Rating: 
Summary: "(Substitute catchy review title here)"
Review: Yes, from reading the other reviews about Underworld you can find many reasons why you shouldn't read it. It's too long, it's whole is not better than it's parts, there is too much coincidence.... If you listen to these reviews, and you don't read the book, you are inhibiting yourself from the unique experience that this book has to offer. You are probably perusing these reviews now, wondering if you should buy the book. Somehow, you've already heard of it-someone says it's a must read, you may have read White Noise or Libra, the title might seem to you, well...catchy? The point is, if for nothing else take the experience of this reader on faith: I am a better person now for having read this book. I now know more about the relationships between men and women and I even have a microscopic image of life in the Bronx. Read this book for the way that it conjures physical response from somewhere deep inside you when the protagonists are revealed as mistaken identities (you thought you knew them, but judged them by too little information). This book is so long, so everything-some parts aren't fully explained because this book is a thousand little snapshots rolled into a bigger but still tiny snapshot of life.
Rating: 
Summary: Delillo's exhausted themes
Review: I was disappointed in this work. Like Whitenoise and Endzone(not to mention his other novels), Dellilo is still writing about the same problems of our American culture, that is, we are too much of a "consumer culture", everything is a "simulacrum", and we live in an age of crisis or apocalypse. Dellilo needs to move on and write about something else; Postmodernism is dead, if it ever really existed, and perhaps Dellilo could write something less formulaic and something with a little more heart.
Rating:
Summary: Cause you gotta have it.
Review: This book is the literary equivalent of Koolhaus' S,M,L,XL. Big, bold, bombastic and emotionally disconnected from character. So chic it sends chills down my spine. Some of the best modern literary sentences ever written can be found in this book. There is virtually no plot. But what's the point? This is post-modern deconstructionism at its best. On that level it works beautifully. 827 pages? Why not? You masturbate through a life time too, don't ya? You drink excessively on occassion also? We all got our vices. Cos' you gotta have it. You gotta go back to it. You gotta have a sacrament. 827 pages of mind candy. I have seen the state of existentialism at the end of the millenium and its name is Underworld. And it is pointless. And it is beautiful.
Rating: 
Summary: A book about waste and time
Review: A year it had dozed on my shelf or on my floor, grey-grey, consuming the immediate space to its left and to its right. Briefly halting the steady-Eddie scan of my eye - from left to right or from right to left - from time to time.It was eight hundred and twenty seven pages long. I read it on the bus or on the train or at my desk with a white plastic coffee cup. Number 53. Strong. Douwe Egberts. White with sugar. The woman from the other desk asked me what I was reading and said is it any good and said we are going to have lunch and said do you want to come? It was eight hundred and twenty seven pages long with seven hundred and eighty one pages of character introduction. The woman from the other desk was from Peru, Indiana. And she lived in what she called an 'affordable' bungalow' with a man who she said was her 'dear other half'. His first name was a name that was Jules or Julian or Julius. He was an electrical engineer and maybe I'll write a bit about his mother and the nun who taught him to read at school. She really has nothing to do with anything but it would make me a clever and interesting writer - a storytelling genius, in fact - and so would repeating random little sections of text and willful placing of the word 'and'. It was eight hundred and twenty seven pages long with seven hundred and eighty one pages of character introduction. And after those seven hundred and eighty one pages were finished I simply didn't care about the characters. I looked out of my dusty-musty window and I had to force myself to read on. And the ending? Peace.
Rating:
Summary: "Om does not rhyme with bomb. It only looks that way."
Review: Before I begin detailing some of its problems, I just wanted to say that I enjoyed 'Underworld'. DeLillo's use of language is prolific, routinely producing interesting epigrams like the one noted above. And I never felt like giving up once during its 800+ pages, which is shocking. The reason for that is there's so much going on here that I always found something interesting in the next section. But therein lies one of its major downfalls. DeLillo has written the start of about 6 or 7 interesting novels, largely focused on the theme of Cold War paranoia/anxiety, pasted together haphazardly to create a whole that is not greater than the sum of its parts. I guess part of the problem is that the connective tissues are fragile. Yes, there is a famous baseball that pops up over and over, paralleling the existence of nuclear weapons. And all of the characters are associated in one way or another. But when an author makes a claim that everything is connected, I want those connections to jump up and slap me in the face. The ones produced here seemed unbelievable, almost too coincidental. If I saw them with my own eyes, in real life, I might believe. But in this piece of fiction, they seem highly contrived. It occurs to me that the film 'Magnolia' had many of the same problems. I suppose if you liked that movie (I didn't), you'll accept 'Underworld' too. Most of the attention 'Underworld' gets revolves around the prologue, set at the famous 1951 playoff game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. Being an amateur baseball historian, I was looking forward to these scenes with glee. And for the most part, DeLillo does a wonderful job, ably skipping from the action on the field, to the action in Russ Hodges' broadcast booth, to a fantastical sequence in the stands (where Sinatra, Gleason, J. Edgar Hoover, and Toots Shore trade barbs and bodily fluids!). He moves between these scenes effortlessly and poetically. Unfortunately, the whole thing felt a little too over-researched and forced, resulting in an emotional coldness that lasts for most of the rest of the book. The Lenny Bruce scenes are probably the best things here. I don't know what it was like seeing Lenny live in his heyday, but DeLillo produces an entertaining facsimile. He does a fine job depicting what's going on in Lenny's head and what comes out of his mouth while onstage. And he manages to tell much more by just describing the club settings and its patrons. Also fine are the (non-Polo Ground) scenes featuring J. Edgar Hoover and his "companion". Again, we get an interesting glimpse into Hoover's inner workings, his fears, his paranoias, and his obsessions. And there's a great scene where he goes to Truman Capote's Black and White ball. Both of these mid-twentieth century icons are utilized to great effect. In the other DeLillo book I've read, 'White Noise', he clearly defines his characters and their roles. They are all interesting and essential to that book's central themes. It is one of my favourite books. Here, the Dramatis Personae reads like a phone book: names in abundance, with mostly anonymous identities. The reader is given a difficult task getting to know any of them. Even the de facto protagonists Nick and Klara (nominated as such based solely on the fact that they are name-checked in the back cover blurb) are barely recognizably as anything more than rhetorical devices. And speaking of rhetorical devices, DeLillo prominently uses (at least) two that baffled me. First, when someone is cut-off mid-sentence, their speech is still concluded with a period. As if the thought was complete. And second, he takes great pains in keeping the identity of a new scene ambiguous for as long as possible. I know that there is a concrete reason for both of these, but for the life of me I can't figure it out. Unless, of course, they're meant to be distracting and off-putting. Not as off-putting was the reverse time structure (where "things move indelibly into the past"). It dominated the book, and was used successfully. So, yeah, there is much good here. And like I said, I did enjoy the book overall. It's definitely worth the effort. And I appreciate the effort DeLillo made in writing it. I only wish that he had achieved the perfection that a book of this size and of this subject deserves.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant . . . in parts
Review: Frankly, most of the glowing reviews have it right: the man is brilliant, and all that; he writes beautifully. There are sections here that I can't imagine another modern novelist being capable of: the opening scene, the highway killer sequences, the Lenny Bruce monologues. But for God's sake: the book is 800 pages long. I'd like to see something ressembling a complex human being, as opposed to what he gives us: grand thematic statement after grand thematic statement. Waste, recycled art, nuclear paranoia and the fear of death. Ok, we've got it: you've got things to say. But I for one miss when he delivered the messages organically, through characters (e.g. in Libra, which I think still stands as his best book) instead of through disjointed vignettes that are much more suitable to write dissertations on than enjoy as a novel. This is the problem I had with Mao II as well. Is it rearguard and naive to suggest creating real people? situations with some sort of emotional weight? Because frankly - as brilliant as a lot of this is - capturing the essence of Cold War America is rather a tall order. And, as a result, so is getting through the middle of this book. One always keeps going, though, because there are, scattered throughout, passages of astounding energy. And I'm not chiding him for his ambition, as a lot of reviewers did . . . but let me suggest that perhaps going for less, a lot less, might make his books more enjoyable to read - which is what fiction is about, right? If you want to make grand thematic statements, either write essays or make your writing so consistenly inventive that people don't feel like putting the book down from intellectual exhaustion (aargh, too many complex, profound ideas). Pynchon can usually manage this. But Delillo, unfortunately, doesn't quite pull it off here.
Rating:
Summary: high tone muzac
Review: This book is like Muzac, in the best-possible sense. DeLillo hasn't really written a novel--there's hardly any plot or narrative line--he's tried to capture the mood of the Cold War. Taken purely on that level, Underworld is a marvel. In years to come when historians want to understand the malaise that Reagan ended, they could do worse than turn to this book to recapture the angst of America in the past half-century. The opening prologue, set during the Miracle at Coogan's Bluff, is remarkable. Among those in attendance as Bobby Thomson hits his homerun are Sinatra, J. Edgar Hoover, Toots Shor & Jackie Gleason. DeLillo does a brilliant job of intertwining numerous story lines with the actual events of the game. This set piece is worth reading by itself, even if the rest of the book does not measure up. GRADE: C+
Rating: 
Summary: Bleak and beautiful
Review: 'Longing on a large scale' Delilo writes 'is what makes history', and this is very much a novel about longing. A deep collective longing that may or may not be uniquely American. Underworld is a strange, almost surreal guided-tour backwards through recent American history; a disjointed often unsettling view which somehow manages to switch between the grand scale of history and the fine detail of individual lives and relationships without losing any of its power or momentum. Delilo links these events with the recurring theme of baseball. As a European I have no idea if this is a novel Americans identify with, if it touches a nerve. Many countries struggle to be number one, not necessarily to dominate but to be perceived as dominant by everyone else, the difference is that America has largely achieved this. But at what cost? Delilo seems genuinely disturbed by what's been left behind in this process of cultural ambition, 'the lost country inside America' as he calls it, part of a nation's identity not so much hidden as discarded, its 'waste'. What makes this a truly extraordinary and universally readable book is Delilo's literary skill. This is a novel which demonstrates the power of literature as an artistic medium, using different narrative styles and sweeping imagery-driven prose to create an overall feeling of mood and emotion, that uniquely virtual aesthetic that only language can generate. It is constantly surprising and frequently breath-taking. Delilo's America often comes across as a desolate place, a country of secrets and empty spaces, but also fascinatingly uncompromising and powerful. Underworld is a unique novel about a unique country, stick it out to the end and you won't regret it.
Rating:
Summary: dude, don dellilo is dreamy
Review: i absolutely love this book!! Crystalclear beautiful prose, energetic intelligence and ohsomuch heart and pathos and painful artistry!!! personally i didnt like white noise and found it shallow and heartless, but underworld is a book filled with compassion and pity and is one of the few books that will be incorporated into my waking daydreams, a rare thing that truly will become a part of my life in a pure way. again i love this book!!! Peace.
Rating:
Summary: A little too much, at least for me...
Review: I had high hopes for this book, and, by and large, Delillo's massive effort met them. I thought the first sixty pages of the book were as good as anything I've read, and other passages throughout the novel were good enough that I read them a number of times before moving on. Some readers may be bothered by the fact that the narration is not exactly linear in nature, but I didn't find it much of a problem. Unfortuantely, things simply tailed off in the end. There was reaaly no resolution to speak of, though this is really due to the nature of the narrative more than a failing on Delillo's part. Also, the scope of people, places, and events in the novel is quite large, and at times I felt as if I was reading two books when Delillo jumped from setting to setting. I would also have liked a stronger conclusion, something on the order of White Noise maybe, at least in terms of wrapping things up. All the same, I recommend this book highly to Delillo fans. Those not acquainted might want to tackle something a bit smaller in scope in order to determine their like or dislike of the author before tackling this sprawling offering.
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