The following was written as part of a longer discussion on Underworld. Dig it: Today I'll just mention that I finally figured out what bugs me about Delillo's Underworld. It is the great american mediocre novel. History since Bobby Thomson and the Bomb told by The New Yorker with a structural formalist editor. It is not the hidden history of America, but the cultural detrius that catches the eye of manhattan based critics. And he's so fricking condescending about the whole mess, as if off the cuff "insight", no matter how elaborately constructed, can pass for vision. If Pynchon, in Gravity's Rainbow, describes Osbie Feel with a "back room, fitted out with telephones, a cork board with notes pinned all over, desks littered with maps, schedules, _An_Introduction_To_Modern_Herero_, corporate histories, spools of recording wire." (pp. 536) Well, then, in contrast, Delillo sat down with a full set of Trouser Press guides and a flowchart. And then later: I am only around page 700 of Underworld, hardcover edition. So you might say that my earlier judgement was too hasty. But really, I am carried towards completion now by a momentum of disgust. Earlier I struggled to find motivation. Now I read to search and destroy. Watch out baby, 'cause we're using technology. "They were denizens. That was the word somehow, from the Late Latin, deep within, and that's what they were like, trapped souls trying to emerge, and I began to understand that Jerry came here so he could put aside self-pity and the gnaws of practical worry and be with people who would talk to him in a kind of delusional plainsong, a run-on voice without any ordinary sense or strict meter but coming from deeper inside than he could bear to hear in his own locution." (pp. 621) It is doubtless that Delillo tries to do this. But does he succeed? Well, what follows? "The lights dimmed and flickered. "Jerry was talking to me and there was a woman with Jorge who was saying something to the bartender about the optimum temperature of the beer and that's when the lights dimmed and flickered and then went out. "Jerry was saying, 'spur of the moment. I'll make some calls. I'll get some guys. I'll get what's-his-name, Allie. This is a thing, my friend, where you don't have the right to refuse.' "Then the lights went out." Somewhere, a talented voice has become one that no longer examines convention, but drowns in it. Yes Don, tell it like it never was. "A long pause. A hush in the hall. Lenny seemed half lost in reverie, in conjure, and maybe people began to feel uncomfortable because he could not seem to stop doing the voice. It was as if the voice had been crossed with his own. It was as if cross-voices were unavoidable, whether you knew it or not, whether you liked it or not, and maybe this old black man spoke in Lenny's voice at times, alone, unknowing, in his room, on some level, hearing the bandy scales in his head, the push and shove of Lenny's own fluted muse, and Lenny did the old man's, spoke in the old man's, unavoidably." (pp. 629) Lenny Bruce, you see, is the author's voice. Because he can comment on the world. Others might find some twist of fate to consider, but only Lenny steps back and has a side. Which makes sense, because right in the center of that 1950-90 arc, between baseballs and the atom, right then is the 60s. And this is the book. Aging boomer misses cultural icons, wonders what matters in today's alienated media-saturated culture? Sound familiar? So the 50s were when things meant something, and when people were working class. The 60s were when things were crazy and the kids grew up. And then the 70s faded away, and by the 80s we were all getting old. Now everything is weird and impossible to understand. Oh yes, and everybody lives in Manhattan now. They either paint graffiti or write for a magazine. But Delillo's voice isn't mixed with Lenny's, again, much as he wishes it was. Because he turns a schtick into a cultural signifier. The characters mean nothing, the concept means everything, and this time around the concept is too time-worn to fly. Lenny Bruce is where Delillo indulges in his most irritating overwriting, and for ever paragraph of this we get another where he pats himself on the back for how _true_ and _tortured_ young Mr. Bruce is. And I could go on, but you get the idea.
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