two quick delillo notes
First, Richard Rayner posts an appreciation of White Noise on the occasion of its 25th anniversary.
Perhaps DeLillo came back to America and so soaked up the assault of its teeming everyday, its wondrous and paranoid present, that he couldn’t help but enclose the darkness of the future. “White Noise” won the National Book Award in 1985 and quickly became an inspiration and influence. Without it, writers such as David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Lethem, Jonathan Franzen, Dave Eggers, Martin Amis, Zadie Smith and Richard Powers (who provides an excellent introduction here) don’t happen – or don’t happen in the same way.
And Mark Athitakis has a copy* of the upcoming Point Omega and finds it lacking:
It’s fine if DeLillo chooses to abandon the tone he pioneered in White Noise. What’s disappointing is the loss of sure-footedness that’s come with it.
* Want. If you know any way to get me one, I’d love you forever.