Rating: 
Summary: White Noise -- just longer
Review: If you've read White Noise then don't bother with this one. Yes, there are random pages throughout (about 1 in every 75) that are absolutely beautiful and that I will remember for forever. However, the characters seem to have the same conversations and he plugs in seemingly random commercial sayings here and there. The themes are there but really they're not much different from White Noise. I wasted the months of May - July going through this. I should have spent it reading All the King's Men again....
Rating: 
Summary: A book I'll revisit over and over...
Review: We had a discussion leader in a book club who would always ask, "So is this the best story you've ever read?" If asked that today, I would say, "No, but it is a damn good book." There are many mixed reviews, and I am not one to condemn opinions. Rather, I suggest you give it a try with some advice: If you are thinking of reading this book, MAKE SURE YOU PAY ATTENTION. Do not put it down for long periods of time. Read a little a day. The prologue is one of the best pieces of writing ever; there will be a lull after reading it. Expect to be let down at times, but expect to be astonished as well. What you'll find is an extraordinarily entertaining book on many levels. It offers a plot, several themes (connection, betrayal, the delicate balance of the world and the many 'underworlds' within--to name a few), and DeLillo demonstrates adept skill at many different styles of writing. Complex, witty, droll, cynical (at times), and challenging, it is one of my favorite books of the 1990's. I hope it is one of yours.
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Summary: For DeLillo Loyalists, His Masterpiece
Review: ... Don DeLillo is an acquired taste. He loves repetition,which drives many readers mad. He has a powerful worldview, centeredon conspiracies and secret meanings. Political conservatives often despise him. If you are new to DeLillo, you may very well enjoy his books. But please, do NOT start your DeLillo reading with this book. Start with a small, funny book like End Zone. Ease into White Noise, Mao II or Libra ... then take a crack at Underworld. For those in touch with DeLillo's dry humor and in love with those picture perfect sentences that seem to appear out of thin air, Underworld is the ultimate feast. It is a culmination of his themes about modern America ... but it's also a miraculous collection of vignettes. What other writer would dare imagine a series of Lenny Bruce monologues during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Or conjure up a forgotten Eisenstein film? Or rediscover the bizarre coincidence of Frank Sinatra, Toots Shoor, Jackie Gleason and J. Edgar Hoover all attending the Giants-Dodgers playoff game? I'm in awe of DeLillo. His universe may be cold and spare, but I believe that's because he sees our world more clearly than most. He gets under the emotions and styles of the day ... he finds the secret histories. END
Rating:
Summary: Stick with it
Review: It took a while to get moving, but now that I'm halfway through it I can't put it down. While other customers fault the author for not clearly writing what he means to say it is this "hinting around" at what is really taking place that keeps my attention. The book requires a lot of the reader. DeLillo stages the events and characters and his readers have to uncover the Underground reality. It is far from much of the popular mindless fiction consumed today and therefore and must-read.
Rating:
Summary: Beneath America
Review: Underworld is full of what makes Delillo great: repetitive phrases that resonate like traffic sounds or words in one's head; quirky references to pop culture and American history with relevance to everything and everyone; obscure connections that allways lurk below the surface of an event. His characters, with this book in particular, are given a life with which they talk and argue, love and fight, and look to the future as they remember the past. The descriptive language is amazing. Very well written.
Rating: 
Summary: I tried reading it when it first came out...
Review: After reading the absolutely and almost uniformly glowing reviews that this book received when it first came out, I tried to express my bewilderment on Amazon.com that the grand pooh baahs of the critical community chose this book as possibly the Great American Novel. For some reason my comments didn't register (perhaps I did something wrong). I'll try again. I have never read a more overwritten, tedious, example of how my 11th grade English teacher told me NOT TO WRITE. I mean, what were the critics thinking in so heavily lauding this book? I am of the school of thought that a writer should say what he or she means as concisely as possible. I absolutely detest the cutesy, flourishing manner of writing that so many people think constitutes good writing. In this book at least, Delillo knows nothing about making his point succinctly. He seems to be more in love with the process of trying to say something with as many adjectives, and as much metaphor, etc. as he can, than in saying anything truly profound. I remain baffled with regard to how the grand king makers of the literary community think.
Rating:
Summary: BRILLIANT
Review: DeLillo may strech his prose at times, but it is some excellant prose. This was for me a page turner in the truest sense. DeLillo uncovers a whole world from baseball to the Cold War to relationships to Italian-America to bomb testing. The book's primary weakness is its lenghth, but the does not mean that DeLillo was not able to fill out the pages. Overall a marvelous book, and a very good (and startling) ending about the effects of nuclear activity and the abuse of our youngest citizens.
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Summary: Delillo never gets "under"
Review: What a waste... Delillo commits two of the most serious sins for a writer: 1) He doesn't take the time to say or convey what he wants in the briefest possible way. Editing would have helped, but it the writer's responsibility in the end. 2) Because he's so enamored with his own writing (which is very good at times), he looses track of his characters and his readers. The rusult: he comes across as pretentious, long winded, and self-absorbed. Ironically, I can't imagine anyone who seems to be more out of touch with this country's "underworld" than Delillo. He considers the history, politics, and pop-culture of the past 40-odd years, but can't penetrate the surface to what's underneath. If I were to offer one word to describe his outlook, it would be "insulated". Rolled out amid great ballyhoo by the litery press, this book's very inaccessability seems to have added to its acclaim. Nevertheless, it will probably be forgotton in less time than it can be read. NOTE TO DELILLO: Go back to basics.
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Summary: Much Ado About Nothing
Review: Simply put: Don't bother. If your'e looking for history, look somewhere else. This book was not only about garbage, it was garbage! Try Rutherford if you want history.
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Summary: Of Baseball and Nuclear War
Review: It took me almost two months to finish this book. It's long, 827 pages, and complex. It starts on October 4, 1951 when Bobby Thompson hit the home run in the last of the ninth inning, thereby winning the pennant for the Giants against the Dodgers. The same day, by coincidence, the Russians exploded their first nuclear bomb. These two themes, baseball and nuclear war, run throughout the book. There are dozens of characters and hundreds of incidents and it all seems like a very loose jigsaw puzzle that doesn't quite fit together. It's art the way a surreal painting is art, the tone set by the author's mastery of language and unique detail. The main character is Nick Shay, a man raised in the Bronx and now a nuclear waste expert living in Arizona. All the other characters had smaller roles. There's an artist who leaves her family, a chess player who loses games, a serial killer who randomly kills people on the highway, a fanatic collector of baseball memorabilia. There's also Lenny Bruce. They're all were part of the total form, though, which was, in reality, only peripherally about it's characters. The book was about America from 1951 until the present day and how the threat of nuclear war effected our lives. Having lived through this time, I remember the classroom drills. We would all crouch under our desks when the teacher said "take cover," and I remember being issued a dog tag to wear. I must admit that during those years, however, I never was seriously afraid of nuclear war. Some of the most chilling parts of the book are the descriptions of a clinic in the Soviet Union where victims of living downwind from the blasts are treated. This is in sharp contrast to the description of the blandness of American life. I almost laughed out load at the chapter about a housewife in America determined to get her jello parfaits just right, tilting the glasses in the refrigerator to layer the jello. There's a "Underworld" beneath the surface of our lives. It is there in the potential for disastrous destruction; it is there in the handling of waste material; it is there in various disappointments and paranoias of life. Much of this book was not comfortable to read. This is serious fiction with a serious theme. It is not for everyone.
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