad students and read it on their recommendation, but I think it spoke more to them than it did to me. AllanGordon posted:
Judge books by whatever standards you want! I won't judge you for it =) The book was certainly interesting, that's not really it. Just . . . insular rather than universal. It may've been oversold to me. Based on the recommendations I'd gotten, I went into the book expecting a book that spoke to the human condition generally, and instead I felt like I was reading a book that pretty much spoke to the condition of affluent white males in twentieth century American academia. Still interesting, sure, but . . . not Joyce, not Faulkner. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Apr 15, 2014 |
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Apr 15, 2014 03:40
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White Noise is the only one of DeLillo's books I enjoy in its entirety. The big difference is humor. The book is really funny a lot of the time. The trials and tribulations of the Gladney family and Jack's colleagues are satirically presented, which is a safety valve that allows me to enjoy the book without feeling complicit in an affirmation of their privilege. There are arguments to be made, I'm sure, that ironic distance is the most privileged stance at all, but gently caress it: it makes the book enjoyable to me. I much prefer it to when DeLillo writes about third world stuff, like in Mao II. At least here he's not a tourist. It is also ferociously well-written. His description of hazmatted chemical spill workers moving with "lunar caution" is something I remember frequently (it would be funny if I'm remembering it wrong: it's been about five years since I read the book). Ditto Wilder crying for hours in the car, and Heinrich and Jack and the other fathers and sons watching the old folks home burn down. The whole media unfolding of the Airborne Toxic Event encapsulates the nature of every mass tragedy in this day and age. To me, it's one of the best things ever written about 9/11 and it was written 20 years early. Hieronymous Alloy posted:the daughter's nighttime muttering of "Toyota Celica" -- it's a powerful indictment of and commentary on late-twentieth-century American life. See -- and I'm not saying you can't read it that way -- but to me, that scene is just really funny. The guy is desperate for innocence and meaning...what could be more innocent and meaningful than the murmurings of a sleeping child? He bends down to listen aaand... 
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Apr 15, 2014 21:20
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dogcrash truther posted:
Oh definitely, that's one of the reasons I picked that moment out. It's hilarious, the prose sets up the joke perfectly, and the joke has a lancet point, too. It's a great moment.
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Apr 15, 2014 21:25
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:White Noise is pretty widely assigned so I'm sure plenty of people have read it. Were we talking about people from this forum or in general?
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Apr 16, 2014 02:14
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Yeah, this book is hot poo poo.
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Apr 17, 2014 04:41
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I like this book a lot. Especially the narration from which I took the customer title below my name. I had a couple friends who said they didn't like it because they thought it was too "cold". Never understood that.
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Apr 17, 2014 20:32
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Stravinsky posted:I have a high tolerance for privileged white dudes complaining
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Apr 21, 2014 00:40
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It is! But even so, I'm still ultimately reading at length about the problems of massively privileged characters, and there's a limit on how much of that I have patience for in a single book. Does layering on the irony and the satire do enough to puncture that bubble? I can see how it would for a lot of readers (maybe most readers?) but when I read it, it came across as a novel that ultimately remains circumscribed within the worldview of the very ivory tower it satirizes. The satire illuminates the academic bubble but never really punctures it, at least from what I remember (again it's been a few years). You're insufferable. What, is a book only worthwhile if it's about the trials and tribulations of the downtrodden?
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Apr 21, 2014 02:50
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blue squares posted:You're insufferable. What, is a book only worthwhile if it's about the trials and tribulations of the downtrodden?  That's not even remotely what I was saying. If you're just trying to troll me at least try harder than that. I'll do you the credit of taking your argument seriously, though, since I guess I wasn't being clear. Almost anything might be "worthwhile" depending on what a particular reader wants. White Noise in particular, for me, felt like a self-satirizing take on a genre I've already read a lot of, i.e., books about the life & times of upper middle class white academics. (Compare with, say, Pale Fire). And partly because of that, and partly because it never really seems to transcend that, it just wasn't as interesting as it could have been. It's still funny and it has some truly inspired moments (as above, the Toyota Celica passage is brilliant) but ultimately it's . . . not a book I have a burning desire to re-read. Pale Fire, I'm going to re-read probably at least once a decade. White Noise felt like a read-once. Ultimately, I think White Noise is a good book but one that's over-assigned in college literature classes, for reasons similar to why A Separate Peace gets over-assigned in high school classes. Past that . . . hrm. There's a privilege element here too. A book doesn't have to be "about the trials and tribulations of the downtrodden" to be worth reading, but reading a book like this after the 2008 crisis, when the type of upper-middle-class prosperity it's kvetching about has begun to vanish from the American landscape, it is hard to read this book without the phrase "white people problems" jumping into your head. It was one thing to read this book in the late 80's when the economy was doing well and the students it was assigned to had a decent chance of becoming the academics it satirizes. These days it's a whole different ballgame; the odds of getting a tenure-track position are vanishingly small, and as a result many of the book's jokes (like the obviously unqualified Hitler Studies professor who doesn't even speak German) that were just funny in 1985 are now tauntingly cruel. That doesn't mean every book has to be Les Miserables but this is a book where the changing economic situation seems to almost inevitably change the way it reads. The book's audience and the book's characters used to be in the same economic class; they aren't any more, and that changes things. It used to be self-satire; now it's punching down. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 21, 2014 03:28
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I remember reading White Noise years ago in college and liking it, but finding it a little over my head. Then I re-read it a while back after reading The Corrections (which reminded me of White Noise, just not as interesting) and suddenly it all clicked and I thought it was hilarious. It's not my fav DeLillo - I'd probably lean towards The Names, Pafko at the Bat or maybe Libra - but I can see why it's his most famous book. It's still been a long time since I read it, but my favourite scene is after Gladney's been rained on and he's talking to an Army guy who runs a test on him and explains that Gladney's going to die, but he can't tell him when. DeLillo plays it pretty straight, but the absurdity of the whole scene makes me smile whenever I think of it.
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Apr 21, 2014 19:43
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:...These days it's a whole different ballgame; the odds of getting a tenure-track position are vanishingly small, and as a result many of the book's jokes (like the obviously unqualified Hitler Studies professor who doesn't even speak German) that were just funny in 1985 are now tauntingly cruel... Ha. Good points; I agree. I think similarly, our perception of disaster has changed since that seen was written. Of course death constantly threatens to intrude into the bubble the characters live in, but it's unable to pierce it. The plane scene is a threat, but ultimately nothing happens and everyone's lives continue uninterrupted. The airborne toxic event brings death into the novel, but only in an abstract way -- Gladney knows he's going to die, but not when, which changes nothing about his situation; knowing that he's going to die but not when is the state of everyone, poisoned or not. After 9/11 etc., highly publicized mass shootings, and over a decade of war, it seems naive, at best, to consider catastrophic death as something that happens only in the abstract. Gladney fears death-by-plane only once disaster starts to happen, whereas nowdays almost everyone that gets on a plane has thought, however briefly, "I wonder if there are any terrorists on board that are going to blow us up."
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Apr 21, 2014 21:48
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I just don't understand the perspective that's it's not enough for a book to be really funny and well-written because. I like funny things and good writing. As far as Pale Fire goes, let's be honest. It's the hilarious footnotes and not all the John Shade cracker barrel poet daughter death poo poo that makes it good.
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Jun 7, 2014 16:35
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It is! But even so, I'm still ultimately reading at length about the problems of massively privileged characters, and there's a limit on how much of that I have patience for in a single book. It's funny, but it overstays it's welcome. You know, I think it would have been better to space out the development of the airborne toxic event as it gradually builds throughout the whole novel instead of being wrapped up in the first few chapters, putting the evacuation (and 'Toyota Celica') at the end. Maybe cut out that stuff about the father-in-law that seemed to go nowhere.
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Jun 9, 2014 02:10
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AllanGordon posted:Were we talking about people from this forum or in general? If you have archives, this was an Awful book of the month.
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Jun 9, 2014 15:13
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Phyzzle posted:It's funny, but it overstays it's welcome. You know, I think it would have been better to space out the development of the airborne toxic event as it gradually builds throughout the whole novel instead of being wrapped up in the first few chapters, putting the evacuation (and 'Toyota Celica') at the end. Maybe cut out that stuff about the father-in-law that seemed to go nowhere. I think you're remembering the book wrong. The airborne toxic event occupies roughly the middle third, not the beginning
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Jun 13, 2014 03:28
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I hated this book. They somehow shoehorned this book into my "Technology and Literature" class, and I frankly didn't feel like it fit with the rest of the class (for reference, our other reading was: Mona Lisa Overdrive, The Martian Chronicles, Being There, Pattern Recognition). I describe this book to anyone who asks thus: This was not DeLillo's first novel, but it was his 'breakout' work, which means he had published before. I suspect that he thought his prior work was brilliant, and simmered at the thought that his work was not being properly appreciated. Thus, he set out to write the worst piece of poo poo book he could, and it is to his surprise and disgust that it not only got published, but won awards and was widespread recognition! I like to picture DeLillo rocking back and forth in a chair and muttering "They just don't get it, they just don't get it, they just don't get it." The punchline is that this schlock gets assigned to unsuspecting college students, who are thus forced to perpetuate sales, and author new papers and essays, which keeps this book active in the academic mind-sphere. My biggest complaint about the book is that it doesn't really go anywhere, it tries to live almost entirely on descriptions but without any action to drive the plot forward. "We hosed around and didn't do much, then there was a toxic event, but then we all went back to our dull, uninteresting, humdrum, 'death-would-be-such-sweet-release-from-this-boredom' existences" is NOT a good book. The 'humorous' penultimate chapter where whats-his-face goes after the drug pusher and tries to kill-him-then-gets-shot-then-gets-remorseful-then-takes-him-to-the-hospital couldn't redeem this shitpile of a novel. Slogging through each page was torture. Un-funny satire is miserable.
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Jun 13, 2014 22:59
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All I can see is:wintermuteCF posted:...... "They just don't get it, they just don't get it, they just don't get it." ....... It's a postmodern book. It's DeLillo. Plot is secondary. You just didn't get it.
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Jun 14, 2014 00:19
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Darn, I've only read Ratner's Star.
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Jun 15, 2014 06:09
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If you don't hate DeLillo most of all for Mao II, you don't yet hate DeLillo. edit; You know what though, Mao II is probably more funny-bad than frustratingly bad. Hate's too strong a word, it's just amazing he really wrote it. And "it" here could mean many different things, like the way the characters just wander around feeling indifferent, or the bland prose, or the way everyone worships the DeLillo stand-in protagonist. Time to read Zinn fucked around with this message at 11:32 on Jun 18, 2014 |
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Jun 18, 2014 11:26
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All I can see is:blue squares posted:It's a
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Jun 18, 2014 15:23
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wintermuteCF posted:All I can see is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)
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Jun 18, 2014 15:27
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Funny you mention this, I just saw an episode of QI where this was brought up. I don't think this is art. And I understand that there's art I enjoy and art I don't enjoy, and they're all still art. But this doesn't qualify. This is a urinal. And anyone that tries to tell you it's art is full of it.
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Jun 18, 2014 17:39
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wintermuteCF posted:Funny you mention this, I just saw an episode of QI where this was brought up. Sometimes art is about making a statement. And believe me when I say that what Duchamp did there was a very bold statement and thus art in its own right.
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Jun 18, 2014 18:18
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So what kind of books do you like, then?
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Jun 18, 2014 18:31
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blue squares posted:So what kind of books do you like, then? Not this, that's for sure. I read a lot of science fiction - classic, cyberpunk, and modern - some fantasy, more contemporary fiction. I also read a lot of nonfiction - mostly history and philosophy. I agree that White Noise clearly just did not speak to me in any form or fashion. I just struggle to comprehend what person can read White Noise and not be filled with the same sort of loathing for the author that I am.
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Jun 18, 2014 19:44
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wintermuteCF posted:Funny you mention this, I just saw an episode of QI where this was brought up. drat, that's a good point.
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Jun 18, 2014 19:54
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Hieronymous Alloy maybe you would have a better view of this book if you replaced the words Hitler studies with King Aurthur studies 
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Jun 18, 2014 19:57
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Stravinsky posted:Hieronymous Alloy maybe you would have a better view of this book if you replaced the words Hitler studies with King Aurthur studies Next time I read it I'll just tell myself that it's actually urban fantasy about the threat of an escaped Air Elemental.
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Jun 18, 2014 20:18
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I also read this book last year because somebody recommended it to me in the "Book recommedation megathread" in response to my request of more books/authors like Vonnegut and Catch-22*. I enjoyed it although I didn't like any of the characters. With this I mean that although they characters have some personality and/or are good caricatures (the kids a bit too sassy/smart maybe) I didn't feel any attachment to them and didn't care what happened in their life. Maybe because the family situation and conversations felt too alien to me, I don't know. I enjoyed it nevertheless, but it isn't a book I'd actively recommend. *) I also got recommended Family Fang (which was very very good until midway when the author decided the book had to have some plot besides cool anecdotes and then it was pretty bad), How To Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe (which I didn't like), God is Dead (haven't read it) and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (which I haven't read despite really liking the premise).
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Jun 19, 2014 00:00
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wintermuteCF posted:Funny you mention this, I just saw an episode of QI where this was brought up.
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Jun 19, 2014 00:31
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wintermuteCF posted:Funny you mention this, I just saw an episode of QI where this was brought up. That's just like, your opinion, man! But please, tell me more about how something qualifies as art!
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Jun 19, 2014 16:47
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