When I was asked to contribute to the Atlantic’s By Heart series, for which an author describes a cherished work or influence, I rushed over to the website to see who’d already been covered — and was surprised to discover Don DeLillo had not. That made it pretty easy to decide what I’d write about. The first paragraph of my tribute to DeLillo — and especially his novel White Noise — is below:

If I were to run a speakeasy or an underground revolutionary movement—something in need of a secret code phrase, a few words you could whisper to show you were a Fellow Traveler—I might opt for: “The station wagons arrived at noon, a long shining line that coursed through the west campus.

You can find the rest of the essay here: