Underworld (AUDIO CASSETTE)

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Summary: "Limited" Time in a Boschian World
Review: Like Carl Sandburg's poem "Limited," Don DeLello's magnificent novel UNDERWORLD focuses on the hubris of modern man as he hurtles toward his self made destruction. Like the vision of hell painted by Hieronymous Bosch in his "The Garden of Earthly Delights," DeLello creates a surrealistic world made even more terrible by its utter ordinariness. From the opening baseball game where a copy of the Bosch painting flutters onto J. Edgar Hoover's lap, as the world is turned upside down by a nuclear explosion juxaposed with an earth shattering homerun, DeLello plays with time, language and the very madness of what passes forthe sanity of life. What a magnificent achievement this book is, and what an awe inspiring writer Mr.DeLello is. As Sandburg says, "I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he answers,'Omaha." All aboard!

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Summary: Vying with Gravity's Rainbow for top of my list -- ever!
Review: It begins with a crowd witnessing a miracle (the Giants Win The Pennant!) and ends with a crowd witnessing a miracle (the apparition of a murdered girl appearing on a billboard). But in the years and chapters between the middle of the twentieth century and its end, the Underworlds of the 1950s -- the nuclear state, the cold war secrets -- give way to new Underworlds, linked and webbed and connected to the surface in ways that a society which saw evil as a thing apart could never have imagined. The realm of Pluto, of waste, of waste management, of the Pynchonite conspiracies of WASTE, ending, as the Wasteland does, with the shattering weight and promise and threat of a single word: Peace.

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Summary: It took 6 months, but I finished it!
Review: I read this book based on the initial review and recommendations of various columnists. It was generally interesting but in the final analysis, I would say not worth the effort. I was unimpressed with the writing style which I felt was overly descriptive with no real connection to the plot. Although I would not recommend this book, I felt that there were some elements of the story and the writing that were excellent. My ultimate regret is that the book as a whole did not live up to the first chapter's tantalizing introduction.

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Summary: americana distilled
Review: I've read 2 of DeLillo's other novels (White Noise, Mao II), and was completely blown away at how very insightful he is about American/western culture. I will admit that I got bored at points, but the scope and depth of this novel are like I've never seen before. It's not so much a novel as it is a journey (as trite as that may sound).

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Summary: Underworld holds a microscope on America.
Review: The first time I read it, I was immediately swept away by the prologue. What captivated me most was a single brief scene of J. Edgar Hoover fitting together a picture of Flemmish painter Peter Bruegel's "The Triumph of Death." Observing the landscape, the dead interacting with the living, he thinks about "Us and Them," how it isn't enough to simply hate your enemy, and how He brings You to completion. Read the book and you'll see what he means. Never has the bipolar world of the Cold War been so honestly evoked. My advice is to ignore the vaunted complexity of the novel and wait for those moments of epiphany when you realize how two stories, or two people, or two cities fit together; they are some of the most satisfying times with a book in my memory. From nuclear bombs to pop icons, garbage to art films, numerology to history, Underworld is America in just over 800 pages, which, when you consider the size of the subject, isn't all that bad. Definitely a must read.

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Summary: Secret American Histories
Review: DeLillo is easily the most important American novelist in the second half of the 20th century, and its fitting that his last book for this century, the boiling brillance "Underworld", attempts to assemble something about the American character, the search for a useable past. The language is keen as is it evocative of things, feelings, ghostly winds that chill the bone that there is really nothing substantial behind our philosophies and our wills-to-power, that our artifacts are evidence only of complex distractions that have kept us from dealing with the gaping emptiness that truly lies behind our industries, our enterprising accumalation. Fitting that it begins with baseball, our ideal game, our pastoral heaven on earth, a fateful game here that makes headlines on the same day the Russians detonate their first nuclear device--the creation of the post modern period. "Underworld" is about many lives of smart people locked into their professions at times of reflection when their expertise is mere precision, not art, instinct, not inspiration--and each story, from the search fora the baseball from that fateful game and onward, shows our characters reaching backwards in memory for instinct, information that might help them transform the present

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Summary: DeLillo DeLights Once Again
Review: He's amazing. He cuts to the heart of the matter, with a nihilistic bent. What good have we done as a society, and how is that reflected in "The Shot Heard Round the World"?

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Summary: Talk is cheap - just read it.
Review: Underworld is very appealing if you've got an interest in America's recent history and the discipline to assimilate one writer's fictional interpretation of it. Do not make the mistake of reading so many reviews that you become concerned with the book's length or it's "literary significance," whatever that means. Forget the comparisons to Joyce. Forget the book awards it "should have" won. Just enjoy the story - it has more redeeming value than any sitcom I've seen lately and it might just help you generate some meaningful discussion around the dinner table. What are the challenges for our country in a more dangerous/volatile post-Cold War world? How do we teach our children to embrace both success and failure in the midst of an absurdly superstar-obsessed culture? A great companion read for Underworld is David Halberstam's The Fifties. Don't overthink this book - just read it, reflect on it and move on to the next one...

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Summary: long, boring, uninspired, dull, in a word, garbage
Review: I read this book because someone compared it with Ulysses and cited it as one of the most important books of the 20th Century. The resemblance to Ulysses stops at the number of pages. Both books are over 800 pages but it ends there. Persevering through Ulysses and the unique style of Joyce takes a lot of effort and the reader is rewarded in the end with greatest affirmation ever written ... Yes. Yes. On the contrary, De Lillo's opus seems to descend down into back alleys, garbage dumps and landfills. I suppose one could write a doctoral dissertation on the garbage metaphor in Underworld. The smart reader is advised to forget about metaphors and just leave it at garbage period. I haven't read anything else by this author and was quite disappointed that he failed to live up to the hype. Might a suggest a career writing copy or commercial jingles instead?

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Summary: Turgid
Review: Its amazing how many people have read some of this book (I dont know ANYONE who has finished it!!) and are too chicken to admit that it is so awful. I am convinced that the critics who lauded the book are having us on. (Best book since Ulysses, oh yeah has anyone actually READ Ulysses?)

Turgid self indulgent and pointless twaddle, one of the worst books I have EVER read.