/lit/ - Literature

"He is just a running boy, a half-seen figure from the streets, but the way running running reveals some clue to being, the way a runner bares himself to consciousness, this is how the dark-skinned kid seems to open to the world, how the bloodrush of a dozen strides brings him into eloquence."

maybe it wasn't "great" enough, but Don DeLillo's Underworld was certainly trying to be a GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL

Has anyone outside the USA read Delillo?

Is the William Dean Howells Medal the best medal?

Is it good?

>>12399676
Thoughts get him?

>>12386773
No. But maybe when I was high in Uni a long time ago.

>>12102487
Same with the others on the picture. I thought it was tacky and underrepresented your rhetorical voice. The pontificating attack on the emptiness of the opponent's language mixed with your own, confirms your tediousness in a mixed veil of an argument intertwined with insight. Have a (you), friend.

Any opinions on this?

>>11957144

>>11707612
I think this is the premise for Underworld by Delillo. I thought it was interesting, though it is a bit long.

>>11330316

just picked this up, what am i in for?

I just finished Underworld. What are your thoughts on it? Does it deserve to be ranked among the likes of Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest? Did George know the shotgun was loaded?

Wow. These first 60 pages were amazing. All I want to do is move to a big city, buy season tickets for the local major league team, and go to every game for years to come.

What concepts, Ideologies, historical events and figures, etc., should I be framiliar with before I start readig Underworld by Don Delillo?

What do you think of this?

Did not enjoy this book. Poignant, insightful moments seemed few and far between. Lack of narrative structure had me uninterested in what existed of a plot. Little character development --Nick Shay- who cares about this guy? Not me. Lacked intellectual reward to match the lack of engagement / enjoyment I typically experience while reading a good novel.

I call it an semi-apocalyptic and overwrought extended, chant-like meditation on American culture that is somewhat outdated and possibly not worth reading (slogging through).

Thoughts?

Anyone want to join me in starting a read-along to Underworld?

>He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.
Is there a better opening line?

What did he mean by this?

Did 9/11 render the ending of Underworld irrelevant?

DeLillo paints a picture of an ultra-capitalist, solemnly faithful, Internet dependant American future as the world's only superpower. It has nothing to rail against anymore now that the Soviet Union has fallen and they now literally take out America's trash (the nuke site in Kazhakstan). The outlook at the end of the novel is that America has no set course anymore and the future will be unpredictable because of it.

But with 9/11 occurring less than 4 years after Underworld was released, America has a new existential threat in Islamic terrorism and the future DeLillo hints at is radically changed.

It's almost spooky that the towers destroyed in the attacks are the ones that adorn the cover of the book and are mentioned several times throughout the book, mostly when they are being built.