Underworld: A Discussion Over Al's Pizza

And so it was that The Book Whores gathered for the eleventh time, meeting this time at the residence of Eryne in Hallowell (we rotate as hosts).  The topic of discussion: Underworld by Don Delillo.  The food: due to one member (me) feeling antisocial, we opted not to dine out, and simply ordered pizza from local favorite, Al's.  I had not eaten pizza from Al's in years, since moving back to Augusta from Portland (but, I digress).

Underworld was a milestone in my life as a reader.  It's the book that finally broke me of a curse whose spell I've long been under: having to finish every single book I begin.  That's right, I cannot stand to put down a book once I've moved beyond, oh, page three.  This has resulted in a few wearysome battles, but overall, I like what I read.  Even books that I don't like, I usually glean something from.  In all honesty, I cannot recall an instance of not finishing a book in my adult life, with one exception, and that was Stephen King's The Eyes of the Dragon.  Putting that one down had nothing to do with the book's quality, but with the circumstances of my life at that time.  Other than that, though, I have finished everything, even an extremely boring book on Arctic exploration that nearly did me in.  And now, Underworld.  As I suffered through the ungodly prologue, which involves baseball (not my favorite passtime, so sue me), I reminded myself again and again that Delillo is one of America's best-reviewed authors.  Ultimately, I decided that I am getting older, there are hundreds (no, thousands) of books I want to read before I die, and why should I waste time on something as pretentious and dull as this.  Unfair?  Perhaps.  And knowing me, I'll go back to the book someday.  After all, I am the same guy who put an asterisk next to the handful of books I did not finish during high school and college, and went back to complete them years later, mainly so that I could remove the asterisk from my list of books completed.

So, Underworld broke me.  At least for now.  Eryne was the only one who finished the book, but she did not judge us.  In fact, she had encouraged the three of us not to finish it, as she thought it was so awful!  Still, we felt a little bad that she had expended all that energy and time.  However, our slight guilt was assuaged by Eryne's delicious apple crisp and some excellent pumpkin cookies made by Abigail.

We are usually a group of talkers, but this conversation consisted of little more than complaints about why we didn't enjoy the novel.  And we were not too proud to resort to banal umbrella statements: "It was boring," "He goes off on too many tangents," "The characters are unlikeable," etc.  Jen interjected that she liked the section with the nuns, with which I agreed.  However, I said it would have worked better as a novella and had no business taking up space in what was already a door stopper level book.  Eryne reaffirmed her hatred of Nick Shay and his wife.  Abbie hated them also.  Jen kept saying that she actually liked the writing, just not the storyline, getting more firm in her sentiments as the hour wore on.  Basically, she was the closest Delillo had to a supporter in that room.

We took the usual twenty minutes deciding on our title for next month, and our decision was momentous: Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.  I have never read her work, so this will indeed be an interesting month.