Now that's what I call DeLillo
Thoughts on Underworld by Don DeLillo via three memories that in no way speak to the contents of the novel
There’s no point in me telling you what Underworld is about.
It’s about everything.
And baseball—there’s a lot of baseball.
Instead, I’ll share three memories I carry with me about the book. They’re of no practical use, nor are they related to the content of the book, but they might in some small way evidence the fact a book I read more than 20 years ago still lives inside my head almost every day.
And maybe—just maybe—if you haven’t embarked on reading Underworld yet, it may finally inspire you to do so.
On the achievement of reading Underworld
Let’s say I started reading properly when I was about 22.
Before then, it was a different story—a different story for another time.
At 22, I’m living with a flatmate in Grimsby. Most times he’s on the sofa eating salt and I’m on the single-seater reading.
During this period, I read a lot. I’m catching up with a canon of modern fiction I never knew existed—fiction they didn’t (and probably still don’t) teach at school.
Eventually—inevitably, perhaps—I get to Don DeLillo and, after whetting my appetite with Libra and Americana, I decide to get all brave and attempt to read Underworld.
Attempt, because it’s a big fucking book. It’s up there with Ulysses, or Infinite Jest in its sheer heft and density.
I’m not a fast reader, but I’m consistent, and I’m persistent.
Still, Underworld takes me an age.
Finally, one dark and stormy Grimsby night, sat in my single-seater—my friend laid on the couch, still eating salt (another story for another time, as I say)—I finish the behemoth of a book and I place it on the arm of the sofa. I exhale: phhhhwwffff.
“You struggle with that one?” my friend wonders. “Not a fan, I’m guessing. It’s taken you ages.”
My friend rarely commented on my reading habits back then. I’d go as far as to say he never commented on my reading habits. The fact he did on this occasion surprised me—it’s stuck in my mind ever since.
“No, no,” I replied. “It’s great. It’s just… I don’t know. I mean, it might be the best book I’ve ever read. It’s just...” and I sighed, feeling confused, overawed, both beaten and emboldened by a piece of pure literature.
That was over 20 years ago, yet I remember the scene and the experience of finishing Underworld as if it were yesterday.
On the reality of reading Underworld
Weeks, maybe months later, I’m in Paris.
I’m in Paris and I’m a book geek and so of course I’m in Shakespeare and Company, browsing the shelves and hoping somehow I’ll be sucked into a Richard Linklater film.
Behind me, I hear a girl ask one of the assistants if the book she’s picked from the shelf is any good.
“It’s good, yeah,” says the assistant. “A real page-turner.”
I wonder what book they’re talking about and covertly steal a glance.
The girl is holding Underworld.
Are you serious? I think. A page-turner?
“Is it an easy read?” asks the girl. “I want something quick, you know, something light?”
“Yeah,” says the guy, and I look directly at him to wonder what planet he’s on—either he’s insane, or he’s inexplicably decided to lie to customers in the hope of shifting DeLillo overstock.
Whether I said the following line to the girl, I cannot confirm. In my mind, I might have, but I also know it’s possible I just said it in my mind.
“Hey, it’s a great book,” I may or may not have said aloud, “but it’s one of the hardest reading experiences you’ll ever go through. Don’t get me wrong—it’s worth it, it’s completely worth it. But please, don’t go into it thinking it’s a breeze.”
I don’t use the word “breeze” so I probably didn’t say this line out loud, but it’s sure as hell what I was thinking.
I think the same today.
On the insider cult of reading Underworld
I’m on an Overground train back to a friend’s flat in Hackney.
We’d been to see the band Battles.
For any math rock geeks reading, this was full Battles—the four-piece version, with Tyondai Braxton and Dave Konopka. (Side knowledge: I supported Battles at a gig in Oxford. The singer from Foals put my band on. I used to be cool, you know!)
There were four of us on the train—one of my oldest friends and two bearded chaps who I hadn’t known for as long, but were still close.
By this point in the night, we were a little drunk and naturally high off the excitement of seeing our heroes Ian Williams and John Stanier (who would, inevitably, be revealed as the core components of the ever-stranger musical outfit that is Battles).
As four alternative-minded drunk and geeky men are wont to do in their late 20s/early 30s at midnight on an Overground train to Hackney, we’re “joke-riffing,” which I define as feeding each other lines and developing them in an almost unconscious attempt to create a shared language we own and can use as a shorthand for our friendship for decades to come.
Passing Homerton, or possibly Haggerston (something H-y), we hit on the phrase… a phrase that will stay in our shared language for the rest of time, a phrase that will always link us directly back to that moment and that shared experience, a phrase that only we could have created due to our shared collective experience of life so far.
The phrase?
Now that’s what I call DeLillo.
A parody of the various artists compilation Now That’s What I Call Music, we imagine for some strange reason a compilation of DeLillo books or some such nonsense.
Truth is, I can’t remember entirely how we got to the phrase, but we did and it was—in the most part—because we all shared some knowledge of DeLillo.
I think two of us might have already read Underworld by that point, and when you’ve read Underworld, you want to share the fact you’ve read Underworld in the same way you sparkle with pride at having read Ulysess, or finished Infinite Jest, and that doesn’t happen with many books.
Like the cults that have developed around reading such books as Ulysses and Infinite Jest—and more recently Lucy Ellman’s Ducks, Newburyport (a cult I hope to join soon)—Underworld demands, and deserves, to inspire its own cult. Cults are cool—when they’re founded on good books.
But anyway, this is all to say: read Underworld. It’s pretty good, and you’ll feel better for having read it… eventually.
My recommendation: Read three short books, no more than 150 pages each (some Claire Keegan stuff or the Édouard Louis one about his mum). Get some reading momentum up so you’re feeling good. Then go into a bookshop and buy Underworld. Physically buy it from a bookshop at full price—don’t order it online. You want to actively take it from the shelf, feel its heft, and march over to the counter to declare: This! I am going to read this! A good bookshop owner will give you a look of admiration—they’ll know what you’re in for. Then, go home. Clear your schedule and give yourself time to get at least 44 pages in on your first sitting. From there, you’re on your own. I wish you luck. You might not thank me for the time it takes to get through it, but you’ll eventually thank me for the experience, and for the memories it brings.