books:

	Underworld: A Novel Don DeLillo Scribner, 1998 - 832 pages average customer review:based on 321 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

Underworld is a story of men and women together and apart, seen in deep, clear detail and in stadium-sized panoramas, shadowed throughout by the overarching conflict of the Cold War. It is a novel that accepts every challenge of these extraordinary times -- Don DeLillo's greatest and most powerful work of fiction.


An Utterly Non-Porus Book.

Don DeLilo isn't to be trifled with.

"Underworld" reads thickly and slowly, and I found it quite the challenge. Some days I could read thirty, forty pages, just go for hours and not notice the time, while other days I'd get maybe five pages read and have to quit. There is so much compressed on these pages, it feels akin to reading flourless chocolate cake; thick, slow, filling, and delicious.

While I'm not saying every new page brings new joy, I am saying that the book as a whole certainly does. Once every few pages I would find myself dog-earing the book, to return to that section later. His understanding of people and of the human soul is phenomenal, I felt like I new every one of the characters at their most intimate and essential level.

On the whole, I think this is one of the most masterful and excellent books I've read in years. A classic.

for more information click here

In Search of a Latin Lover

[....]

Single Abroad: Tales of the Boyish Man is written for anyone who has ever been uncomfortable when trying to approach the opposite sex, dealing with Bike Cops in Butte County, traveling Europe or interviewing with ivy-league colleges. Covered in this book are the cheapest and most social hostels in Europe, the life of a Club Med host in Mexico and the Dominican Republic, the three features that make Mexico City unlike any other city in the world, how I managed not to get thrown out of Chico State University, the impact of the Russian Mafia in Southern Spain, the linguistic impact of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines, the last 20 days of the Incan dynasty, how to live in Latin America for $25 a year, how to make the most out of a Euro Rail Pass, mastering a second language and how someone who can't even properly slice a tomato can get a job overseas in a Portuguese restaurant. This guidebook was designed for anyone wanting to explore a Latin approach to working, dating and travel.

for more information click here

"Under the surface of ordinary things"

This took me two weeks, and I wondered if it'd be worth the effort. The heft of the book had discouraged me before, but the beginning bravura panorama of the Polo Grounds game and the closing pages with a less ostentatious, but surprisingly thought-provoking scene also in a New York where crowds gather for another miracle does manage to bookend this massive work satisfactorily. The challenges lie in what comes between, seven hundred pages of characters who you constantly shuffle among, unsure often who they might be for a few pages, or how they fit into the larger plot.

De Lillo does not satisfy the reader wanting as in some Dickens novel all the characters to match up and align by the end. It's messier, and truer to life if not fictional craft of what we expect in a neat narrative. I liked this. The scope narrows and expands without warning, but by the last 100 pages, the vistas begin to enlarge and contract both. De Lillo takes on, by the conclusion, big questions, but he does not reduce them to pat answers. I almost forgot about more than one character, so attenuated might be the lapse before their earlier and later turns on stage. I wish the book came prefaced with a dramatis personae! Let the book continue, don't resist the occasionally puzzling dead end, and move on. Not all the subplots will find resolution anyway. You come away both humbled and puzzled by his conclusion, one I certainly never saw coming.

Elements never quite fit, and the baseball's trajectory into the hands of various collectors does not align with the wanderings of the main figures as I'd anticipated. After a while, I learned to put up with the languid passages, and gained patience. The iconic baseball and the nuclear core represent the key symbols, but they are not as easily pegged down or pinned for a reader's facile understanding. This is a clever, haranguing, and frustrating story, for it's both hyper-aware in its jittery prose and smarter than the usual entertaining fare. It's serious, if with lots of clever put-downs thanks to the Italian American one-upsmanship, and while you may find certain characters that you glom onto with affection, others will bore you. Like life, their permanence in the plot as you get to know them will differ, and without warning, people drop in and out of the vast events. De Lillo alternates Nick Shay's first-person voice with many other ones, and while I wish the omniscient recorder of this diverse cast sometimes registered more emphatically the necessary accents, moods, and personalities, even those (like Klara and Sister Edgar) who bored me early on turned out to be worthwhile, albeit many many chapters later. Don't give up on anybody you encounter early on in these dense pages.

The waste theme, the FBI-Hoover surveillance, the wanderings through deserts and suburbs, apocalyptic tension, and childhood wonder all emerge and overlap, again in a nearly imperceptible form for much of the time. The contrast of Nick's Italian neighborhood then vs. the Bronx today gradually assumes its symbolic significance, but very glacially. The pace has to slow often, so while the energy ebbs and flows, stick with the plot's byways and asides. The prose shimmers at times, yet more or less does not call as much attention to itself. Dependably intelligent, this book takes on enormous themes. I'm not convinced that De Lillo can not top this book. It recalls Roth, Dos Passos, Kesey, Hemingway, Updike, Mailer, Vonnegut, Heller, and Barth, to name a few American peers and predecessors. He's at the top of his game here, but I think he's capable of yet another turn or two at bat that might match or surpass this game.

for more information click here

Detritus of the modern age

DeLillo's Underworld has some difficult aspects. It presents a history of a world in decline, as we follow (in rough shod fashion) the life of Nick Shay, a waste expert. DeLillo throws in snippets of times and other lives into the mix, for all too fleeting periods. Reading this book is maddening for all the unfinished stories. However, the total sum of its parts adds up to a great thesis. I have long wanted to read this book, but it took me a LONG time to read. Now I feel it has spoiled my reading to come. This is because DeLillo's writing is very masterful and intelligent and spare. I loved the theme - of the Cold War and the examination of the detritus of our (recent) times. Personally Nick's character did not resonate with me. There was the wrong kind of introspection and the most intriguing aspect of his life took too long to unfold. However the story of his father and his brother made sense as did that of Klara Sax.

To read it now, it feels like DeLillo was ahead of his (political) time. I think he missed demonstrating the communist hysteria and the rejection of the foreign when the novel dips into the 50s and 60s. He does capture the fear and emptiness of the modern world and beginnings of the materialist mania that America was headed for very well.

Overall, if you enjoy books that are challenging, please read this book. It may take some time, but it will be worth it.

for more information click here

Underwhelm

I finished this book perhaps a year ago. It took me ten months to complete and to be fair, I read it while moving across the country and often set it down for days at a stretch. When I picked it up again, I'd forgotten what was happening.

I intend to go back and give this book better treatment. I kind of want to read it chronologically, in other words, read the different sections of the book in order from the shot heard round the world up through the end. It might make more sense.

Two complaints:

one, the length. I felt like I was reading a compilation of several novels rather than one.

two, the language. Here's an example: "And where do these compressed words come from? They come from remote levels of development, from technicians and bombheads in their computer universe - story, bespectacled men who deal with systems so layered and many-connected that the ensuing arrays of words must be atomized and redesigned, made spare and letter-sleek."

Many-connected?
Letter-sleek?

Barf. These two awkward constructions ruin an otherwise flawless sentence.

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

products you might be interested in

recommendations

NY Times Top 25 novels of the last 25 years.
Best books of the 20th Century
The Great American Novel
Books Read in 2008
Melvillains

novel

	The Hour I First Believed: A Novel The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel (Oprah Book Club #62) The Joker Watchmen The Brass Verdict: A Novel