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
(Reviewed:)
Grade: (C+)
Websites:
See also:
Don DeLillo (
2 books reviewed)
General Literature
Don DeLillo Links:
-REVIEW: of Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo (James Wood, The New Republic)
Book-related and General Links:
-Don
DeLillo's America
-Don
DeLillo Website
-FEATURED
AUTHOR: NY Times Book Review
-ESSAY
: The Power of History (Don DeLillo, NY Times Magazine)
-PROFILE
: Don DeLillo : America's premier novelist of ideas has long
anticipated a world in which spectacle and terror would achieve totemic
significance in our everyday lives. (Jeffrey MacIntyre, Salon)
-LINKS
: UNDERWORLD Media Watch
-Don
DeLillo: Underworld -- Read an interview, bio and backlist (Publishers
Weekly)
-INTERVIEW:
The American Strangeness: An Interview with Don DeLillo
by Gerald Howard
-PROFILE
: Endpaper (Michael Berube, Center for Book Culture)
-ESSAY
: The Last Don : Don DeLillo weighs in on September 11 and
comes up short. (David Skinner, 11/26/200, Weekly Standard)
-ESSAY:
Culture, History and Consciousness in DeLillo*s White Noise : The Aesthetics
of Cyberspace (William S. Haney II, Journal of American Studies of
Turkey)
-DIALOGUE
: Dissecting The Body Artist : Keith Gessen and Sam Lipsyte discuss
the new DeLillo (FEED)
-REVIEW
: of Underworld by Don DeLillo (Martin Amis, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
Visions of the American Beserk (Paul Gediman, Boston Review)
-REVIEW:
Waste Management (Daniel J. Silver, Commentary)
-REVIEW:
of Underworld Bubbling Under (Gary Marshall , Spike)
-REVIEW:
An Underhistory of Mid-Century America Underworld, by Don DeLillo (Tom
LeClair, The Atlantic)
-REVIEW:
of Underworld How the waste was won: Don DeLillo's brilliant
epic novel Underworld compacts the 20th century (Peter Keough, Boston Phoenix)
-REVIEW
: of American Pastoral by Philip Roth & Underworld by Don DeLillo
(Paul Gediman, Boston Review)
-REVIEW
: of Underworld (Peter Craven, The Age)
-ESSAY
: Don DeLillo's Bum Luck : The novelist's low status in an age of cultural
proliferation. (Nick Gillespie, Reason)
-REVIEW
: of The Body Artist by Don DeLillo (Tim Adams , ZA Play)
-REVIEW
: of The Body Artist (Ben Ehrenreich, LA Weekly)
Comments:
Orrin welcomes reader comments on his reviews.
Add yours here.
