You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.88 AVERAGE
3.88 AVERAGE
Underworld is a messy historical fiction of American counter-culture since the 1950's, full of insight and paranoia, philosophy and obsession, baseballs and bombs. By looking at the ideas and artifacts we throw away, DeLillo masterfully reconstructs the society that truly created the contemporary United States, creating a doppleganger of the zeitgeist that is both wonderfully new and deeply personal.
However, the sheer scope of the novel, while successfully creating a stage big enough to contain DeLillo's massive story, can sometimes overwhelm the narrative. Some scenes could have been edited or thrown out altogether and the novel would have maintained its integrity and possibly gained a little more focus. Compared to Pynchon's ambitous novels Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon, the sprawl of DeLillo's Underworld looks ponderous and awkward.
I can still recommend Underworld, but with a warning. Because I was warned beforehand, I was able to enjoy diving into the cerebral and emotional maze that is Underworld without panicking the first few times I found myself lost. This is a heavy book, both metaphorically and literally. The story will occasionally drag, and the narrative framework may sag under its' own weight, but the exertion of navigating Underworld's expanse is ultimately worth it.
However, the sheer scope of the novel, while successfully creating a stage big enough to contain DeLillo's massive story, can sometimes overwhelm the narrative. Some scenes could have been edited or thrown out altogether and the novel would have maintained its integrity and possibly gained a little more focus. Compared to Pynchon's ambitous novels Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon, the sprawl of DeLillo's Underworld looks ponderous and awkward.
I can still recommend Underworld, but with a warning. Because I was warned beforehand, I was able to enjoy diving into the cerebral and emotional maze that is Underworld without panicking the first few times I found myself lost. This is a heavy book, both metaphorically and literally. The story will occasionally drag, and the narrative framework may sag under its' own weight, but the exertion of navigating Underworld's expanse is ultimately worth it.
There's genius in here, for sure, but for me it was a series of oases in the middle of a lonely desert. The prologue is excellent, and there are a bunch of passages and observations that stopped me cold, but there was a lot of what felt like fat, a lot of meandering, and I lost focus a lot in struggling through. There were a lot of connections and characters returned to that had me straining to remember -- there's just too much here to hold it all in your head unless it made more of an impact or was read much more quickly. I'm glad I didn't give up in the end -- hence three stars instead of less, but in my opinion a good edit down to about 50% of the size could've made this into a much better book. I say that as somebody whose favourite book is Infinite Jest, by the way.
This books starts off with a baseball game in the 50s. The Giants v Dodgers when they were both in NY. A guy hits a home run into the stands and the Giants win. This is a big deal to people in NY at the time. And the home run ball is stolen from a fan by a little black kid. Also on this same day the Russians detonate a nuke. So symbolism and stuff. The book sort of follows the ball as it’s stolen by the black kid’s dad and sold to another kid’s dad. There’s a bunch of separate timelines and narratives going and they sort of follow this guy who later in life owns the ball. The nuclear bomb and subsequent cold war escalation weave their ways in. There’s old times fifties scenes of Italians in the Bronx back when that was a thing. And sex affairs. The best part was the 2 pages where a memorabilia collector has super stinky shits in Eastern Europe. Otherwise the book is sort of a wish mash of superbly written dialog scenes that sort of over lap. Turns out the important baseball’s final owner shot his buddy in the face with a sawed off shotgun on accident and a nun goes on the internet and the reader is left with a rumination on the word peace. It’s 800 pages.
So far Delillo is 2 for 4 with me. I liked White Noise and Libra. The Names sucked. And this one reminded me of White Noise in its character studies but wasn’t as funny and was three times as long.
The end.
Love, Mitch.
So far Delillo is 2 for 4 with me. I liked White Noise and Libra. The Names sucked. And this one reminded me of White Noise in its character studies but wasn’t as funny and was three times as long.
The end.
Love, Mitch.
Through the first 100 pages I wasn't sure how I would end up feeling about the book, but I ended up really enjoying the prose/pacing.
I find myself struggling to find the words. Not out of the greatness. Not out of humility.
But, perhaps, magnitude. This is a work of size and reflection, at times poetic and at times trite. There is so much here. The weight is a weapon in the hands. The weight bends one over and forces them into the work whether willingly or not. This is a world and this is a place and this place and this world leaves us there and we aren't quite sure if we want to stay or need to stay only that we can't escape and that is a thing both tragic and beautiful. The book is long. Too long of its own good or usefulness. But, there is so much. This stands with the greats whether we agree or not.
But, perhaps, magnitude. This is a work of size and reflection, at times poetic and at times trite. There is so much here. The weight is a weapon in the hands. The weight bends one over and forces them into the work whether willingly or not. This is a world and this is a place and this place and this world leaves us there and we aren't quite sure if we want to stay or need to stay only that we can't escape and that is a thing both tragic and beautiful. The book is long. Too long of its own good or usefulness. But, there is so much. This stands with the greats whether we agree or not.
Questo libro è davvero molto complesso.
Un puzzle.
Innanzitutto, la struttura.
Cotter è un bambino quando trova la pallina da baseball di una partita storica del 1951.
Da quel momento, noi seguiremo la storia dei passaggi di mano di questa pallina, e con essa degli Stati Uniti stessi.
Dagli anni Cinquanta agli anni Novanta.
Ma lo faremo al contrario, perché si va a cronologicamente a ritroso con inframezzi sulla storia di Cotter.
In questo mega calderone, si intrecciano decine di personaggi e decine di storie, e ci sono alcune tematiche che rappresentano dei veri e propri leit-motiv; per esempio, la spazzatura, il numero tredici e il nostro Underworld, che è un concetto che viene indagato in tutte le sue forme possibili, sia letterali che figurate.
Seppur lo stile dell'autore sia molto chiaro, sembra di essere dentro una palla pazza.
DeLillo infila ovunque dettagli e riferimenti a cose o persone, e lo fa all'improvviso (ci sono elementi a p.870 che si riferiscono a eventi di p.250). E, per tutti questi motivi, questa è un lettura che richiede il massimo dell'attenzione. È molto cerebrale, ma anche celebrale.
Del grande romanzo americano.
Della Storia degli Stati Uniti.
È un libro che consiglio assolutamente perché, seppur prolisso e a volte apparentemente confusionario, difficilmente leggerete qualcosa di simile.
A questo un po' si avvicina 4321 di Paul Auster.
Ma quella è tutta un'altra storia.
Un puzzle.
Innanzitutto, la struttura.
Cotter è un bambino quando trova la pallina da baseball di una partita storica del 1951.
Da quel momento, noi seguiremo la storia dei passaggi di mano di questa pallina, e con essa degli Stati Uniti stessi.
Dagli anni Cinquanta agli anni Novanta.
Ma lo faremo al contrario, perché si va a cronologicamente a ritroso con inframezzi sulla storia di Cotter.
In questo mega calderone, si intrecciano decine di personaggi e decine di storie, e ci sono alcune tematiche che rappresentano dei veri e propri leit-motiv; per esempio, la spazzatura, il numero tredici e il nostro Underworld, che è un concetto che viene indagato in tutte le sue forme possibili, sia letterali che figurate.
Seppur lo stile dell'autore sia molto chiaro, sembra di essere dentro una palla pazza.
DeLillo infila ovunque dettagli e riferimenti a cose o persone, e lo fa all'improvviso (ci sono elementi a p.870 che si riferiscono a eventi di p.250). E, per tutti questi motivi, questa è un lettura che richiede il massimo dell'attenzione. È molto cerebrale, ma anche celebrale.
Del grande romanzo americano.
Della Storia degli Stati Uniti.
È un libro che consiglio assolutamente perché, seppur prolisso e a volte apparentemente confusionario, difficilmente leggerete qualcosa di simile.
A questo un po' si avvicina 4321 di Paul Auster.
Ma quella è tutta un'altra storia.
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
slow-paced
So I slog through the first 60 pages going I hate baseball so much that I'm not even getting the interesting thoughts here, finally get a brief reprieve from fucking baseball driving the plot, get like one goddamn conversation, then back to throwing in baseball for 25 pages. I enjoy the thoughts and themes DeLillo usually deals with, but couldn't enjoy anything with all the damn baseball and had to drop this about 250 pages in.
Underworld is the type of novel I love because it centers characters above plot. I’ve seen many reviews of this book that deride it for its lack of narrative cohesion and seemingly anecdotal storytelling devices, but that is precisely why I find it so compelling. What it lacks in plot it makes up for in thematic weight, in that raw emotional stuff that makes your heart ache for reasons you can’t even place at first.
Don Delillo is painting a vivid portrait of the 20th century as seen at all its best and worst angles. In the opening scene, a baseball game seemingly unites people of all backgrounds, but racial and economic disparities abound in the stands. This book is an exercise of dichotomies in this way. Connecting all these disparate elements is Nick Shay, a protagonist who we are introduced to as a depressed, isolated shell of a man. Like the Thomson ball that acts as a prominent narrative device throughout the story, he has been chewed up and regurgitated by the sprawling mechanics of late-stage capitalism, deprived of any and all inherent meaning or character. Learning new details about his tragic life through the reverse-chronological narrative was honestly the height of this experience for me. A story with a structure like this excites and surprises you in the most unexpected ways, as throwaway lines from early on take shape as key scenes in the characters’ lives through Delillo’s wonderful prose. Seriously, this book was a delight to read, start to finish. I do think Delillo has a tendency to get a bit verbose in unnecessary places, but when he hits, he hits. I give this book 4 stars because I feel that, in context of his greater bibliography, the author retreads a lot of ground he already covered in prior works in a way that feels properly synthetic, but not transcendent. Alienation, human connection, and the roles played by lone individual in history are all themes Delillo has covered better in books such as White Noise, Libra, and Mao II. Very few of the scenes in Underworld, save for the magnificent opening and closing, had the same memorable power as those in White Noise, which I have to say
is still easily my favorite of Delillo’s works. Underworld is an incredible addition to his corpus nonetheless.
Don Delillo is painting a vivid portrait of the 20th century as seen at all its best and worst angles. In the opening scene, a baseball game seemingly unites people of all backgrounds, but racial and economic disparities abound in the stands. This book is an exercise of dichotomies in this way. Connecting all these disparate elements is Nick Shay, a protagonist who we are introduced to as a depressed, isolated shell of a man. Like the Thomson ball that acts as a prominent narrative device throughout the story, he has been chewed up and regurgitated by the sprawling mechanics of late-stage capitalism, deprived of any and all inherent meaning or character. Learning new details about his tragic life through the reverse-chronological narrative was honestly the height of this experience for me. A story with a structure like this excites and surprises you in the most unexpected ways, as throwaway lines from early on take shape as key scenes in the characters’ lives through Delillo’s wonderful prose. Seriously, this book was a delight to read, start to finish. I do think Delillo has a tendency to get a bit verbose in unnecessary places, but when he hits, he hits. I give this book 4 stars because I feel that, in context of his greater bibliography, the author retreads a lot of ground he already covered in prior works in a way that feels properly synthetic, but not transcendent. Alienation, human connection, and the roles played by lone individual in history are all themes Delillo has covered better in books such as White Noise, Libra, and Mao II. Very few of the scenes in Underworld, save for the magnificent opening and closing, had the same memorable power as those in White Noise, which I have to say
is still easily my favorite of Delillo’s works. Underworld is an incredible addition to his corpus nonetheless.