Is White Noise literary cannon?
Would you say the novel seeks to criticize or accept postmodernism?
>>7501229
>cannon
it's his shittest book to be honest
that said anything by him is better than pynchon
did delilos publisher just higher the same viral marketing firm that does all the dfw threads?
I too thought white noise was shitty when i was 20. Now im older, smarter, wiser, and stronger. I get delillo and all his novels. If you dont, maybe you just gotta get a little older. Maybe youre just a college pup. Eat shit like a dog you animal
>>7501229
Where to start with him?
>>7501242
>>7501443
White noise
>>7501301
lel delillo is high school-core. it's sad that he's the best amerifats have to offer. irrelevant bloomtards
beaa... *wheeze*
beaaa.. beaaaa *hack* *cough*
beaaaaa beaaaaa beaaaaaannnnn *gasps for air*
beaaaaaa *adjusts oxygen tank*
bbeaaaaaaaann beaaaaan *grabs throat*
beaaaaaaa *takes a sip of water*
beeeeaaaaaa *wheeze*
beeeaaannnnn *grabs a hold of jonathon franzen*
beeeaaaaaaaaaann *expires*
>>7501470
>delillo is high school-core
Literally didn't even know DeLillo existed until I was in college.
>>7501470
Where are you from, anon?
>>7502686
Well I literally didn't even know John Green existed until I completed my Bachelors, but that doesn't really prove anything either
>>7501476
I don't get this reference
>>7502737
hes a frail old man
>>7502737
He mishears Franzen saying "meaning" as "beaner" somewhere in this video (can't be bothered to find the exact timestamp): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ_iDyzxxTE
Watching the video, however, the passage from The Angel Esmeralda he reads is stunning in its beauty. DeLillo is in the top 3 of the best late 20th century American authors imho, and by far one of the best authors living today.
Here's the passage, for anyone interested, since I know we have a lot of newfriends who might be unfamiliar with DeLillo (and because it's amazingly-written):
>"[a] seaward bulge of stratocumulus. Sunglint and littoral drift. I see blooms of plankton in a blue of such Persian richness it seems an animal rapture, a color-change to express some form of intuitive delight. As the surface features unfurl, I list them aloud by name. It is the only game I play in space, reciting the earth-names, the nomenclature of contour and structure. Glacial scour, moraine debris. Shatter-coning at the edge of a multi-ring impact site. A resurgent caldera, a mass of castellated rimrock. Over the sand seas now. Parabolic dunes, star dunes, straight dunes with radial crests. The emptier the land, the more luminous and precise the names for its features. Vollmer says the thing science does best is name the features of the world."
>>7502716
Bad analogy.
>not just diving into Underworld
>>7502746
It doesn't really work as a joke though because he is extremely eloquent as a speaker.
>>7501229
>mfw i thought this was iannis xenakis before he lost the eye.
>>7501229
God I hope not. White Noise is trash on just about any level. As a stylist his writing was barely above that of a redditor.
He as a thinker is absolutely derivative and uninspired.
As someone who portrays experience of post modernity he doesn't hold a candle to Bolano.
His characters are garbage without personality.
The only thing I can think of as an excuse for the shit White Noise is would be that he wrote it "ironically" which would put it on the level of your above average meta ironic meme or baneposting.
>>7501229
>White Noise
>LOL THE 14 YEAR OLD IS JUST AS INTELLIGENT AS HIS LITERATI PARENTS
Literally Ripping Off John Green. Utter Shit.
>>7503387
Why do the people who browse lit have better taste in every art form than the respective boards they belong to on 4chan?
>>7503469
>/tv/ is full of plebs trying too hard
>/mu/ is full of hipsters
Gee, I wonder why.
We still have to purge a lot of redditors and pseudos though.
>>7503446
I thought that was annoying too, especially the scene when they were in the car driving to school
>>7503583
>/lit/ favorite movie thread
>all middlebrow trash
>american beauty
>there will be blood
>lawrence of arabia
/tv/ has much better taste in movies. (at least the regulars do) can't speak for /mu/ because i've never been there but you're probably wrong about that too
each board is obviously going to have best taste about its own interest
>dislikes white noise
>says carver is just shitty faux-artistic minimalism
>doesn't like american pulp fiction
>enjoys Dostoyevsky
>>hasn't realized this enjoyment is really jouissance stemming from indulgence in self-punishment
>hasn't realized literature before whitman was a prelude
>hasn't embraced the beautiful mistake that is american literature
Not a good novelist, but a dope long parable writer.
>>7503446
>"Why are breakfast foods breakfast foods?" I asked them. "Like, why don't we have curry for breakfast food?"
>"Heinrich, eat."
>"But why?" I asked. "I mean, seriously: How did scrambled eggs get stuck in with breakfast exclusivity? You can put bacon on a sandwich without anyone freaking out. But the moment your sandwich has an eggs, boom, it's a breakfast sandwich."
>Dad answered with his mouth full. "When you come back, we'll have breakfast for dinner. Deal?"
>"I don't want to have 'breakfast for dinner,'" I answered, crossing knife and fork over my mostly full plate. "I want to have scrambled eggs for dinner without this ridiculous construction that scrambled eggs-inclusive meal is breakfast even when it occurs at dinnertime."
>"You've gotta pick your battles in this world, Heinrich," my mom said. "But if this is the issue you want to champion, we stand behind you."
>"Quite a bit behind you," my dad added, and Mom laughed.
>Anyway, I knew it was stupid, but I felt kind of bad for scrambled eggs.
You guys think this is canon worthy?
>>7503922
I'm 99% sure this is John Green.
Nice meme.
>>7503922
Son, you ain't get it. You will understand that shit when you have kids to care about telling them everything works right even when you know it doesn't and you gotta try to find rest/meaning on TV catastrophies, supermarkets or sunshines.
I don't think White Noise criticizes or accepts post-modernism, & I think it's been fairly enduring because it's a family satire.
Novels who strive for these high-ideas like DFW wanting to "defeat irony" are always contrived. Books that are weird, original and non-pretentious like White Noise and GR are always alot simpler at a closer look. White Noise's pseudo-pretension has trickled its way into modern pop culture, too.
If you ever listen to interviews with Delillo he never talks about hating or loving pop culture, or talks about how he has no opinion about it in general.
>>7503860
That's sad anon, this is Christmas don't say sad things about people
>>7503922
Yeah it really captures a human experience.
>>7501242
>hasn't read pynchon
>>7503953
It's pretty close to Dellilo desu
>>7504031
Yeah definitely mate
Have you read the new Gould novel btw? I mean SENPAI it's just like fucking Gaddis I swear to God if I was maybe 1/4 of drunk I'd not have the focus levels to notice any difference lolllllllllllllll
>>7503922
It's good writing
>>7503996
Satire is the lowest form of creative expression. It's paint-by-numbers humor; take something and magnify its identifying features. It's easy. As criticism it's often used to bash strawmen. As a presentation of ideas it's cowardly. Ask yourself what kind of person bashes on a bad idea rather than tries to establish a good one?
I have no respect for satirists, nor should anyone else. It's cheap, guilty humor at best.
>>7504069
I think you're mixing up 'satire' in literature and pop media satire though.
>>7503055
Where was this quality prose in White Noise?
>>7503859
>disliking American Beauty
How fucking pretentious can you be.
>>7503387
I always see a mix between him and ligeti
>>7504132
>415. Boku no Pico
leld
>>7503446
What? wasn't the point that he had a lot of 'knowledge', but was very extreme and not really wise at all?
>>7504132
might as well change /tv/ with reddit
>>7504184
It's a trollchart, jesus christ
>>7504132
>implying this is accurate
>implying these aren't votes from televisionfags and board tourists
the core group of /tv/ has good taste
>>7503922
This isn't white noise...
But I did find Heinrich to be among the most compelling characters in the novel. Would have been interesting to get his perspective every now and a-gain.................
>>7504512
It's literally john green.
But really? I found him immensely annoying.
>>7504544
The scene in which he's telling the other adults (during the lockdown in the gymnasium was it?) I thought was really really fantastic. Obviously he's a little asshole, but I found that charming in a weird way. Definitely written well. And also interesting to see the ways in which Heinrich's character serves as a sort of odd prototype for some of the young-Hal appearances in Infinite Jizz
>>7503859
Last time I saw a /lit/ movie thread the discussion was on Tarkovsky and Malick. You're generalizing based on nothing, essentially. And /tv/ nowadays is entry-level "cinephiles" who think Nolan is the greatest filmmaker of all time, so yeah.
That said, Xenakis is actually "experimental music" for the kind of people who browse /mu/ and RYM so that post doesn't mean anything either.
>>7504139
Is this a new meme, to hate on White Noise?
>>7505159
I'm not hating, but i didn't think too highly of the book.
It started good and ended pretty well too, but the theme got very tired towards the end.
I found it kind of superficial. Like the elements of postmodernism were there, but it was missing the bizarre, eerie heart that should have been at the center of it all.
ITT people acting like the entire airborne toxic event part isn't a hilarious adaptation of The Trial.
>>7505603
I see what you're saying, and I agree to an extent, in the sense that the plot, prose, and even the style seem a bit like they were contrived using instructions from a lego set or something to that effect. However, I think in the same way that Tarantino pulls off his schtick (imo), DeLillo does in managing to manufacture, for the lack of a better word, a very high quality and inevitably impressive product–though, it still does seem like a product.
In short, he lacks what Chris Hedges calls the 'sublime'–that spark of transcendental brilliance that illuminates a work through the night of time. Melville had it, Proust had it, Kafka, Tolstoy, Joyce, and dare I say even Pynchon has it (Roth too, but in a much milder degree, to speak of contemporaries). DeLillo, like Wallace, has talent, but lacks genius.
>>7505159
It's really just not one of DeLillo's better works. It's okay but not even he was too fond of it.
Classic case of a second rate yet accessible work getting the greatest exposure.
I'm reading white noise for my american lit class next semester.
any themes or analysis I should know or critical insights?
>>7505030
I find experimental classical music decidedly more interesting than it's non-classical counter parts. As with Picasso, who was a child prodigy at art that masted traditional art forms when he was quite young before moving onto his later projects, I like the classical avant-garde (well some of them anyway, fuck Cage) because you know that there is immense knowledge and skill possessed by the creator and it's not just some cop out from an untalented bum.
Just for specificity I consider composers like Schoenberg and Webern traditional composers in the sense that they are a clear continuation of the musical tradition from Bach, to Beethoven or Wagner etc rather than a break from that tradition that we see later on in music.
>>7505699
Not who you were replying to but, I agree and honestly I think DeLillo might agree as well, he's always said he's just an incredibly average guy who just went to school and learned ways to write, which is pretty much what Wallace did too.
The trick is that DeLillo's read a ton, he knows what works and what doesn't, even though he might not be have the qualities for ein Mensch und sein Werk (a person and their oeuvre) critique like we have for Kafka or Joyce, he's still entertaining, cerebral and better than anything (for American readers, I imagine he's not a big hit outside of the states for the most part) is that he knows every type of American archetype, being able to write about personalities in dialect in the burrows, or the plainness of the Midwest. I think what might make DeLillo so worthy of celebration is that we're forced to be optimistic by reading him, knowing he isn't this archetypal troubled artist that DFW projected a lot of, that Pynchon avoids and that Melville or Joyce capture the best, he's just a regular guy who loves literature so much he knows it in-and-out and can write books that still show some deep level of understanding of at least America. People on /lit/ try to be the troubled artist a lot of the time but most should try to be like DeLillo, at the very skin of things just read and learn and find what works best for you if you're trying to get published.
>>7505699
>DeLillo, like Wallace, lacks genius.
Pretty iconoclastic opinion ya got there, friendo.
>>7505761
That's fine, but do you disagree? Think this: if Wallace didn't die as young as he did, and the way he did (I can already hear the agape mouthed literary rabble exclaim, "tortured genius!"), do you think he would be as canonically immortalized as he is now?
I'd be hard pressed to say so. The man was brilliant, that I don't deny, but I think he was much more a contriver of terrific texts than an antennae through which genius flowed (not to sound too spiritually lofty). In the end, he was good old neon, a fabulous talent whose only fraudulence existed in the mirror of an Icarusian (is that a word?) ideal. You can also see it when reading IJ's footnotes: his writing breathes noticeably more freely when its not in the foreground of his megalithic 'masterpiece.'
And I'm not a keen connoisseur of music by any means, but I think the same can be said for Cobain, 2Pac, and even Winehouse.
>>7505729
Totes agree–more artisan than artist. A master of his craft, (much like Handel or Maupassant) but not a crafter of mastery (unlike Mozart or Dante). But, as you say, a writer of wonderfully enjoyable works that comes in one-size only: American.
>>7505159
White Noise seemed pretty standard to me for the most part. Only prose that impressed me was when he kept running through his plan at the end, like 4 times a page, but I liked the intensity rather than the pure aesthetics of the writing there
>>7505853
I was captivated from the very first sentence of the book tbqh. Maybe I was just more fond of the ideas it presented than most.
>>7505790
Sure. Wallace's suicide really skyrocketed his acclaim, but I think his genius was still there. I also think DeLillo has a penchant for words and a genius for puzzle-solving -- an understanding of the conflictions of science and logic, and assumptions and reality, that many other authors (the literary "greats," not excluded) fail or forget to recognize.
>>7505915
I definitely agree with most of what you've said about DeLillo's, but I think we just hold different definitions for genius–
I love Schopenhauer's take: talent hits a target nobody's else can; genius hits a target nobody else can see.
Anyway: genius/talent/brilliance/skill/ability, why get entangled in semantical bibble-babble?
Oh also regarding DeLillo's subject matter: I absolutely love the idea of 'the world's most photographed farm.' Inertial cyclones, feedback loopty-loops, fulfill thy own prophesies–!!!
>>7505915
I'm >>7505729 and I definitely agree with your points on DeLillo, I'm just not sure if DFW was a genius or maybe we didn't see enough of his work. Don't get me wrong, my 2nd favorite book is Infinite Jest as of now, but I'm not sure if it's a showcase of his genius or proof of what the liberal arts and an MFA can help you accomplish, I guess an easy answer to myself is that I haven't seen much good stuff come out of other liberal arts-> MFA grads, so maybe it really is something different, I think we might have to let things cool off a little bit on his work for a while to see how it ages, 20 years is a good amount of time but I want to see what it's like a little further down the road.
>>7505159
White Noise is garbage
He taught fucking Hitler studies at the university
DUDE LOOK HOW SATIRICAL MY BOOK IS LOL, OH YOU DONT SEE THE SATIRE? HERE LET ME SHOVE IT DOWN YOUR THROAT LOL
>>7506020
thank you for the intelligent analysis, le caps lock guy
>>7506018
I think IJ will age poorly because it is not a victory over its time period, just a persuasive diagnosis of its ills. DFW was not an artistic genius. the power of his writing came solely from his personal war of hating contemporary life while also being entrenched and obsessed with it. He taught classes on pop novels, listened to alannis morisette, wrote books about rap, loved Die Hard, thought deeply about David Letterman, sought fame. Everything most writers leave behind, he made into art. He made the unpoetic poetic, as my friend Thomas Stearns liked to say. But it will ultimately not be enough since he lacked discernible literary talent
>>7506337
So he's basically a shitty Voltaire (a shitty satirist [most famous for his satire] who will be enjoyed by the most boring college students)
>>7506337
Do you think that IJ is going to be some sort of nostalgia then? (This is assuming you like it, seeing as though you seem to know more about him than the average DFW-fan who knows nothing about him besides the fact that he wrote a long book). I'm concerned with it's aging potential more so if it comes to be considered a milestone for what would be YA as John Green would like to think. Which I only really get one part of it being YA and that's the scenes of them sitting in the locker room at ETA maybe, but wardine be cry, the drain-o incident, Lenz, the musings between Remy and Steeply, and the other sections might continue to be interesting.
I say the following not to try to impress, cuz that would be lame. I'm just kind of normal. But I might be a different demographic from other folks here. I'm 34. I haven't been to 4chan before tonight in over 6 years. I have a wife and 2 year old son. Employed, home owner. I'm super normal. Don Delillo is a fine author and I'd recommend White Noise to anyone.
>>7506365
thank you anon
>>7506365
you are basically the NBA/NFL player who made it out the trap. how is visiting the old neighborhood? does it feel weird?
>>7506358
no estate would ever allow their dead daddy/brother/husband's literary rep to nosedive by being marketed as YA.
>>7506365
Welcome back, and remember: you're here forever.
>>7506365
Welcome back
I'll fuck your son
>>7506344
You're comparing tangerines and toffee–they're both sweet in their own way. So don't be reductive anon (esp. when it appears you haven't read much of both).
>>7506002
>I absolutely love the idea of 'the world's most photographed farm.' Inertial cyclones, feedback loopty-loops, fulfill thy own prophesies–!!!
are u 'avin a giggle, m8?
>>7504139
His prose has evolved over the years. There's certainly an early and a late Delillo.
Economist here.
Don Delillo is fucking amazing.
White noise is getting hate because its actually a fairly widely read book among college kids interested in postmodernism and the edgy tryhards here are trying to separate themselves from the herd. The problem is that they really just dont get white noise. I read it when i was their age and i didnt get it either. They probably think that just because they were able to 'understand' every line and there was no crazy esoteric scientific or historical information that prevented their understanding it, that they 'got' it and they dont have to read it again, or that it's overrated or that it's just entry-level postmodernism or whatever the fuck their retard brains use to justify their ignorance. The truth is that white noise, like a lot of books that get assigned in college, is an actual good book with great writing and something hysterical or insightful on every single page. Just because hipsters who dabble in literary stuff read it too doesnt mean its not good. It's great and you're dumb.
DeLillo has been great since Americana his first fucking novel and has had few missteps.
>>7506365
what the fuck would cause you to come back after 6 years? don't believe you senpai
>>7510165
Too late to ask him. He's already reverted back to his normal ways.
>>7508649
/lit/ btfo
Shallow critique of the shallowness of consumer culture. Such verisimilitude.
Getting pretty fucking tired of selecting gift boxes for the captcha, t b h friends.
DeLillo's writing is a delight. A random excerpt:
Heinrich's hairline is beginning to recede. I wonder about this. Did his mother consume some kind of gene-piercing substance when she was pregnant? Am I at fault somehow? Have I raised him, unwittingly, in the vicinity of a chemical dump site, in the path of air currents that carry industrial wastes capable of producing scalp degeneration, glorious sunsets? (People say the sunsets around here were not nearly so stunning thirty or forty years ago.) Man's guilt in history and in the tides of his own blood has been complicated by technology, the daily seeping falsehearted death.
The boy is fourteen, often evasive and moody, at other times disturbingly compliant. I have a sense his ready yielding to our wishes and demands is a private weapon of reproach. Babette is afraid he will end up in a barricaded room, spraying hundreds of rounds of automatic fire across an empty mall before the SWAT teams come for him with their heavy-barreled weapons, their bullhorns and body armor.
Just listen to the rythm and the cool constructions he finds ("daily seeping falsehearted death"). And the humour. White Noise is great, from a stylistic point of view, just pointing that.
>>7508649
What do you think the point of it is?
>>7510930
Dude, saying you don't have to be smart to write 'any of these books' is like saying you don't have be able to have good vision to be a sniper, or naturally athletic to win Wimbledon–some things can't be achieved through practice.
Anyway, I'm >>7506002, and never implied DeLillo's being a genius (which is a exceedingly nebulous and subjective concept anyway), I simply implied that uncommon facility with language is a absolutely necessary prerequisite trait to conceive of novels of the caliber of White Noise or IJ or the like.
But think what ye like, señor. Not looking to argue pedantic, semantic, atlantic minutiae.
Read in this order
Mao II
Libra
[Underworld, White Noise, The Names, Players, short stories]
Everything else
>>7510901
>White Noise
>a shallow critique
expunge urself
