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Don DeLillo was awarded the 1999 Jerusalem Prize for a writer whose work expresses the theme of freedom of the individual in society.
—Mark Winegardner
Working at the top of his form, DeLillo draws on his previous novels (Mao II, 1991, Libra, 1988, etc.) in shaping his most ambitious work yet, a grand Whitmanesque epic of postwar American life—a brainy, streetwise, and lyrical underground history of our times, full of menace and miracles, and humming with the bop and crackle of postmodern life.
DeLillo's bottom-up chronicle is also the history of garbage, from a rubble-strewn lot in the Bronx to nuclear waste dumps in the Southwest. And the true-blue American who spans these landscapes is one Nick Shay, now an executive with a waste-management firm, once a j.d. on the not-so-mean streets, where his father kept book and his mother worried her rosary for her two boys, the other a chess prodigy who later lends his mathematical genius to the weapons industry. From the '50s on, DeLillo's always accessible narrative is also the history of a baseball, the one that was the "Shot Heard Round the World," Bobby Thomson's pennant-winning home run in 1951. The fate of the actual ball, a relic of spiritual significance, seemingly lost, is also a lesson in enterprise. Snagged by a young black kid from Harlem, who identifies with Thomson's Homeric homer, the ball quickly becomes an object of commerce, purloined by the boy's desperate father. Eventually, Nick acquires it, but for him it more properly commemorates failure: Branca's losing pitch. Beyond garbage and baseball, DeLillo surveys the Cold War years with a satirist's eye for meaningful detail and a linguist's ear for existential patter.
Sweeping in scope and design, incorporating such diverse figures as Lenny Bruce and J. Edgar Hoover, DeLillo's masterpiece shouts against the times in the language of the times: postmodernism against itself. He kicks the rock of reality, teases out the connectedness of things, and leaves us in awe.
The novel, whose original cover, unnervingly, features an image of the World Trade Center towers surrounded by fog and looming over a small church, focuses on the cold war years. But its portrait of life under the shadow of the atomic bomb — this thing "they had brought" into the world that "out-imagined the mind" — is immediately recognizable. As he did so astutely in earlier novels, Mr. DeLillo depicts an America in thrall to celebrity, technology and the mass media, a country afflicted with paranoia and confusion, a country in which there are no limits to the power of money, and "violence is easier now, it's uprooted, out of control, it has no measure anymore."
Though "Underworld" pivots around the experiences of one Nick Shay, a hero who shares his creator's Bronx childhood and Roman Catholic upbringing, it unfolds into a panoramic portrait of America, charting the intersecting lives of dozens of characters, famous and obscure — baseball fans and conspiracy fanatics, hustlers, con men, businessmen, scientists and artists. The novel moves from the streets of New York to the suburbs to the New Mexico desert, cutting back and forth from the 1950s to the 1990s, and in doing so gives us a visceral sense of how private lives and public events, the personal and the collective, can converge, with explosive force.
Readers put off by the novel's 800-plus page length should sample its prologue: a breathtaking 50-odd-page set piece that seamlessly captures the experience of 35,000 people watching the famous ballgame of Oct. 3, 1951, in which the Giants beat the Dodgers to win the pennant race — a game that happened to take place on the very same day that America learned that the Soviet Union had exploded an atomic bomb, and the cold war took a deadly new turn. This prologue is such a bravura display of Mr. DeLillo's literary powers, odds are the reader will be propelled through the rest of this dazzling and prescient novel. --(Michiko Kakutani)
, the author of fifteen novels, including Underworld, Falling Man, White Noise, and Libra, has won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize for his complete body of work and the William Dean Howells Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2010, he was awarded the PEN/Saul Bellow Prize. The Angel Esmeralda was a finalist for the 2011 Story Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. In October 2012, DeLillo receives the Carl Sandburg Literary Award for his body of work.
When De Lillo's first novel, Americana, was published in 1971, it received modest reviews. Seven books followed over the next 14 years, steadily generating more critical praise but few sales. Then, in 1985, he hit pay dirt with White Noise, a brooding postmodern masterpiece about a Midwestern college professor and his family in the aftermath of an airborne toxic accident. It proved to be De Lillo's breakthrough, earning him both a National Book Award and an avid cult following.
Since then, De Lillo has gone on to produce a string of superb "literary" novels that fairly brim with big ideas yet also capture the essence of contemporary culture in all its infuriating banality. Cited by younger writers like Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace as a major influence, De Lillo remains a reserved and private, albeit gracious and genteel man who seems a bit uncomfortable with fame.
Among the many honors De Lillo has received are the Irish Times/Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize for Libra (1989); the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for Mao II (1991); and the Jerusalem Prize, William Dean Howells Medal, and the Riccardo Bacchelli International Award for his magnum opus Underworld (1997). In addition, three of his novels received high marks on a 2006 survey sponsored by The New York Times to name the single best work of American fiction of the last 25 years.
We were about thirty miles below the Canadian border in a rambling encampment that was mostly barracks and other frame structures, a harking back, maybe, to the missionary roots of the order -- except the natives, in this case, were us. Poor city kids who showed promise; some frail-bodied types with photographic memories and a certain uncleanness about them; those who were bright but unstable; those who could not adjust; the ones whose adjustment was ordained by the state; a cluster of Latins from some Jesuit center in Venezuela, smart young men with a cosmopolitan style, freezing their weenies off; and a few farmboys from not so far away, shyer than borrowed suits.
"Sometimes I think the education we dispense is better suited to a fifty-year-old who feels he missed the point the first time around. Too many abstract ideas. Eternal verities left and right. You'd be better served looking at your shoe and naming the parts. You in particular, Shay, coming from the place you come from."
This seemed to animate him. He leaned across the desk and gazed, is the word, at my wet boots.
"Those are ugly things, aren't they?"
"Yes they are."
"Name the parts. Go ahead. We're not so chi chi here, we're not so intellectually chic that we can't test a student face-to-face."
"Name the parts," I said. "All right. Laces."
"Laces. One to each shoe. Proceed."
I lifted one foot and turned it awkwardly.
"Sole and heel."
"Yes, go on."
I set my foot back down and stared at the boot, which seemed about as blank as a closed brown box.
"Proceed, boy."
"There's not much to name, is there? A front and a top."
"A front and a top. You make me want to weep."
"The rounded part at the front."
"You're so eloquent I may have to pause to regain my composure. You've named the lace. What's the flap under the lace?"
"The tongue."
"Well?"
"I knew the name. I just didn't see the thing."
He made a show of draping himself across the desk, writhing slightly as if in the midst of some dire distress.
"You didn't see the thing because you don't know how to look. And you don't know how to look because you don't know the names."
He tilted his chin in high rebuke, mostly theatrical, and withdrew his body from the surface of the desk, dropping his bottom into the swivel chair and looking at me again and then doing a decisive quarter turn and raising his right leg sufficiently so that the foot, the shoe, was posted upright at the edge of the desk.
A plain black everyday clerical shoe.
"Okay," he said. "We know about the sole and heel."
"Yes."
"And we've identified the tongue and lace."
"Yes," I said.
With his finger he traced a strip of leather that went across the top edge of the shoe and dipped down under the lace.
"What is it?" I said.
"You tell me. What is it?"
"I don't know."
"It's the cuff."
"The cuff."
"The cuff. And this stiff section over the heel. That's the counter."
"That's the counter."
"And this piece amidships between the cuff and the strip above the sole. That's the quarter."
"The quarter," I said.
"And the strip above the sole. That's the welt. Say it, boy."
"The welt."
"How everyday things lie hidden. Because we don't know what they're called. What's the frontal area that covers the instep?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know. It's called the vamp."
"The vamp."
"Say it."
"The vamp. The frontal area that covers the instep. I thought I wasn't supposed to memorize."
"Don't memorize ideas. And don't take us too seriously when we turn up our noses at rote learning. Rote helps build the man. You stick the lace through the what?"
"This I should know."
"Of course you know. The perforations at either side of, and above, the tongue."
"I can't think of the word. Eyelet."
"Maybe I'll let you live after all."
"The eyelets."
"Yes. And the metal sheath at each end of the lace."
He flicked the thing with his middle finger.
"This I don't know in a million years."
"The aglet."
"Not in a million years."
"The tag or aglet."
"And the little metal ring that reinforces the rim of the eyelet through which the aglet passes. We're doing the physics of language, Shay."
"The little ring."
"You see it?"
"Yes."
"This is the grommet," he said.
"Oh man."
"The grommet. Learn it, know it and love it."
"I'm going out of my mind."
"This is the final arcane knowledge. And when I take my shoe to the shoemaker and he places it on a form to make repairs -- a block shaped like a foot. This is called a what?"
"I don't know."
"A last."
"My head is breaking apart."
"Everyday things represent the most overlooked knowledge. These names are vital to your progress. Quotidian things. If they weren't important, we wouldn't use such a gorgeous Latinate word. Say it," he said.
"Quotidian."
"An extraordinary word that suggests the depth and reach of the commonplace."
His white collar hung loose below his adam's apple and the skin at his throat was going slack and ropy and it seemed to be catching him unprepared, old age, coming late but fast.
I put on my jacket.
"I meant to bring along a book for you," he said.
Copyright © 1997 by Don DeLillo
I read 150 pages of the 827-page book, and skimmed much of the rest, and only read that much of it because the novel was on a list of literary fiction I'd been working through. I knew it was difficult and wanted to give it a fair chance to win me over. Otherwise, I would have stopped at the second page of story.
I not only don't find this is a great book and a "page-turner" as promised in the blurbs, I found the novel a badly written one from the first pages: endless run-on sentences-of-doom, forced and clunky metaphors, random bits forced into sentences where they don't belong. I'm aware, that like the doorstop length, these are all techniques that plenty of critics would find evidence of profundity, but they left me cold.
The book jumps from omniscience with touches of second person in the Prologue to first person in Part One, and much of the rest looking though the novel is third person. You can tell looking at the section title pages that the main story is non-linear; like Pinter's "Betrayal" or the film "Memento," you work yourself backward from the early 90s to the early 50s in each of the six parts until you hit the epilogue set in the near future. Nothing about this book is straightforward--not the prose, point-of-view, narrative, characters or the very thin plot.
Even many reviewers who found the book a mess thought the prologue a work of genius, so if you're not enchanted by it--and I wasn't--I doubt the book will hold you. I think that prologue does say a lot about Delillo. Both it and a great deal of the book hangs on baseball as a metaphor for American culture and is about a legendary game between the Giants and Dodgers in 1951--through it we follow not just a turnstile jumper but characters like J Edgar Hoover and Jackie Gleason--who is described vividly and repellently as throwing up on Frank Sinatra. That turnstile jumper who skipped out of school finds a seat and is befriended by a man who buys him a soda. At the end of the game he'll twist this man's fingers to pry the home-run baseball out of his hands. So, if baseball is America, then the message is America is grasping, greedy, thieving, and repellent.
The bulk of the book then deals with the man who ultimately bought that baseball--Nick Shay--who is in waste management. The first person narrative of Part One is more accessible than the Prologue, but still at times disjointed in the modernist way, and we're headed to another extended metaphor: American culture as trash.
In short, if you're looking for a gripping story with characters you care about and a narrative that sucks you in, you're looking in the
wrong place. But if you're the kind who loves a disjointed narrative with overwrought, pretentious prose that revels in showing us the tawdriness of American life, by all means, go pick up a copy.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 13, 2001
This book is a masterpiece, but like many good things, it may be best to start with some earlier (and probably easier to follow) books by the author. Libra (a novel about Oswald's and the mafia's role in the assasination of JFK), White Noise, and even End Zone are all probably good places to start. That said, Underworld is awesome in its scope (fifty years, many subplots, Delillo's incredible command of dialogue), and highly recommended.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted March 19, 2012
*slaps him and takes control of the boat*hmmm*decides to be nice to the guy and throws him on the shore*thnx!!so wat now posiedon
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Posted February 20, 2012
Wheres Hades cabin?
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Posted January 28, 2012
Okay
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Posted May 24, 2009
Rivals Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" as the most important American novel ever.
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Posted April 2, 2007
If one were to pick their recipe for a 'perfect book', 'Underworld' would not meet many readers' criteria. The ending is somewhat disconnected and disappointing. This is not a book that you will sit up all night to finish, nor is it a book you can walk away from for a week or two due to its complexity. However the vast tapestry woven from the opening chapter of the 'Shot Heard Around the World' and the detailed and real character development are arresting. The contrasts between postwar neighborhood centered New York City life and today's disposable society are telling and the New York portraits-past and present- are wonderfully evocative. I generally like a fast read, as long as it is well written, but this book remains in my memory.
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Posted July 22, 2003
Underworld is one of those books that does not seem to inter-connected, this seemingly detachment from character to character drives home the colossal picture that Delillo is trying to make. It will not be enjoyed if seen otherwise.
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Posted April 30, 2003
When I read a book, I'm more interested in the story than superfluous language. If you're into erratic shifts of time and place, as well as hard to read dialogue and mundane observations that serve no purpose in furthering the story, then Underworld is the book for you. There's a reason why authors like Stephen King, James Patterson, and JK Rowling sell so many books--THEY TELL STORIES PEOPLE FIND INTERESTING. They may not win the literary awards books like Underworld win, but they're a hell of a lot more fun to read. When I pick up a book, I don't want to work. I'd rather stare out the bus window than read Underworld.
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Posted August 16, 2001
Mr. Delillo has written a masterpiece ....not so much as an accurate history of the last century's last 50 years but a pastiche of soaring language ....daring use of metaphor and astounding tone and poetic prose ....if you love truly love good writing and are not put off by discursive turns to further the poetry this is your book! there are whole sections and even paragraphs that stand all alone and can be read as exquisite essays and short stories Delillo has wrought a work of grand proportions in the use of the English language .....this is nothing short of the work of a genius and lord of language .....to be sure the plot and characters are not rendered clearly thus throwing some readers off stride ....but for the beautiful language it's well worth the read .....you can find epigramatical passage after passage ....this book will instill in many a love for good writing the language has been rescued from banality by Mr.Delillo 3 cheers !!! read it ....you'll love it
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Posted July 25, 2001
In his epic that spans five decades, Delillo subtly observes, commends, and criticizes American society. Focusing on the consumption oriented society, this tale of half a dozen major characters and a baseball is both brilliantly written and engrossing. Perhaps the best book to be written in the past ten years.
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Posted May 4, 2001
-which is not a bad thing. some people enjoy its framework, others don't. nothing more. a book that really requires your attention most importantly your thoughts inbetween the times you're actually reading it. otherwise you'll immerse yourself into a lost world of american history's not so newsbreaking yet highly interesting (fictional) events. yet even with so much information packed into the book it manages itself to wrap itself around one central theme in the end - peace.
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Posted September 16, 2000
Delilo writes about American culture with incisive clarity and wit. Some people get it, and some people, like the negative reviewers on this page, don't. There's something to be found in every sentence.
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Posted April 28, 2012
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Overview
Don DeLillo's novel opens with a legendary baseball game played in New York in 1951. The glorious outcome - the home run that wins the game is called the "Shot Heard Round the World" - shades into the grim news that the Soviet Union has just tested an atomic bomb. The baseball itself, fought over and scuffed, generates the narrative that follows. It takes the reader deeply into the lives of Nick and Klara and into modern memory and the soul of American culture - from Bronx tenements to grand ballrooms to a B-52 bombing raid over Vietnam. A generation's master spirits come and go. Lenny Bruce cracking desperate jokes, Mick Jagger with his devil strut, J. Edgar Hoover in a sexy leather mask. And flashing in the margins of