by Don DeLillo (1985)

2023 reads, 7/12:

Death, consumerism, and academic elitism, all set against the backdrop of a hyperreal 1980s America, comprise this satirical novel revolving around Jack Gladney and his stepfamily. Much like We Have Always Lived in the Castle|89724, I actually watched the White Noise movie first on Netflix, without knowing anything prior; this made me want to read the source material to further understand the main themes and anything else the movie might have missed (although I feel the need to say that Greta Gerwig absolutely nailed the role of Babette).

Part I of the book, “Waves and Radiation,” sets in place the many themes throughout. We meet Murray, a new professor at the college where Jack teaches. Through the process of trying to solidify his own “Elvis Studies” program, we quickly descend into a satire of academia. The multitude of superficial pop-culture departments at this college (Hitler studies, Elvis studies, cinematic car crash seminars, to name a few), and the way the professors talk to one another is extremely exaggerated and elitist, albeit entertaining. These scenes were done very well in the movie as well.

"‘We're all brilliant. Isn't that the understanding around here? You call me brilliant, I call you brilliant. It's a form of communal ego.’"

Reading “Part II: The Airborne Toxic Event,” it’s hard to not be reminded of the 2023 Ohio train derailment or any other man-made disasters we learn about in school. The book portrays the negatives of this growth of technology and mass media in the 1980s, leading to a hysteria and borderline obsession over these types of disasters.

The events in Part II lead right into Part III, 'Dylarama,' and it's here that leads to many interpretations as to what the titular “white noise” is. Of course, it could refer to the constant background noise (both visual and audible) of advertisements, mass media, and the metaphorical rubbernecking of man-made disasters. Or even “Mr. Grey,” one who Jack sees in “extraneous flashes,” one whose body “flares with random distortion.” But I think that Jack’s (and Babette’s) fear of death is the white noise – it’s always around them, further exacerbated by everything previously mentioned; Hitler, Elvis, the airborne toxic event, Mr. Gray, and even the advertisements trying to sell you a better life.

"‘How do you plan to spend your resurrection?’ he said, as though asking about a long weekend coming up. ‘We all get one?’"

Also, how awesome are these movie posters?

#readingyear2023 #physicallyowned #american #book2screen

by Thomas Pynchon (2009)

2022 reads, 11/20:

“Questions arose. Like, what in the fuck was going on here, basically.”

This novel was an absolute pleasure to not just read, but immerse myself in. Like a few novels I’ve read this year, Inherent Vice takes place in 1970s SoCal, and follows private eye ‘Doc’ Sportello as he tries to help out an ex who discovered a murder plot against her real-estate mogul boyfriend. The novel follows Doc as he meets many zany characters, such as ultra-conservative police lieutenant “Bigfoot” Bjornsen, on-the-run sax-player Coy Harlingen, and maritime lawyer Sauncho Smilax.

The novel follows Doc and these characters in the context of the tension between counterculture (mainly symbolized by Doc) and anti-counterculture (mainly symbolized by Bigfoot) in the wake of the Manson murders. Those who ran in Doc’s circles usually had friction with those who ran in Bigfoot’s circles.

“[The police station] creeped him out, the way it just sat there looking so plastic and harmless among the old-time good intentions of all that downtown architecture, no more sinister than a chain motel by the freeway, and yet behind its neutral drapes and far away down its fluorescent corridors it was swarming with all this strange alternate cop history and cop politics—cop dynasties, cop heroes and evildoers, saintly cops and psycho cops, cops too stupid to live and cops too smart for their own good—insulated by secret loyalties and codes of silence from the world they'd all been given to control, or, as they liked to put it, protect and serve.”

I’ve heard this work described as Pynchon’s most accessible work (Pynchon-lite, if you will), and I may not be on best authority to throw my two cents in (the only other book of his I’ve read was The Crying of Lot 49), but I still think this is very much his style. While the plot in this one is a bit more sensible than TCoL49, there are still those delightful tangents that Pynchon takes in his writing. That being said, the novel can get complex pretty quickly, solely because of the number of characters, so I recommend this wonderful resource which diagrams the character relations for each chapter.

“Offshore winds had been too strong to be doing the surf much good, but surfers found themselves getting up early anyway to watch the dawn weirdness, which seemed like a visible counterpart to the feeling in everybody's skin of desert winds and heat and relentlessness, with the exhaust from millions of motor vehicles mixing with microfine Mojave sand to refract the light toward the bloody end of the spectrum, everything dim, lurid and biblical, sailor-take-warning skies.”

#readingyear2022 #humor #physicallyowned #book2screen #pynchon

by Hunter S. Thompson (1971)

2022 reads, 9/20:

This semi-autobiographical novel follows Raoul Duke (Hunter S. Thompson) and Dr. Gonzo (Oscar Acosta), journalist and attorney respectively, as they attempt to cover two events happening in Las Vegas for Rolling Stone magazine. What resulted instead, however, was this book; a recount of their insane-yet-hilarious drug-addled journey to Vegas.

However, hidden between the hallucinatory imaginings of Duke and Gonzo (tirades of bats, reptiles, and trying to buy a gorilla) are grounded and real-world fragments of happenings occurring at the time in American history. Newspaper clippings, references to famous events, and commentary from other characters and their experiences, are all interspersed in this absurd recollection of events.

“A very painful experience in every way, a proper end to the Sixties: Tim Leary a prisoner of Eldridge Cleaver in Algeria, Bob Dylan clipping coupons in Greenwich Village, both Kennedys murdered by mutants, Owsley folding napkins on Terminal Island, and finally Cassius/Ali belted incredibly off his pedestal by a human hamburger, a man on the verge of death. Joe Frazier, like Nixon, had finally prevailed for reasons that people like me refused to understand – at least not out loud.”

The imagery of bright Las Vegas lights and having a ‘good time’ are juxtaposed with these types of references throughout the book. So I’ll retract my statement above, and say that this book has disguised itself as a drug-addled adventure, but in reality is about the end of an era and the beginning of new forces in America.

Regardless of what you think of the plot (or lack thereof), Fear and Loathing has cemented itself in American literature and popular culture. Once you read the book (and watch the movie as well, 4.5/5 stars), you start seeing references to it everywhere in popular culture (especially this music video from The Weeknd, and this album title from Panic! At the Disco).

“And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave… […] So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

#readingyear2022 #american #physicallyowned #book2screen

by Shirley Jackson (1962)

2022 reads, 8/20:

Truly a haunting book, with a thrilling ride in the latter half. I had seen the film a few years ago, but it didn’t have much of an impact on me, so I had forgotten most of the plot. The book better captures that lingering fear throughout, in my opinion – it definitely felt like something dreadful was always lurking around the corner (thanks to Merricat’s pseudo-extrasensory ‘skills’).

The book does start off a bit slow, but the arrival of Cousin Charles really sets things into motion. Many things are left open to the reader’s interpretation, partially because of unreliable and eccentric narrator Merricat, but also because of Jackson’s writing. The writing for events occurring in the present are well-articulated, but passages describing the past are very ambiguous, something that Jackson likely did on purpose. This allows the reader to speculate what might have gone on in the past, and how those events affect the plot.

Mild spoilers ahead: I wish I remembered where I read this, but someone mentioned that this book is like the prequal of how houses become haunted, and how urban legends get started in small towns; an idea I’ve really come to appreciate.

“I remember that I stood on the library steps holding my books and looking for a minute at the soft hinted green in the branches against the sky and wishing, as I always did, that I could walk home across the sky instead of through the village.”

FILM REWATCH: After rewatching the film after this read, it was definitely better than I remember, but didn’t capture a lot of mysteriousness the book had to offer. Book: 4/5 stars, movie: 2.5/5 stars.

#readingyear2022 #gothic #spooky #book2screen