White Noise by Don DeLilloWHITE NOISE is probably Don DeLillo's most popular novel, especially because most readers see it as DeLillo's warmest and most humane book. In this story, the ideas that seem to fascinate DeLillo are brought to life in real life in a way that none of his other books achieve. Of course, there are some stubborn souls (like me) who still give THE NAMES a try, or one of his other books is better. But I think everyone agrees, WHITE NOISE is a winner. It won DeLillo the National Book Award in 1985, and also won a wider readership for a major American writer. DeLillo said that THE DENIAL OF DEATH by Ernest Becker was a book that influenced him at the time he wrote WHITE NOISE. There is certainly no denying that death, and the many things we do to avoid facing it, are a major focus of DeLillo's novel. Becker's book, which won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 1974, has as its thesis the statement that "the idea of ​​death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a spring of 'human activity--- activity intended largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the ultimate destiny of man.' Becker's point is that this is *the* driving force in the human psyche today... which I think is a bit of an exaggeration... but it certainly is a reality that we all face in some way, at some point. While leafing through Becker's book last month, I was surprised to discover that it is actually an exposition of Otto Rank's work. Rank was the third of three famous defectors from Freud's inner psychoanalytic circle earlier this century (the others being Alder and Jung), and is known to some extent in the literary world for his intimate involvement with Anais Nin. Like Jung, Rank developed a psychology based on mythology and religion... and, in particular, Rank's emphasis was on the theme of "The Hero." This is what Jung called "the puer aeternus" (or the feminine "puella"): eternal youth... which never grows old... which never dies... for which death is nothing. In psychology, this idea is closely linked to that of narcissism, which is considered prevalent in today's society. Just look at all the things we do to avoid the appearance of aging! Jack Gladney is, at best, an unlikely hero, I think.