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Underworld by Don DeLillo

Underworld (1997)

by Don DeLillo

Other authors: See the other authors section.

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
5,65050755 (3.89)137
Recently added byprivate library, nicoelston, HubCity, b00kw0rm69, Klepeis, bobparr, JoePhelan, bsbllbsbll, odeb
Legacy LibrariesTerence Kemp McKenna, William Gaddis
  1. 30
    The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño (chrisharpe)
    chrisharpe: Bolaño's novel is set mostly In Mexico City, rather than the US. He uses some similar techniques to DeLillo to produce a much more accomplished and interesting work. It will probably appeal to those who enjoyed Underworld.
  2. 20
    Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (BrandonSiguenza)
  3. 00
    The Weight of Numbers by Simon Ings (ShelfMonkey)
  4. 22
    Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (xtien)
  5. 12
    The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (igorken)
  6. 01
    American Gods by Neil Gaiman (Hibou8)
    Hibou8: Profound, and profoundly american.


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» See also 137 mentions

English (46)  Italian (3)  Serbian (1)  All languages (50)
Showing 1-5 of 46 (next | show all)
Personalmente ho sempre odiato le classifiche, tipo quelle di Hornby in 'High fidelity' - che tra l'altro mi è piaciuto. Oppure quelle stronzate da 'libro nell'isola deserta' , che pochi hanno visto e pochi possono permettersi - a meno di naufragare in un serial tv americano, dove di libri ne appaiono comunque assai pochi...Ad ogni modo, nell'ipotesi ridicola di dover salvare un solo libro dal Diluvio Universale, imbarcandolo a fianco di Noè e dei suoi animali copulatori, penso che questo testo di narrativa potrebbe permettere di ricostruire da zero la civiltà statunitense dell'ultima metà del secolo scorso, nella sua materialità, immaterialità e religiosità, laica e non. Ci sono frasi, paragrafi e intere pagine che, come le olive, possono essere spremute a freddo, a caldo, trasformate in pasta, e saranno sempre generose di senso e significato. La loro densità è così pregna da poter generare storie infinite negli occhi del lettore. La potenza delle immagini, degli intercalari, dei dialoghi, è qualcosa che va oltre la narrativa finora conosciuta. Un prodotto dalla potenza di un diamante grezzo radioattivo, e uno schiaffo molisano ai mediocri scrittori che popolano le classifiche da spiaggia. ( )
  bobparr | Dec 14, 2014 |
This is a very disjointed book. The skipping back and forth makes the story-line difficult to follow. I finished this novel but I would not recommend it. ( )
  Amusedbythis | Aug 17, 2014 |
This needs some explaining. After rating many hundreds of read books, this one had me the most perplexed as to how to rate it. I was thinking, either a 3 or a 5. A three>, or a five?! It was suggested I average it out as a 4, but that seemed to me to just misrepresent both ratings.

There is no question for me that the writing in this book is 5 star, all the way. Though the lengthy baseball stadium scene at the beginning, packed with American cliches and the slapstick team of Hoover and Gleason, started me off decisively thinking I was not at all going to like this book, it won me over with its amazing presentation and acute powers of observation. To my amazement I found myself eventually able to see the baseball game (and fans) from a whole other perspective than I thought possible. This is 5 star stuff. And it just keeps going, and going, and going...

And yet, honestly, the book is extremely American, and as much as I'm dazzled by the writing and observations, the characters and content just don't speak to me personally very much. Hence, for me, though the writing is top notch, I can't get much beyond "liked it" (3 stars).

So, seeking enlightenment, I naturally read a bunch of reviews here to get a sense of how others have evaluated this work. There's very little middle ground. There's a blanket of 4 and 5 stars, peppered with shotgun blasts of of 1 star holes.

The 1 star hits are, without a doubt, the more substantial (sadly) and fun to read. I guess the 5 star reviewers are just too in awe and humbled to attempt to write anything insightful after completing the masterpiece? What more is there to say?

I am in entire sympathy with most of the 1 star reviews I read. Yes, the book really feels long. Yes, what "plot" there is, there hardly is. Yes, Delillo is brutally long winded. Yes, it can't help but drag on probably even the most ardent fan in places. Yes, it's really hard to hang on to the thread, and not drift off into the aether of words.

I am in sympathy with those who "did not like", for these reasons. They are justified in this perspective. And yet I am also sad. They seem to have missed so much. I feel, when confronted with such a sweeping, complexly structured, and yet minutely detailed work as this, that the lack is in us the readers rather than in the text. This is a work we really do need to expand ourselves and apply ourselves to connect with, as lovers of literature, lovers of observation, and lovers of life.

And so, slightly ironically, it was the delightful and painful one star reviews that pushed me from the middle of the road into the extremely starry expanse. This book deserves the stars, even if I don't entirely feel them.

I still like White Noise more (the only other Delillo I've thus far read) -- though it has less stars from me.

I hope this explanation of my here aberrant rating is satisfactory (to me).
( )
1 vote tmiddleton | Jan 7, 2014 |
I grudgingly gave this three stars, just as I grudgingly gave [b:White Noise|11762|White Noise|Don DeLillo|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327934706s/11762.jpg|327422] two. For me a begrudged star almost always indicates a lack of enjoyability, usually in the face of some detectable higher quality of literature. In both books I somewhat admire what DeLillo is doing, yet I require more than a cold intellectual exercise out of my literature. In other words, I still don't see the point of displeasurable pleasure reading.

This book is significantly better than White Noise (my review) but equally flawed, although in different ways. In fact, Underworld had practically the opposite problem as White Noise, since the latter suffered from intentional superficiality and the former suffers primarily from inaccessibility. Perhaps ironically, the titles of each book are excellent signals of the problems that await each respective reader.

I won't get too much into the plot besides to say that there is not a traditional narrative, just around twenty characters that we follow over the course of five decades and 800 pages. If that sounds like it would be difficult for an author to pull off, it is, and DeLillo didn't. I guess it's redundant to say it's too long since I already mentioned the 800 pages. Here's an example:The cheesecake was smooth and lush, with the personality of a warm and well-to-do uncle who knows a hundred dirty jokes and will die of sexual exertions in the arms of his mistress (180).Now, this sentence is interesting, funny, and also completely useless. Too many times DeLillo takes his eye off the prize in favor of these masturbatory asides. It's the same Tom Robbins-y tendency that bothered me in White Noise.

It is somewhat entertaining to think about the book post-fact, and to analyze how he weaved all of these minor subplots and various characters into his overall theme of the dirty underside of what we call normal life. He does it with subtlety and artistry, yet the book's disjointed nature -- randomly hopping between characters and years/decades -- makes it difficult to stay engaged. Additionally, the book's length means it took several weeks to read, and by the end the events from the beginning of the novel lost any impact just because I couldn't really remember them. There are many powerful moments and scenes that could have been woven into a highly impactful novel with stricter editing and perhaps more conventional narration.

Maybe I missed the part where the postmodern classic no longer needs to be enjoyable, but for my postmodern dollars I'll take [a:Cormac McCarthy|4178|Cormac McCarthy|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1302752071p2/4178.jpg] or [a:Jose Saramago] every time. This book reminds me of [b:Sophie's Choice|228560|Sophie's Choice|William Styron|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320477080s/228560.jpg|2912834] in that I thought the tremendous adulation each book received was overblown.

Here are some choice cuts that demonstrate DeLillo's skill, despite his questionable narrative/structural choices:

(Discussing video of the Texas Highway Killer, the last sentence here is just beautiful.)Seeing someone at the moment he dies, dying unexpectedly. This is reason alone to stay fixed to the screen. It is instructional, watching a man shot dead as he drives along on a sunny day. It demonstrates an elemental truth, that every breath you take has two possible endings. And that's another thing. There's a joke locked away here, a note of cruel slapstick that you are willing to appreciate even if it makes you feel a little guilty. Maybe the victim's a chump, a sort of silent-movie dupe, classically unlucky. He had it coming in a sense, for letting himself be caught on camera. Because once the tape starts rolling it can only end one way. This is what the context requires.
. . .
The more you watch the tape, the deader and colder and more relentless it becomes. The tape sucks the air right out of your chest but you watch it every time (159-160).

Ismael stood their coughing and Edgar moved back against the far wall. She knew she ought to be more sympathetic to the man. But she was not sentimental about fatal diseases. Dying was just an extended version of Ash Wednesday. She intended to meet her own end with senses intact, grasp it, know it finally, open herself to the mystery that others mistake for something freakish and unspeakable (245).(He's very good at conveying a feeling and sense, without using the precise language to explain exactly what he means.)

And I love this one because it makes me think of 100 times when I've experienced it myself:They laugh and stop and laugh again. It's one of those jokes that reverberates for ten or twenty seconds, bouncing around the premises, one meaning echoing into another. . . (651)A bit of DeLillo's stream of consciousness characterization:In the stronger light down here he could see that Marvin Lundy's hair was a swatch of loomed synthetic, ash-brown, combed sleekly forward, and it made Brian think of Las Vegas and pinky rings and prostate cancer (169).And:They shook hands and exchanged the wry smile of adversaries who are enjoined from mauling each other by some inconvenience of context (195).
( )
1 vote blake.rosser | Jul 28, 2013 |
In the summer of 2012 I listened Independence Day, which I despised with forgetful disdain. In the spring of 2013, unfortunately, I am struggling to get into a second listen, much as I love it, because it has the same narrator (who is fine!).
  ljhliesl | Jun 1, 2013 |
Showing 1-5 of 46 (next | show all)
'"Underworld" is a victim of its own ambition: by trying to cover such a wide range of characters and situations, DeLillo loses track of some of them' ... 'Despite its faults DeLillo has created an ambitious and powerful novel...'
added by GYKM | editSpike Magazine, Gary Marshall (Dec 1, 1998)
This "is his best novel and perhaps that most elusive of creatures, a great American novel."

» Add other authors (19 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Don DeLilloprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Mikulášková, LucieTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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To the memory of my mother and father.
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Parla la tua lingua, l'americano, e c'è una luce nel suo sguardo che è una mezza speranza.
"How is it we did so much laughing? How is it people came over with their empty pockets and bad backs and not so good marriages and twenty minutes later we're all laughing?"
"Sometimes faith needs a sign. There are times when you want to stop working at faith and just be washed in a blowing wind that tells you everything."
Tutto è collegato, alla fine.
Il ciberspazio è una cosa dentro il mondo, o il contrario? Quale contiene quale e come si può esserne sicuri?
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Average: (3.89)
0.5 3
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