I finished White Noise today, including some reading out in the park pretending it wasn't quite as cold as it is. Despite predispositions to the contrary (fun fact, we put this article online the summer I was at the Atlantic), I really did enjoy it. It's a pretty addictive style, although it helps that I enjoy implausibly-eloquent dialogue, which is probably why I also like Dawson's. Admittedly, some of the ideas are simple and there are occasional bits of blatant style-over-substance, but there are some fun little pithy passages. Several toward the end revolve around death and war, timely-ily enough. For example:
"Nostalgia is a product of dissatisfaction and rage. It's a settling of grievances between the present and the past. The more powerful the nostalgia, the closer you come to violence. War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country."
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