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This is part of a new series of guides to contemporary novels. The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years – from ‘The Remains of the Day’ to ‘White Teeth’. A team of contemporary fiction scholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to provide a thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question. ... Read more

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Title: Underworld, Don Delillo (Hardcover)Binding: HardcoverPublication date: 1997 ... Read more

Product Description
This is part of a new series of guides to contemporary novels. The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years – from ‘The Remains of the Day’ to ‘White Teeth’. A team of contemporary fiction scholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to provide a thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

waste of money
1) This book is very short.It's even shorter since some of it is stuff like telling you were to look on the internet for more information (so if you don't know how to use google maybe its helpful).
2) I didn't find much insight here, it's mostly showing how literary terms like "politicizing the aesthetic" and "aestheticizing the political" relate to the book.I don't find it added to my understanding of Underworld.
3) There are tons of typos in this book.
It basically reads like some college student's senior thesis that they turned in without even proofreading.Don't buy it.It exists for one purpose only - to get your money.Just my opinion, the other reviewers seemed to think it was good, but that wasn't my experience.

Just about Perfect
An excellent explication of DeLillo's most massive, sprawling fustercluck of brilliance. Along with DeLillo's White Noise, Underworld will still be read when we're all dead, and Duvall concisely crystallizes many of the reasons why. Underworld burrows beneath the sometimes shiny, sometimes scary surfaces of an enormous range of seemingly disparate Cold War territory, and Duvall goes a very long way (in a remarkably short space) toward putting together its pieces, and illuminating its insights. I read this reader's guide after reading Underworld, and it made me want to read the novel again. Bravo!!

a difficult task, well done
How do you even begin to analyze the magnitude of DeLillo's achievement in 'Underworld'? This little book is a good place to start. Professor Duvall gives a brief and informative sketch of DeLillo's life and career to date and then dives into the meat of his book, wrestling with some of the themes - it would be impossible to do them all - of the novel. He comes over as well-informed, sharp and widely read, without ever being pretentious about it. And the book is even up-to-date enough to discuss the post 9/11 resonance of the novel's cover image.

At times a little dry for my taste, but that is a minor quibble. Duvall has packed a lot of thought into a nicely packaged book. ... Read more

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In this revised edition, David Cowart discusses Don DeLillo's thirteen novels, including his latest, Cosmopolis, and explores the ways in which DeLillo's art anticipates, parallels, and contests ideas that have become the common currency of poststructuralist theory. Cowart argues that the major site of DeLillo's engagement with postmodernism is language, which DeLillo represents as more mysterious--numinous even--than current theory allows. For DeLillo, language remains what Cowart calls "the ground of all making." ... Read more

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With the publication of his seminal novel White Noise, Don DeLillo was elevated into the pantheon of great American writers. His novels are admired and studied for their narrative technique, political themes, and their prophetic commentary on the cultural crises affecting contemporary America. In an age dominated by the image, DeLillo's fiction encourages the reader to think historically about such matters as the Cold War, the assassination of President Kennedy, threats to the environment, and terrorism. This Companion charts the shape of DeLillo's career, his relation to twentieth-century aesthetics, and his major themes. It also provides in-depth assessments of his best-known novels, White Noise, Libra, and Underworld, which have become required reading not only for students of American literature, but for all interested in the history and the future of American culture. ... Read more

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This is a collection of original, stimulating interpretations of key texts by Don DeLillo, designed for students and edited and written by leading scholars in the field. Offering a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the post-1990 fiction of one of America's most respected writers and cultural critics, this volume focuses on three of Don DeLillo's most recent novels - "Mao II", "Underworld", and "Falling Man" - that span pivotal moments in recent history: the end of the Cold War, the millennium, and 9/11. Bringing together original essays by scholars working in art history, urban studies, economic theory, ethnic studies alongside contemporary literature and American studies approaches, investigates DeLillo's portrait of turn-of-the-century America as it confronts globalism and terrorism.With an eye always on the impact that shifts in historical sensibility produce on aesthetic sensibility, the volume considers the role that DeLillo sees narrative playing in a world defined by digital images and provides the first extended analysis of how much faith he has in fiction's ability to convey the trauma of September 11, an event commonly conceived as resistant to all forms of artistic expression. This series offers up-to-date guides to the recent work of major contemporary North American authors. Written by leading scholars in the field, each book presents a range of original interpretations of three key texts published since 1990, showing how the same novel may be interpreted in a number of different ways. These informative, accessible volumes will appeal to advance undergraduate and postgraduate students, facilitating discussion and supporting close analysis of the most important contemporary American and Canadian fiction. ... Read more

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This is the first transatlantic critical study to look at the role of media, terrorism and literature in DeLillo's fiction. In his novel "Mao II", Don DeLillo lets his protagonist say, 'Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness'. DeLillo suggests that while the collective imagination of the past was guided by the creative order of narrative fictions, our contemporary fantasies and anxieties are directed by the endless narratives of war and terror relayed by the mass media. To take DeLillo's literary reflections on media, terrorism, and literature seriously means to engage with the ethical implications of his media critique. This book departs from existing works on DeLillo not only through its focus on the function of literature as public discourse in culture, but also in its decidedly transatlantic perspective. Bringing together prominent DeLillo scholars in Europe and in the US, it is the first critical book on DeLillo to position his work in a transatlantic context. ... Read more

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In novel after award-winning novel, Don DeLillo (b. 1936) exhibits his deep distrust of language and the way it can conceal as much as it reveals. Not surprisingly, DeLillo treats interviews with the same care and caution. For years, he shunned them altogether. As his fiction grew in popularity, especially with "White Noise," and he began to confront the historical record of our times in books such as "Libra," DeLillo felt compelled to make himself available to his readers. Despite claims by interviewers about his elusiveness, he now hides in plain sight.

In "Conversations with Don DeLillo," the renowned author makes clear his distinctions between historical fact and his own creative leaps, especially in his masterwork, "Underworld." There it seems the true events are unbelievable and imaginary ones not. Throughout long profiles and conversations -- ranging from 1982 to 2001 and published in the "New Yorker," the "Paris Review," and "Rolling Stone" -- DeLillo parries personal inquiries. He counters with the details of his work habits, his understanding of the novelist's role in the world, and his sense of our media-saturated culture. A number of interviews detail DeLillo's less-heralded work in the theater, from "The Day Room" to a recent production of "Valparaiso," itself a stinging satire on the interviewing process.

DeLillo also finds time to comment on his nonliterary passions, primarily the movies and baseball. Lee Harvey Oswald also inspires much extraliterary discussion, not just as the subject of "Libra," but as a figure who, like the terrorists always lurking in DeLillo's fictions, captures our attention in ways novelists cannot. For DeLillo, a writer who eschews celebrity, the ultimate response might be the one he offered in his very first interview, paraphrasing Joyce: "Silence, exile, cunning, and so on. It's my nature to keep quiet about most things." Fortunately for his many readers and fans, he proves himself here to be a talker. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

great resource for writers and fans
I really love this book and highly recommend it anyone with a strong interest in literature and writing.As a writer I find this book along with others in the"Literary Conversations Series" (the one for Philip Roth is equally interesting and useful) to be fascinating and indispensible as a resource.I wish my creative writing teachers in school had handed them out as parting gifts, it might have saved me some frustration. If you're like me and have spent too much time on the internet nerding out in search of interviews, musings and work routines, etc. you'll be surprised by the wealth of material here.If you want to know more of Delillo's thoughts on writing, his habits, his ideas, etc. then this is the greatest thing in the world.If not, you may not share my enthusiasm. (I'm kind of baffled they don't do a better job marketing these to aspiring writers. I discovered them by digging in the stacks of a giant college library. In my opinion these are of much greater use than the self-helpy style writing books that are more ubiquitous in bookstores, etc.People like Delillo, Roth, Bellow, Morrison, Garcia-Marquez, whomever you like, know what it takes to write great fiction and are often surprisingly candid and thorough in describing their processes.) Perhaps the best compliment I can give this book is that I borrowed it from the library 4 or 5 times before I broke down and bought it--it's great for bedside encouragement and writerly solidarity. ... Read more

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Harold Bloom suggests Don DeLillo's work holds a proleptic sense of the triumph of terror. This text offers critical views on numerous DeLillo novels, including The Names, Mao II, Libra, White Noise, and Underworld. This edition of Bloom's Major Novelists will help any student delve into the work of this contemporary writer.

This series is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School; preeminent literary critic of our time. Titles include detailed plot summaries of the novel, extracts from scholarly critical essays on the novels, a complete bibliography of the writer's novels, and more. ... Read more

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"The Body Artist" opens with a breakfast scene in a rambling rented house somewhere on the New England coast. We meet Lauren Hartke, the Body Artist of the title, and her husband Rey Robles, a much older, thrice-married film-director. Through their delicate, intimate, half-complete thoughts and words DeLillo proves himself a stunningly unsentimental observer of marriage, and of the idiosyncrasies that both isolate and bind us. Rey says he's taking a drive and he does, all the way to the Manhattan apartment of his first wife. Lauren is left alone, or so she thinks...'A poised, individual ghost story for the twenty-first century' - "Observer". 'Inspiring ...a beautiful book' - "Independent on Sunday". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A coping book
A woman's husband commits suicide. She struggles to cope when she discovers someone else in her house. It is a nice story of a lady's struggle to cope atfer her husband's death.

god awfull
This book was by far DeLillo's worst.The book was rather short, yet I had to fight the urge to put it down after every page.I gave DeLillo the benifit of the doubt, and I wish I hadn't.I was confused throughout about what was going on but more about why I should care.I feel sorry for anyone who is introduced to this giant of American Literature through this book.BEWARE DELILLO FANS THIS ONE WILL DISSAPOINT!

Strange and seductive novel, filled with ambiguities.
The Body Artist is one of the strangest--and most seductive--books I've read in a long time, a "ghost story" with a character who is described as if he were real, and whom the main character believes to be real, and who may, in fact, be real--but who may also be a figment of imagination. Events which are described as real may be fantasies, and even the relationships the main character has or has had with people who seem to be real may, in fact, be colored by wishful thinking. Ultimately, even the linear progression of the narrative itself is called into question since, DeLillo tells us, "Past, present, and future are not amenities of language."

The story begins with the intimately described minutiae of breakfast, as a couple, married just a short time, gets ready for the day. We learn that it takes two cycles on the toaster to get the bread the right color, that the cup is his and the paper is hers, that a blue jay comes to the bird feeder, that she puts soya on her cereal and that it smells like feet. When Rey Robles, the husband, dies later that day (something we know from the beginning), the world of the wife, Lauren Hartke, changes from one of communication and an outward focus to a world of grief and an inward focus. When she discovers a stranger living on the third floor of her rented house, we aren't sure whether he is real or whether he materializes to show Lauren's unresolved feelings about her loss and the depth of her trauma. The stranger, dubbed Mr. Tuttle, is handicapped, unable to understand or communicate in language in any traditional way.

Fascinating in its focus on internal action, the reader must ultimately just accept the story for what it is while enjoying the glories of the meticulous prose, the acutely felt portrait of a woman grieving, the suggested symbolism in birds and nature, and the author's depiction of the ambiguities and uncertainties of life and time. This is a work which uses language in new ways, ultimately even calling into question the use of language itself to make sense of the world. Like Lauren, DeLillo himself is a performance artist. Mary Whipple
... Read more

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The anti-hero of Libra is Lee Harvey Oswald, who is as hauntingly real in the book as he was elusive in reality. Here he is, as large and as small as life—joining the marines, poring over Marxist texts, defecting to Russia, handing out leaflets for the Fair Play Cuba committee, imagining himself as an agent of history. That is, until “history” presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on JFK’s life, one that could be linked to Fidel Castro, is the only way to put Cuba back in geopolitical play—and that Oswald would be the perfect instrument for their plans.

Praise for Libra:
“One of the most ironic, intelligent, grimly funny voices to comment on life in present-day America.” —The New York Times
“Libra operates at a dizzyingly high level of intensity throughout; it’s that true fictional rarity—a novel of admirable depth and relevance that’s also a terrific page-turner.” —USA Today

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One of the few available books of criticism on the topic, this monograph presents the fullest account to date of Don DeLillo's writing, situating his oeuvre within a wider analysis of the condition of contemporary fiction, and dealing with his entire work in relation to contemporary political and economic concerns for the fist time.

Providing a lucid and nuanced reading of DeLillo's ambivalent engagement with American and European culture, as well as with modernism and postmodernism, and globalization and terrorism, this fascinating volume interrogates the critical and aesthetic capacities of fiction in what is an age of global capitalism and US cultural imperialism.

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This book provides a wide-ranging discussion of realism, postmodernism, literary theory and popular fiction before focusing on the careers of four prominent novelists. Despite wildly contrasting ambitions and agendas, all four grow progressively more sympathetic to the expectations of a mainstream literary audience, noting the increasingly neglected yet archetypal need for strong explanatory narrative even while remaining wary of its limitations, presumptions, and potential abuses. Exploring novels that manage to bridge the gap between accessible storytelling and literary theory, this book shows how contemporary authors reconcile values of posmodern literary experimentation and traditional realism. ... Read more

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In the closing decade of the twentieth century, Don DeLillo emerged from the privileged status of a writer’s writer to become by any measure—productivity, influence, scope, gravitas—the dominant novelist of fin de millennium America. With a series of landmark titles beginning in 1982 with The Names and continuing with White Noise and Underworld, DeLillo defined himself as a provocative, articulate anatomist of American culture. In Beyond Grief and Nothing: A Reading of Don DeLillo, Joseph Dewey offers an astute assessment of this daunting yet important writer’s four-decade cultural critique. Dewey finds DeLillo’s concerns to be organized around three rubrics that mark the writer’s own creative evolution: the love of the street, the embrace of the word, and the celebration of the soul.

Measuring the full weight of DeLillo’s narrative achievement, Dewey takes the reader through the novelist’s hip avant-garde satires of the mid-1960s, his dense interrogations of the power of language and the spell of narrative in the 1980s and 1990s, and his recent efforts to transcend the narrow parameters of the immediate. Dewey explores, among other relevant topics, DeLillo’s fascination with Eastern philosophies, interest in Native American traditions, passion for jazz, and deep roots in Roman Catholicism.

Written to present an open and helpful reading of this demanding literary figure, Beyond Grief and Nothing traces DeLillo’s achievement in a careful chronology of artistic progression. By grounding his reading in the texts themselves (novels, plays, and many of the short stories), Dewey develops an insightful arc, a thematic trajectory that takes understanding of DeLillo into significant new directions and offers a compelling and satisfying introduction to his long literary career. ... Read more