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3.88 AVERAGE
3.88 AVERAGE
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Just finished and loved it Tough book to describe this book. It’s about a baseball. It’s about nuclear weapons, love, war, relationships, the progress of time, faith, and peace.
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
An inquisitive and experimental novel, sprinkled with a touch of understated wit, 'Underworld' embarks upon a questioning and exploration of modern Amercian society. Through its disjointed narrative and multiple character perspectives, this novel suggests themes of class, consumerism, waste, modernity and identity formation. The book's pacing and irratic story telling do not make it an easy-to-pick-up page-turner, however, when given the time and space to be digested, it presents a deeply reflective and feeling story that goes beyond fiction in the regular sense and extends to the human experience at large, in all its non-sensical and existential wonder.
“Even if we believe that history is a workwheel powered by human blood - read the speeches of Mussolini - at least we’ve known this thing together. A single narrative sweep, not ten thousand wisps of disinformation.”
A massive work. DeLillo crafts an incredibly intricate narrative, weaving intimate, interpersonal conflicts effortlessly against the global strifes that form Underworld’s backdrop.
A massive work. DeLillo crafts an incredibly intricate narrative, weaving intimate, interpersonal conflicts effortlessly against the global strifes that form Underworld’s backdrop.
hmmm i think 4.5? i really liked underworld, and i love delillo's prose, and there were many bits that made my little brain go nuts (if you check my progress notes you can see some of them) but i do think that this was perhaps unnecessarily long and i did not think that all parts were equally strong—very strong beginning and end, but the middle was... meandering almost??? still, i think this would make an excellent re-read and also an excellent book to annotate because there's so much to chew on here. either way, i'm extremely pleased this was my last read of 2022.
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
okay so. I liked this. but I haven't picked it up since January 2019 when I was in my first trimester and one of the side effects of my pregnancy was that just looking at books made me nauseated. at this point I would need to start again from the beginning, and this is a fucking tome. 827 pages. and it wasn't gonna be 5 stars, probably somewhere in the 3-4 range. so we're just gonna part ways.
I don't know what made me think I would enjoy this book. It is set in a time, place and surrounding characters with which I have no interest and no relation. Enough books written about 1950's men in New York!
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This author is incredibly talented. Don Delillo is able to build a story from a multitude of perspectives, and feeds back in and revisits how a narrative is built.
Its a beautiful experiment and fight over how we define our past and our experiences and how we define ourselves today.
He not only pulls you in with compelling individual characters, but he manages to quickly confront you with the fact that these people are a part of a pulsing entity - a life in itself - at a much larger level.
This book is tough at points - with long, descriptive moments and often abstract definitions. But I can assure you it pays off. Its eloquent in a way I could never imagine and so relatable to this day.
Worth the intention to read although it did take me two months. This book is not about baseball!
Its a beautiful experiment and fight over how we define our past and our experiences and how we define ourselves today.
He not only pulls you in with compelling individual characters, but he manages to quickly confront you with the fact that these people are a part of a pulsing entity - a life in itself - at a much larger level.
This book is tough at points - with long, descriptive moments and often abstract definitions. But I can assure you it pays off. Its eloquent in a way I could never imagine and so relatable to this day.
Worth the intention to read although it did take me two months. This book is not about baseball!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse, Rape, Sexual content, Murder
Moderate: Cursing, Violence, War, Classism
This is now my favourite novel alongside Blood Meridian, 2666 and Infinite Jest. I'm too fatigued and mentally exhausted to write a decent review now, which fact is a shame.
Underworld is, to use a quote from Roberto Bolaño's 2666 to illustrate my take on this DeLillo novel, one of "the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze a path into the unknown."
Those who will tell you that White Noise is DeLillo's best, or some other short, compact, precise DeLillo work, "want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench." THAT is what DeLillo does here.
Underworld is DeLillo's The Trial, his Moby Dick, his Bouvard and Pecuchet. It is not his Metamorphosis, his Bartleby, his A Simple Heart.
Like all great writers, DeLillo's given you the chance to watch him spar if that's what you want, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. But as far as I'm concerned, nothing is as beautiful as reading a book by a literary master embroiled in what Bolaño terms "real combat" and so eloquently describes in the quote above.
Underworld is, to use a quote from Roberto Bolaño's 2666 to illustrate my take on this DeLillo novel, one of "the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze a path into the unknown."
Those who will tell you that White Noise is DeLillo's best, or some other short, compact, precise DeLillo work, "want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench." THAT is what DeLillo does here.
Underworld is DeLillo's The Trial, his Moby Dick, his Bouvard and Pecuchet. It is not his Metamorphosis, his Bartleby, his A Simple Heart.
Like all great writers, DeLillo's given you the chance to watch him spar if that's what you want, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. But as far as I'm concerned, nothing is as beautiful as reading a book by a literary master embroiled in what Bolaño terms "real combat" and so eloquently describes in the quote above.
I'll be honest and say that I don't remember much about this book other than an awful lot of baseball. This is partially because there is a lot of baseball in it, and partially because I would read it days after school my senior year of high school when I would go with Caryn to watch our baseball team play - and I can't remember if we were going to watch her boyfriend pitch during practices or actual games. So one thing I've learned in the space since then is, you don't have to be supportive of your friends as they are being supportive of their boyfriends if you don't want to, because it's boring!
Also, when you are a senior in high school, and you are reading book reviews in newspapers and feeding off THEM like other girls in high school feed off each other in terms of what to like and what not to like, you're going to average about the same as they do. If I had done more girly things during high school I might have a better idea of how to make my hair look the way I want it to on a day when I really want it to look a certain way. This probably would have arisen after a few haircuts/styles imposed on me by frenemies that I actually hated, but would teach me about how to best flatter my face shape/how hot the flat iron really needs to be. And so... I don't think I actually liked "Underworld" that much, but having read it gave me a sort of confidence that I was up on things in at least one tiny corner of the adult world. And I do actually like Don DeLillo's books in general and this book led me to read more , so that's good, even if looking back on it is a little embarrasing, but not more than anything else people do when they're 17.
Also, when you are a senior in high school, and you are reading book reviews in newspapers and feeding off THEM like other girls in high school feed off each other in terms of what to like and what not to like, you're going to average about the same as they do. If I had done more girly things during high school I might have a better idea of how to make my hair look the way I want it to on a day when I really want it to look a certain way. This probably would have arisen after a few haircuts/styles imposed on me by frenemies that I actually hated, but would teach me about how to best flatter my face shape/how hot the flat iron really needs to be. And so... I don't think I actually liked "Underworld" that much, but having read it gave me a sort of confidence that I was up on things in at least one tiny corner of the adult world. And I do actually like Don DeLillo's books in general and this book led me to read more , so that's good, even if looking back on it is a little embarrasing, but not more than anything else people do when they're 17.