Word: underworlders
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That bashed artifact bounces repeatedly in the rest of Underworld, eventually coming to rest in the possession of Nick Shay, an executive with a waste-management firm in Phoenix, Ariz., who pays $34,500 to a New Jersey memorabilia dealer named Marvin Lundy for the Thomson souvenir. Why buy something that even the seller cannot authoritatively trace back to Bobby Thomson's bat? (DeLillo's readers know about Cotter Martin and can make the connection, but his characters can't.) Why, especially, since Nick was a teenager in the Bronx and a desperate Dodgers fan when the home...
...features a famously reclusive author named Bill Gray who finally goes public, with unhappy consequences. Now DeLillo, not a recluse but visibly wary in the presence of cameras and interviewers, stands braced to face a lot of both during a seven-city tour to promote his new novel, Underworld (Scribner; 827 pages; $27.50). "My publisher has worked very hard on this book," he says, explaining his willingness to go on the road. "I do feel I'm entering some self-replicating white space, where the distinction between working and living has been erased." Reminded of what happened--of what...
...imminence of Underworld has been talked and written about for months. By now nearly everyone who cares about contemporary literary fiction has heard how DeLillo got the inspiration for the novel. Intrigued by the hubbub back in 1991 surrounding the 40th anniversary of Ralph Branca's fateful pitch and Bobby Thomson's subsequent home run--the so-called shot heard 'round the world that gave the New York Giants a playoff victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers and the National League championship--DeLillo went to the library and looked up on microfilm the front page of the New York Times...
...long story he wrote in response to this epiphany, which appeared as Pafko at the Wall in the October 1992 issue of Harper's, forms the prologue for Underworld. It is a tour de force, an astonishing set piece that captures the sweep and emotions of those tumultuous few hours in the Polo Grounds as experienced by, among many others, the radio announcer Russ Hodges ("The Giants win the pennant!"), attendant celebrities Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, Toots Shor and J. Edgar Hoover (yes, DeLillo learned later, they were really present), and a fictional black kid named Cotter Martin, who jumps...
...film basically follows the misfortunes of three Los Angeles cops as they trace the links among the murder of a corrupt colleague, a pioneer of sleazoid celebrity journalism (Danny DeVito, who brings huge comic relish to the role), a shadowy social climber (David Straithairn), who is enamored of underworld glamour, a call girl (an entrancing Kim Basinger) working for a service whose employees are obliged to imitate movie stars (she's the Veronica Lake look-alike), and, eventually, major players in the Los Angeles law-enforcement hierarchy...