Opens at the Shea Stadium at the World Series Game of 1951, where the ball is caught by a young, black man in the crowd, and continues to change hands throughout the book. The various recipients of the ball tell the story of post-war US history giving a panorama of America from the 50s to the 90s.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Amazon Review
While Eisenstein documented the forces of totalitarianism and Stalinism upon the faces of the Russian peoples, DeLillo offers a stunning, at times overwhelming, document of the twin forces of the Cold War and American culture, compelling that "swerve from evenness" in which he finds events and people both wondrous and horrifying. Underworld opens with a breathlessly graceful prologue set during the final game of the Giants-Dodgers pennant race in 1951. Written in what DeLillo calls "super-omniscience" the sentences sweep from young Cotter Martin as he jumps the gate to the press box, soars over the radio waves, runs out to the diamond, slides in on a fast ball, pops into the stands where J. Edgar Hoover is sitting with a drunken Jackie Gleason and a splenetic Frank Sinatra, and learns of the Soviet Union's second detonation of a nuclear bomb. It's an absolutely thrilling literary moment. When Bobby Thomson hits Branca's pitch into the outstretched hand of Cotter--the "shot heard around the world"--and Jackie Gleason pukes on Sinatra's shoes, the events of the next few decades are set in motion, all threaded together by the baseball as it passes from hand to hand.
"It's all falling indelibly into the past," writes DeLillo, a past that he carefully recalls and reconstructs with acute grace. Jump from Giants Stadium to the Nevada desert in 1992, where Nick Shay, who now owns the baseball, reunites with the artist Kara Sax. They had been brief and unlikely lovers 40 years before, and it is largely through the events, spinoffs, and coincidental encounters of their pasts that DeLillo filters the Cold War experience. He believes that "global events may alter how we live in the smallest ways," and as the book steps back in time to 1951, over the following 800-odd pages, we see just how those events alter lives. This reverse narrative allows the author to strip away the detritus of history and pop culture until we get to the story's pure elements: the bomb, the baseball and the Bronx. In an epilogue as breathless and stunning as the prologue, DeLillo fast-forwards to a near future in which ruthless capitalism, the Internet, and a new, hushed faith have replaced the Cold War's blend of dread and euphoria.
Through fragments and interlaced stories--including those of highway killers, artists, celebrities, conspiracists, gangsters, nuns, and sundry others--DeLillo creates a fragile web of connected experience, a communal Zeitgeist that encompasses the messy whole of five decades of American life, wonderfully distilled. --Amazon.com --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
‘This book is an aria and a wolf whistle of our half-century’ -- Michael Ondaatje
‘Underworld is a magnificent book by an American master’ -- Salman Rushdie --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
‘Underworld is a magnificent book by an American master’ -- Salman Rushdie --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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I was driving a Lexus through a rustling wind. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
I was driving a Lexus through a rustling wind. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
It took a big effort to read this - carrying around that extra weight to and from work and in planes, and having to search for the concentration to draw together the myriad threads of the storylines in the midst of the rest of my life. But I have to say that it was well worth the effort.
It is not just the length that daunts. This is not a "page-turner" in the normal sense. Whilst some sections draw you through, the majority of the text, for me, cried out to be read lovingly and for meaning - which meant that I had to slow right down to make sense of it all.
If you have the time, and energy, (and are prepared to read something almost wholly American) you should read this book. It is surely of the highest quality.
True - there were the odd fifty pages here or there which I struggled with. But that was counterbalanced with some moments of such emotion (the argument over which brother should look after the aging mother; the description of flying through the blast; the scenes of infidelity; the scene with the shotgun to name only a few) to make up for this many times over.
29 of 33 people found the following review helpful
By Mr B
Format:Paperback
My advice: pick up this tome at your local bookshop and read the wonderfully evocative first 50-60 pages which describe a mythical baseball game at a pivotal moment in American history. Watch the game slowly unfold through the eyes of the youngster who vaults the turnstiles. Savour the descriptions of the stands going wild, the papers and programmes spiralling through the air and wonder on the fate of that coveted home run ball. And then replace your copy. For after this almighty beginning, Underworld's joys are but fleeting epiphanies. For me, De Lillo reads as if he is just trying too hard at times, and nowhere more so than in his constant reference to GenX assembly parts like linoleum and styrofoam in his descriptions. And it's such a shame because the set pieces are so huge in scale and ambition that you'd go with them, if the characters and situations didn't seem so studied, so plotted out. All the right tunes, but sadly minus the soul.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
I loved the first chapter. The baseball game was electric. Then it meadered for pages and pages. Granted, all of his words are chosen and delivered with ace precision. Problem is, a page is a heavy morsel on its own. You get through 50 and feel full-up! I couldn't stomach too much of this "great" writing. It's now back on the shelf, for the time-being.
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3.6 out of 5 stars
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing
The envelope was unfit to contain this book, entirely open.
It is disappointing because it would suffice common sense and care to deliver a
book properly.
It is disappointing because it would suffice common sense and care to deliver a
book properly.
Published 10 months ago by Valentinuz Matteo
5.0 out of 5 stars
Massive and amazing
Don DeLillo's Underworld opens with a baseball game at the Polo Grounds in the 1950s. The Dodgers are playing the Giants and we're introduced to the stadium through a black kid... Read more
Published 15 months ago by rhysthomashello
5.0 out of 5 stars
Masterful, Brave and Beautiful.
This is undoubtedly one of the truly great novels. Not just of the second half of the twentieth century, but of all time.
It is not perfect. Read more
It is not perfect. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Pierre
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Great American Novel
Thoroughly deserves its place amongst novels classified as the "Great American Novel" ,such as Moby Dick. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Mr. Joel C. A. Cooney
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic
I brought Underworld after reading White Noise which I also think is superb. Once again I was astounded by DeLillo's beautiful style & language creating such detailed scenes which... Read more
Published 24 months ago by Charlie C
3.0 out of 5 stars
James confirmed
One dares hardly praise Delillo's beautiful writing (unworthy), but while I loved his repetitiveness he seems to confirm James's warning as to the loseness of the first person... Read more
Published on 24 July 2010 by Jens
1.0 out of 5 stars
Sterile, modern American drivel
I know nothing of literary culture but Don DeLillo is a meathead. This book is boring and pretentious. Read more
Published on 4 July 2010 by Mr. M. Brown
4.0 out of 5 stars
A dizzying journey through Cold War paranoia
Don Dellilo's monumental opus sweeps over you in a tidal wave of dark and unsettling detail in a fragmented odyssey through the underbelly of America during the Cold War years. Read more
Published on 4 Nov 2009 by Trevor Coote
4.0 out of 5 stars
Impressive range and drive
This book only just holds together - it is a massive 827 pages long and has a large number of themes and situations, all credibly worked through and described, which makes it an... Read more
Published on 16 Sep 2009 by Eileen Shaw
1.0 out of 5 stars
Difficult read
The cover of this book piqued my curiosity. Ok, that is not the only reason I bought this novel. I had wanted to read some de Lillo at the time and the book was widely acclaimed as... Read more
Published on 24 Aug 2009 by James Twain
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