n January 1985 Don DeLillo published a novel that achieved a rare hat-trick: the highest sales of his 14-year career, adulatory reviews and an enhanced reputation in any university English department interested in postmodernism – which in 1985 was all of them. Ten months later it won the National Book Award. According to the novelist Richard Powers, White Noise “placed Don DeLillo at the centre of contemporary cultural imagination. I can think of few books written in my lifetime that have received such quick and wide acclaim while going on to exercise so deep an influence for decades thereafter.” Now approaching 40, it re-enters the culture in the form of Noah Baumbach’s $80m Netflix film adaptation.
