But though the family's handle on facts is hilariously shaky, their conversations also suggest the unfunny results of living in a high-technology society: there is abundant information around, but nobody seems to know anything. And just as the family members gorge themselves with disposable information and fast food, so are they also inundated by consumer goods, not only when they visit the supermarket and the mall, but also when they are at home watching television, which they seem to do constantly. Indeed, White Noise is preoccupied with consumerism and with the values inherent in a consumer society. DeLillo's treatment of these ubiquitous features of contemporary life is surprisingly balanced: although he satirizes the family's addictions, he gives many of the best lines to Jack's colleague Murray Jay Siskind, who enthusiastically celebrates television and shopping as contemporary religious rituals. DeLillo dramatizes the omnipresence of TV and consumerism by punctuating the scenes with disembodied electronic voices and lists of brand names. Simultaneously attesting to the novel's highly textured realism and violating it by reminding us of the author's controlling presence, these mysterious, often acerbic insertions are one reason the novel has been called "postmodern."

Another reason is that White Noise flouts the conventions it seems to invoke, imitating a number of different genres, but ultimately fitting none of them. For example, the relatively plotless part 1 presents itself as a hyperintelligent TV sitcom, complete with brainy children, zany friends, and banal conflicts. Even here, however, DeLillo alludes to deeper disturbances: Jack and Babette debate about who will die first; Wilder ululates at length for no apparent reason. Things turn much darker when, in part 2, the family is forced to flee a toxic leak; the book begins to resemble a disaster thriller, except that DeLillo is less interested in providing graphic descriptions of poisoning than in tracing its subtler, long-term effects, especially on Jack, who is exposed to the toxic substance and hence "tentatively scheduled to die" (202).