Underworld (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Don DeLillo
- First Published: 1997
- Type of Plot: Postmodernism
- Time of Work: The Cold War and immediate post-Cold War eras
- Setting: New York City, Phoenix, a reform school in Minnesota, and post-Soviet Kazakhstan
- Principal Characters: Nick Shay, Marian Shay, Matt Shay, Klara Sax, Albert Bronzini, Manx Martin, Brian Glassic, Sister Edgar, Ismael Muñoz
- Genres: Long fiction, Metafiction
- Subjects: Culture, Working class, Imagination, Peace, Technology, Internet, Cities or towns
- Locales: New York, NY, Phoenix, AZ, Minnesota, Kazakhstan
The Novel
Underworld is divided into eleven parts: six narrative sections, a prologue, an epilogue, and three sections narrated from the perspective of Manx Martin. Each section is marked by nonchronological shifts among times and locales, beginning with the onset of the Cold War and culminating in the post-Cold War 1990’s. DeLillo links the Soviet Union’s first detonation of an atomic device, on October 3, 1951, with the famous Brooklyn Dodgers-New York Giants baseball playoff game that occurred on the same date. This connection between a sports game and a...
[The entire page is 2143 words long]
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