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The wisest, richest, funniest, and most moving novel in years from Don DeLillo, one of the great American novelists of our time-an ode to language, at the heart of our humanity, a meditation on death, and an embrace of life.Jeffrey Lockhart's father, Ross, is a billionaire in his sixties, with a younger wife, Artis Martineau, whose health is failing. Ross is the primary investor in a remote and secret compound where death is exquisitely controlled and bodies are preserved until a future time when biomedical advances and new technologies can return them to a life of transcendent promise. Jeff joins Ross and Artis at the compound to say "an uncertain farewell" to her as she surrenders her body. "We are born without choosing to be. Should we have to die in the same manner? Isn't it a human glory to refuse to accept a certain fate?" These are the questions that haunt the novel and its memorable characters, and it is Ross Lockhart, most particularly, who feels a deep need to enter another dimension and awake to a new world. For his son, this is indefensible. Jeff, the book's narrator, is committed to living, to experiencing "the mingled astonishments of our time, here, on earth." Don DeLillo's seductive, spectacularly observed and brilliant new novel weighs the darkness of the world-terrorism, floods, fires, famine, plague-against the beauty and humanity of everyday life; love, awe, "the intimate touch of earth and sun." Zero K is glorious.
Don DeLillo (Author), Thomas Sadoski (Narrator)
Audiobook
Shots ring out. A president dies. And a nation is plunged into psychosis. Don DeLillo's extraordinary Libra is a brilliant reimagining of the events and people surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Concentrating on the lives of Lee Harvey Oswald, some rogue former spooks unhappy with Kennedy's presidency, and Nicholas Branch, a CIA archivist, trying to make sense of or draw inferences from the mass of information after the assassination, Libra presents an apologetically provocative picture of America in the second half of the last century.
Don DeLillo, Don Delillo (Author), Michael Prichard (Narrator)
Audiobook
In this powerful, eerily convincing fictional speculation on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. When "history" presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the president will galvanize the nation against communism, the scales are irrevocably tipped. A gripping, masterful blend of fact and fiction, alive with meticulously portrayed characters both real and created, Libra is a grave, haunting, and brilliant examination of an event that has become an indelible part of the American psyche.
Don DeLillo (Author), Michael Prichard (Narrator)
Audiobook
Winner of the National Book Award, White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and four ultramodern offspring as they navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event," a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys-radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings-pulsing with life, yet suggesting something ominous.
Don DeLillo (Author), Michael Prichard (Narrator)
Audiobook
"DeLillo's most affecting novel yet...A dazzling, phosphorescent work of art."-Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "The clearest vision yet of what it felt like to live through that day." -Malcolm Jones, Newsweek "A metaphysical ghost story about a woman alone...intimate, spare, exquisite." -Adam Begley, The New York Times Book Review "A brilliant new novel....Don DeLillo continues to think about the modern world in language and images as quizzically beautiful as any writer." - San Francisco Chronicle
Don DeLillo (Author), Richard Poe (Narrator)
Audiobook
In the opening scene of Falling Man, Keith Neudecker emerges from the smoke and ash of the burning tower where he worked, and makes his way to the apartment of his ex-wife and young son uptown. Throughout this bold and haunting novel, DeLillo traces the way the events of September 11 kindled or rekindled relationships, reconfigured our emotional landscape, our memory, and our perception of the world. Falling Man is a direct encounter with the enormous force of history, yet the story is told through the intimate lives of a few people immediately affected. It is beautiful, heartbreaking and, ultimately, redemptive.
Don DeLillo (Author), John Slattery (Narrator)
Audiobook
"A whimsical, surrealistic excursion into the modern scientific mind." -The New Yorker "His most spectacularly inventive novel." -The New York Times One of DeLillo's first novels, Ratner's Star follows Billy, the genius adolescent, who is recruited to live in obscurity, underground, as he tries to help a panel of estranged, demented, and yet lovable scientists communicate with beings from outer space. It is a mix of quirky humor, science, mathematical theories, as well as the complex emotional distance and sadness people feel. Ratner's Star demonstrates both the thematic and prosaic muscularity that typifies DeLillo's later and more recent works.
Don DeLillo (Author), Jacques Roy (Narrator)
Audiobook
The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories
From one of the greatest writers of our time, his first collection of short stories, written between 1979 and 2011, chronicling'and foretelling'three decades of American life Set in Greece, the Caribbean, Manhattan, a white-collar prison and outer space, these nine stories are a mesmerizing introduction to Don DeLillo's iconic voice, from the rich, startling, jazz-infused rhythms of his early work to the spare, distilled, monastic language of the later stories. In 'Creation,' a couple at the end of a cruise somewhere in the West Indies can't get off the island'flights canceled, unconfirmed reservations, a dysfunctional economy. In 'Human Moments in World War III,' two men orbiting the earth, charged with gathering intelligence and reporting to Colorado Command, hear the voices of American radio, from a half century earlier. In the title story, Sisters Edgar and Grace, nuns working the violent streets of the South Bronx, confirm the neighborhood's miracle, the apparition of a dead child, Esmeralda. Nuns, astronauts, athletes, terrorists and travelers, the characters in The Angel Esmeralda propel themselves into the world and define it. DeLillo's sentences are instantly recognizable, as original as the splatter of Jackson Pollock or the luminous rectangles of Mark Rothko. These nine stories describe an extraordinary journey of one great writer whose prescience about world events and ear for American language changed the literary landscape.
Don DeLillo (Author), Aaron Tveit, Heather Lind, Mercedes Ruehl, Michael Cerveris, Peter Friedman (Narrator)
Audiobook
It is an April day in the year 2000 and an era is about to end. The booming times of market optimism-when the culture boiled with money and corporations seemed more vital and influential than governments- are poised to crash. Eric Packer, a billionaire asset manager at age twenty-eight, emerges from his penthouse triplex and settles into his lavishly customized white stretch limousine. Today he is a man with two missions: to pursue a cataclysmic bet against the yen and to get a haircut across town. Stalled in traffic by a presidential motorcade, a music idol's funeral and a violent political demonstration, Eric receives a string of visitors-experts on security, technology, currency, finance and a few sexual partners-as the limo sputters toward an increasingly uncertain future.
Don DeLillo (Author), Will Patton (Narrator)
Audiobook
THE BODY ARTIST opens with a breakfast scene, a husband and wife, Lauren Hardke, the Body Artist of the title, and Rey Robles, a much older, thrice-married film director, in a rambling rented house somewhere on the New England coast. Though this novel is a radical shift from UNDERWORLD, the way these two people absorb their toast and figs and newspaper, their intimate, half-complete, disjunctive dialogue, is pure DeLillo. He is a stunningly unsentimental observer of marriage, and of the idiosyncrasies that both isolate and bind us. In this novel, he enters the essential space of human encounter. Rey says he's taking a drive and he does, all the way to the Manhattan apartment of his first wife, where he shoots himself. Lauren is left alone, or not alone, as she welcomes a stranger into the house, an eerie, strangely gifted individual she calls Mr. Tuttle. This man, who often speaks in Rey's voice or Lauren's, who knows both intimate moments of their past life and things that haven't yet happened, seems to defy time and to deepen the mystery of human perception. Told from Lauren's perspective, this is a lonely novel, mutely beautiful and moving. It is also a dialogue with our century's new understanding of time.
Don DeLillo (Author), Laurie Anderson (Narrator)
Audiobook
Reading Group Discussion Points "Underworld" can refer to many different facets of this book, such as the labyrinthine subways that wind beneath New York City, or the underground art scenes frequented by Klara and her friends. But it also alludes to the "underworld" that lives within each of us, the fusing of our memories, emotions, and personal histories that make us who we are. Do you agree with the prison psychiatrist who tells young Nick Shay that "we all have a history we are responsible to?" Discuss other "underworld" themes in the book. As Underworld's cover photo represents, there are many "twin forces" explored in this book. Identify these themes of duality and discuss how they're rendered by DeLillo. Few books boast a more brilliantly conceived Prologue than Underworld. Discuss your opinions of it: its construction, its language, its use of real-life in a tale of fiction. Why is the Prologue titled "The Triumph of Death?" How does its gritty, "you're-in-the-ballpark" tone compare to the tone of the first chapter? Do you think the Prologue could stand alone as a short story? One of the most striking aspects of Underworld's narrative is its sprawling, nonlinear structure. By the end of the novel, we have gone full-circle; we start at the baseball game in 1951, fast-forward to the 1990s, and then work our way back to 1951 again. Why do you think DeLillo chose to structure his book this way? Is he saying that while we mark time in a linear fashion, time itself-and our memories-are not linear at all? What does this say about the interconnectedness of the present and the past? In what other ways does this story and its writing come full-circle? Klara Sax says "many things are anchored to the balance of power...." Do you agree that, without the Cold War, this balance is gone? Is there chaos because we don't have an element of danger hanging over our heads? Is life better or safer now that the Cold War is over? Or do we simply have new enemies? Bobby Thomson's game-winning ball serves as the string that links Underworld's numerous characters, subplots, and themes. Is the ball a symbol of achievement or failure? Or, does that assessment depend simply upon who is holding it? Who do you think should have ended up owning the ball? To whom did it mean the most, and why? When Cotter realizes that he will go home with the game-winning baseball, he feels like an important part of history. But does he truly realize the significance of the game he just witnessed? How often are we actually aware that we are witnessing history-in-the-making? What is it about a moment in time, or an event, that makes it obvious that it will go down in history? Do you agree with Marvin Lundy when he states that "reality doesn't happen until you analyze the dots?" What is more reliable: our own personal perception of an event as it happens, or our memories of it years later, after we have had time to think about it, process it, and be influenced by other's opinions and recollections? How have video cameras changed our lives? Do mundane moments become elevated simply because they are caught on tape? Does the repeated viewing of an event (such as the Rodney King beating) make it more horrifying than it would be if only imagined? Or does seeing it over and over in some way make it less terrible? Discuss how the public surfacing of the Zapruder film in the 1970s changed the way Americans considered the Kennedy assassination. How does this compare with other historical moments (such as the Giants/Dodgers game of 1951) that were not filmed? Which is more powerful, and why? Our country's largest man-made monument is the Fresh Kills garbage dump on Staten Island. Explore the irony that we, as a nation, have so much garbage that we have specialists like Nick Shay devoted to studying it. Why did Nick choose to enter such an unappealing field? At one point, he says that his choice of careers came at a point in his life when he was looking for a "faith to embrace." Is his "faith" 20th century American over-consumption? Discuss Lenny Bruce's philosophies about life and our government, as expressed in his comedy routines. How did his routines change as the Cuban Missile Crisis ran its course? Do you think he was an alarmist, or was he playing up his fears to be funny? Do you think his rants accurately reflect the nation's feelings? How did his different audiences react to his performances? Discuss the notion of art versus garbage, as explored in Underworld. How fine is the line between the two? if Klara turns everyday junk into art, can it be argued that the two are one and the same? Are painted planes in the middle of a desert really art? Is the Earth's landscape an appropriate background for art? Or is it perhaps more appropriate than any other? What do you think of the "garbologists" who collect Hoover's trash? Does putting it on display make it art? In regard to Truman Capote's infamous Black and White Ball, DeLillo writes that "the factoidal data generated by the guests would surely bridge the narrowing gap between journalism and fiction." The blending of fact and fiction is a main element of Underworld, and it's precisely what Capote did with In Cold Blood, the first book to present true crime in a novel form. Do you think there should be a thicker line between fact and fiction? Under what circumstances do they become one and the same? Discuss the unique way DeLillo writes dialogue. How do you feel about the way his characters often talk "over" each other? Is this a realistic rendering of the way we communicate? What do you think of the way his characters often let topics of conversation drop off, only to suddenly pick up where they left off at a later time? Does their ability to do this attest to the strong connections they have with one another? In one memorable scene in the book, Marian recounts how she abandoned the trouble-making family dog, and then told her children that he ran away. Later, as she drove the children around "looking" for the dog, she almost came to believe the story she'd made up. Have you ever convinced yourself that a lie you told is true simply because you told it so many times? How often do You think this kind of "revisionist history" occurs in our daily lives? Within our government? Discuss other "secret manipulations of history" explored in Underworld. DeLillo is a highly expressive writer, penning characterizations that stick in the reader's mind. For example, he describes Jack Marshall as a man "on the perennial edge of dropping dead. You know these guys. They smoke and drink heavily and never sleep and have bad tickers and cough up storms of phlegm and the thrill of knowing them is guessing when they'll pitch into their soup." Pick one of your favorite characterizations and discuss.
Don DeLillo (Author), Richard Poe (Narrator)
Audiobook
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award"One of the most intelligent, grimly funny voices to comment on life in present-day America" (The New York Times), Don DeLillo presents an extraordinary new novel about words and images, novelists and terrorists, the mass mind and the arch-individualist. At the heart of the book is Bill Gray, a famous reclusive writer who escapes the failed novel he has been working on for many years and enters the world of political violence, a nightscape of Semtex explosives and hostages locked in basement rooms. Bill's dangerous passage leaves two people stranded: his brilliant, fixated assistant, Scott, and the strange young woman who is Scott's lover-and Bill's
Don DeLillo (Author), Michael Prichard (Narrator)
Audiobook
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