Reading 1001 discussion

Why it is included in the 1001 list: "Underworld offers a way of understanding our collective past. It excavates the arcane workings of our culture, articulating connections between the overt and the hidden mechanisms of state power. At the same time, its awed intuition of the unseen forces that continue to drive history toward redemption or annihilation looks forward to a new millennium."

Allrighty, then. I am not sure I got any of the aspects of the novel mentioned in the blurb above. What I got form this novel was a fabulous, freewheeling epic story.

Mostly centered around Nick Shay, Bronx born juvenile delinquent that has grown into an executive for an international waste company. His story, and the mystery of the crime he committed as a teenager, is interwoven with dozens of other story lines -- the fate of the baseball hit by Bobby Thomson off Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca at the Polo Grounds in New York City on October 3, 1951, dramatically clinching the National League pennant the Giants in the first ever televised baseball game, Klara Sax - an artist loosely represent the earthworks movement, Nick's brother Matt who could have been a chess prodigy and is now a reluctant nuclear scientist, Sister Edgar - an elderly nun still in the Bronx, and so many more.

There is something about DeLillo's writing that I love and that captivates me. I loved how the author created tension and continual questioning of the narrative by opening the novel with the final moments of a baseball game witnessed by a few real-life characters, thus keeping me guessing for the rest of the 900 pages how much was "real". I love that he is able to juggle so many mysteries and maintain my interest in discovering what happened to the baseball, what crime did Nick commit, what was his relationship with Klara, and so on.

I found it to be an enjoyable experience, partly because I was able to read large sections at a time and complete the whole within a few weeks. It is not a book that can easily be absorbed over a long period of time. Although the size of the book encourages one to read it electronically, I did appreciate having a paper edition on hand, because of how the different sections are visually separated.

Rating: 3.5 stars


Honestly, I dreaded this one. I am not a fan of DeLillo, so it was hard to get excited about an 800+ page novel by him. So going in with super low expectations, I was pleasantly surprised to find it somehwat enjoyable. This book inspired me to read the 14th century The Cloud of Unknowing, which I am reading now.

The story follows the journey of a baseball over 50 years and different owners. I really liked the interweaving of true historical events and characters into the story.

3 - Stars

My least favourite DeLillo to date

This is an unpopular opinion within the 1001 group but I have to say I found the whole section on baseball unbelievably boring, when we finally escaped from baseball we had a tour of American culture via in depth descriptions of condom varieties, graffiti tags, waste disposal and a hunt for the baseball. If you stripped this unnecessary detail away you actually have a pretty decent story.

I enjoyed the reverse narrative and finding out how things had ended up as they were the further you read, I also enjoyed some of the sections (Truman Capote’s party, Cuban missile crisis, nuclear testing) but these felt short in comparison with the dreaded baseball sections.

Book wrote: "3 - Stars

My least favourite DeLillo to date

This is an unpopular opinion within the 1001 group but I have to say I found the whole section on baseball unbelievably boring, when we finally escape..."

I wouldn't say wholly unpopular, I agree with what you said here and everything you said on the quarterly thread. I was even less generous and gave 2 stars. But, to be honest, this might be in part due to just being bored and over Dellio's style at this point. I only have Libra left of the whopping 8 books he has on the combined list.

While I also find baseball dreadfully boring, I found the premise of the first part somewhat interesting and promising, but largely fell out of interest from there with exception of some of the sections about some of Klara’s hijinks in the queer nightlife of the 70s. All of the parts about drug and sex addled dirt bags that seem to predominate a lot of 20th century dude-lit standards were just a weak dreadful bore for me.

Unlike quite a few reviewers, I loved the opening baseball scene that has our sportscaster standing in for Walt Whitman. All of DeLillo's writing in this book has a wonderful resonance between an individual's struggles and the epic moments that are shared experiences. Many of his scenes took my breath away with their remembered moments of a very ugly lost culture, particularly that of the South Bronx in the 50's. I also really liked quite a few of the characters such as Klara Sax, Sister Edgar, Ismael Muñoz and Albert Bronzini. However, I did not care for who the Primary Character had become in his adulthood and I found many of the set pieces and some of the characters to be unnecessary to my understanding of the book. They did add layers and they were all well written but it served in my view to make the book denser and longer without necessarily making it broader or better. However, I can also understand the problem of editing such a book. J. Edgar is a good example. The few chapters about him are exceptional visions of a powerful man haunted by demons both real (dramatic rebels against the war) and of his own making. They are so well done. Did they need to be in this book? Ultimately DeLillo thought they were needed to give us a full vision of the world at that time.
I gave it 3.5 stars.

Reason read: 1001 Books, 2nd Quarter read, Reading 1001. ROOT (read our own tomes). The story is historical fiction, a postmodern novel that is set in the period of the fifties and sixties. The book opens with the baseball pennant race of 1951. What's not more American than baseball. Themes include; nuclear proliferation, waste, and everything else that epitomizes the 50s and 60s. DeLillo weaves the reality with the fiction throughout the book.

The novel was published in 1997 and received a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize and won the American Book Award. It is set in the US states of New York, Nevada, Arizona, Texas and perhaps others I haven't gotten to yet. I will add that Minnesota was also mentioned as Nick spent his juvenile detention years in northeast Minnesota (my home town area). Also mentioned is Kazakhstan which is interesting fact because I just bought Soveitistan by Erika Fatland which covers all the 'stans'. It mentions that nuclear testing occurred here. And it mentions that people die young and die of cancer.

The book probably is his best but I like Libra better, the difference might be the sprawling length of Underworld. Libra focuses only on Kennedy assassination while this book focuses on everything. I liked that it starts with the baseball game and the missing home run ball is the piece that connects the many people and points of the novel.

***

A sprawling novel over 900 pages, multiple storylines somewhat connected and interconnected, with a good first chapter chronicling from various points of views the lead-up to the "shot heard 'round the world", the dramatic 3-run homer hit by Bobby Thomson to help the New York Giants beat the Brooklyn Dodgers to reach the World Series in 1951. Beyond that chapter, things went downhill (at least, for me): several storylines going back and forth in time, spawning new themes and new characters, and definitely not helping the reader to extricate the purposes and main themes of the novel. This definitely did not reconcile me with DeLillo, I don't think I have ever given him more than 3 stars so far.