“The novel as modern art”

I cannot give 5 stars to Underworld, because I rate my books simply on "how much I've enjoyed them", and Underworld for me was good, but not great.

If it wasn't for the breathtakingly beautiful initial chapter and for a few other scenes, it would easily be a 3 stars book.

Let’s face it: the first chapter is a diamond of very rare beauty. The rest of the book almost never reaches that same level. You can feel it immediately, as you move on and put some distance between yourself and the first chapter. Unsurprisingly, Delillo published the first chapter originally as a short story in itself, a separate work in itself, and went on to build the LONG rest of the novel later. Very bad info to know! Feels like being cheated.

I loved White Noise, but the funny, playful spark of that novel is utterly absent in Underworld (except from the first chapter).

And, while I very much enjoyed Delillo's genius at the micro-level (words, sentences, paragraphs), I didn’t enjoy much the macro-level (absence of plot, posturing, excessive and overbearing style - like listening to a jazz solo that you can't wait to be over).

I don’t know how he does it, but Delillo achieves a depth, a power and an intensity with a single sentence that his chapters, sections — and even the book as a whole — absolutely don’t have.

Strange? Yes, but to be clear, I do enjoy this style. I read somewhere that he used to work in advertising, so perhaps that’s where that peculiar skill comes from.

The literary critic Michael Wood says in the London Review of Books: “ When critics and readers praise DeLillo they often speak about his sentences, as if sentences were what he wrote, rather than words or phrases or paragraphs or books. The cue comes from DeLillo himself who in Mao II (1991) has a writer say that he’s always seen himself in sentences, that he’s ‘a sentence-maker, like a doughnut-maker only slower’, and that ‘every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it.’ This last sentence is manifestly not itself true, and although DeLillo does write wonderful sentences, some can get a little sticky, like doughnuts only more talkative: ‘A hollow clamour begins to rise from the crowd, men calling from the deep reaches, an animal awe and desolation.’ ‘The deep discordance, the old muscling of wills, that unforgiving thing in the idea of brothers’. ‘Longing on a large scale is what makes history.’ Er ... maybe. ‘When people tell rat stories, the rat is always tremendous.’ Now there’s a sentence.

In fact the most interesting syntactic unit in Underworld is the paragraph, or more precisely the evoked image or moment, instantly intercut with another image or moment. All of DeLillo’s stories in this novel run in parallel with other stories, restlessly zig-zagging from one time or place or connection to another. This is true even of conversations, which are always conducted on several fronts, non sequiturs being retrieved by sequels, sequels beings interrupted by new non sequiturs. Here’s a simple example:

At home we wanted clean healthy garbage. We rinsed out old bottles and put them in their proper bins ...

He never committed a figure to paper. He had a head for numbers, a memory for numbers.

We fixed her up with a humidifier, the hangers, the good hard bed and the dresser ...

The first ‘we’ is a mother and two boys, in the old days in the Bronx. ‘He’ is the absent father. The second ‘we’ is one of the boys and his wife, and the ‘her’ is the mother – the time is now the Nineties. The whole narrative relies on our hanging onto stories in our heads, being ready for their return – the effect is about as close to simultaneity, or a split-screen, as one could get on pages that run in lines and have to be turned over one after another.“


So…. we could say that “Underworld” is something like the novel version of a modern art painting.

More importantly, since I am very much a "get to the point" reader who cares about the meaning of what he is reading above all else, I did not like the joylessness of this novel. It's VERY cold, in there. There is no joy, anywhere.

At the very bottom of the human experience is God. God is love and joy. So, if you haven't been able to find any joy in your worldview, then, unfortunately for you, you haven't gone deep enough. No, no, no, no: not saying that I didn’t like it because it’s not christian: whether the novel is christian or not, it really doesn’t matter. What I’m saying is: at least, break the earth in two and open up a Nietzschean pit underneath me! But that doesn’t happen either. Delillo, like most New Yorkers, is NOT a very deep person.

All this talk about "waste" and "garbage" throughout the 820 pages of Underworld, which the famous critic Michiko Kakutani calls the “controlling metaphor” of the novel, does not suggest any awesome and original philosophical angle on reality, on America or even on consumerism: it is, not unlike a lot of modern and post-modern art, very little more than a shallow gimmick.


Here is Michiko Kakutani from the NYT: “ The controlling metaphor of "Underworld" has to do with waste, with chemical and nuclear toxins, as well as the more mundane trash our ravenous, bulimic society recycles. One character is "a garbage guerrilla who stole and analyzed the household trash" of celebrities; another is an entrepreneur specializing in the buying and disposal of hazardous waste. Even Nick Shay ends up with a well-paying job in waste analysis.

Other characters take the trash they see around them and try to turn it into something new. Nick's old lover, Klara, salvages discarded military planes, repaints them in fanciful colors and arranges them in artful compositions in the desert. Another artist has built a huge sculpture known as the Watts Tower out of "steel rods and broken crockery and pebbles and seashells and soda bottles and wire mesh"; he has built a "jazz cathedral" out of junk.

The same might well be said of Mr. DeLillo, who in this remarkable novel has taken the effluvia of modern life, all the detritus of our daily and political lives, and turned it into a dazzling, phosphorescent work of art.”


I’m a little less enthusiastic than Kakutani, because so much of Delillo’s work feels like a magic trick: he mesmerizes the reader with the sound of a sentence, he enchants you with what is, often, an acrobatic number between the cryptic and the nonsensical. And you walk away “wowed”, but you’re not always clear why — a bit like after having talked to someone unbelievably attractive.

The infinite connections among the novel's innumerable characters and objects are clear and true and beautiful… but they’re not bearing any deep meaning. They are, at best, a cute bravura exercise. The famous 1951 baseball itself? Another pretty empty gimmick, because nothing really happens (and we never really know if Nick’s ball is the original ball). The orange juice? All these structural games remain at surface level, because they are not there to say anything other than “Everything is connected”, which is nothing life-changing.

Here stops my own review, because I found this article by the wonderful literary critic James Wood, that expresses part of my own frustration with this "post-modern" style:


James Wood (2000): "A genre is hardening. It is becoming easy to describe the contemporary idea of the “big, ambitious novel.” Familial resemblances are asserting themselves, and a parent can be named: he is Dickens. Such recent novels as The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Mason & Dixon, Underworld, Infinite Jest, and now White Teeth overlap rather as the pages of an atlas expire into each other at their edges. A landscape is disclosed—lively and varied and brightly marked, but riven by dead gullies.

The big contemporary novel is a perpetual-motion machine that appears to have been embarrassed into velocity. It seems to want to abolish stillness, as if ashamed of silence—as it were, a criminal running endless charity marathons. Stories and sub-stories sprout on every page, as these novels continually flourish their glamorous congestion. Inseparable from this culture of permanent storytelling is the pursuit of vitality at all costs. Indeed, vitality is storytelling, as far as these books are concerned. If, say, a character is introduced in London, call him Toby Awknotuby (that is, “ To be or not to be”—ha!) then we will be swiftly told that he has a twin in Delhi (called Boyt, which is an anagram of Toby, of course), who, like Toby, has the same very curious genital deformation, and that their mother belongs to a religious cult based, oddly enough, in the Orkney Islands, and that their father (who was born at the exact second that the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima) has been a Hell’s Angel for the last thirteen years (but a very curious Hell’s Angels group it is, devoted only to the fanatical study of late Wordsworth), and that Toby’s mad left-wing aunt was curiously struck dumb when Mrs. Thatcher was elected prime minister in 1979 and has not spoken a word since. And all this, over many pages, before poor Toby Awknotuby has done a thing, or thought a thought!

Is this a caricature, really? Recent novels—veritable relics of St. Vitus—by Rushdie, Pynchon, DeLillo, Foster Wallace, and others, have featured a great rock musician who, when born, began immediately to play air guitar in his crib (Rushdie); a talking dog, a mechanical duck, a giant octagonal cheese, and two clocks having a conversation (Pynchon); a nun called Sister Edgar who is obsessed with germs and who may be a reincarnation of J. Edgar Hoover, and a conceptual artist painting retired B-52 bombers in the New Mexico desert (DeLillo); a terrorist group devoted to the liberation of Quebec called the Wheelchair Assassins, and a film so compelling that anyone who sees it dies (Foster Wallace). Zadie Smith’s novel features, among other things: a terrorist Islamic group based in North London with a silly acronym (kevin), an animal-rights group called fate, a Jewish scientist who is genetically engineering a mouse, a woman born during an earthquake in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1907; a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses who think that the world is ending on December 31, 1992; and twins, one in Bangladesh and one in London, who both break their noses at about the same time.

This is not magical realism. It is hysterical realism. Storytelling has become a kind of grammar in these novels; it is how they structure and drive themselves on. The conventions of realism are not being abolished but, on the contrary, exhausted, and overworked. Appropriately, then, objections are not made at the level of verisimilitude, but at the level of morality: this style of writing is not to be faulted because it lacks reality—the usual charge against botched realism—but because it seems evasive of reality while borrowing from realism itself. It is not a cock-up, but a cover-up.

One is reminded of Kierkegaard’s remark that travel is the way to avoid despair. For all these books share a bonhomous, punning, lively serenity of spirit. Their mode of narration seems to be almost incompatible with tragedy or anguish. Indeed, Underworld, the darkest of these books, carries within itself, in its calm profusion of characters and plots, its flawless carpet of fine prose on page after page, a soothing sense that it might never have to end, that another thousand or two thousand pages might easily be added.

The optimism of all this “vitality” is shared by many readers, apparently. Again and again, one sees books such as these praised for being cabinets of wonders. Bright lights are taken as evidence of habitation. The mere existence of a giant cheese or a cloned mouse or several different earthquakes in a novel is seen as meaningful or wonderful, evidence of great imaginative powers. And this is because too often these features are mistaken for scenes, as if they constituted the movement or the toil or the pressure of the novel, rather than taken for what they are—props of the imagination, meaning’s toys. The existence of vitality is mistaken for the drama of vitality.

What are these stories evading? One of the awkwardnesses evaded is precisely an awkwardness about the possibility of novelistic storytelling. This in turn has to do with an awkwardness about character and the representation of character. Stories, after all, are generated by human beings, and it might be said that these recent novels are full of inhuman stories, whereby that phrase is precisely an oxymoron, an impossibility, a wanting it both ways. By and large, these are not stories that could never happen (as, say, a thriller is often something that could never happen); rather, they clothe real people who could never actually endure the stories that happen to them. They are not stories in which people defy the laws of physics (obviously, one could be born in an earthquake); they are stories which defy the laws of persuasion. This is what Aristotle means when he says that in storytelling “a convincing impossibility” (say, a man levitating) is always preferable to “an unconvincing possibility” (say, the possibility that a fundamentalist group in London would continue to call itself kevin). And what above all makes these stories unconvincing is precisely their very profusion, their relatedness. One cult is convincing; three cults are not.

Novels, after all, turn out to be delicate structures, in which one story judges the viability, the actuality, of another. Yet it is the relatedness of these stories that their writers seem most to cherish, and to propose as an absolute value. An endless web is all they need for meaning. Each of these novels is excessively centripetal. The different stories all intertwine, and double and triple on themselves.

Characters are forever seeing connections and links and plots, and paranoid parallels.”

This was another one of those books that was a challenge question for me. Should I read this or not? He is a prolific well-known writer, and this one is 827 pages.

This was a book from my reading past. When I was more patient about spending time with longer novels.

Interestingly enough it ended up as a donation recently at my Little Free Library Shed, so I thought I would refresh myself with it again.

I now bring my review to Goodreads.

Underworld is an amazing performance.

It encompasses five decades of history, a world of public events, private emotions, hope and loss.

It is a story of one man and one family.

But…It is also the story of what happened to America in the second half of the 20th century.

The author addresses real and imagined conspiracies to the media’s Heisenberg effect (an interviewing process where the interviewees tend to give answers they think the interviewer wants to hear) to the threat of terrorism and random violence.

As a writer, he showcases his ability to be shrewd and absurdly comic and brilliant about the vignettes of American life. He also shows the chilly and sociological effect.

Sometimes there are laugh out loud moments.

He makes us readers want to probe beneath the surface of his characters’ lives; his hero’s chronic alienation is even given a history and a source.

The author has a way of rattling our emotions by taking us inside the character’s lives as if we are inside the story, as well.

The story opens with a breathtaking passage that seamlessly captures the experience of 35,000 people watching the classic October 3, 1951 ballgame in which the Giants beat the Dodgers to win the pennant race.

It is the same day that America learned the Soviet Union had exploded an atomic bomb, the day the cold war took a deadly new turn.

These are two completely different events but they will impact the characters and the story over the years and decades.

As readers we will be introduced to a cast of baseball fanatics, conspiracy nuts, hustlers, con men, scientists, businessmen, school children, graffiti artists and nurses, to name a few. We will also recognize a few real people’s names, too.

Cutting back and forth in time between a multitude of plot lines, DeLillo creates a rich narrative that keeps readers engaged.

As readers, we feel right in the middle of it all.

How can I best describe this piece of work?

Dazzling.

Should I create a new shelf? Yes, I think I will.

Mis notas/guía de lectura para Submundo, de Don DeLillo


Submundo es una obra autodestructiva, decadente, regresiva, un suicidio literario que moldea a su antojo el espacio-tiempo inalterable desde lo real pero posible desde las letras. Don DeLillo nos ha obsequiado un magnum opus que recorre cincuenta años de historia, manipulando cuerpos solitarios con un temor inquebrantable hacia la muerte y la falta de respuestas, que va a hacer del lector un dolido testigo de lo que no quiere ver; todo esto a partir de un juego narrativo en el que el autor nos presenta las consecuencias de la historia y luego sus causas, una aproximación de 900 páginas a aquello que intenta darle una solución a la pregunta: ¿Cuándo fue el momento en que nos equivocamos?

Todo libro tiene su inicio, sin importar lo mucho que juegue con la linealidad. Submundo abre con un prólogo de una calidad insuperable que relata el mítico partido entre los Giants de Nueva York y los Dodgers de Brooklyn del 51. Un buceo en los miedos y los sueños de la sociedad americana retratada en setenta páginas de pura maestría literaria. Este prólogo, titulado «El triunfo de la muerte», es una novelette que actúa por si sola, no necesita de un contexto que la sustente. En particular me sentí fascinado y hasta asfixiado por tanto la tensión como por su inquietante avance hacia su párrafo final. En este prólogo hay dos realidades, dos líneas paralelas que no se ven entre sí: la euforia, la felicidad colectiva, y en el trasfondo, como un secreto que nadie quiere oir, el inicio de la guerra.

Luego Submundo se quiebra, y de esa rotura se escapan cuarenta años y surgen decenas de personajes, desde reales, como el director del FBI Edgar Hoover, Frank Sinatra o el polémico humorista Lenny Bruce (con su famoso grito de «¡Vamos a morir todos!»), hasta ficticios aunque no por eso menos palpables, como Nick Shay o Klara Sax, o el encantador Albert Bronzini, el maestro de ciencias y ajedrez. En esos personajes se verán vestigios de una sociedad trémula ante la guerra y la inminencia de la muerte, con algunas escenas que personalmente me han hecho estremecer. DeLillo ha sabido formar personajes —debido en parte a un manejo brillante de la autorreflexión— complejos y profundamente entrañables que habitan tanto en la mente del lector como en su entorno.

Y así Submundo se dobla y se desdobla, se estira, se tuerce y se achata, deformando el tiempo. Comienza una regresión hasta los 50, pasando por la Guerra Fría, por la Crisis de los Misiles, por el asesinato del presidente Kennedy, por las protestas contra la guerra de Vietnam, por la experimentación nuclear, la segregación racial, el abuso de drogas duras y blandas, las mafias y los suburbios de Nueva York, que presentan una realidad tapada por rascacielos que arañan la fantasía. Personajes nacen y mueren a lo largo de los años que pasan en Submundo, crecen en diferentes contextos sociales y se adueñan de diferentes culturas ligadas a las épocas. Así se presenta una red polifónica que hace mella de lo que somos, que no ignora sino enfrenta el aislamiento que nos separa los unos de los otros y la superficialidad del consumismo salvaje en un claro desafío hacia la muerte. Un camino por la bondad y por el dolor inseparable de vivir.

La escritura de DeLillo es de lo mejor que me he encontrado en mi vida. DeLillo trata las palabras con cuidado, no escribe por escribir; cada oración tiene una consciencia aparte, una identidad que corresponde a otro relato, al relato del lenguaje. Todavía no me puedo quitar de la piel el capítulo que da inicio a la parte dos, sobre el Asesino de la Autopista de Texas y una niña sin nombre que filmó uno de los asesinatos de casualidad. Ese capítulo es de lo mejor que he leído en mi vida. Escalofríante desde su inicio hasta su última frase, no solo por lo que se narra, sino también por cómo está narrado. Submundo es de esa clase de obras que pueden abrirse en cualquier página y con solo leer un párrafo al azar ya te conmueve.

En cuanto a los diálogos, carecen de un elemento lineal o progresivo, puesto que funcionan como una reproducción de la soledad inherente a cada personaje. Los diálogos en Submundo son minimalistas, se superponen, se chocan entre sí, se rozan hasta desgastarse y frustran la verdadera conexión, y muchas veces salen de la boca de su emisor sin llegar nunca a su receptor. Son soliloquios demasiado personales de los que desprenden solo unos pocos fragmentos de información capaces de llegar al oído de su oyente. Esto, lejos de volverse desesperante, me resultó un recurso (aunque ya lo había visto antes en otro gran libro de DeLillo, White Noise) que renueva un poco lo que puede hacer un escritor en una obra de ficción.

Pocas veces me ha ocurrido de estar leyendo un libro y ya sentir que me va a acompañar por años. Hay libros que marcan, y Submundo se ha marcado a fuego en mi memoria. Submundo es todo lo que no vemos, todo lo que ocurre detrás de la prensa amarillista y de las ondas electromagnéticas salidas de la radio y de la televisión. Submundo es lo que se oculta detrás de nuestros deshechos, de la podredumbre, de nuestra mirada hacia lo que carece de sentido. Una búsqueda de la verdad, de lo que constantemente tratamos de tapar con objetos sin vida, porque encontramos consuelo en figuras preconcebidas que le hacen sombra a la esencia humana. Unos hermanos sufriendo de diferentes formas la desaparición de su padre, un anciano juntando las piezas de un pasado más dichoso o una monja en plena crisis religiosa. Esto es lo que no vemos. Esto también respira. Esto es historia.