Underworld

Underworld is a novel by Don DeLillo (born in 1936) published in 1997. Its first section, called The Triumph of Death, was published separately as the novella Pafko at the Wall in 1992. The novella is considered by many to be DeLillo's greatest achievement, while the novel as a whole is regularly included on lists of the best American fiction of the second half of the 20th Century.

The title of the novella from which the novel stemmed provides a clue to its baseball content. It refers to Brooklyn Dodgers outfielder Andy Pafko standing helplessly against the outfield fence at the Polo Grounds, watching Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round the World" sail over his head to give the New York Giants a come-from-behind victory in the deciding game of the three-game playoff that crowned the Giants as National League champions that year. The opening section of the novel describes the game in great detail, focusing on Giants broadcaster Russ Hodges, on celebrities attending the ball game such as singer Frank Sinatra, comedian Jackie Gleason and Federal Bureau of Investigations Director J. Edgar Hoover, and on a couple of fans in the bleachers, an 11-year-old black boy who has snuck in to watch the game, Cotter Martin, and a middle-aged white fan, Bill Waterson. During the game, Hoover gets word that the USSR has successfully tested a nuclear weapon, casting a pall of gloom over the festivities, that will be echoed in later parts of the novel.

When Thomson hits his historic home run, Cotter Martin and Bill Waterson both scramble to recover the ball, and it is the young black child who is successful, to Waterson's dismay. However, when Cotter comes home that evening, his father finds the souvenir and immediately understands that he can trade it in for immediate cash, and he takes away his young son's precious artifact of the greatest day of his life, selling it off that very night. The novel will then trace the plight of the ball through the following decades, as it passes from owner to owner, its authenticity disputed, but still serving as a touchstone for very powerful memories for all of these owners. At the same time, the Cold War is unfolding, especially the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, with comedian Lenny Bruce memorably riffing on the phrase "We're all gonna die!" as he predicts imminent nuclear Armageddon. The ball eventually ends up in the present day in the ownership of Nick Shay, who works for a nuclear waste management company, and has his own repressed motivations for wanting to own the precious souvenir (for one, he was a Dodgers' fan, and he sees the ball as a symbol of the first of many things that went wrong in his life).

The action does not follow a linear time line, although all events that occur lead back to the opening section, the historical baseball game standing in for an idealized America that probably does not exist, threatened as it is by nuclear annihilation, but also built on layers of unsuspected and repressed grime - the "Underworld" of the title.

Further Reading

• Don DeLillo: '"Pafko at the Wall", Harper's Magazine, October 1992. [1]
• Don DeLillo: Underworld, Scribner, New York, NY, 1997. ISBN 0-684-84269-6
• Michel Nareau: Double jeu: Baseball et littératures américaines, Le Quartanier, Montréal, QC, 2012, pp. 115-120 and 231-244. ISBN 978-2-923400-91-4