…”White Noise” by Don DeLillo, the third novel of his I’ve read, follo wing “Libra,” which I didn’t care for, (or may not have been ready for) and “Underwater,” which I thought was terrific. (I must have gotten smarter by then.) “White Noise” is not as rrific — it’s central character is an academic for one thing, and I’m ill-disposed tempermentally toward novels set among academics — but it is very good. (It’s also funny.)
DeLillo is a major novelist. No question about it. He deals with the largest of matters in original and engrossing fashion. (This one’s about Death, for one thing. Also lesser stuff of consequence.) I let it wash over me without being able to claim I absorbed more than the slightest weight of DeLillo’s thinking. (My Viking paperback — acquired at Moe’s — came appended, as if in documentation of DeLillo’s major-ness, with interview snippets, reviews, and articles from classy quarterlies. I skipped them all. I didn’t want a seminar. I took what I had and moved on to the next book on my stack. One has, speaking of large matters, only so much time.)