Nick Calabrese’s Reviews > Underworld > Status Update

I see how some people describe parts of the vignettes section as slow. I like the woman running home from her hospital shift, and J Edgar Hoover at the ball (and seeing Klara make a small appearance as a “middling painter”).

Small thought—I remembered Lenny Bruce being littered through the book and it turns out he only shows up for the first time around page 500. Granted there’s a good chunk of book left.

Love Matt in the desert in the bomb labs. Interesting in this section how there will be some argument about conspiracies where the characters are saying “this can’t be true” but it’s clear they think it probably is true, and then in the following sections with Klara at the movie the narrator overtly tries to convince us the movie is interesting before finally saying “admit it, you’re bored.”

First ~ half of the book is great. Good vibes, easy to pick up and read. Something about long books that often break into tons of short little vignettes. It’s nice when you’re just about done reading but then you realize you can hit another white space in just another page, so why not. Seeing a lot of connections between threads I didn’t see the first time reading it, which is always fun.

First Nick Shay sections are really fun and interesting. I still have some of the same sense from the first time that I read this that Don DeLillo is kind of self important in this book (hugely in opposition to the tone of white noise) but much less than the first time. Having already read it too is interesting because he does call back and forth, so it’s nice to get little Easter eggs throughout.

Rereading this big boy. Reminds me of the beginning of my last year of college (since that’s when I first read it). I’m always afraid when rereading that my visualizations will be different. I’m very happy with how many of the pictures in my head I still have.

I don’t remember disliking the prologue, but I really liked it a lot this time. Has me excited for the next 700ish pages lol.