Don DeLillos White Noise :: Free Essay Writer

come in DeLillos White NoiseWHITE NOISE is probably Don DeLillos most popular novel, largely because most readers see it as DeLillos warmest and most human book. In this story, the ideas that seem to captivate DeLillo are fleshed out in sure life in a way that none of his other books quite achieves. Of course, there are a few stubborn souls (like me) who still feel THE NAMES, or one of his other books is better. But I conceive of everyone agrees, WHITE NOISE is a winner. It won DeLillo the National Book Award in 1985, and it also won a larger reading audience for a great American writer. DeLillo has said that Ernest Beckers THE DENIAL OF DEATH was a book that influenced him at the time he wrote WHITE NOISE. Theres certainly no denying that death, and the many things we do to avoid facing it, is a major focus of DeLillos novel. Beckers book, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1974, has as its thesis the assertion that the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts th e human animal like nothing else it is a mainspring of human activity---activity designed largely to avoid the compulsion of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man. Beckers point is that this is *the* driving force in the human psyche today...which I think is overstating the matter a bit...but it certainly is a reality that all of us face in some way, sooner or later. As I looked done Beckers book last month, I was surprised to discover that its actually an exposition of the work of Otto circle. Rank was the third of the three famous defectors from Freuds inner psychoanalytic set early this century (the others being Alder and Jung), and hes known in the literary world to a certain extent because of his intimate involvement with Anais Nin. Like Jung, Rank developed a psychology of mythology and religion...and, in particular, Ranks emphasis was The Hero motif. This is what Jung called the puer aeternus (or the female puella)---the eternal youth...who never ages...who never dies...to whom death is nothing. In psychology, this idea is linked almost with that of narcissism, which is considered prevalent in society today. Just look at all the things we do to avoid the appearance of aging Jack Gladney is, at best, an unlikely Hero, I think.