Underworld

[RICHARD ROMEO]

to try to synopsize _Underworld_ would be to akin to saying that 
_Ulysses_
is a day-in-the-life of a Dublin salesman, the reviewer really didn't say
*what* the book is about. But am I correct in assuming that the first
chapter is set in 1951, then we jump to present day and work *backward* 
in
time through the rest of the book?

Sounds interesting, but since my last two attempts at DeLillo left me
rather cold, I'll wait for the paperback on this one.

Joe
-------------------
Joe--

I've been waiting for DeLillo to really flesh out his themes, characters, 
and obssesions.  He does it wonderfully here.  There's the crazy science 
folk from Ratner's Star, the underground film exposition ala Running Dog, 
elements of nuclear annihilation featured in End Zone (football instead 
of baseball), discourse on art, junk, and shit that ones find in Mao II & 
White Noise, Great Jones Street) etc.
Not to mention his wondrous descriptions of the NYC (Great Jones Street) 
and the Italian experience in the 50s, J Edgar Hoover, the soliloquies on 
heroin, mushrooms, orange juice and agent orange, chess, the Stones, 
Zapruder, Eisenstein, marital infidelity, his pinpoint, razor-like obs on 
just about everything...I could go on.
Sure there's lots of GR-like stuff floating and descending (that baseball 
as holy grail), but all the characters are American and maybe we can't 
compare Trip and DareDevil--why would we?  Ain't that the point of 
M&D--drawing them lines ya gonna be paying some mighty heavy price in 
karma..
I like a book that is masked in that "Cloud of Unknowing" and which will 
break my heart as well as my forearm, hefting the fucking thing on the 
"N" train (which appears in the book also, he he)

Bless you, Don. Or as Patton allegedly screamed in the Northern African 
desert to Rommel's retreating tanks:  "I read your book"!

"And the concert footage that's gelled red, bodies bioluminescent, what 
we all love about rock, Klara thought, the backlit nimbus of higher 
dying."--Underworld

nuff said,
Richard Romeo
Coordinator of Cooperating Collections
The Foundation Center-NYC
212-807-2417
rromeo at fdncenter.org