Underworld
Nick Shay and Kiara Sax knew each other once, intimately and they meet again in the Sahara desert. He is trying to outdistance the crucial events of his early life, she is an artist who has made a blood struggle for independence. Underworld is a story of men and women together and apart, seen in deep clear detail and in stadium sized panoramas, shadowed throughout by the overarching conflict of The Cold War. It is a novel that accepts every challenge of these extraordinary -- Don DeLillos's greatest and most powerful work of fiction. -Back Cover
Stats for nerds
5recommend
11mentions
10people
2010–2026years
55% recommend45% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- A few months ago I spent an entire Saturday reading a long book (Underworld by Don DeLillo) deliberately with my phone off. I walked around, went to a restaurant, sat on a bench in the park, all with just the book. It was one of the most “grounded” days I’ve had in years, and I felt like I noticed dozens of things about the place I live that I hadn’t noticed before.
Ironically it was the exact day that the recent Iran war started. But I didn’t find out about it until late at night, when I turned my phone back on.
- Don Delillo’s Underworld is an amazing novel with some garbology themes.
- Amazing book and you totally nailed the reason why it's my all-time favorite. It's a monster story where the book itself is the monster. Instead of seeing the monster through the words of the characters, the reader holds it in their own hands. In our insane pursuit of reading and understanding this monstrous book we become a little bit like Ahab himself by the end. It gives you an impression of something huge lurking behind the pages, something bigger than your comprehension. The pursuit of God, or the Truth, or whatever big universal thing you believe in, is such a huge and terrifying endeavor that it will break a human being if we are too honest about it. Moby Dick is truly an awe-inspiring experience. Also, don't skip the whaling chapters. They are secretly the best parts of the book.
Another book that gives off very similar vibes is Don DeLillo's Underworld.
- I've just started it - I'm about 10% of the way in and I'm really engaged - enjoying it but with a kind of mental equivalent of full-body exhaustion way after a big day at the beach - it's fun but also hard and sometimes just plain difficult. I think DFW was swimming in so many ideas & feelings that Infinite Jest was a way of letting it all come out in a Kerouacian-stream without much thought for concision.
If it helps anyone decide whether to give it a go, two recent books I read and loved were 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, and Underworld by Don DeLillo, and Infinite Jest is satisfying me in the hard-earned way they both did.
- The whole practice of counting how many books you read is ridiculous. I recently read Don DeLillo's Underworld. It's 850 pages long and some sections can be kind of a slog. But it was one of the most satisfying books I've ever read. It took me 4 months to get through it. Am I really worse off because I'm reading at a pace of 3 books per year vs. someone who reads 100 trashy self-help or empty business-speak "thought leader" books per year? Probably not.
- Don DeLillo - "Underworld"
Kind of slow to get going, but absolutely fascinating and real characters.
Next up: Murakami - "Norwegian Wood"
