Ronald Flores

I just read Underworld. The novel. Yes. The massive novel by Don DeLillo. Underworld. Page after page. Abundant one sentence paragraphs, one word by line. Wow. Libra, White Noise. And then this. A novel about waste. Dazzling. Ironic. Underworld.

“This is the only arte I’ve mastered, Father –walking these streets and letting the senses collect what is routinely here” (p. 672).

I did have a bit too much of the fragmented sentences. But it’s all style. Yes, but too much. “He swerved into sermons and admonitions, streams of rumination…” (p.626). DeLillo’s narrator says about Lenny Bruce. But it also self-referring. Yeah.

The novel Underworld (1997) by Don DeLillo (New York, 1936) is a great narrative documentary on American Life during the last half of the Twentieth Century. The narration feels like a stream of ruminations, like the routines of Lenny Bruce, on waste, nuclear plants, American life and a marriage based on “a deep betrayal”.

In a sense, it is an archeological, Foucaultian, novel, but Bataille’s essay “The Notion of Expenditure” (1933) serves as an ideal framework to understand DeLillo’s fascinations with waste. The following quote merges some of these two philosopher’s views and provides some insight into the narration’s project:

“Waste is a the secret history, the understory, the way archeologist dig out the history of early cultures, every sort of bone heap and broken tool, literally from under the ground”. (p. 791)

The novel begins with baseball and finishes, pretty much, with references to the Internet. It’s full of smart comments on everyday life, quotable phrases and funny passages. As a novel, I prefer White Noise (1985), but as a narrative project, however, I admire Underworld.

“Everyday things represent the most overlooked knowledge” (p. 542).

DeLillo, Don. Underworld. New York: Scribner, 1997. 827 p.

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