• Title: Underworld
• Author: Don Delillo
• Genre/Subject: Award winning fiction
• Publisher: Kindle
• Publication Date: 1997
• Start date: 8/30/23
• Finish date: 9/12/2023

Review:

I didn’t read this book as much as I experienced this book. What an absolutely brilliant novel. From the first sentence to the last word this was stunning, emotional, captivating.

I originally heard of this book when reading an old newspaper piece by Salman Rushdie when he was reviewing some of his favorite reads back in the late 90s. Meaning I read this in a collection of his miscellany in the last year or two. But I put it on my wishlist and finally it’s number came up. 2 dollars on Kindle so it was an easy choice.

A friend of mine asked me what it was about. Good question. I’ve been balls deep in this for almost two weeks and I still don’t have a good answer for that. Like asking what Waiting for Godot is about (Godd-oh is how you pronounce that according to the author, so you know.) there is really no answer other than you have to read it and you’ll get it. What does a Harley Davidson sound like? If I have to explain it to you then you’ll never understand.

What do you think of when you hear this, “THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT!! I had heard of this, some baseball game some year in the days of yore, but really had no idea what it was all about. The whole prologue to the book is about this game, the finish, and most importantly, what happened to the actual baseball in that legendary home run. The book takes that as its starting point and goes forward and backwards in chronology with that baseball as the needle pulling the thread through.

It’s not poetry, but it reminds me of the meter you experience when you read Homer. Wine-dark sea, rosy-fingered dawn, this to match the original Greek dactylic hexameter but still reading as prose. I had to stop sometimes just to absorb the words. take them in and make them a part of me. Like when I memorize a poem, making it part of myself, associating it with my own emotions and experiences.

One of the contemporary reviewers referred to it as “that most elusive of creatures, a great American novel…”. And appropriately it features a character named Ismael. If you don’t get that reference, you should read more.

This was charged, electric, thrilling and deeply melancholy at the same time. Like a rose you find pressed into an old book, or an ancient circus poster in some long forgotten barn.

I loved this, I really enjoyed every page but that doesn’t mean everyone will. Some would have bailed after the first chronological back and forth, like it’s 1951, and now here’s some other stuff going on in 1978, and now we’re in 1965 but with a new character. It’s long too, really long, over 900 pages in print I believe so that’s another thing that many people would not like. And finally, you have to get this, like the Harley sound, it can’t be explained, it has to be felt.

I felt it, I got it, and I loved it.