Review of Don DeLillo's "Underworld"

If you have decided to dip into some Don DeLillo, you may want to start with White Noise for a more succinct sample of his prose, and to save seemingly six months of your life. I wish I had done so multiple times in the course of lurching through the seemingly endless Underworld – a whopping 826 pages that feels like double that. I came upon DeLillo via David Foster Wallace’s list of favorite authors, and turns out the two are similar in both good and bad ways.

As with Infinite Jest, this book has no driving plot line to keep the reader’s interest and the pages turning. Promising plotlines are established early on, only to be utterly abandoned, barely referred to again, and then only in a clumsy effort to tie the book together at the end. Occasional − perhaps even frequent − passages of brilliant writing can be found, and there are many wonderful phrases coined and descriptions made, “Crisp little men aswagger with assets,” and “The lure, the enticement of a life defined by its remoteness from the daily drudge of world complaint,” chief among them.

My quarrel with Underworld is its dozens of stories that start and fizzle, some in under a mere page. Some may consider this style brilliantly unique, but I find it lazy, as if the author couldn’t be bothered to, or was incapable of, putting together a story that fit together. This choppiness is frustrating, especially when references are made to an easily forgotten character or incident swarmed under two or three hundred pages earlier, virtually impossible to find again for a refresher. There are indeed thoughtful ruminations about the working class, gritty city life, and a (poorly explained) big picture, but they are delivered in a distracting fashion.  

I forged ahead anyway, occasionally enchanted by an interesting observation or brilliant passage of prose, but divorced from the idea that any of the multiple story threads would ever connect. I did, however, expect the final fifth of this seemingly endless tome to present some sort of payoff. That perhaps the best writing would be delivered on the back end – a reward for slogging through the rest of the head-scratching format.

Instead, with the book waning, there are passages like: “Did she eat anything?” “I made a little soup.” “Did she eat it?” Ate some, spilled some . . .” All seemingly apropos of nothing, because the ailing elderly person referred to was never truly introduced, so I had no reason to care about her plight. And again, none of this was in service to any discernible or compelling plot line. The only reason to turn a page was to finally, mercifully make it end and be able to say I didn’t skim to get there.

David Foster Wallace cited DeLillo as a major influence, but I wonder if it was the other way around in this instance, since Infitnite Jest was published two years before Underworld. It sure seems like DeLillo read the former and realized storylines are overrated and nothing has to fit together in the end after all. It’s all in the journey – the overly verbose, pointless detail-ridden journey. This is not to say great writing can’t be found here, but what exists could fit into a book the size of White Noise. If you must mark DeLillo off of your must-read author list, you may want to begin and end with Noise instead of this bloated, overly “clever” behemoth.

 I can’t say I necessarily regret reading this book, but I suspect the three I could’ve knocked off of my reading list in the same time frame would’ve been far more fun and entertaining.