Should I give up on Underworld (DeLillo)?

Maybe I'll keep going long enough, at least, to get a better sense of this. (This is actually my second go at the book, but the first time I only got a few pages in and was just too busy -- when I put it down, I probably didn't even pick up another book in its place.)

the baseball story in particular knocked the shit out of me when i read it - i was kind of surprised because before reading i felt no great interest whatsoever in baseball, and yet by the end i was actually excited by the whole thing (not just the question of whether so and so would get the ball back). the subsequent sections were for a while a bit of a letdown, but i got over it (there's a lot of great stuff the follow).

that excerpt brought a smile to my face, fwiw. can you explain what about it confused you? it doesn't really read like the delillo i know - more joyful & conversational.

I should be able to say what was so annoying for me. Hmm. It's not the scene or the action, it's all in how it's told -- the prose and the styling. Maybe I'm just put off by "great stylists".

I just finished reading Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana, which is short, easy to read, and light (but with some resonance). But I don't want to limit myself to books with those qualities. I found Greene's prose to be a pleasure, vivid and fluent, but it never draws attention to itself. I guess that's what's bothering me with Underworld, the telling is getting in the way of what's being told. However, I know this happens in a lot of fiction and I don't want to give up on it if I might learn to appreciate it.

I suppose what will happen with Underworld is I'll stick with it for a while. If the next section seems like an improvement, I'll stay on board; if not I'll jump.

Is DeLillo really the greatest stylist ever?

delillo's writing in my exp. requires a lot less disentangling than a lot of other Great Writers; it has a remarkably fluid quality & it's simple & clean w/out being abrupt or pointed like hemingway. i hope you come 'round, but if not, def. give libra or white noise a try.

personally while i think delillo is an amazing stylist, i don't think he's a particularly original one - as has been pointed out many, many times it's sort of a melange of pynchon and a half-dozen other writers that followed in pynchon's post-WWII wake (paula fox is another that comes to mind). the passage up there (w/ the "don't you love this move?" is like straight pynchon)

i hate to out myself as a big-ol' lowbrow sci-fi nerd but a good analogy might be william gibson - after the first few books you're not getting much new stuff in the way of ideas - just somebody's extended take on an established style that gets tedious after the fifth or sixth book - i am just way too familiar with their tics by now (gibson's and delillo's - and even pynchon's! i couldn't get through "v" after reading everything else)

i can't vouch for his originality, but really, who gives a damn?

i bought cosmopolis tho and will read at some point.

also the body artist really confused and bugged me.

No way. Not even close. He's one of the most confident contemporary American writers, I'd say. There's always gonna be a good ten or so BIG NOVEL WRITERS per country publishing stuff, and he's got tenure in the ol' US right now, along with who, Cormac McCarthy, Annie Proulx, Toni Morrison, Richard Russo, some others.

Admittedly, I could go either way on his treatment of Cotter through the opening; there's something a little fogeyish about it, as if Delillo, beyond romanticizing Cotter's game experience, is actually envious of it, envious of this kid for getting to exist in something he himself made up.

But I worry about always asking writers to stay out of the way and fear fear fear anything that could be construed as putting attention onto themselves, for two reasons: (a) that rhetoric implicitly steers writers away from letting themselves be very human at all, and maybe even more importantly (b) it keeps them from ever being able to use language in all of the amazing ways that normal emotional humans wind up using it (cf "Don't tell me you don't love this move")!

delillo is best at his most lyrical. the shifting voices thing is often pretty awkward (mostly cuz delillo's ear is...quirky) but usually remains enjoyable, perhaps more because of than in spite of his quirkiness. the ex. up there is actually really good; i don't see why you'd feel strange about defending it.

It is possible that in ten years his tastes will shift and he'll come back to the book with newfound enjoyment. But, if he reads it now, while often wishing to throw it across the room, he will treasure up a memory of his distaste and probably never come back to it again.

As Docpacey noted, there are plenty of other books - er, fish - in the sea.

i read end zone the other week and couldn't really get the right headspace about it and mostly just ended up reading it for the funny bits. i have 'players' and 'running dog' (i.e. his dull phase, apparently) from the library but they're waiting for me to finish the baroque cycle, which is itself waiting for me to stop finding other things to do

And for what it's worth, I'm enjoying the next part more.

I'm glad John added that his one comment wasn't directed at me in particular, because I'm really *not* saying "novelists should just focus on telling a good story" -- I *like* the idea that prose can be playful or transcendent or somehow mannered. (I'm all for mannerism in the arts.) Its just that, given where my tastes are at right now, I'm not finding this to be the book of joyous, beautiful prose that others have experienced.

[SLIGHT SPOILER IN THIS PARAGRAPH]
I still feel like the Prologue drags things down; it's by far my least favorite part of the book. (Runner up: the Epilogue.) In the next several chapters beyond the Prologue, I found myself annoyed by the parts that cycle repetitively through a series of mundane events, sometimes in a slightly re-examined form, but often unchanged. The further I read, the more the book seemed to shed its unappealing features. I'm not sure if those features actually fell away, or if I began to find them more appealing. Actually, I'm sure the latter explanation is partly right: DeLillo's repetition technique is a pretty fantastic way to convey Nick's confusion after the gunshot.)

Most of the parts that seemed truly great, that gave me that great-book-buzz, were the sections dealing with the Klara. Partly because I connect with aspects of her life and character, partly because I think DeLillo does such a fine job of writing about her relationships to other people and to her work. And Nick's character becomes more interesting as the story of his youth falls into place.

eep

it has the worst ending

just how I felt reading underworld, Im no arty farty expert on lit but I found its almost smarmy-- his writing, some passages and RUN ON SENTENCES, yes of course, wow-- like the confession of one of the priests, but I think underworld really highlights delillos limits-- ironically despite the free form post modern type pretensions he lacks the smarts to present his big ideas in a way which is open ended or at all intriguing to me.

He seems more close minded than most writers-- hmmm what am I trying to say -- his ideas or the way he structures them in a real oppositional way seems narrow and bolshy, like hes trying to push a barrow down ones throat. Im thinking of the crude caricatures he often makes, like the young vs old nun set up . Still yes I thought it was worth the effort but I haven’t read many big American novels like this, well only Wally Lamb springs to mind :).