In 2010, when Time listed the best 100 English-language novels since the magazine's birth in 1923, Don DeLillo's White Noise rightly featured. His eighth book, this 1985 awardwinner skewered middle-class life in America so acutely, “you don't know whether to laugh or whimper” wrote author Lev Grossman. You'll feel the same way about Noah Baumbach's Netflix-backed movie adaptation, as fear and loathing in a mid-'80s college town take hold of academic Jack Gladney and his family. Get ready for addiction, anxiety, and eco-angst.
Central to the story is what's dubbed ‘The Toxic Airborne Event’ – an environmental catastrophe that occurs just outside the Midwestern town where the Gladneys live, after a train crashes into an oil tanker, leading to a chemical spill. Soon a toxic cloud is heading towards homes, leading to panic, evacuation, and mass mask-wearing. Which may sound a mite familiar. “It was one of the uncanny things about DeLillo's book,” says Baumbach. “It had all of these elements built into the story that resonate in the culture –
