DeLillo gains his comic effects in White Noise by the constant juxtaposition of traditional expectations about meaning — of language, of relationships, of professions — with the contemporary phenomena of popular culture, all effectively devoid of the kind of significance assumed to have been part of life "before." Jack Gladney, robed in traditional academic garb, is representative of this. Even he is uncomfortably aware that "Hitler Studies" is hardly consistent with older notions of valid academic disciplines or curricula. When everything is supposed to be significant, when even the most trivial phenomena demand "equal time" and attention, then those things that had seemed important lose importance and meaninglessness becomes the norm. DeLillo evokes the image of a supermarket line in the concluding paragraphs of the novel: "A slowly moving line, satisfying, giving us time to glance at the tabloids in the racks.

Everything we need that is not...