White Noise may be said to be an amalgam of a number of recognizable contemporary fictions. It is a satire of academic life as were Randall Jarrell's Pictures from an Institution (1954), Mary McCarthy's The Groves of Academe (1952) and John Barth's Giles Goat-Boy (1966); although the apocalypticism of White Noise is a different kind altogether from Barth's version). The disruptive impact of the arrival of the mysterious cloud — revealing the underlying negative characteristics of the academic pastoral — is reminiscent of any number of "catastrophes," though none of the others is worthy of comparison. (Some interesting comparisons might develop by juxtaposing Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins, 1971, however.) Gladney's badly botched effort to murder the man responsible for his wife's deteriorating mental and physical state, and its comic aftermath, might suggest a comparison with the many versions and imitations of the film Death Wish. It is part...