An app has been developed to simulate the sound of a white noise machine in your bedroom for you to sleep through the night. I can't sleep without it. That staticky low hum is imperative, says one London-based writer about the machine's incessant hum.
Don DeLillo's White Noise is a classic of postmodern fiction, long considered "unadaptable" for reasons that become more clear when you read it. It's a funny novel that keeps shapeshifting, making the reader feel the friction between lives dominated by consumerism and consumption and technology.
Noah Baumbach's film adaptation of Don DeLillo's 1984 novel is faithful to the book. Critic calls it "a valiant attempt to capture [Delillo's] book".
Donal DeLillo's White Noise is not just a story, though it's plenty entertaining on the surface. People can, and do, write lengthy peer-reviewed papers and dissertations on White Noise. The movie and novel treat this as if it's a totally normal sort of academic department to found.
The film's prose erupts into oddly detailed small lists of hotels and motels that Jack refers to in various locations.
Jack Siskind's White Noise is set in an era when the internet hadn't yet blanketed the world. "It's like a myth being born right there in our living room," author writes.
Jack can't believe that a disaster would happen to him because he is a well-off college professor. The novel ends rather abruptly; DeLillo and Baumbach give us the experience of jumping right back into reality.
Characters suddenly start talking strangely, and you realize they've slipped into the cadence of a sitcom or thriller. This bleed between what's on TV and what's real is part of the fabric of the novel.
In it, she explores how we create a world of white noise to distract ourselves from the horrifying realization that we will die. It's why we become obsessed with celebrities and leaders who falsely promise us the world.
Audrey Baumbach's film adaptation of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Meyerowitz is a faithful adaptation, though it loses some of the humor and bizarreness of the source material. But it is, after all, a very talky and theoretical novel.
One omission, though, made me especially sad. The key to White Noise lies in an indelible early scene in the novel. It's called "the most photographed barn in America," and yet Jack never gets to see it.
Murray: Being here is kind of a spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. Murray: We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. This literally colors our vision.
In the end, he says, “They are taking pictures of taking pictures.”
A photo of a barn that's remarkable simply for being remarkable snaps the whole of White Noise into focus. A photo is a way to stake a claim on reality, to put a frame around existence: We were here.
Netflix's new film White Noise is about how we deal with mortality in a digital age.