“All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers’ plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children’s games. We edge nearer death every time we plot.”

…

“Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else.”

…

How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?

Jack Gladney, a college professor, lives with his fourth wife, Babette, and four of his seven children from different marriages. His ordinary daily concerns and thoughts gradually give way to the two main plot lines of the novel. The first is when a train derailment leads to an “airborne toxic event” (and if you think of East Palestine, Ohio, you're not the first) and exposes Jack to a derived chemical called Nyodene D. The second is when one of his daughters reports seeing Babette taking some unknown drug for unknown reasons.

White Noise is regarded as a classic of postmodern literature, winning the 1985 National Book Award and bringing author Don DeLillo to the forefront. As you might anticipate, it's a difficult read. It often seems very unfocused and full of digressions, but that appears to be part of the point, representing the “white noise” theme. The novel covers a wide variety of subjects—none more so than death and the fear of death—but it also extensively discusses consumerism, technology, simulations, academia, sex and love, parenting, television, and perhaps most surprisingly, supermarkets. A couple of the best scenes had a real Catch-22 feel: the “most photographed barn in America” that has become a simulacrum so that “no one sees” the actual barn anymore, and the SIMUVAC responders who we are told respond to real disasters but mainly just to improve their simulations.

I've found postmodern literature to be somewhat of a mixed bag. Slaughterhouse-Five, The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Infinite Jest, House of Leaves, A Visit from the Goon Squad, The Underground Railroad, Lincoln in the Bardo, and Interior Chinatown are some of the best books I've ever read, while others that I won't name were various degrees of disappointing. I'd place White Noise somewhere in between. It's interesting, but I never felt particularly engaged in the story. I think more humor would have made the story more captivating. Recommended for literary fiction readers and those seeking a challenge.

More empty, overwrought modern prose to avoid reading. This type of writing seems to be prevalent these days. It often lacks substance and depth, relying instead on flowery language and excessive embellishments. The words may sound impressive at first, but upon closer inspection, there is little of real value.

Readers are left feeling disappointed and unfulfilled. They long for prose that is engaging, thought-provoking, and meaningful. Prose that can transport them to another world, make them feel emotions, and expand their understanding of the human experience.

It is essential for writers to recognize the importance of quality writing. To focus on the message they want to convey rather than simply trying to sound good. By doing so, they can create prose that will stand the test of time and be cherished by readers for generations to come.

Initially, when reading White Noise by Don DeLillo, there were aspects that seemed promising. However, as I delved deeper, the novel appeared to devolve into a chaotic web of discordant voices, exasperated characters, and a highly dysfunctional family. Tolstoy's words about every unhappy family being unique in its unhappiness rang true here, but this modern blended family failed to evoke much sympathy from me.

For instance, the description of white noise as "a heterogeneous mixture of sound waves extending over a wide frequency range" did seem to capture some of the essence of the highly praised novel, especially with over 5,500 Goodreads reviews. But despite being called a satire and compared to works like Joseph Heller's Catch 22 or Vonnegut's, I felt that White Noise fell short as a meaningful satirical work. The attempt to show the collision of values, such as art, culture, and education, especially with the introduction of the first day on campus at "College-on-the-Hill", was interesting. However, the novel failed to explore these aspects more deeply, leaving the initial narrative structure lacking in substance.

The characters, including Jack Gladney, his wife Babette, and their children, were an eclectic mix. The children, in particular, were more compelling than the adults, with their precociousness, outspokenness, and even belligerence. Murray, the New York Jew in exile and Elvis lecturer, added another layer to the story with his frequent chance-encounters with Jack at the supermarket. The second section, with the potentially lethal gas escape and its aftermath, introduced some interesting ideas, such as the characters' sense of "large scale ruin" and the concept of deja-vu. However, these ideas were not fully developed.

Much of the novel revolved around the fear of death, with Murray and Jack discussing it and Babette having an affair with a man who had developed a pill to deal with this fear. The concluding chapters, however, seemed bleakly cartoonish rather than satirical, lacking the intended social reform or uplifting change. Overall, while there were things to admire in White Noise, I felt that the novel lacked both development and coherence, although this may be a minority opinion.

White noise, as we commonly define it, pertains to the vast expanse of random information that inundates our lives. It poses a challenge for us to discern if there is any genuine meaning within the ceaseless chatter. When Don DeLillo's novel White Noise was published in 1985, many of the forms of "white noise" we encounter today did not exist. There was no World Wide Web, no Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. This makes this postmodern literary masterpiece even more prophetic.

Readers who have spent their careers in colleges and universities (I have worked at seven myself) will relish the way DeLillo satirizes modern academia through the creation of the fictional College-of-the-Hill. The protagonist, Jack Gladney, has built his career there by pioneering Hitler Studies. Here, DeLillo seems to be having a great deal of fun mocking a problematic aspect of modern academia: the way scholars carve out safe careers by specializing in ever-narrower areas of inquiry.

Gladney's status as the creator of Hitler Studies is ironic on multiple levels (setting aside for a moment the fact that he doesn't speak German). His "teaching" about Hitler seems to consist solely of regaling students with anecdotes about the Nazi dictator's personal life. And it is surely a deliberate choice by DeLillo that in all of Gladney's talk and writing about Hitler, there is never a word about the Holocaust. Just as the best satire uses humor to address serious issues, DeLillo here appears to be highlighting that scholars in modern academia, while dutifully uncovering the minutiae of their fields, risk missing the larger significance of what they study.

Like all the other characters in the novel, Gladney feels overwhelmed by the sheer deluge of electronically mediated information. The definition of "white noise" as electronic chatter that may or may not hide a deeper meaning comes to the fore as Jack's colleague Murray Jay Siskind urges him to focus on television and "Find the codes and messages.... You have to open yourself to the data. TV offers incredible amounts of psychic data. It opens ancient memories of world birth, it welcomes us into the grid" (pp. 50-51). But does it really? Or is Murray's fixation with "white noise" merely an example of someone desperately attempting to impose meaning where there is none? The world of DeLillo's White Noise provides no answers to these questions – only more examples of the "white noise"充斥着 the characters' lives.

Gladney's home life also has its share of troubles. Both he and his fourth wife Babette are consumed by a fear of death, constantly wondering aloud which of them will die first. As Gladney reflects, "The truth is I don't want to die first.... But I don't want to be alone either.... [Babette's] death would leave me scattered, talking to chairs and pillows. Don't let us die, I want to cry out.... Who decided these things? What is out there? Who are you?" (p. 101).

Gladney's and Babette's fear of death leads them both, at different times and in different circumstances, to the fictional drug Dylar. This time-released drug is said to target the part of the brain that fears death and thereby alleviate that fear. The novel's passages about Dylar, which Gladney cynically refers to as "Technology with a human face" (p. 201), may make the reader think about the pervasive hard-sell of prescription medications on TV today. It's easy to envision a TV ad for Dylar, with soft music playing as a happy young couple runs in slow motion through a green field toward a copse of trees in the distance, all while the announcer quietly intones that "Side effects of Dylar may include...."

DeLillo's perception of contemporary life as something in which ordinary individuals feel helpless in the face of modern technology and its impact is most evident in one of the novel's main plotlines: the "airborne toxic event" that occurs when a train wreck releases a vast amount of noxious fumes into the atmosphere, forcing the evacuation of the entire college town of Blacksmith. There has not yet been a film version of White Noise, but I imagine any filmmaker would have a great time recreating the fear and panic caused by the "airborne toxic event," as witnessed by the Gladneys as they flee through the night in their family automobile.

Today, as mentioned earlier, our world offers even more forms of "white noise" than in 1985 when DeLillo published White Noise. What new varieties of "white noise" will there be in the years to come, in 2049 or 2112? As long as people continue to feel bombarded by information technology, helpless in the face of the threats unleashed when our technology malfunctions, and anxious for a technologically-produced magic pill to make all the fear disappear, White Noise will continue to speak to life in the modern world.

Ooh look! It's a can. Looks like it might have worms inside. Let's open it up again.

Updated (i.e. "final") review: March 30th, 2008

So. I had read three quarters of this and decided to chuck it, but last night my compulsive side won over, and I went ahead and finished it. I still can't wrap my mind around the notion that I should somehow regard it as a "great book of the 20th century". None of the 19 comments in this thread to date really addresses why I should. So, I am asking for enlightenment.

To sum up my three main difficulties with the book:

(a) The dialog is clunky to the point of unreadability. It's so dreadful that I'm quite willing to believe it's deliberately implausible. But - assuming it's not just laziness and a tin ear - why would an author make such a choice? What's the point? Giving DeLillo the benefit of the doubt, and assuming he could have written believable dialog, what is the point of not using his gifts to the best of his ability, instead irritating the reader with substandard rubbishy 'conversations' that draw attention to their own lack of believability?

(b) The "satire" whose effect is similar to assaulting the reader with a blunt instrument. Whether it's the repeated use of such tired and obvious devices as the random scattering of consumer product names throughout the text, or having his protagonist lead the department of "Hitler Studies", there's nothing remotely smart about it. This kind of heavy-handed bludgeoning is the hallmark of a very inferior writer. It insults the intelligence. Authors are generally praised for demonstrating subtlety and wit - why should DeLillo be given a pass?

(c) The lousy dialog is symptomatic of a related problem - the characters are thinly developed, cartoonishly described, to the point of caricature. Not to mention aspects of the plot that don't even bother to approximate reality (did you know that just rolling up your car window will create a hermetic seal, preventing any and all gas exchange with the outside world?). Again, hardly qualities we associate with good writing.

So I'm left with the question - why is DeLillo given a pass? At best, (if one believes he is capable of writing well) in this book he's being incredibly lazy and just phoning it in. Another possibility is that he's genuinely incompetent and actually mistakes his cartoonish efforts here for genuine wit. Either way, why should he be held to a lower critical standard?

Because that's what seems to happen with this book. People acknowledge that it is poorly written, with characters that border on caricature, that it's hard to read, then go ahead and give it 4 or 5 stars anyway. Why?

*************************************************

my original comments start here

OK. I'm 50 pages into this award-winning effort and there's something I just don't get. Why is this book stuffed with such gratingly implausible* dialog throughout? It's so unspeakably bad, I have to think it's deliberate. But why? What would be the point? DeLillo has already made the questionable choice to filter the entire story through the voice of a first-person narrator who was already irritating by page 2 and isn't getting any more likeable. If none of the characters has a believable voice, why should I read on?

*: entered as supporting evidence -

I've bought these peanuts before. They're round, cubical, pockmarked, seamed. Broken peanuts. A lot of dust at the bottom of the jar. But they taste good. Most of all I like the packages themselves. You were right, Jack. This is the last avant-garde. Bold new forms. The power to shock.

"Your wife's hair is a living wonder."
"Yes, it is."
"She has important hair."
"I think I know what you mean".

"Whatever's best for you."
"I want you to choose. It's sexier that way."
"One person chooses, the other reads. Don't we want a balance, a sort of give-and-take? Isn't that what makes it sexy?"
"A tautness, a suspense. First-rate. I will choose."

There's not a human being on the planet who would say the boldfaced stuff. Ever.

Further examples - even more egregious - can be found (famously) in B.R. Myers's "A Reader's Manifesto".

So why does this not bother all you readers who gave 5 stars to this book? Just askin'

The "White Noise" is a lament for the overwhelming prospect of death, the decaying modern society, and the absurdity of the author's universe.

I started positively, with a lively interest in the development and emotionally invested, although the chit-chat, repetition, and tendency to teach had a negative impact.

Along the way, I realized that the recurring theme that should touch me, trouble me, and perhaps impress me was that every person lives their life with the fear of death and everything else is just... "White Noise".

There is an emotional detachment, an inspired technique that creates artificial events and situations. The setting of the story elsewhere is remarkable and elsewhere full of comments and absurdities, verbosities and exaggerations about the commercial trap of profit, the contradictions of life, and the deeper thoughts, always unclear and controversial.

Our hero is a university professor specialized in "Hitler studies". He himself invented this field of study which had great success as an academic research field.

Perhaps this is where the illness of our protagonist begins. Hitler's "Struggle" skillfully enters the programs of social science, becomes acceptable, and ends up being assimilated with the professor to an incomprehensible level of emotional numbness, inaction, and stoic coldness in dealing with everything, except for the egocentric fear of death.

/ That there is also a suitable attire to give authority and power to a teacher of Hitlerian symbolism is also a factor.

His wife - also suffering from thanatophobia - is the fourth or fifth in a row of his legal spouses, and their children are all fruits of previous loves.

All members of the family are copies and disguises of the father with perfect loyalty and immediacy.

The children are mature, wise, and clearly complete personalities who do not miss the opportunity to question their parents, who accept it with respect and absolute tolerance.

Anyway, the only thing that concerns the couple in the hypocritical America of the 20th century is their fear of death. The rest is insignificant and superficial.

The long-winded dialogues of the couple about who will die first and how the situation will be improved are also annoying.

It is unacceptable to hear and try to understand the skeptical parents who tremble at their death. My humble opinion as a person and as a mother is that parents primarily and clearly feel despair, fear, panic, crying, and agony for their children, not for themselves.

Positives:

•From there on, there are many scenes where human instincts are presented predominantly with intense lyricism and deep emotion. Also, the author's effort regarding the toxicity at all levels of life is notable. Overall and essentially. Impressive and unforgettable descriptions of many situations of depressive or satirical mental and interpersonal-social despair.

Negatives:

•Boring messages that stopped bothering the modern person a long time ago.

Pseudo-deep ideas about what is meant or implied, ritualized scenarios of destruction, pieces of unrelated compensatory culture that are constantly disrupted by advertisements, television, and newspapers.

A consumer paradise, the bright supermarkets that promise security, joy, and comfort far from reality.

The super chap of the biopsychologists against the mortal substance. Political, philosophical statements of domestic consumption that strive to create noble situations for the unpredictable and the inescapable.

Subtle way of hinting at the reader's expectations so that they don't guess what will happen and sudden twists in directions counterproductive to the story as a whole.

A part of pop culture professors, shopping as a religious experience, and while death hovers over the heads of the heroes, commercial signs fall between the paragraphs. Certainly, there are messages here, but nothing that we haven't heard before.

In conclusion, we know that we are consumer victims. We understand that there is no genuine spirituality, but in the end, why should this be the biggest issue?

Societies have had and will have more serious problems in the course of world history. It is pointless and overly dramatic to be mobilized for action as if we have lost our humanity due to modern economy and culture.

Perhaps it makes very good reading material for second-year philosophy students who are called upon to overcome themselves and develop ideas around the pathology of the destructive modern society.

Good reading.

Many greetings.

⚪️⚫️⚪️⚫️⚪️⚫️⚪️⚫️▪️

Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind and his involuntary perceptions. He knows that to his involuntary perceptions, a perfect faith is due. He may err in expressing them, but he is certain that these things are as unarguable as day and night. This is a profound thought by R.W.Emerson in his work "Nature".

White noise, on the other hand, is a compelling force that carries an inexorable clamour. It seems to typify the lives we lead today, filled with fears, panics, and anxieties. It is the silent yet powerful noise that prevails over our minds, stronger and more discrete than the more audible voices that mess with our thoughts. It is both a wonder of Science and a product of the anxiety brought about by increased knowledge.

The noise penetrates all the mediums that surround us - the TV, radio, internet, mobiles, the fuss of commercial life, and places filled with people and things. It is an unrest in the quest for a solidarity between things and people, and between things and happiness. It prods our subconscious minds, mocks at our helplessness, and coerces us to leap out while restricting us with invisible limits. It makes us wonder if we can ever cross those limits and assuage our fears.
At times, the noise nags at us, and at other times, it presents itself with an absolute finality. The fear it manifests in our actions forces us to take a plunge and face the silent ruler. What if the fear of death, which we so wish to dispel, makes us realize the futility of our efforts? What if it makes us stop and think, a thing we have always feared? White noise seems to be an effort in the same direction. It makes us stop and think amidst all the other noises, about the age-old question of death. In a comical and satirical way, it observes our routine lives and impresses upon us the need for white noise to live happily, even if some fears constantly afflict our minds and make us question the very basis of our existence. Needless to say, I loved this work.

It offers a unique perspective on the modern human condition and makes us reflect on the role of noise and fear in our lives.

My first encounter with Delillo has left me rather hesitant when it comes to'reviewing' this work. I am eagerly looking forward to reading what others have made of it once I hit the save button on my attempt.

Jack Gladney, the central character and narrator, is an academic who has created and heads Hitler studies at an American University. He has been married multiple times and has a large number of children with his various partners. I found him to be a shallow and self-absorbed individual that I simply couldn't warm up to. He seems to be a reflection of an empty, materialistic, and doomed society. However, his children and his unorthodox fellow academician friend, Murray, gave me some hope that my world and the planet were not entirely doomed.

Jack and his current wife, Babette, are both obsessed with a fear of dying. In Jack's case, this fear is rather more prescient, especially after his direct exposure to a toxic incident that affects the community where he and his family live.

From the outside, Jack can be seen as a wholesome liberal academic whose values seem to differ from those of people like his father-in-law, who has a more rough and ready, hands-on approach to life. But in reality, they share the same basic instincts.

I felt like a mere voyeur in my relationship with the novel, never fully committed or involved. Was this the author's intention?

There is some wonderful and insightful writing in the book. Here are two short examples. It is a long book, and I'm not sure if the ending paid off as much as I might have hoped from my investment. It would no doubt benefit from a re-read, but I might have to save that for the afterlife!

Babette's father turns up unexpectedly: "What an epic force he must have seemed to her, taking shape in her kitchen in this way, a parent, a father with all the grist of years on him, the whole dense history of associations and connections, come to remind her who she was, to remove her disguise, grab hold of her maundering life for a time, without warning."

Somewhere in the book, but I can't find it now, Delillo defines dreams as the debris of premonitions.

DeLillo is truly quite quotable. His works are filled with profound and thought-provoking statements that linger in the mind.

Here are a few gems from White Noise:

"How strange it is. We have these deep, terrible, lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?" This passage makes us question the nature of our fears and how we manage to carry on despite them.

"The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. Over-closeness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps even something deeper like the need to survive. Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The family process works towards sealing off the world. Small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate. I tell Murray that ignorance and confusion can’t possibly be the driving forces behind family solidarity. What an idea, what a subversion. He asks me why the strongest family units exist in the least developed societies. Not to know is a weapon of survival, he says. Magic and superstition become entrenched as the powerful orthodoxy of the clan. The family is strongest where objective reality is most likely to be misinterpreted. What a heartless theory, I say. But Murray insists it’s true." This exploration of the family and its relationship to misinformation is both fascinating and disturbing.

"No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die." This simple yet powerful statement captures the essence of the human condition.

And one from another novel that I've always loved ever since my first film class:

"Film is more than the twentieth-century art. It's another part of the twentieth-century mind. It's the world seen from inside. We've come to a certain point in the history of film. If a thing can be filmed, the film is implied in the thing itself. This is where we are. The twentieth century is on film. You have to ask yourself if there's anything about us more important than the fact that we're constantly on film, constantly watching ourselves." -from The Names This quote about film and its impact on our perception of the world is truly profound.

And:

"The term itself--my life--is a desperate overstatement." -from Valparaiso This short and poignant statement makes us reflect on the meaning and value of our own lives.

I'll write about this one another day, just posting these quotations for the time being. A placeholder for a review.

These quotations from DeLillo's works offer a glimpse into his unique and insightful perspective on life, love, family, and the human experience. They make us think, question, and reflect on our own lives and the world around us. I look forward to exploring his works further and sharing my thoughts with you in a future review.

- It is astonishing how many people teach nowadays, - I said. - There is one teacher per person. All those I know are either teachers or students. What does she think that means?

Just imagine men and women who stop in front of the shelves of a large department store and compare two brands of mineral water, looking for the one on promotion that will save them 98 cents, buying several packages of Acqua Pallottini and then going home after a three-hour drive. They ask themselves, separately, but isn't my life becoming rather stupid, but then they answer, yes, but if I take away all the white noises from my life, including the messages I receive from megaphones, TVs, radios (nowadays from the internet), what is left. White Noise has often been written about as a book about death, about the fear of death, but in my opinion that is not accurate. White Noise is a book about the speed of the spirit, which gushes from the artesian wells of indolence, as Canetti said, but then we don't know what to do with it: affected by dissatisfaction for an imagined life that does not coincide with the actual life, we return to the white noises. DeLillo has fun and his characters are deeply comic. The protagonist has invented a course of Hitlerian studies at the university, but he doesn't know German. He knows that it is a course that pays off these days. His wife teaches deportment and reads mystery novels and absurd news magazines to elderly blind people. Their children, by the way, are his fourth wife's, and they are even stranger than their parents but possess information that seems to condense a thousand brilliant tweets written in 2018. Nevertheless, it all sounds quite credible. Plausible. Eccentric but credible. About a hundred years ago, a man like DeLillo wanted to extend reality into the lives of men, and in doing so he invented strange scenes, such as two people coupling on the side, in a courtroom, during a hearing, on the floor. Now this man, who was Kafka, if he could be interviewed, I'm sure he would say that those scenes are not grotesque or intended to cause scandal. You haven't understood anything, he would say: in Kafka's world, those scenes are perfectly natural, it is his way of extending reality. DeLillo, more cautious, stops before. That's why it is almost more frightening.

However, this is an important book but not exactly a masterpiece. The masterpiece is seen in the end as a beautiful day is seen in the evening, as Leonardo wrote. And the end of White Noise is a bit too heavy-handed with the strange and the evanescent, in a structure that until then had been perfectly balanced on that register.

Reading books was one of the enjoyable experiences for Parvaneh. Although she didn't get married and thus didn't have children, wasn't a university professor, and didn't even live in America with its particular lifestyle, yet she had a strange sense of kinship with the protagonist of the story who had all these characteristics. The invasion of useless information in life and the feelings of dissatisfaction that are temporarily satisfied through buying and consumption, the fear of death and many other concerns and characteristics of us ordinary people are very well depicted in this book, without making us feel inferior! Anyway, the fact that it shows you the weaknesses and fears without making you feel very bad is an art in itself! Maybe we don't feel bad because there is nothing we can do, because we can't stop the invasion of this information, or we can't not feel good when we buy things, or we haven't found another way yet, I don't know, go read the book.

Snow by Orhan Pamuk is not only on the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die but also among the best works of postmodern literature. The story is told in a fragmented way, with no clear timeline or narrative sequence. The characters do not follow the typical pattern of characterization, and in fact, they are quite similar! I thought I wasn't paying attention, but a friend of mine who read Snow after me said that the names were so ambiguous that she thought someone was a boy, but later found out it was a girl. Clearly, the author did not accidentally create such characters. That is to say, we cannot say that it is a weakness of the author; because in some places, the author has given delicate details to the characters. If there was a weakness in characterization and the author had ignored the integrity of the characters, he would not have been able to describe them like this! But in my opinion, the author has focused on a few details. I don't know if this is really a weakness or a stylistic feature.

The second point is that the postmodern story breaks or reduces many elements. For example, what we recognize as the plot of a story, something that shapes the story and affects everything until the end, is very weak here. The plot happens very late. This is why we read stories, and it has no attraction for us! Because of the good narrator and the details I mentioned, we continue reading, but if one of us asks what has happened in the story so far? We will mention a few small events. Not something that, as Robert McKee said, is a crisis. We need a crisis in the story. This is one of the most important things that distinguishes a story from other forms of writing. In Snow, we don't have this, we don't have it, we don't have it, but we gradually notice it at the subtext level of the story. From the actions of Dunya and the narrator himself and the view he has towards his relationship and family life. To the point where finally Dunya herself says. She says that she has been betrayed, and even the narrator's reaction is very postmodern. :D They talk very rationally about it, and we understand that the narrator has realized it, and if his wife had told him before, maybe some emotions would have arisen. But now this event has become so cold that his emotions are silent for him, and he can only look at it with his mind. I really liked this.
However, if we want to consider the crisis and characterization as stylistic features and not criticize them, we cannot ignore one point: how much the characters talk! Of course, it is natural that a postmodern story does not have the overly descriptive style of a classic story or the character-centered style of a modern story, which provides the ground for the characters to talk more. But in some places, the characters were not like ordinary people at all. They were like a few existentialist philosophers talking! In some places, when the narrator was talking to his wife about their relationship, it was completely real, touching, and sweet. Or about their child, or a little bit of satire in some dialogues. But in some places, they were like scholars discussing the crises of humanity today, and it really hit the taste of the reader! I'm sure in no other kind of story are we allowed to talk so explicitly. Because the story is not the place for these words. Now, since the postmodern story always wants to be beyond ordinary life, extraordinary, and have complexity, that's fine. We accepted it. But not to the extent that we feel that in some places the author is sitting in place of the characters and justifying the intentional flaw in characterization here; because if the characterization is strong, the author can no longer take their place.

My actual rating for it is three and a half.