At 827 pages in its paperback form, Underworld is heavyweight novel in every sense of the word. This classic of post-war American literature has much to say: about American culture, the Cold War and, like all great novels, about the human condition. Don DeLillo made his name as a literary novelist, notably for White Noise. Underworld, his twelfth novel, is the pinnacle of a career in storytelling. Distilling fifty years of history, from 1951 to 1992, this ambitious book contains dozens of characters, cinematic dialogue and prose of exquisite beauty.
AMERICAN LIFE
Essentially, this is the story of waste manager Nick Shay, his wife Marian and their family. Nick has been to jail for killing someone, but who and why? For all the complexity of its plot lines and time periods, Underworld is a novel deeply rooted in American life. So where better to begin than baseball and the legendary 1951 match between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers. As the winning run is hit the ball flies into the crowd, where it is found by a young boy:
- “The ball is back there in a mighty pileup of shirts and jackets. The game is way behind him. The crowd can have the game. He’s after the baseball now and there’s no time to ask himself why… He’s going up the aisle through a thousand pounding hearts.”
“La palla è là dietro in un possente ammasso di giacche e camicie. La partita è ormai lontanissima per lui. La folla può tenersi la partita. Lui vuole la palla adesso, e non ha tempo di chiedersi perché […] Sta risalendo il corridoio attraverso un migliaio di cuori martellanti”.
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Nick Shay is at the match, which coincides, we learn, with the Soviet Union exploding an atomic bomb. DeLillo loves writing about conspiracy theories and Underworld is no exception. When Nick Shay was eleven his father disappeared – a tragedy which haunts him for the rest of his life. Nick thinks that his father was abducted and killed by mobsters, the ‘underworld,’ but he hears another version of events:
- “No one came for him, Nicky. No one got him and took him away. He left because of us, basically. He didn’t want to be a father. Being a husband was bad enough, what a burden, you know, full of obligations and occasions he couldn’t handle.”
“Nessuno è venuto a prenderlo, Nicky. Nessuno l’ha portato via. Se n’è andato da solo, sostanzialmente per causa nostra. Non voleva essere un padre. Era già abbastanza pesante essere un marito, un fardello gravoso, capisci, pieno d’obblighi e situazioni cui non sapeva far fronte”.
BIG ISSUES
Criticised by some for his stylised prose, DeLillo believes that the writer’s job is to challenge and question power and authority. In this respect the themes in Underworld remain relevant today: the global influence of sport, politics and uncontrollable capitalist consumption. Central to the novel and to Nick Shay’s profession is the image of America as a vast producer and receptacle of waste. It is symbolised by a giant waste site just outside New York City:
- “It was science fiction and pre-history, garbage arriving twenty-four hours a day, hundreds of workers, vehicles with metal rollers compacting the trash, bucket auger digging vents for methane gas, the gulls diving and crying, a line of snouted trucks sucking in loose litter.”
“Era fantascienza e preistoria, spazzatura che arrivava ventiquattr’ore al giorno, centinaia di operai, veicoli con rulli compressori per compattare i rifiuti, trivellatrici che scavavano pozzi per il gas metano, gabbiani che scendevano a picco stridendo, una fila di camion dal muso lungo che risucchiavano rifiuti sparsi”.
SMALL DETAIL
As Underworld moves towards a dramatic ending it continues to ask big, enigmatic questions: “How deep is time? How far down into the life of matter must we go before we understand what time is?” But the book’s beauty also lies in the apparently mundane details of life, such as when one of the characters makes a sandwich.
- “He spread the mayonnaise. He spread the mayonnaise on the bread. Then he slapped the lunch meat down. He never spread the mayonnaise on the meat. He spread it on the bread. Then he slapped down the meat and watched the mayo seep around the edges.”
“Spalmò la maionese. Spalmò la maionese sul pane. Poi ci schiaffò sopra la carne del pranzo. Non spalmava mai la maionese sulla carne. La spalmava sul pane. Poi ci schiaffava sopra la carne e guardava la maionese colare ai bordi”.
Now in his eighties, DeLillo continues to write. His most recent novel Zero K was published in 2016. Meanwhile, Nick Shay and the whole cast of Underworld are destined to live on, far into the future.