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Underworld

By Don DeLillo
Scribner, $27.50

ISBN 0684842696

Review by Alden Mudge

If the history of the last 50 years really were a chain of particular facts, each logically linked to the next, as neat and tidy as a row of post-World War II suburban tract homes, then a reader might reasonably be outraged by the epic, gloriously disruptive, often funny, dream history of the interior life of Atomic Age in America that Don DeLillo presents in his 827-page novel "Underworld."

Might . . . that is if a reader could also ignore the sheer magnificence of the prose of one of our most dazzling writers.

But history is rarely a matter of facts, and interpretations of recent history have burned with an especially virulent fever of forgetfulness, so DeLillo offers "Underworld," a novel he recently called "a dream that is an antidote to history's nightmare." And "Underworld" is, quite simply, the best and most important book of the year, if not the decade.

"Underworld is,
quite simply,
the best and
most important
book of the year,
if not the decade."
At its most elemental, "Underworld" follows the lives of Nick Shay, a waste manager, and Klara Sax, an artist, who had a brief, almost anonymous affair in the Bronx in 1952, when he was an angry teenager and she the vaguely restless wife of a schoolteacher. The novel begins with a kind of overture, a funny, disturbing, beautifully written section, describing a meeting of J. Edgar Hoover, Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason and Toots Shor -- as well as the action in the stands -- during the final game in the pennant race between the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants at the Polo Grounds on October 3, 1951. Bobby Thompson's legendary homer "the shot heard round the world," goes over the fence at about the same moment Hoover learns that Russians have detonated an atomic bomb. The search for Thompson's authentic home run ball is one of several recurring quests that run through this intricately plotted novel.

From there, the novel picks up the lives of Shay and Sax, its plot radiating outward from the near present to the present before collapsing into the past, to the moments when Shay and Sax have their affair, and Shay is led to the violent act that sets his life in motion.

But such a synopsis of "Underworld" is both too little and too much. Too little, because it affords the most meager glimpse of the range of characters and events that circulate through DeLillo's most ambitious and complex novel yet. It's as reductive as calling "Ulysses" the story of a stroll through Dublin. And it barely hints at the fact that the power and extravagant beauty of this novel are found not so much in its events (as moving as they are), but in the vibrant pulse of language that connects people and events, giving their lives and actions meaning.

Too much, because a synopsis will color, distort and, I fear, reduce your own experience with this wonderful book. "Underworld" is big and long and worth every minute you'll spend reading it. Read it for yourself and see.

©1997, ProMotion, inc.

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