A review by sarah_dietrich
Underworld by Don DeLillo
3.0
The long opening sequence, set at a baseball game, is excellent. The rest of the book doesn't match it. Far too much time is spent on Nick Shay, the book could have benefited from being 200 pages shorter.
Part-way through the book, some characters watch an apocryphal Eisenstein film, called 'Underworld'. This clearly mirrors the book itself, and the viewers have these reactions:
"The plot was hard to follow. There was no plot. Just loneliness."
"I want to be rewarded for this ordeal."
"Admit it, you're bored."
"It was remote and fragmentary and made on the cheap, supposedly personal, and it had a kind of suspense even as it crawled along. How and when would it reveal itself?"
And best of all:
"Do we have to stay for the rest of it?" "I want to see what happens." "What could happen?"
Part-way through the book, some characters watch an apocryphal Eisenstein film, called 'Underworld'. This clearly mirrors the book itself, and the viewers have these reactions:
"The plot was hard to follow. There was no plot. Just loneliness."
"I want to be rewarded for this ordeal."
"Admit it, you're bored."
"It was remote and fragmentary and made on the cheap, supposedly personal, and it had a kind of suspense even as it crawled along. How and when would it reveal itself?"
And best of all:
"Do we have to stay for the rest of it?" "I want to see what happens." "What could happen?"