Despair and Humor: Why One Needs the Other in a World of White Noise

Delillo appears throughout White Noise to very much delight in forcing his reader to attempt to pull together the pieces of the world he has created. This, he accomplishes in a way that starkly contrasts with the attempts of “” in The Crying of Lot 49. Where “” used subtle connections between things and the very relatable Oedipa as a confused protagonist, Delillo instead opts to offer up possibilities through the (perhaps questionably) brilliant minds of the narrator's professor friends before quickly dismissing them as fodder for more cosmic humor. There are countless examples of this throughout the book.

A Few Quick Examples:

"I understand the music, I understand the movies, I even see how comic books can tell us things. But there are full professors in this place who read nothing but cereal boxes."

"It's the only avant-garde we've got."

"In a rooming house. I'm totally captivated and intrigued. It's a gorgeous old crumbling house near the insane asylum. Seven or eight boarders, more or less permanent except form. A woman who harbors a terrible secret. A man with a haunted look. A man who never comes out of his room. A woman who stands by the letter box for hours, waiting for something that never seems to arrive. A man with no past. A woman with a past. There is a smell about the place of unhappy lives in the movies that I really respond to.""Which one are you?" I said."I'm the Jew. What else would I be?”

And it is just these sentiments which, in some ways, hold White Noise together. Despite what may happen or may have a chance of happening, the world finds a way to insert some humor to lighten the blow, even if the characters are unaware of it. This does not in any way detract from the book as a Postmodern work but it certainly allows for more Modernist elements as it creates the feeling of some sort of underlying meaning, even if that meaning must certainly end in death.