White Noises Off

I sat at my desk at lunch today desperately trying to read White Noise. You know that scene in American Werewolf in London where David is calmly reading a book one minute and the next he is screaming and ripping his clothes off and sprouting fangs and a tail? Yeah, that is what this felt like. I decided fuck it, I was done. And a sense of peace just that suddenly came upon me. This is the feeling of a good, nay excellent, decision.

A tedious academic in a made-up discipline (Hitler Studies? That's your joke DeLillo?) An affectless wife-oh sure, eventually you find out she is shagging some guy to obtain an experimental drug that supposedly ameliorates the fear of death but even then she just becomes another annoying character in a crowded sea of same who also is still affectless. A seriously creepy oldest son who plays chess over mail with a mass murderer and that's not even the creepiest thing about him. A colleague that likes to natter about the intellectual significance of generic peanut packaging and tourist photo ops and is in desperate need of a good generic nut punching. An unbearable class co-taught by Hitler guy and ridonkulous colleague (who I always imagined could be played in the movie by David Cross) who is trying to start his own discipline of Elvis Studies. Wasn't Elvis a cliche by the mid 80's? Fucking pretentious pseudo-clever twaddle. I gave it two stars but really I think I hated it. Warning sign #1 and the reason I've avoided DeLillo so studiously lo these many years was a rave review Rolling Stone gave Libra. Warning sign #2 is people who like to use the fucking tragic contraction "PoMo" like this book.

Not even posting first and last lines. This book does not deserve the typing time.

Moving on to A Loyal Character Dancer, second in the Inspector Chen series.

Short list for the year: Michael Chabon, Ragtime, Jonathan Safran Foer, Why Evolution is True, maybe David Mitchell, maybe Japanese history.