Postmodernism in Don DeLillo's White Noise

In Don DeLillo’s White Noise, a postmodern novel is achieved through the perspective DeLillo presents to certain objects as well as people, in the sense that their appearance and presence insist upon what they knowingly represent, presenting an unclear and meshed distinction yet definitive enough on its own that not only remarks the nature of its existence, but also the social reaction to its existence, therefore creating a certain air of realism that accompanies the stark and exposing nature of DeLillo’s writing style. It’s these distorted representations that are the result of the huge impact of technology that is the focus of the novel. Considering that modernism has the intent of breaking tradition, and realizing the changes in society, DeLillo’s novel in itself represents the effects of the technological and consumer dynamic, especially so concerning the timeless nature of the story in the sense that many of its own numerous references to consumerism still hold mostly true and equivalent even today. For instance, in the opening of the novel, the narrator Jack describes the middle-class parents sending off their children to the college he teaches at: “The conscientious suntans. The well-made faces and wry looks. They feel a sense of renewal, of communal recognition. The women crisp and alert, in diet trim, knowing people’s names. Their husbands content to measure out the time, distant but ungrudging, accomplished in parenthood, something about them suggestive massive insurance coverage.” And in a critical essay by John Frow, he notes this in the way the author depicts the parents of the students attending the College-on-the-Hill: “the middle-class parents know the ideality they are supposed to represent, and are deliberately living up to it. But this means that the type loses its purity, since it can always be imitated, feigned; or rather that there is no longer a difference in kind between the social category and the lifestyle which brings it into everyday being the type ceaselessly imitates itself.” He also goes on to further explain the novel’s use of representations of objects and characters in which they “neither precede now follow the real but are themselves real,” while also inhabiting the appearance of both “preceding another reality (as a model to be followed) as well as following it (as a copy).” By blending this sense of parody and/or satire with realism, the writing style then becomes demanded to be taken seriously, as the question of whether to accept the force of technology becomes more prominent, being that the author does not seem to set a definite stance, though the main character and narrator Jack certainly does; take this excerpt for example, showing Jack after a successful usage of an ATM: “Waves of relief and gratitude flowed over me. The system had blessed my life. I felt its support and approval. The system hardware, the mainframe sitting in a locked room in some distant city. What a pleasing interaction. I sensed that something of deep personal value, but not money, not that at all, had been authenticated and confirmed.”

DeLillo, Don. White Noise. Penguin Books, 1998.
Frow, John. "The Last Things Before the Last: Notes On White Noise." South Atlantic Quarterly. 89.2 (1990): Print.