TO O CLO S E TO GETH ER, TO O FA R A PA RT
White Noise BY CIARAN BANKWALL A ILLUSTRATED BY CALEB JAMES
D
eLillo’s White Noise is brimming with mortality, to the extent that the title of the book was called ‘The American Book of the Dead’. The novel investigates the postmodern condition and its relationship with death; a world where technology has become a super power in the postmodern world, stepping in on the religious vacancies left by Darwinism and filling in the voids left from the angst of nuclear threat. DeLillo’s White Noise is postmodern; and although it is a truism that postmodernism cannot be condensed into a singular definition, it may help the reader to understand the kind of setting DeLillo was writing in when his novel falls into this bracket. Lyotard argues that postmodernism is “the state of our culture following the transformations which, since the end of the nineteenth century, have altered the game rules for science, literature and the arts” (Lyotard 2010 page 1). It provides a hyperconscious intertextuality with an ironic post-modern view; a view which concentrates on image and consumerism, and a stance in which reality is overlaid with images and signs that relate to one another. In terms of architecture – it would be of value to think of the typical post-modern building: because a post-modern building is a bit of everything. “Everything is neatly arranged, everything is labeled, and, presumably, everything has a price” (Lentricchia 2010 page 4). Additionally, it would be important to think of Fredric Jameson who claims that parody overtakes pastiche – along with a predilection for nostalgia and a fixation on the perpetual present. Perhaps it is no surprise that decades years later, Simon Reynolds felt that the
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