false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1156916982m/399.jpg 11761 19 While Eisenstein documented the forces of totalitarianism and Stalinism upon the faces of the Russian peoples, DeLillo offers a stunning, at times overwhelming, document of the twin forces of the cold war and American culture, compelling that "swerve from evenness" in which he finds events and people both wondrous and horrifying. <i>Underworld</i> opens with a breathlessly graceful prologue set during the final game of the Giants-Dodgers pennant race in 1951. Written in what DeLillo calls "super-omniscience" the sentences sweep from young Cotter Martin as he jumps the gate to the press box, soars over the radio waves, runs out to the diamond, slides in on a fast ball, pops into the stands where J. Edgar Hoover is sitting with a drunken Jackie Gleason and a splenetic Frank Sinatra, and learns of the Soviet Union's second detonation of a nuclear bomb. It's an absolutely thrilling literary moment. When Bobby Thomson hits Branca's pitch into the outstretched hand of Cotter--the "shot heard around the world"--and Jackie Gleason pukes on Sinatra's shoes, the events of the next few decades are set in motion, all threaded together by the baseball as it passes from hand to hand. <P> "It's all falling indelibly into the past," writes DeLillo, a past that he carefully recalls and reconstructs with acute grace. Jump from Giants Stadium to the Nevada desert in 1992, where Nick Shay, who now owns the baseball, reunites with the artist Kara Sax. They had been brief and unlikely lovers 40 years before, and it is largely through the events, spinoffs, and coincidental encounters of their pasts that DeLillo filters the Cold War experience. He believes that "global events may alter how we live in the smallest ways," and as the book steps back in time to 1951, over the following 800-odd pages, we see just how those events alter lives. This reverse narrative allows the author to strip away the detritus of history and pop culture until we get to the story's pure elements: the bomb, the baseball, and the Bronx. In an epilogue as breathless and stunning as the prologue, DeLillo fast-forwards to a near future in which ruthless capitalism, the Internet, and a new, hushed faith have replaced the Cold War's blend of dread and euphoria.<P> Through fragments and interlaced stories--including those of highway killers, artists, celebrities, conspiracists, gangsters, nuns, and sundry others--DeLillo creates a fragile web of connected experience, a communal Zeitgeist that encompasses the messy whole of five decades of American life, wonderfully distilled. 2968156 1997 Underworld total:3678|5:1355|4:1228|3:686|2:276|1:133| 3678 14430 6159 463 436005 0684842696 9780684842691 219 43 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174759422m/436005.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/436005.Underworld 1 20 false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Aug 05 18:22:19 -0700 2007 Wed Oct 03 16:59:01 -0700 2007
the first was Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged," which i absolutely loved but got terribly sick of after about 700 pages of the same goddamn philosophy being crammed down my throat. (which sounds like its awful, but i really did ador...more...]]> 11761 0330369954 9780330369954 2671 326 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166485768m/11761.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11761.Underworld 1 19 false Sun Sep 30 01:02:33 -0700 2007 Thu Oct 15 01:33:14 -0700 2009
So I will strap on my backpack and don sturdy walking boots, an oxygen tank might be useful, and a supply of plasters and animal pelts - and then I will begin to scale the North Face of Modern American Literature. Let's see ...more...]]> 11761 0330369954 9780330369954 2671 326 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166485768m/11761.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11761.Underworld 4 14 false Sun Dec 09 11:06:53 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 09 11:07:16 -0800 2007 399 0684848155 9780684848150 695 88 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1156916982m/399.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/399.Underworld 2 4 false Sat Jun 30 18:13:02 -0700 2007 Sun Mar 29 08:20:29 -0700 2009
One, pedigree: DeLillo is a critical darling, deservedly so. ...more...]]> 399 0684848155 9780684848150 695 88 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1156916982m/399.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/399.Underworld 4 4 false Wed Jun 13 18:08:40 -0700 2007 Wed Jan 02 20:48:14 -0800 2008 more...]]> 11761 0330369954 9780330369954 2671 326 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166485768m/11761.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11761.Underworld 5 4 false Sun Jul 20 08:18:03 -0700 2008 Sun Jul 20 08:19:08 -0700 2008 Underworld, as I saw it, revolves around trash. One of the main characters, Nick Shay, works for a waste-disposal company. No matter how many different recycling bins his family divides their waste into (seven and counting), it cannot all be reclaimed. The trash builds up ...more...]]> 11761 0330369954 9780330369954 2671 326 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166485768m/11761.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11761.Underworld 5 2 false Sun Mar 29 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Sep 20 16:23:40 -0700 2008 Mon Mar 30 00:21:36 -0700 2009 more...]]> 399 0684848155 9780684848150 695 88 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1156916982m/399.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/399.Underworld 3 2 false Tue Oct 16 22:48:19 -0700 2007 Tue Oct 16 22:54:00 -0700 2007 more...]]> 399 0684848155 9780684848150 695 88 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1156916982m/399.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/399.Underworld 1 2 false Tue Mar 25 20:36:41 -0700 2008 Sun Apr 06 07:34:33 -0700 2008 more...]]> 399 0684848155 9780684848150 695 88 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1156916982m/399.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/399.Underworld 2 2 false Thu Mar 01 10:24:11 -0800 2007 Thu Mar 01 10:24:40 -0800 2007 more...]]> 11761 0330369954 9780330369954 2671 326 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166485768m/11761.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11761.Underworld 5 2 false Sun Sep 30 00:00:00 -0700 2001 Sat Jun 14 09:13:05 -0700 2008 Sat Jun 14 09:22:36 -0700 2008 I was reading this book in September 2001, when I put it down to go on vacation in Switzerland. While on vacation, 9-11 happened. When I returned, I picked the book up again and the cover - which prominently featured a cr...more...]]> 399 0684848155 9780684848150 695 88 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1156916982m/399.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/399.Underworld 4 1 false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Apr 07 20:35:44 -0700 2007 Fri Jul 06 09:30:58 -0700 2007 Underworld has an interesting structure, going backwards for the most part. The 60 page prologue is the best part of the book, brilliant prose about the Giants' triumph over the Dodgers at home at the Polo Grounds on the last day of the 1...more...]]> 399 0684848155 9780684848150 695 88 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1156916982m/399.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/399.Underworld 3 1 false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Aug 01 07:21:41 -0700 2007 Wed Aug 01 07:21:41 -0700 2007
If I were you (unless you are gaga for DeLillo and don't mind if things don't really come...more...]]> 95214 0965664120 9780965664127 55 3 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1184495172m/95214.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/95214.Underworld 0 1 false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Sat Apr 14 10:00:07 -0700 2007 Thu Dec 11 11:32:05 -0800 2008 -Honeymooners
-the baseball
-Lenny Bruce
-J. Edgar Hoover & friend
-recycling
-airport graveyard and plane ride
-stupid pretentious black paper chapters.
-That's about it.

Is that bad? Well, I did read it quite a wh...more...]]> 11761 0330369954 9780330369954 2671 326 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166485768m/11761.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11761.Underworld 5 3 false Sun Apr 08 15:06:56 -0700 2007 Sun Apr 08 15:11:03 -0700 2007 more...]]> 436005 0684842696 9780684842691 219 43 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174759422m/436005.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/436005.Underworld 3 0 false Wed Jan 14 13:16:03 -0800 2009 Wed Jan 14 13:16:03 -0800 2009 more...]]> 11761 0330369954 9780330369954 2671 326 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166485768m/11761.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11761.Underworld 3 23 false Sat Nov 21 07:46:55 -0800 2009 Sat Nov 21 07:48:04 -0800 2009
this book was recommended to me by an ex (who also recommended zuleika dobson and the joke, so he had a good track record until then) who knew how much i liked infinite jest so he thought i would like this one. and if i only like...more...]]> 399 0684848155 9780684848150 695 88 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1156916982m/399.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/399.Underworld 4 0 false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Sep 14 18:39:50 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 14 19:18:34 -0700 2009 1.5
1. 50 years, and four years. I started plugging through it somewhere around 2005, pulled in by the holy cow triumphant opening, and continued for about two hundred-odd pages, long weekend mornings starting out at socrates diner in tribeca and continuing...more...]]> 11761 0330369954 9780330369954 2671 326 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166485768m/11761.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11761.Underworld 4 0 false Mon Sep 07 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 14 07:21:27 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 14 07:50:50 -0700 2009 more...]]> 11761 0330369954 9780330369954 2671 326 3.92 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166485768m/11761.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11761.Underworld 5 0 false Tue Jul 14 19:49:46 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 14 20:36:36 -0700 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=399