Why DeLillo's White Noise feels strangely contemporary and prophetic

I’m glad that I stayed a little longer w/ Don DeLillo’s break-out novel, White Noise (1985); yesterday I read part 2 (of 3 – incorrect in yesterday’s post, on which I said there were 2 parts to the novel). Part 2, unlike the others, is a single long (40 or so pp) chapter/section, and it’s the heart of the novel and the part that stays in one’s mind and memory (mine, anyway) and that drew attention and praise for the work. This section begins as the oldest son in this weirdly dysfunctional family, Heinrich, is perched on the roof outside the attic dormer, in a snowstorm, observing through binoculars the gathering of emergency vehicles, choppers, floodlights as what we soon learn to be an accident involving a train tanker loaded with insecticide, leading to an “airborne toxic event.” As the poison cloud builds and spreads, parts of the city are evacuated and the family (Gladney?, can’t remember and patronym) takes off – 6 of them – in the family car – and embark on a night of terrifying delays and car crashes, nightmore like confusion and fear, and the discomfort of all evacuees and refugees, culminating in a frightful containment in an abandoned Boy Scout camp. This section reads vey well on its own, and I don’t know why DeLillo spent so much time developing the eccentric characters in this family in the first 100 pp or so of the novel; they’re in essence unlikable and, in fact, not credible – nothing about them seems like a real family - though DD’s great use of quirky dialogue and his academic satire provides many laughs. The second section, though – the “airborne toxic event” – while it’s quite inaccurate in its account of how such an event is covered by the media and how the emergency crews respond (for example, they don’t set up emergency shelters literarlly w/in minutes; and the news media do not boradcast live from the accident and present reports replete with detailed technical info about the contaminent – these things take days, and are limited to a few breif news conferences at least at first) – is eerily prophetic, a year or so before Chernobyl and accurately and acutely provides the sense of fear and dread that can permeate a community in time of disaster or catastrophe. Though the toxic spill differs in many ways from our current health crisis, the fear of disruption and of the unknown, the struggle for survival at an cost and risk, feels eerily contemporary as well. <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-fareast-language:JA;}size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}