Customer response to "How sad if this is one of the great books from the 80's"

Yeah, DeLillo doesn't rely on gimmick and shock value to pull in the mongoloid readers like Palahniuk does.

One-star reviews of White Noise from Amazon.com

Verification, others

Warning--just stay away

I just a read a short story of his in the latest New Yorker and was reminded of this book, and it struck me how much he hasn't changed in 20 years. Fist of all academics writing about academics is as bad as writers writing a book about a writer writing a book. In general the book is condescending, obvious with characters who I had absolutely no interest in.

Infuriatingly Self Important

It is rare that I have a reaction of violent dislike to a book, and even books that I do not especially like I can find something respectable or interesting about the text, but I hate this book. This is the sort of literature that gets first-year philosophy majors to cream themselves because it is oh-so-insightful and important, and allows all the armchair intellectuals of the world to feel a little bit more superior because they assume the cleverness of Delillo's writing is lost on lesser minds. This isn't a novel, it's an extended postmodern manifesto that exposes the philosophy for the empty, whiny system of nihilism that it is. This novel has no characters, only insufferable stereotypes who can't walk through a produce isle at the grocery store without disappearing up their butts with lengthy, obnoxious monologues that somehow equate buying apples with death (exemplified by the single most unbearable character I have ever come across, Murray); it doesn't have drama, only histrionics. What makes this a thoroughly unenjoyable and ultimately uninteresting is that it is a work that sags under the weight of its own importance; it is so persistently self-conscious that I can't take it seriously as a work of literature--it spends a couple hundred pages trying to convince me how great it is without actually being great. What's more, if this novel were a failure as a novel but still offered some genuine insight into the experience of the individual in a post-modern world, it would still succeed as a work of philosophy. But it doesn't; every sentence feels like a catch-phrase rather than a substantive statement.

The difficult thing about criticizing a novel like this is that defenses of it are always predicated on the notion that disliking it reflects a misunderstanding of postmodernism itself--that is, those who dislike this novel obviously are not sophisticated enough to untangle the dense threads of philosophic intent that make it what it is. But, I do understand postmodernism (don't like it but still understand it) and still feel this is a failure. While reading it I was reminded of the infinitely superior Cat's Cradle (Vonnegut), and thought that this is what that great work would read like if stripped of all its originality and craft. That is a successful postmodern novel; this one is several long hours of my life I will never get back.

God Did I try

For years I heard what a wonderful book this is. Finally I bought it to read. And read, and read, and read, even though my wife, a brilliant engineer said she hated it when she read it ten years ago and that I was wasting my time. It took me a month to finish, and every night it put me to sleep after about three pages. The Hitler studies concept was brilliant (except Mel Brooks had already done it) and there were indeed some amusing parts, but pretentious does not begin to describe this book. Thank God for... readers because I thought surely something is wrong with me if I'm the only person in the world except for my wife who doesn't like this book. Then I found out I wasn't alone--there are a lot of us on the sidewalk who see that this emperor isn't wearing any clothes. Not only that, he's butt ugly besides. I absoulely recommend this book. You will, like many, either love it and join the cult, or like many of the rest of us, be utterly amused that so little can be taken for so much by so many. One way or another, you are going to feel good about yourself, and so much smarter. In my case, I decided I am much too smart for this book. Definitely decide for yourself; it's a litmus test of intelligence, and you can't fail.

Boring as Hell

Books like this (and for the most part, many works of Pynchon and Vonnegut) provide social commentary and overblown allegories of life in the modern age. White Noise is trying so hard to teach lessons and issue warnings that the message comes across as subtly as a teacher holding up multiplication table flash cards. Along with Breakfast of Champions and The Crying of Lot 49, this is the kind of book that I will no longer feel guilty about not liking. Boring and unrealistic, with a plot that wanders like a donkey lost in the desert, this self-important book provides me with absolutely no reading enjoyment. It's like listening to a 20 minute guitar solo by some bored jazz musician who turns his back to the audience. I've left the concert, see you at the bar. Read William Vollmann instead.

absolutely unreadable - no, unless your teacher insists,

I'd tried to read White Noise a number of times, thrown it across the room each time. But this time, with a couple of transatlantic plane flights in my arsenal, I couldn't fail to finish, right?

Wrong. White Noise is terrible. It's full of dialogue that no one would ever say, precious, precious, gimicky, and gimicky. Every word is too clever by half, including "and" and "the." I take it the grating serial monologs making fun of consumerism (oooh - how unprecedented!) are meant to emphasize the disconnectedness of modern life. But instead they show only the consequences of writing an arid echo chamber of a piece drained entirely of humanity or anything remotely resembling any claim at accuracy. It is, however, tremendously effective at annoying its readers.

Fear not DeLillo haters. This will be off the syllabi before too long. And how we will celebrate!

Horrible read, weak characters, bad writing style.

Biggest problems with this book is the overuse of quotations to tell a story. The author might as well have writen a screenplay. The result is a confusing and choppy read. I would have prefered he reserves quoting his characters only when it would add something to the story. The prose itself is also weak. The author's descriptions of the characters' relationships with each other, the surroundings, the events are clumsy and weakly staged. He is also inept at pacing the events to keep the reader intrigue and hungry to read on to uncover the plot. Lastly, this book fails to draw the reader into the events taking place because we don't care about any of its characters. The writer would have created more believable characters we can sympathize with if he had taken us into the secret recesses of their souls where emotions like fear, happiness, self-doubt etc. reside. A writer should write for his reader in mind and not for himself. For a good book try Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, Ms.Rowling's Harry Potter books or Memoirs of a Geisha.

How sad if this is one of the great books from the 80's.

I read an article comparing Don Delillo and Chuck Palahniuk's writing style. What an awful comparision. I have read two Delillo books and both have been dreadfully boring.

In White Noise the characters are annoying and the conversations are awful. The book seems to have very little purpose and goes no where. If this is one of the great books of the 80's, I will not be reading any more books from the 80's.

The Beginning of the End of the Novel

Delillo's disese has been spreading ever since this novel was published. The redundent fragments, the uncomphrehensable descriptions, and the false meaning that is being controlled by his illiterate notions of the dreaded "conspiracy".
Delillo's attempt to debase literature and humanity is praised which makes it that much more ironic and ultimatley a pathedic sign of the power of publicity.

Sonically, Mall Cop sounds better than Mall Ninja, but I still like Mall Ninja more

I read my winter reading list before I left for home, so I bought Robert Coover's Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears? for one dollar off Abebooks. The copy has this inscription:

March 2, 1989

To David,

Love and have fun with this!

Happy 19th birthday!

xxx [illegible, could be Mom or Lauren]

I feel like this inscription, if written on March 2, 2009, would appear in the opening page of I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell.

Tony Tost posted a link to HTMLGIANT's 25 Important Books of Poetry of the 00s. I've read work by most of the poets listed, but only owned one book--James Tate's Return to the City of White Donkeys, which I brought with me. Jennifer told me about the book my first year in grad school and gave me xerox copies of poems. Every time I try to read here in Dayton I get sidetracked by ESPNEWS HD.

Darrell and I watched Browns-Chiefs at Clancy's on Sunday, and he mentioned a state-owned gun range in Xenia. He wants to take me there--he owns an AK-47 and I said he could probably start his own dictatorship in Africa. He said maybe, but his gun is wussified, unlike the guns of Ugandans. His model does not hold semi-automatic clips, is not defined as a gun by the ATF. We may fire the AK-47 anyway and we may have Mall Ninjas ask us questions. He explained a Mall Ninja is what gun guys call the gun guys who work security jobs--the ones who dream of taking down terrorists in food courts. They know the most Darrell said.

I will read with Fred Kirchner and Dave Nichols on January 2 at the Dayton Dirt Collective in Dayton, Ohio.

I finished my prose class, taught by Whitney Terrell, last night. We had an informal gathering at Minsky's, a gourmet pizza place in KC. I ate there the night Obama won the election. Whitney called us "the young intelligentsia" of Kansas City. It was cool to hear something like that.

I am applying to other programs now and so is my friend Lewis. Last night he said he sent his first few applications out. I said I just the same on Wednesday. He asked me what applications of ours "crossed-over"--both of us talked about UNC-Greensboro as an option. I told him I did not apply there, but I might since the date is farther off than the others (March 1st).

He has been my closest friend since I moved out here, and I wouldn't mind going to same place again.