It is so refreshing to actually understand a book's plot!

I am anxious to find out what connections Delillo makes between the prologue and Nick Shay's narrative-- how the ball ended up in Nick's hands, the relationship between Nick and Kara forty years ago (an affair?), etc. I'm anticipating some sort of connection between bombs and baseballs, but I'm not quite sure what to make of it yet.

I'm sure this will make more sense as I read further, but I'm not sure about the significance of the prologue's title-- "the triumph of death," which was also the title of the painting that fascinates J. Edgar Hoover. While everyone else is celebrating the triumph of the Giant's huge win, climbing over seats and rushing into the field, Hoover is completely fascinated with the image of the dead and rotting bodies. Delillo mentions that Hoover is somewhat of a germaphobe, yet he "loves this stuff." Then he focuses on the audience: "Admit it--you love it" (50).

DeLillo has already brought in the capitalized Us and Them that brings to mind the capitalized words of GR....."And what is the connection between Us and Them, how many bundled links do we find in the neural labyrinth? It's not enough to hate your enemy. You have to understand how the two of you bring each other to deep completion" Us vs Them is necessary for any type of war, including the Cold War: without this idea, how can you hate? And past that, DeLillo says that you need 2 separate entities so that you can decide your place in the world. The power struggle of the Cold War can be seen in terms of two superpowers with differing ideas of how they each brought the other to 'deep completion'.

A link taken from the Wikipedia article on Underworld: http://www.lichtensteiger.de/WTCunderworld.html

Here DeLillo explains how he chose the title of the book:

"While I worked on the book, I gradually compiled a number of titles. I first hit upon Underworld when I started thinking about plutonium waste buried deep in the earth. Then about Pluto, the god of the dead and ruler of the world. New connections and meanings began to suggest themselves, and I recall drawing a circle around the title Underworld on a page filled with prospective titles." — Don DeLillo to Jonathan Bing, 1997

My one complaint so far, Underworld makes waiting the next month and a half for baseball season that much more agonizing.

One moment that particularly struck me was the moment where Cotter he realizes his rival is indeed Bill Waterson. From my perspective it seems certainly possible that the two of them represent the Soviet and American powers and their onetime alliance and subsequent hostility. Just after Cotter finally wrests the ball away, "The man catches his eye, This is not what Cotter wants, this is damage to the cause. He made a mistake looking back" (49). The moment serves as a loss of innocence, the end of an impersonal struggle. Once the friends, united by a previous common cause, have something to fight over, it tears them apart in such a primal way. What makes this moment so stunning, however, is the the distinct sameness of the two sides, two men looking "at each other over the crowd and through the crowd." For all that separates them, they stand out to each other essentially oblivious to the swarms of people around them. For all their conviction that they each have the superior claim to that ball, they both ultimately want the same thing, the ball -- and will do whatever it takes to keep it.

Wow, this book is so much easier to read than Gravity's Rainbow! I really liked the prologue (I think part of that is because I actually understood everything that I was reading!)

One incident that I found particularly interesting was on page 41: "in the box seats J. Edgar Hoover plucks a magazine page off his shoulder, where the thing has lighted and stuck. At first he's annoyed that the object has come in contact with his body. Then his eyes fall upon the page. It is a color reproduction of a painting crowded with medieval figures who are dying or dead--a landscape of visionary havoc and ruin. Edgar has never seen a painting quite like this. It covers the page completely and must surely dominate the magazine . . . it is clear to Edgar that the page is from Life and he tries to work up an anger, he asks himself why a magazine called Life would want to produce a painting of such lurid and dreadful dimensions. But he can't take his eyes off the page." (Sorry for including that long of an excerpt!)

Again, dealing with the prologue. I feel like a lot of passages really allude to the aura of the Cold War without being painfully obvious. Or I’m trying too hard to look for Cold War references. Anyway, I like that it’s subtle.

When the engineer is talking through the blanket to the “other side”, I thought about Russia and the US, talking to each other but often not seeing each other really, blocked off by some sort of ideological blanket….but that might just be me….that’s on pg. 26.

On page 27 the line “nothing is the same”…well, it jumped out at me. Hoover hears about the bomb, and nothing is the same.

few thoughts/annotations after first 30 pages

By 1957 both teams had left New York. By 1964 the Polo Grounds no longer existed.

"Robinson" is Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in 1947. Played for the Dodgers his whole career. HOF 1962.

Waterson's comments to Cotter are interesting in that he praises the tradition and sameness of baseball ("you do what they did before you") in the presence of Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays, two black athletes that did more to transform the landscape of sports, pop culture, and society than anyone until Magic w/ aids and MJ's global branding.

I so want to break out into song. I'll refrain, though.

I rather liked the Prologue…and am quickly picking up on DeLillo’s writing style, which I think I rather like. I notice that he uses repetition to make something stick in the reader’s mind. It sounds pretty cool, I think. Here are a few examples:

Pg. 23 “Edgar fixes today’s date in his mind. October 3, 1951. He registers the date. He stamps the date.”

Pg. 27 “He’s reading and reading the sign. He’s reading the sign.”

Pg 28. “A man slowly wiping his glasses. A staring man. A man flexing the stiffness out of his limbs.”