Jack Gladney, Murray Jay Siskind

In White Noise, I was introduced for the first time to that sardonic and ironic tone which comes across so loudly through the distinct cadences and voices of so many of Delillo's main characters; native New Yorkers who never forget their roots, no matter what setting or story he locates them. In White Noise, Delillo introduces us to the Modern Family, years before many of us knew what that was, or that it even existed so prevalently in Mainstream America.

The station wagons arrived at noon, a long shining line that coursed through the west campus.

(spoiler alert)

Delillo's first novel, which caught national attention because his story pivoted on a chemical factory spill which engulfed a town, was published just around the time the real thing happened in Bhopal, India at a Union Carbide Plant, killing at least 2,500 people.

1980 to 1989 Bonfire of the Vanities