Visions of the future

Rhys Tranter writes the A Piece of Monologue blog. Here is his first collaboration with the Spectator Book Blog.

You might be forgiven for considering Don DeLillo’s White Noise as a survival manual for contemporary life. Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, the novel’s relevance continues as a philosophical checklist of twenty-first century culture. On its initial release in 1985, DeLillo’s novel stood out for its wry commentary on the ubiquity of commercialism — ‘Mastercard, Visa, American Express’ — and its portrayal of neurotic anxiety at the heart of the Western nuclear family. The novel inaugurated a new phase in the American writer’s career, sparking a series of bold and ambitious books that includes Libra, Mao II and Underworld. But, for me, White Noise remains DeLillo’s signature work.