have recently finished White Noise by Don Delillo. I was enthralled by this book; living it word by exact word. And yet, it flowed nicely. It was a comparatively easy read (as opposed to V.) that never bored me.

In spite of this book being written before the World Wide Web, which has only added to the swarm, the book's main focus is the topic of the information that we are bombarded with as we live our modern lives. From the narrator to his current wife and the children (his own and those brought in by marriage), we see the constant absorption of needless information; information that is derived from other people's panic, fears, superstition that when received is processed as matter-of-fact, almost apathetically. As it is shared it is passed along like gossip only to be argued against, mutated, and disenfranchised. This happens day-to-day within the narrator's family.

And then the Airborne Toxic Event (a very specific name for a very specific disasters whose cause and effects are very unspecific) occurs and the molestation and noise of information (founded and unfounded, though it is nearly impossible to decipher which is which) grows considerably as evacuation procedures are made. It is not exactly chaotic. Much more this is a group of people who live in a small college town who are addicted to the events seen and heard through television and radios: they have seen all the disasters of the world, thus the only new thing is that it is happening to them.

After the Airborne Toxic Event, the exploration of death takes place and is pondered on immensely by the lead character. In the end, a singular philosophy takes place: Are you the dier or the killer? (And yes, that is how "dier" is spelled in the novel.) And in spite of this singularity of thought, this "theory" of how we live as humans in this society, the narrator defeats it. He is neither dier nor killer: he just is.

I think the one aspect that I can draw from reading this is how prone we are to misinformation; and how we create our own tabloid within all that we witness and hear.

PS: This book is NOT a reader's guide. In the appendixes are a series of essays and observations made by critics and the like. This is not a reader's guide.