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Создана новая глава «PROLOGUE. The Triumph Of Death» в переводе «Don DeLillo «Underworld» / Дон ДеЛилло «Изнанка мира»»
Underworld by Don DeLillo

Reviewed by Ted Gioia

When The New York Times surveyed 124 writers and critics to
determine the best work of American fiction during the last twenty-
five years, Don DeLillo's Underworld finished in second place with
eleven votes. Only Toni Morrison's Beloved, which received fifteen
votes, ranked ahead of DeLillo's massive 1997 novel.

Almost a half-century of history is crammed into
Underworld, and the constant interaction of the
diverging plot lines with pop culture events and
socio-political milestones adds to the piquant
flavor of this rambling novel. Underworld starts
with a famous 1951 baseball game, when Giant
Bobby Thomson hits a game-winning home run,
the so-called “shot heard ‘round the world.”
The book wraps up 827 pages later in cyberspace,
where “everything is connected. All human
knowledge gathered and linked, hyper-linked. . . .
World without end, amen.”

DeLillo, for his part, steers clear of obvious links and hyperlinks in this
massive work. Instead he jumps freely, and without warning, from
vignette to vignette, character to character, decade to decade.
DeLillo's approach is essentially cinematic, based on masterfully
conceiving and executing discrete scenes and making generous use of
flashbacks. This large novel defies our expectations of linear narrative
flow, and is instead built carefully, lovingly out of these isolated
tableaus, each one possessing a drive and vitality of its own. DeLillo
creates a unified whole through juxtaposition and contrast. To some
extent, the chronology reverses the typical future-directed timeline of
most fiction, and DeLillo himself has likened the structure of the book
to the countdown to zero that precedes a missile or rocket launch

Occasionally DeLillo will hold on to a setting and situation at length, as
in the opening ballgame narrative, which unfolds leisurely over sixty
pages, and involves a wide cast of characters. But more often DeLillo
presents brief, potent interludes of only a few pages, which he sets up
and delivers with a sure touch, and quickly abandons for the next stop
on our itinerary. DeLillo is the master of discontinuity, and the
moment you start to settle into the narrative flow is just when you can
count on a change in scenery.

But the cinematic quality of DeLillo's writing is especially evident in his
dialogue. No modern writer constructs more engaging conversations
than Don DeLillo, and one would need to look to the film industry
(Quentin Tarantino comes to mind) to find someone in his league. It's
not just clever repartee – heaven knows we hear enough of that on TV
in mind-numbing thirty minute and sixty minute chunks. Rather it's
DeLillo's rare ability to capture that strange moment when two people
are communicating, but really aren't; when they are talking past each
other, engaging in conversations that are almost simultaneous
soliloquies.

Yet DeLillo can also present old fashioned descriptive writing of the
highest order. It may sound surprising, but my favorite passage in this
book is several pages devoted to a description of the different
components that make up a shoe. This section does little to advance
the plot, but as you have probably picked up by now, this author is not
overly concerned with pushing ahead a linear story line. Here DeLillo
pauses from his other themes to demonstrate how a great writer can
observe a wealth of details in something so banal that the rest of us
would just ignore it. If I were picking assigned reading for creative
writing students, this account of how to look at a shoe would be toward
the top of the syllabus. (Philip Roth offers us a similarly brilliant
interlude on the construction of gloves in American Pa

Шикарная, одна из лучших книжек этого автора. Финалист Пулицеревской премии.
Книги ДеЛилло, к сожалению, мало известны в наших странах, но от этого не становятся менее интересными!!!
Помогите и присоединяйтесь!

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Underworld is a postmodern novel published in 1997 by Don DeLillo. It was nominated for the National Book Award, was a best-seller, and is one of DeLillo's better-known novels.

A survey of eminent authors and critics conducted by The New York Times found Underworld the runner-up to best work of American fiction of the past 25 years; it garnered 11 of 125 votes, finishing behind only Toni Morrison's Beloved (15 votes)

In 1997, Underworld was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Underworld was a nominated finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize.

In addition, Underworld was the winner of the 2000 William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.