Some more recent media on Don DeLillo's 1985 novel, White Noise.
New York Times Book Review: Jan 1, 2023 - Dana Spiotta's appreciation of White Noise, "What a 1985 Novel Can Tell Us About Life in the 2020s: Almost Everything" gets front cover billing.
The book's attention to the "unlocatable roar" of our age also plays out in how the characters react to events in which language both identifies and obscures what is happening. When a plane starts to hurtle to earth, the pilot on the intercom blurts: "We're falling out of the sky! We're going down! We're a silver gleaming death machine!" A plane crashing becomes a machine of death, but DeLillo’s insertion of "silver gleaming" is unexpected, ridiculous, what makes it so funny. We believe and trust technology because humans like gleaming things.
The Millions: Sept 23, 2019 - Writing the Present for the Future: The Mezzanine vs. White Noise by Adam O'Fallon Price.
In White Noise, Don DeLillo — in almost perfect contrast to Baker — looks at his world with the telescopic eye of a priest or pop-cultural anthropologist, beginning with a couple of large-scale hypotheses about modern culture and gathering particulars from there. Anyone familiar with DeLillo could more or less guess what these general hypotheses are, as they run throughout his body of work in various guises: 1) modern consumer culture is similar to primitive culture, and, related, 2) people want to be in cults.
Below, a listing of contemporaneous reviews of White Noise.
America: July 6-13, 1985 - review of White Noise by Robert Phillips.
Antioch Review: Fall 1985 (V43/#4) - very short review of White Noise.
Atlantic: February, 1985 - brief review of White Noise.
Boston Globe: January 27, 1985 - "Don DeLillo's Upside-Down World" review of White Noise by Mark Feeney.
Chicago Tribune Book World: January 13, 1985 - review of White Noise by John W. Aldridge.
Commonweal: April 5, 1985 - review of White Noise, p. 219.
Globe and Mail (Toronto): March 9, 1985 - review of White Noise by Bart Testa.
Los Angeles Times Book Review: January 13, 1985 - review of White Noise by Richard Eder.
Nation: February 2, 1985 - "Maximum Exposure" review of White Noise by Thomas M. Disch, pp. 120-121.
New Republic: February 4, 1985 - "Midwestern Wasteland" review of White Noise by Jay McInerney.
Newsweek: January 21, 1985 - "At the Edge of Dreams" review of White Noise by Walter Clemons, p. 69.
New York Review of Books: March 14, 1985 -"Conspirators" review of White Noise by Diane Johnson, pp. 6-7.
New York Times: January 7, 1985 - review of White Noise by C. Lehmann-Haupt.
New York Times Book Review: January 13, 1985 - "Crowding Out Death" first page review of White Noise by Jayne Anne Phillips.
White Noise finds its greatest distinction in its understanding and perception of America's soundtrack.... Fast food and quad cinemas contribute to the melody, as do automated teller machines. Nowhere is Mr. DeLillo's take on the endlessly distorted, religious underside of American consumerism better illustrated than in the passage on supermarkets.
San Francisco Chronicle: January 27, 1985 - "A Detective of Our Mundane Culture" review of White Noise by Paul Skenazy.
Saturday Review: March/April 1985 - brief review of White Noise by Anna Shapiro.
Time: January 21, 1985 - "Death 'n' Things" review of White Noise by R.Z. Sheppard, pp. 71, 73.
Times (London): January 23, 1986 - review of White Noise by Hugh Barnes, p. 15.
Sunday Times (London): January 26, 1986 - review of White Noise by Nicholas Shrimpton, p. 36.
Times Literary Supplement (London): January 17, 1986 - "The disconnected view" review of White Noise by Roz Kaveney, p. 56.
USA Today: January 11, 1985.
Village Voice: April 30, 1985 - "Death by Inches" review of White Noise by Albert Mobilio, pp. 49-50.
Washington Post Book World: January 13, 1985 - "Don DeLillo's American Nightmare" review of White Noise by Jonathan Yardley.