The Underground City: A Novel

by H.L. Humes

Back in print after nearly fifty years–the acclaimed fiction debut of novelist H. L. Humes, co-founder of The Paris Review

“Immensely intelligent and energetic, intensely dramatic and melodramatic, heroically overwritten yet sharp, insightful, and precise, The Underground City is an astonishing book by a writer of abundant gifts whose resurrection is long overdue.”
–Peter Matthiessen

It is the late 1940s and Paris is in turmoil. A man named Dujardin is sentenced to death for treason, sparking general strikes and threats of riots across the city. In the meantime, John Stone, a war-weary American and former secret agent, finds himself being investigated as a suspected Communist. What has brought these two men to their fates? H.L. Humes spins a thrilling account of the French underground during the last years of World War II, and the events that lead to the Dujardin affair. His many memorable characters include Adriane, loved by both Stone and Carnot, a fanatic Communist; Bruce Sheppard, the American ambassador to France, a statesman of vision and compassion; and Solange Récamier, the sophisticated young Parisian widow who finds meaning in trying to salvage Stone’s broken life.

The Underground City displays H.L. Humes’s youthful literary skill and a striking capacity for fast-paced narrative. This is a brilliant tour de force.

“A major achievement . . . [The Underground City] attains its full stature in poetry and truth. . . . [This is a] many-sided, absorbing novel, written on a grand scale, that holds the reader’s attention from the first to the last of its many pages.”
–New York Herald Tribune

“Magnificent . . . [The Underground City] has verisimilitude and scope, action and depth of emotion.”
–Chicago Tribune

“A work of power, maturity and distinction.”
–Newsweek

Genres: France, Paris, Historical Fiction, Fiction

768 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

Reviews

[J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is something about a big, weighty book of fiction. If it's not a predetermined classic, you go thru agonies in the first few hundred pages deciding whether to dedicate numerous reading-weeks, maybe a month of your life, to getting thru it. In the case of Underground City, there were red flags galore in the first couple of hundred pages.

Try this :
"Sit down, Lieutenant, while I look at this."
"Sugar, sir ?"
"No, thank you. I like it black as sin and strong as the Lord's right arm.".

Honest. Not even in jest. Eek. But what kept me at it was the slightly weird and hazy biography of Mr. Humes, which you'll have to find in cyberspace if you're intrigued. Seems he had been involved in the underground that the book portrays... so there was always that to allay the doubts about the finesse of the storytelling.

Let me say, though, that the narrative goes from EXTENDED STANDSTILL for two hundred pages to something more lively, and that only by page #203. It's not a pointless wait, though.

The hype on this book is that it's something that encompasses, maybe even epitomizes, the shift from the 'Big Worldwar Two Novel' that every soldier wanted to write, to the uncertain and more complex world of the coldwar geopolitical novel. And it does, sort of.

It's about the Resistance in France (and collaborationists), and the Aftermath of the largest conflict in which the world had jointly participated by '58, when this book was published. There's a lot of room to be elaborate in the 755 pages that Humes dedicates to this book, so a lot of this complex history is parsed & re-parsed, lots of characters are brought to the page, and lots of time is spent in leisurely contemplation of the moment.

Good or bad ? Well, both, really. We do get intimations of the present (future for them) in this kind of passage :

"We marvel at the folly of the Romans, the Calvinists, the Inquisition-- they all burned human beings alive for the greater glory of God, some for the love of gentle Christ. We wonder how men could become so sick in their souls as to commit murder in the name of God, and yet will it be much different looking back a millenium from now ?"
"Georges, why are you lecturing me like a schoolboy ?"
"One half of the world is ready to fight for freedom, privacy, and justice for all mankind; the other half is ready to fight for an end to econonomic enslavement of all mankind. The first half finds it increasingly necessary to repress freedom, privacy and justice-- in the name of freedom, privacy, and justice. The other half finds it necessary to employ slave labor to put an end to economic enslavement. And if nothing else will do, there is still one issue that the whole world is ready to fight for --peace. Ha !...."

Fairly prescient in what is overall, well, still and only a big wwII novel. Yes, it's got it's suspense and covert espionage aspects, but it's still somebody's big war book. And the truth of it is that by 1958, Messrs Ambler, Greene and Fleming had already been at the task, even though it was not till '61 that Le Carre entered.

Without going too far into any specifics, this is intermittently very rewarding and then here & there a bit tedious. But it's got the scale of the 'big book' at least. And Humes' evocations of postwar Paris are really pretty exquisite, by any measure. The twilight tour of the sewers is good, and the boozy Bloom In Night Town sequence at the end of the book very much worth it. In the city that fostered Surrealism, it's good to know our author isn't immune to it's charms.... Let's have an examp.

As the start to the night-town narrative, our protagonist has met the denizens of an odd bar called Cafe Monumentale, so called because it is sited next to the many large graves at the Montparnasse cemetery. Here's our hostess :

"Do you know what I'd do if I had his money ? I'd start a funeral parlor. Always a steady business, a changing clientele. You don't even have to smile at them once they're in the box, and they never come back to plague you with their troubles. I tell you it's not easy being a woman in this business." She knocked her knuckles on the counter top to show what business she meant.
"Does your son help you with it ?" Stone asked innocently.
"Him ? Ha! He's got too much of his father in him. He can't even help himself yet." Then she softened. "But he's a good boy. He writes poetry but he's honest, always keeps track of his debts." She shook her head ruefully. "If he didn't look so much like his father, I'd have thrown him out long ago."
"I imagine it's hard to make a living writing poetry," Stone offered.
She smiled a wry smile. "That's why I'm trying to teach him to play billiards." Then she shrugged resignedly. "At least he likes girls. Thank God for that."
Stone laughed politely.
"Only you should see the girls. They all look like orphans. Thin like sticks. Straight black hair. Turtle-neck sweaters. Existentialists. I don't know where he finds them, but each one's like all the rest...."

Don't skip the Dickens or Dostoyevsky to go on this trip, but if you've got the time, an interesting & under-the-radar ride.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Underground City is from 1958. It was written by a now almost unknown American writer, H.E. Humes. Part of the reason I liked this book is that it was, of all the fiction I read this year, the most "Helprinesque."It's a long, perhaps overlong, tale that contains stretches of beautiful writing and very precise descriptions of people, places, and politics that rival Winter's Tale and A Soldier of the Great War. I posted some praise of it in this venue back in August and some might remember that.

The book has been out of print for many years although a paperback reissue is to appear this month (http://tinyurl.com/2sygvf). One of the joys of working in a university library was discovering that we have three pristine copies off in the dusty and lonely PZ section.
Novelist Paul Auster is one of the champions of Humes, calling the author a "legendary, forgotten novelist." Besides the human cast the main protagonist of the book is the city of Paris. The book is divided into three parts, the first in Paris immediately after World War Two,the middle section in southern France during the time prior to the Allied invasion of France, and the final third back in 1946 Paris. The
book is essentially concerned with the nature of loyalty and trust, a prominent subject in early 1950s America. It's really neither a spy story, although the main character was a secret agent dropped into Nazi-occupied France, nor a war story, although the middle third is a tale of arming the communist resistance in the south of France, but of honest men thrown up against political necessities.

The book was reviewed well in the New York Times Books Review and Time magazine but two years after its publication was the Kennedy inauguration, followed by assassination, civil rights marches,Vietnam, and all the other panoply of the 1960s. The themes of the novel, although universal, were not the kind to keep it in print in this era and so it, like so many, fell off the end of the literary wagon only to find some measure of notice in current years.

Humes wrote another novel, which I have not read, and then fell into the 60s maelstrom and never really came out. Once again I point to the strange Wikipedia entry on Humes for those who are interested.:literature, drugs, politics, and perhaps the proto- Pynchon? And certainly not at all like Helprin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_L...

[Tom Leland · Rating 3 out of 5]

At 755 pages, probably longest book I've ever read. Humes co-founded the Paris Review, had an acclaimed documentary, "Doc", made about him by his daughter, was watched by the FBI for decades, dropped acid with Timothy Leary, hung out with John Lennon, became a wandering sage on the Columbia campus, handing out $50 bills to students. I had trouble following some of the political intrigue -- probably because I just didn't want to expend the required effort; but it didn't keep it from being an enjoyable read, because as his friend George Plimpton said, "Doc knew everything about everything, and he was always right."

There is a certain detachment from emotion in the main character's relationships, and the book meandered too much; as it was said of the book, "it's heroically overwritten."

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Humes only wrote two novels which may explain why very few people have ever heard of him. I found him accidently on Amazon. Humes was someone who had a lot of potential in his early years. He co-founded the Paris Review and wrote two novels but then he became ill and never published again. The Underground City in one of his two novels and is loosely based on his experiences living in Paris after WW II, the anti-communist furor of the early 1950's and the ambivelance of the French people after the Nazi Occupation.

The protagonist, John Stone, is an American who stayed in Paris after serving as an intelligence officer during the war. He gets caught up in a criminal trial that becomes very messy was people on all sides use it for their own purposes. This book also explores how one copes with past activities that seemed very clear at the time but get twisted around into somehting else.

During the war, Stone allied himself with a Communist resistance group. He was fighting the Nazis. They were fighting the Nazis. It was a practical alliance. However, in the anti-communist days after the war, his involvement with these Communists ends his career as an American government functionary. Humes expresses this point both by straight narrative and by showing us how Stone's testimony in the court case morphs from a clear memory into questions about how sure of his memory he was.

The story of this book is quite good but there are places where Humes stops to polemicize about the judgemental attitudes of the early 1950's. These times are tangential and not necessary becuase he is expressing these ideas through the story already. Stone is a compelling character on his own and Humes did not need to introduce others to get his point across.

Humes brings up important questions for us about human relationships and how they are affected by the group mentality. During the war, there were the Nazis and the Allies. After the Nazis were defeated, there were the Soviets and the Democrats. However when we become consumed with the group metality, we forget about the individual people in each group and things that seemed so clear and seem to make so much sense take on a whole different meaning when the focus shifts.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this to be a great book. I like a good long book that is driven by the character, location, and feeling of the scene other than the plot, and this fits that description. In a way it reminded me of Gaddis, though easier to read, especially because of the time period and disaffection felt by the main characters.

The book is very large in scope and takes on a lot of themes about the effects of wartime on the people who lived through it, as well as those that fought in it. It is long and drawn out, but is able to help the reader know and instinctively understand the people and places.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is easily one of the best books I've read. Humes' power of description and his command of language made me feel as if I were watching scenes take place, rather than just reading them. I can still visualize things I read months ago. (It's a long book) This is a fascinating look at the nature of humanity, civilization, war, and what drives us to act, set in the context of WWII in France and its aftermath.

[Mikee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Long and complex. A lot of realpolitik. Excellent.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Got a first edition of this whoopee - I read it earlier - bit baggy - but worth a solid five as not many people know of this writer so - now you do!

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally finished this long book "The Underground City". Finally? Yes, because it was 755 pages. Finally? No, becuse it was excellent, intelligently written, philosophical, complicated, sometimes hard to read, but now that I'm finished, I want more of this WWII historical novel by H. L. Humes who sadly only wrote two books, this being Humes' second novel, before his mental decline, He was the originator of The Paris Review in the late 1950s.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the second time that I've started this book...really well-written but it is VERY LONG. On page 150 and nothing has happened yet.

Ok - I finished it. Or I guess it would be more accurate to say that I gave up, but I think I made it through the actual action, and couldn't deal with the drunken depressing mess that was the last couple of chapters. Here's the quick scoop:

The main character in this book, John Stone, is an American undercover agent who is sent into to German occupied France during WW2 to make contact with French resistance groups in the south of France and get weapons to them and to coordinate an uprising when the Allies land to weaken the German response to the invasion. The problem is that the most organized & effective of the resistance groups are Communists. So Stone gets involved with an underground communist group to complete his mission, and then the whole group is caught & turned over to the Nazis by a French sympathizer.

Fast forward 5ish years, and the French sympathizer is on trial for war crimes, and all kinds of crazy political things happen - McCarthyism is on the rise in the US so Stone is made out to be a villian by his own gov't b/c he worked with the Communists, and the French Communist party is completely clueless as to what actually happened, and then people talk about Communism, liberty, patriotism, and other fascinating topics for HUNDREDS of pages.

My take on it - the actual actions that the whole book is about...how the US worked with the Communist resistance in France to weaken the Germans...is really interesting and makes a good story. All of the court room intrigue that happens afterwards is painfully boring. This book needs to be edited by about 600 pages.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Underground City by H.L. Humes, co-founder of the Paris Review, is a sprawling beast of a novel. Magnificently overwritten and imbued with a dark sense of dread throughout, the 755-page tome tells the complex story of John Stone, a burned-out American agent working with the French Resistance in the weeks leading up to the Normandy invasion.

The tale opens in Paris a year or two after the war. A Frenchman named Dujardin is facing possible execution for collaborating with the Germans. The French Communist Party is championing Dujardin’s case, using it as a public forum to blast the American military presence in France. Dujardin, a one-time police captain, stands accused of handing a dozen Resistance fighters over to the Gestapo for execution during the war. Stone, one of the would-be victims, survives the massacre and testifies at Dujardin’s trial. Stone’s wartime mission was to orchestrate the delivery of American weapons into the hands of France’s underground army . . . it just so happened the men Stone was arming were Communists—a fact that causes him much grief at war's end.

The above summary really doesn't do the book justice, but to explain the story in its entirety is a near impossibility. Humes, who passed away several years ago ravaged by mental illness, was a master storyteller and exquisite writer. Originally published in 1958, The Underground City has recently been re-released by Random House. For those who love unwieldly, rambling novels, check this one out.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine wartime, political thriller with a little bit of a human touch.

The part reserved to the Resistance is particularly enthralling in that Humes is successful in depicting the isolation these guerilla fighters must have felt. While they were free to roam the countryside, it was always as anonymous citizens...this anonymity semmed maddening at times. It serves to underscore the depth of their conviction, even though history has taught that were on the just side, this conviction, in any warrior, seems somewhat noble.

The postwar scenes are at times bloated with political philosophy, but still the intrigue behind these philosophies prevents the novel from bogging down.

As for characters, I thought that John Stone was a character of enormous depth. There is never really a breaking point, just an accumulation of experience that ultimately breaks him. The same goes for Alexi Carnot.

Overall, I thought that this novel was successful on everything it aims for except for the character of Ambassador Sheppard. We are left to wonder why he was to be viewed as a great man. I'm sure that Humes was trying to portray him as a last bastion to a noble America that was to disappear and be swallowed up by Red paranoia, but I just felt that there was not an action that he undertook that ennobled him. Perhaps this was his final desperation and he had no choice but to commit suicide.

[Billy De · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was one of the best books about post ww2 Europe I've read

[Patsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very well written. It delves into the Communist influences at work in the French Resistance and how involvement with the Resistance left WWII intelligence operatives vulnerable to investigation by the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities. A totally different perspective on that era. But, the author tends to wander in places and the ending is so protracted, I wanted to quit reading! All in all, worth the read though.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 700-plus page novel is a 2009 reissue of the 1958 printing of this novel by H.L.Humes, who is one of the founders of the Paris Review. Grand in its scope and themes, the writing style somehow incorporates many of the murky elements of the workings of the French Resistance movement in WWII. Very masterful writing.

This is one of only two novels written by Hume, and it makes me want to seek out the other.

Very thought-provoking.

[Kc · Rating 3 out of 5]

This 1958 book by the cofounder of The Paris Review was recently re-released and is a solid entry in the post-war espionage style novels. The main character is sympathetic yet a little mysterious and the book gives us a fascinating look into the complexities of wartime alliances among the underground in France.

[Jt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blew through the first two-thirds of the book, which is where it should have ended. Last 150 pages or so just seem like a waste. The themes in the book were built, explored, some destroyed, most resolved, and then the last third of the book.......

[Deidre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Novel about the French underground and the Allies.
It fit my needs as a book for travel (long, good but not so engaging that I read it before the plane lands, and cheap second-hand copy that I don't mind abandoning).