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Summary: page counters
Review: I found this book completely worth the time it took me to read it. And may I point out to all the people who gripe about "800 pages" that the pages are printed in a large typeface with lots of white space. It isn't as long as it looks. And why do you all want Don DeLillo, of all people, to write short linear novels with real easy plots? Appreciate him for what he does do.
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Summary: Hanging on for dear life
Review: I'm only about 200 pages into this octopus, and its eight arms (read: subplots) are slowly and painfully entangling me. I want to survive until the end but I will freely admit - it's tough. This is not exactly a page-turner, but it's so adventurous and promising that I'd like to finish it. I wanted to get other readers' opinions for some possible encouragement. This is my first go with DeLillo. Is this typical of his style? So far, this book does not fill me with desire to read his earlier stuff.
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Summary: sometimes things you don't fully understand are still fun.
Review: This book is loved by many and reviled by others. But I am struck by how many of the negative reviewers feel compelled to criticize the length (or weight) of the book. Yes, it's a lengthy read. That much we can tell from simply looking at it or lifting it! If that fact alone causes the prospective reader such distress they'd do themselves well to make another selection. I suspect that those who do actually read the damn thing will find much to enjoy and contemplate. Yes, in fact I did read the entire book, and I recommend it without reservation. Although it is true that I could not explain it to you. I confess that going back to it after a few days often left me at a loss to recall earlier characters and connect all the dots. But never did I fail to marvel at the beauty of the writing and , now several months later, I still roll some scenes over and enjoy. Seems to me that reviews should be submitted by those who have actually read the book.
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Summary: Fiction is (no longer) dead
Review: This is a big book, a great book, as American as the Grand Canyon or the Vietnam War Memorial, a book so vital and important that, even after having read it, I do not feel fully qualified to speak of it. It's just too deep. It is as effective a summary of an epoch (Post-WWII America) as "Ulysses," and just as deeply insightful and poignantly witty. Delillo, much to the consternation of the pedantic literalist so prevalent nowadays, has refuted Povich and proven that fiction (read, Literature) is still alive and well. We just might have trouble recognizing it as such, in much the same way we would balk at our image in a mirror with a thousand fissures running through the glass.Delillo's world has a rather uncanny landscape, both familiar and distanced, like a fleeting glimpse of our immediate past through the shreds of the Iron Curtain or the graffitied fragments of the Berlin Wall as it falls to the ground. It is a kaleidoscope of the familiar, a bazaar of the knowable, a delectable mishmash of perception and feeling; it is a laboratory of language (both tropological and rhetorical) enveloping the full range of emotion and intellect and opinion, the knowable and the unknowable, that can be found in what we call the human condition. A history of History, a literature of Literature: walk away from this book and its landscape has become yours. "History is desire on a grand scale." How true. Delillo has plumbed the depths of a dangerously complex time and an equally convoluted place; he has posited an archaelogy that subsumes our desire to "make sense" of it all at a time when 'the sensible' has lost its ability to stabilize and comfort. This archaeology is our history. It is symbolized by the strata lining the edges of the book. Much as we would read the history of rocks or trees through the lines indelibly etched into granite canyons or across sylvan boles, we can only trace our lives, our histories, through the lines we have inscribed, lines that intersect (somewhat arbitrarily) with friends, lovers, enemies, and the random face or fact that emerges, unbidden, at odd yet appropriate moments. These fragments are ours, and even though they might seem to be cryptic or nonsensical, they are us. They are our Underworld.
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Summary: DeLillo is a unique experience
Review: Reading DeLillo is an experience, one that many wouldn't care to involve themselves in. That's a pity because this man seems to understand and verbalize the plight of American life better than anyone I'm aware of. Like "White Noise", "Underworld" doesn't seem like normal writing rather more like a dream. Honestly, I believe DeLillo is deserving of status among the great writers of the century.
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Summary: Stylistically adventurous without delivering much insight
Review: People who have come to believe that traditional narrative style has to be tricked-up somehow in order for a book to be considered "great literature" will love this book. Delillo does some imaginative and interesting things in terms of presentation, and I could support his experimentation if he actually had something important to say along the way. But his actual messages, insights, themes, characterizations, etc., are tedious, stodgy, and often dull. I began this book expecting to learn something important about "American life during and after the Cold War." I was disappointed. To begin with, the very notion that a home run hit by the New York Giants' Bobby Thomson in 1951 is somehow worthy of world-historical attention reeks of a sports chic (read: baseball, and sometimes soccer) pretentiousness that has become all the rage among American literatii. It was just a baseball game, folks. Consequently, the use of that baseball as a "symbol" or thread to hold the novel together seemed interminably ridiculous to me. Similarly, the "insights" about American life, the Cold War, etc., that spout from the lips of Delillo's characters fall flat more often than not. Certainly, the man has good command of the English language, and he can turn a phrase. But that doesn't substitute for REALLY having something vital to say that makes it worth wading through 800+ pages of prose that is turgid, fragmented, meandering, and to my mind, excessively and pointlessly "artsy." For me, it just didn't work.
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Summary: The Late (20thC) Almost Great American Novel?
Review: The Late (20thC) Great American Novel? Along with most other reviewers I found this to be an awesomely well written book. However, call me a child of the TV age, but the wandering plot left me frustrated. To avoid going on and on let me say in summary(how about halving the word maximum Amazon?), any page of this book is as good as anything being written, but in it's totality, few books have left me as frustrated and with such a feeling that the author had just stopped one day
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Summary: an important comparison
Review: In much the same way that Joyce cut away at the strata of Irish life, to reveal every layer's intricacies and dynamism, Delillo has managed to conduct the dissonant voices of America into a chorus of screams and whispers. This book radiates out into your life with a surprising presence if your are an American. The story Delillo is telling is YOUR story, a three dimensional living organism; he has transcended mere history or mere literature. This book is a living, breathing entity that doesn't simply end when you get to the last page. The Underworld turns us all over to show us what we are made of.
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Summary: Our collective history as a novel--a half century in prose
Review: Usually I'm not prompted to write a review of this sort, but I feel as if I must respond to the recent rash of negative criticism that readers have generated. As a college senior, I heard DeLillo read from Underworld about nine months ago. It was only after graduation that I was able to finally find the time to read the novel. (It is rather intimidating, isnt it?) Driving across the country, I travelled through all four dimensions--with my car providing the vehicle for the first three and Underworld the vehicle for the fourth. If it is possible to "write America," then that is what DeLillo has done. The complaints I read from other readers about the book's lack of continuity miss the point I think--the overarcing element of American history ties together these seemingly divergent events. DeLillo doesn't need to tell a linear story; that has been done before by every American history textbook. The reader, with any amount of research, knows the ending to the story--Bobby Thomson's home run ball has never been recovered; Kennedy is dead; the Texas highway killer has never been caught; the Rolling Stones continue to tour. The reader does not have to wonder about the story, he or she has probably lived it. Instead, DeLillo leaves his readers to ponder more fundamental questions: What is my place in this American history? How have I shaped it and how has it shaped me? A little boy from Harlem becomes entangled in the crooked trail of one of sport's most priceless artifacts--Nick Shay's adolescent tyrst draws him into the life of a world-renowned artist. By formulating this personal level, DeLillo asks each reader to decide their own place in American history, and, in essence, to define their own history. Ultimately, the first fifty pages of the book are its finest. Rereading this prologue after the novel reiterates and enriches the experience. When thinking about the novel, my mind continues to return to the end of the prologue and the airbourne body of a crazed Giant fan as "it all fades indelibly into the past." What we know as history is invariably over--all that remains is the effect it has on us in the present. Who we are today is a function of what has transpired in our experiences. Underworld is DeLillo's brave attempt to not only personally address this question, but also to ask every one of his readers to consider it. In the meantime, he also struggles to define "what America is" in light of its history. In my estimation, what DeLillo leaves us with is the most powerful estimation of our nation and its people since Gatsby. Absolutely mesmerizing.
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Summary: a milestone in american fiction
Review: glancing at customer comments posted here, i am stunned by some of the negative response; however, I am grateful I don't think or feel like those unfortunate people. Too often, I think, we rely on comparison when trying to convey a work of art's impact on us- but here goes: Delillo's work is more accessible than Pynchon's and vastly more emotionally satisfying. Underworld possesses the breadth of Tolstoy. It is simply a damn remarkable novel. In many ways it is unlike anything you've ever read, yet it is strangely familiar. I believe the novel's language captures the stream of our cultural subconsciousness. I found myself speaking to the book-"yes, my thoughts often come to me that way." Life in this world is overwhelming,painful,wondrous,cruel and mystifying. Delillo knows that, and he knows many of our secrets. If the last fifteen pages of this amazing novel don't have you teary with wonder, you just aren't human.
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