/lit/ - Literature

Finally finished picrel. Took me almost 4 months. I had read White Noise and found it great, especially as a book to recommend. Its clear and efficient. Underworld sprawls the entire distance of White Noise in its prologue, a piece of writing no litizen should go without reading. From there it explodes, bouncing around in time to tell a convoluted and bleak story, analyzing cold war effects, class struggle, and Delillo's trademark character loneliness.

It is not easily digested. I feel like to even conceive of central ideas, you need to ignore sections of the book. It's just too big. That said, he keeps it engaging. Delillo is a master of description. Passages will roll on, never without an enticing verb or simile. Plus, you have his Carver-esque brisk dialogue to keep momentum quick. The final chapter, that is, the one before the prologue, dashes towards a tragedy the reader knows is coming.

George. What a character. Shadowed, discarded, and tying scenes to themes without losing believability. His sections with Nick are among my favorites, and the final one will sit in my mind for a long while. He brings a danger to everything, and it's only at the end, at a moment the reader might have begun to doubt whether this feeling of danger was worthwhile, that it culminates into the ultimate wrongness. Why did he smile, bros?

The epilogue confused me. It trashes the previous scene with a huge leap in time, and leads to more of the same. The novels ideas of waste and paranoia. At times it reminded me of Gravity's Rainbow. Rockets, bombs, and sex. In a different world, it supplants GR in the meme trilogy. I understand the epilogue doubles down, but I don't understand why. Then it switches to the running girl and her graphic end. Why? I get the erasure. The billboard is covered up. Time will move forward for the characters as it did for the readers, but what about that scene led to Delillos stamping it at the end of the book? Id love to hear some of anons theories.

But overall, what are your thoughts? How did you digest it, and what parts of it stuck with you?

The best thing I can say about it is that it justifies it's length, and offers value to those willing to dig. It's worth your time as a whole, and it's prologue is something you need to have already read.

This book is an absolute masterpiece – easily the closest thing to an American 2666

>*deletes the Klara Sax chapters*
Ahhh, now it’s perfect.

I just finished Underworld, and found it shatteringly powerful. What did you all think of Underworld, /lit/?

Why is the prose so fucking good bros?

What are some novels as virtuosically cosmopolitan as Underworld and The Savage Detectives?

I like DeLilo, thought Libra and White Noise were solid books. He is much better than Wallace or that hack Pynchon. But i’m not sure if he’s 700+ pages good. Has anyone actually finished Underworld? If so, was it with it?

Is this better than White Noise?

What did you think of this /lit/?

>>17556471
Because the ones that hate it are circlejerking around this book, despite the fact that DFW and Delillo most likely respect each other.

Purchased it today.
Have you read it? Did you enjoy it?

>>17049936

Best novel of all time

What an abysmal, beautifully written clusterfuck.

Those who've read it, what do you think?

What's your impression of Underworld by Don DeLillo? Seems like a strange book to be considered one of the modern greats.

I really liked White Noise and Libra, but this feels like a waste of time. Random events stitched together that make sense only in authors mind.

>Memorial de Aires
>Austerlitz
>The Feast of the Goat
>A Heart So White
>If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
>Journey to the End of the Night
>Stoner
>Absalom, Absalom
>On Heroes and Tombs
>Blindness
>Note From the Underground
>Underworld
>White Noise
>The Obscene Bird of Night
>The Book of Monell
>Immortality
>War and War
>Peretsburg
>Lonesome Dove
>The Emigrants
>Cancer Ward's
>The Razor's Edge
>Journey by Moonlight

Rate them if you can.

Just finished pic related, wish I spent the time reading something shorter by him

I feel like it just goes in circles. The narrator is saying the same thing over and over again. Does something interesting happen? Or is it the same stuff for 800 pages? He said that he works in waste managment and their family separates thrash and that he has a device he puts in his hip when he goes running that tells him how many kilometers he has run and how many calories he has burned.
I read Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest, but man this juset feels boring. It's not funny or witty or emotional. It feels hollow...

Is it worth it?

>Out the south windows the Trade towers stood cut against the night, intensely massed and near. This is the word "loomed" in all its prolonged and impending force.
>"It's small as these places go. But I can't afford it anymore. And I have to look at the million-storey towers." "One has an antenna." "The male." "Tea is perfect, thank you." In the kitchen she took things out of cabinets and drawers, an object at a time, feeling as though she'd been away for a month, six weeks, a sense of home folding over her now. "One of these days I'll go out there and knock one of them down." Brita said. Bill lifted his head. "No, it would have to be both them. All at once. Or one after the other. It would play better that way. A tower still standing would be no loss at all. People forget such things. One after the other." "No more towers." Scott added. "All it would take is one well placed explosion. We could use a jumbo jet." Brita wasn't laughing.

The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly

by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them—

all the exciting detail
of the chase

and the escape, the error
the flash of genius—

all to no end save beauty
the eternal—

So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautiful

for this
to be warned against

saluted and defied—
It is alive, venomous

it smiles grimly
its words cut—

The flashy female with her
mother, gets it—

The Jew gets it straight— it
is deadly, terrifying—

It is the Inquisition, the
Revolution

It is beauty itself
that lives

day by day in them
idly—

This is
the power of their faces

It is summer, it is the solstice
the crowd is

cheering, the crowd is laughing
in detail

permanently, seriously
without thought