Matt's review
Underworld
by Don DeLillo
Matt's review
Underworld by Don DeLillo
Matt's review
rating:
The central metaphor in 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 – and what holds true for the physical also holds true for the personal and the historical. No matter how we might try to reprocess, recast,or ignore our history/memory, our past accumulates, and the weight of our mental and personal garbage is heavy.
An interesting twist that DeLillo works into Underworld, as I realized during a recent discussion with a friend, is that one of the characters, the painter Klara Sax, is able to find a sort of redemption. Yet the reader sees redemption at the beginning of the book, not the end – the book works backwards towards the trash and detritus of her past, leaving Klara, rather, at an seemingly insurmountable (although we, as readers...more
An interesting twist that DeLillo works into Underworld, as I realized during a recent discussion with a friend, is that one of the characters, the painter Klara Sax, is able to find a sort of redemption. Yet the reader sees redemption at the beginning of the book, not the end – the book works backwards towards the trash and detritus of her past, leaving Klara, rather, at an seemingly insurmountable (although we, as readers...more
