On the Road: (Penguin Orange Collection)

Product Information

One person chooses, the other reads. Don't we want a balance, a sort of give-and-take? Isn't that what makes it sexy?" There’s something about German names, the German language, German things. I don’t know what it is exactly. It’s just there. In the middle of it all is Hitler, of course.” Frequently imitated and widely influential, Howard Philips Lovecraft reinvented the horror genre in the 1920s, discarding ghosts and witches and instead envisioning mankind as a tiny outpost of dwindling sanity in a chaotic and malevolent universe. S. T. Joshi, Lovecraft’s preeminent interpreter, presents a selection of the master’s fiction, from the early tales of nightmares and madness such as “The Outsider” to the overpowering cosmic terror of “The Call of Cthulhu.” More than just a collection of terrifying tales, this volume reveals the development of Lovecraft’s mesmerizing narrative style and establishes him as a canonical- and visionary-American writer. I initially enjoyed the book, and indeed, the opening chapter describing the line of station wagons pulling up to college at the end of summer is timeless. Written in the 80s, it is still perceptive today. However, the book gets more tiresome as it goes on. There are countless trips to the grocery store, where DeLillo's characters, including the insufferable Murray, can wonder zombie-like down the endless aisles, exchanging self-important banalities with each other. I guess the grocery store is some sort of symbol for our rampant consumerism?

Deadly Don: Ha! The system is invisible, which makes it all the more impressive, all the more disquieting to deal with. What happens to Mr. Gray at the end? At one moment he is about to die, then the next it cuts away to an argument about religion. Instead, DeLillo urges us to regard life with wonder and awe, and just get on with it, appreciating each day as it comes, sunrise followed by sunset. Deadly Don (speaking over his shoulder on the way to his corner): Can you hear them now? The networks, the circuits, the streams, the harmonies.

Become a Member

Man’s guilt in history and in the tides of his own blood has been complicated by technology, the daily seeping falsehearted death.’ stars out of 5. Extremely memorable with something verging on greatness that seems frustratingly forever on the tip of DeLillo's tongue. I wish I could split the rating and give it a 4 thematically but a 5 for style. Sometimes a sentence would rise up seemingly out of nowhere and take my breath away. It's seriously that good, on a small scale. I have critiques of how everything hangs together in a bigger picture sense, and how belabored the point gets at certain stages, but I will remember this book for a lifetime. Fear of death. Fear of life. Consumerism. Commercialism. Communism. Toyota Celica. Murray is a comic genius. No frills. The pills won’t save you. Orest Mercator. Going for the record. Snakes bite.

It is amazing that this was written in 1985. All these problems have only been amplified in light of the information age and the internet. I would say that some of things he writes seems obvious or understood only because we are so seeped in such a culture. But like I said, this is the pessimistic way to look at it. Cuando hace un par de años me trasladé a vivir al campo, me asombró lo ruidoso —como en la novela de Bohumil Hrabal— que puede ser el silencio. Ahora, recientemente de vuelta en un entorno más urbano, el ruido de fondo de la civilización me resulta ensordecedor. Pero, cuando uno se acostumbra, detrás de la cacofonía de voces, músicas y tráfico, si se escucha con atención, se puede oír el mensaje: “consume, consume.”

White Noise is the eighth novel by Don DeLillo, published by Viking Press in 1985. It won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. White Noise is an example of postmodern literature. He has just entered the gym from his limousine outside, followed by his manager and a sliver of twilight sun. Here are 75 answers to that question selected by the editors of Penguin Classics for our 75 th anniversary. We hope these selections, some familiar and some surprising, guide you through a reader’s odyssey.

White Noise takes place in a realm one small step removed from an easily recognisable reality – or “just outside the range of human apprehension”, as DeLillo puts it. On face value none of its characters or events are quite credible – the characters are too eloquent, the scenes too stage managed. Why, for example, would people choose to go out in the open on foot to escape from a toxic cloud? Why not get in their cars or simply stay barricaded in their homes? So DeLillo can give us an image of a nomad biblical exodus because Delillo wants to strip down humanity to its rudiments in this novel – the fear of death and subsequent gullibility it induces to submit to all kinds of generalised information that will keep us safe. He wants to show us how information is used to cower us into a herd mentality. The Hitler warning always stalking the outer corridors of the novel. “Put on a uniform and feel bigger, stronger, safer''. It’s a collective delusion, “a convenient fantasy, the worst kind of self-delusion,” designed to distract us from our incapacitation in the face of death. It’s almost as though our fear is what brings it on. If we could learn not to be afraid, we could live forever.”White Noise, written in 1984 (published in 1985), brings Orwell to mind. But the real Orwellian streak is that Delillo was so in tune with where contemporary society was going, he all but predicts events of the 21st century - with his references to plane crashes, manmade disasters, our artificial high-tech, miracle drug society. I think it is beyond doubt that H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.” -Stephen King A masterpiece of Biblical scope, and the magnum opus of one of America’s most enduring authors, in a commemorative hardcover edition Babette's confession & his reaction felt too like Driver's other work, out of character for Gladney but a striking performance. I put this book on my 2009 Literary Resolutions List, which comprises 15 books culled from Time's List of the 100 Greatest Novels since 1920. I thought it was a novelization of that movie where Michael Keaton hears dead people. I was wrong.

At the end, I put the book down on my lap, put my hands up to the sides of my head, fingertips pressed gently into my hair, then pulled my hands away while making the sound of an explosion quietly with my lips. What does Wilder crying at the end mean? Is that him finally speaking? Or is it some semblance of hope? Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. It literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism.’But there is also a general sense of trying to assert control in the general uncertainty of the world. With the Airborne Toxic Event there is the uncertainty of what to do and what is even happening. ‘ In a crisis the true facts are whatever other people say they are,’ DeLillo writes, ‘ no one’s knowledge is less secure than your own.’ Had this been written today that would feel very on the nose amidst the past years where grifting off misinformation and gaslighting increased the uncertainties of truth. White Noise also touches on distrust of authority, who are often as uncertain as everyone else but tasked with upholding a false certainty. There is a brilliant dark humor in aspects such as SIMUVAC running simulation evacuations though it is a real evacuation. What if there were a pill that that fixes the fear-of-death part of the brain and cures you of this "condition"? Would you take it? Jav laughs, but stops when Southpaw Bryant slides gracefully through the ropes into his corner. A woman in a Batgirl costume runs up to the ring and thrusts an autograph book at him.