The Audio Book Club on Don DeLillo
Our critics discuss White Noise.
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This month, the Audio Book Club discusses Don DeLillo's White Noise, on the occasion of its 25th anniversary. Generally considered DeLillo's breakout work, the novel follows a year in the life of professor Jack Gladney—famous in the academic community for creating the field of Hitler Studies—his wife, Babette, and their children from previous marriages. He suffers from a nearly crippling fear of death, a condition exacerbated by the "airborne toxic event" that occupies the second part of the novel.
In an approximately 50 minute discussion, Troy Patterson eviscerates the novel (he calls it "flagrantly bad"), Stephen Metcalf vehemently defends it, and Meghan O'Rourke moderates.
Slate's Audio Book Club now comes to you on the third Monday of every month. Our selection for February is Hilary Mantel's Man Book Prize winning novel, Wolf Hall. Look for our discussion on iTunes or on the Slatehome page on Monday, March 15. Also, become a fan of the Audio Book Club on Facebook.
You can also listen to any of our previous club meetings through our iTunes feed or by clicking on the links below. To download the MP3 file, right-click (Windows) or hold down the Control key while you click (Mac), and then use the "save" or "download" command to save the audio file to your hard drive.
Lit, by Mary Karr
The Original of Laura, by Vladimir Nabokov
"A Small Good Thing" and "The Bath," by Raymond Carver
The Anthologist, by Nicholson Baker
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
A Vindication of Love, by Cristina Nehring
Thy Neighbor's Wife, by Gay Talese
"The Swimmer," by John Cheever, and "A Good Man Is Hard To Find," by Flannery O'Connor
Atmospheric Disturbances, by Rivka Galchen
Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace
Rabbit, Run, by John Updike
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Night of the Gun,by David Carr
American Wife,by Curtis Sittenfeld
Brideshead Revisited,by Evelyn Waugh
Netherland, by Joseph O'Neill
Anna Karenina,by Leo Tolstoy
Beautiful Children,by Charles Bock
All the King's Men,by Robert Penn Warren
Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert
Tree of Smoke,by Denis Johnson
The Audacity of Hope,by Barack Obama
The Road,by Cormac McCarthy
The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
Independence Day,by Richard Ford
The Emperor's Children,by Claire Messud
The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
Beloved,by Toni Morrison
Everyman,by Philip Roth
Saturday,by Ian McEwan
The Year of Magical Thinking,by Joan Didion
Questions? Comments? Write to us at podcasts@slate.com . (E-mailers may be quoted by name unless they request otherwise.)