 Don DeLillo - Underworld. |
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Don DeLillo's Underworld is often described as the essential contemporary American novel, the Moby Dick of our time. A critic's evaluation is quoted on the back cover of the book: "Underworld is a rousingly impressive achievement in almost every novelistic department -- dialogue, structure, timing, precise description, heartfelt veracity ['truthfulness'] and the rest".
I don't quite remember when I first heard of this book. After having planned to read it for a long time I finally gave in and bought an English copy. It then lay on my bookshelf, next to Pynchon's "Mason and Dixon", for at least half a year before I started reading.
Now, more than three years later, I'm still not finished. I stopped and started again, several times, but somehow the stories didn't really catch my interest in a way that kept me reading. At one point I even lent a German copy from a local library in the hope that reading might become more fluent; but in vain. I'm now at page 222 and haven't read it for more than a year.
My main trouble with the novel is the lack of a real plot. A lot of things happen, and as there are several main characters living in different places at different times there is an interesting variety of content and pace. But somehow, even after more than 100 pages, I kept myself asking: so what's the point? Where's the entertainment?
It's probably like having to listen to Photek's "Modus Operandi" when all you want is Christina Aguilera. There is substance, and variety, a core which holds it all together, and the language is excellent and colorful. But there is rarely any suspense, no love story, almost no struggle except with the inner self; sure there is dirt and money, women and sex, success and failure, joy and doom, but it all seems distant, detached. To me it read like a laundry list. Well, a very long laundry list with lots of fancy characters.
I just talked with a friend who is currently reading Underworld, and he more or less agreed with above points. But while talking we also came upon some exciting elements in the novel, allegories of products and waste, collectors and renovators, memories and history, and more. Strong metaphors for a social and economical system, somehow hidden in the subtext, but somehow still pretty accessible to an occasional reader.
Maybe my lack of interest in baseball played a part in my reaction. Maybe I simply wasn't in the mood. Maybe what I was lacking was patience. I might start reading it again sometime. When I'm older. Older and less eager to be entertained.
About the Book
| Title: | Underworld, by Don DeLillo | |
| Publisher: | Picador (UK) 1999, first published in 1997 by Scribner (USA) | |
| Vita: | Aquired the English edition in ca. 2000 in Berlin, for 25,00 DM (12,50 Euro). Stopped reading at page 222 of 827. |
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