Underworld (1997), DeLillos elfter Roman, ist bis dato sein ehrgeizigstes Projekt. In diesem 827-seitigen Nachruf auf den Kalten Krieg vereint und verdichtet er viele der Themen seiner schriftstellerischen Karriere: Verschwörungstheorien und Formen der Paranoia, atomare Bedrohung, das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen fiktionalem Erzählen und Historiographie, die Fragmentarisierung der grands récits, Onomastik und die Macht der Sprache; der Einfluss des Films, des Fernsehens und der Werbung auf unsere alltägliche Wirklichkeitswahrnehmung wie auch auf künstlerisches Schaffen, Jean Baudrillards Simulakrum; Gewalt und die unterschwellige Faszination, die die Medienberichterstattung über Naturkatastrophen, Terrorakte, Serienmörder, Amokläufer, Flugzeugabstürze und dergleichen auf uns ausübt; Sport; Homophobie, der Konsumwahn und die Macht des multinationalen Kapitals; Kunst und die Frage, ob subversive Kunst, Kunst die gesellschaftlich noch etwas bewegen kann, in einem soziokulturellen Rahmen, den wir grob mit den Begriffen Postmoderne oder Spätkapitalismus umreißen können, noch möglich ist; und schließlich noch Müll als empirisches Faktum und als große historische, psychoanalytische und ästhetische Metapher. Eine Metapher, die fast jeden Aspekt des Romans in sich vereinigt. Müll ist im buchstäblichen Sinne und als Metapher nahezu allgegenwärtig und dient in der Diskussion der vielschichtigen und weitverzweigten historischen, politischen und ästhetischen Implikationen von Underworld als allumfassendes Bild. Der aus unser aller Alltag wohlbekannte Begriff des Recycling, und Containment, ein Wort, das etwa im Begriff „Müllcontainer“ schon längst Bestandteil auch der deutschen Sprache ist, bilden dabei das Grundgerüst dieser Betrachtung.
Table of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Some Evidence of Don DeLillo’s soon-to- be Canonical Status within the Academy
1.2 Getting in Touch with Don DeLillo
1.3 Why Underworld?
1.4 Beyond the 20th Century: Don DeLillo and Avant-Pop
2.TURNING HISTORY INTO ART: UNDERWORLD’S POLITICS AND AESTHETICS PART I
2.0 Some Preliminary Remarks
2.1 Don DeLillo and Postmodern Theories
2.2 Artists, Works of Art, and Media Technology in Underworld
2.2.1 The Modern-Postmodern Binarism
2.2.2 Underworld’s Artist Figures
2.2.2.1 The Art of Filing: J. Edgar Hoover
2.2.2.2 The Art of Killing: Richard Henry Gilkey and the Media
2.2.2.3 The Art of Talking—Part 1: Russ Hodges
2.2.2.4 The Art of Talking—Part 2: Lenny Bruce
2.2.2.5 The Art of Painting the World—Part 1: Ismael Munoz
2.2.2.6 The Art of Painting the World—Part 2: Klara Sax
2.2.3 “Underworlds” en abyme: Films, Paintings and the Web in Underworld
2.2.3.1 The Films: Unterwelt, Cocksucker Blues, and the Zapruder Film
2.2.3.2 The Paintings: Brueghel’s Triumph of Death and Whistler’s Arrangement in Gray and Black
2.2.3.3 The Web: The WWW mirroring DeLillo’s Foregrounding of Interconnectedness in Underworld
3.TURNING WASTE INTO ART: UNDERWORLD’S POLITICS AND AESTHETICS PART II
3.0 Some Preliminary Remarks
3.1 Containment
3.2 Recycling
3.2.1 DeLillo Recycling DeLillo
3.2.2 DeLillo Recycling Other Novelists
4.CONCLUSION: DELILLO’S ARTFUL CONTRADICTIONS OF BEING
Objectives & Themes
This thesis examines Don DeLillo's novel Underworld as a monumental meditation on the status of art and the artist within contemporary late-capitalist society. The primary research question explores whether, and to what extent, the novel’s aesthetic strategies—such as montage, the use of "mise-en-abyme," and the recycling of historical and cultural fragments—allow the artist to maintain critical agency against the totalizing and commercializing forces of the "New World Order" and multinational capital.
- The intersection of Cold War history, technology, and popular paranoia in Underworld.
- The novel's aesthetic framework, specifically the strategies of "aesthetizing the political" and "politicizing the aesthetic."
- An analysis of "artist figures" within the novel, ranging from J. Edgar Hoover and serial killers to graffiti artists and painters.
- The role of "waste" as a central metaphor for death, loss, consumerism, and the potential for artistic transformation.
- The use of "mise-en-abyme" through film, painting, and the World Wide Web to mirror the novel's structure and themes.
Excerpt from the Book
The Art of Filing: J. Edgar Hoover
The comparison of what I would call “complex and monumental piles of worldly data” to works of art is nothing new in the world of Don DeLillo. Just think of Libra where he calls The Warren Commission Report: Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1964) “[t]he megaton novel James Joyce would have written if he’d moved to Iowa City and lived to be a hundred.”(Libra 181)
Moreover, the Warren Report mirrors DeLillo’s own novelistic practice in Libra and Underworld, especially in “[i]ts massive accumulation of detail, the sense of multiple contradictory narratives existing simultaneously as valid explanations of a historical event, [and] the location of millions of facts that seem to reproduce themselves exponentially [...]” (Parrish 706)
Hoover’s notorious files can be seen in a similar light.
Photographs, surveillance reports, detailed allegations, linked names, transcribed tapes—wire-taps, bugs, break-ins. The dossier was a deeper form of truth, transcending facts and actuality. The second you placed an item in the file, a fuzzy photograph, an unfounded rumor, it became promiscuously true. It was a truth without authority and therefore incontestable. Factoids seeped out of the file and crept across the horizon, consuming bodies and minds. The file was everything, the life nothing. (Underworld 559)
Summary of Chapters
1. INTRODUCTION: This chapter establishes the scholarly context of Don DeLillo’s work, tracing his rise to canonical status and outlining the thematic focus on late capitalism, the postmodern self, and the spectacle of violence.
2. TURNING HISTORY INTO ART: UNDERWORLD’S POLITICS AND AESTHETICS PART I: This section analyzes DeLillo's aesthetic strategies, focusing on the tension between "aesthetizing the political" and "politicizing the aesthetic," and examines various "artist figures" who act as authorial doubles.
3. TURNING WASTE INTO ART: UNDERWORLD’S POLITICS AND AESTHETICS PART II: This chapter investigates the metaphor of waste in the novel, exploring the concepts of "containment" and "recycling" as structural and thematic pillars that mirror the novel's complex historical and cultural synthesis.
4. CONCLUSION: DELILLO’S ARTFUL CONTRADICTIONS OF BEING: The final chapter synthesizes the findings, arguing that DeLillo's novel acts as an "encyclopedia of conflict" that both opposes and embodies the paradoxes of the contemporary era.
Keywords
Don DeLillo, Underworld, Postmodernism, Late Capitalism, Waste, Containment, Recycling, Mise-en-abyme, Paranoia, Cold War, Spectacle, Media, Art and Artist, Montage, Historiography.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core focus of this thesis?
The thesis explores the political and aesthetic dimensions of Don DeLillo’s novel Underworld, specifically how the work serves as a synthesis of Cold War history and a meditation on the power of art in a postmodern consumer society.
What are the central themes discussed in the work?
The study centers on the status of the artist, the metaphor of waste as a means of managing history and desire, the influence of media technology, and the persistent motif of "everything is connected."
What is the primary research question?
The research asks whether the artist in a late-capitalist society still possesses the capacity to create oppositional art, or if all aesthetic production is inevitably absorbed into the logic of commodity production.
Which scientific methods does the paper employ?
The paper utilizes literary analysis and cultural theory, drawing upon concepts from postmodern thinkers such as Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson, and Walter Benjamin to deconstruct the novel’s narrative structure and its relation to history.
What topics are covered in the main body of the paper?
The main part is divided into two sections: the first analyzes aesthetic strategies, "artist figures" (e.g., J. Edgar Hoover, Lenny Bruce), and the use of "mise-en-abyme" (film, painting); the second focuses on the pervasive theme of waste, its management, and its role as a structural principle.
What are the primary keywords characterizing this work?
The essential terms include Postmodernism, Waste, Containment, Recycling, Montage, Paranoia, and the intersection of art, media, and technology.
How does DeLillo treat the figure of J. Edgar Hoover as an artist?
The author argues that DeLillo frames Hoover’s compulsive filing and surveillance as a form of "novel-in-progress," positioning him as an authorial double who uses data management as a means of constructing a version of historical reality.
What is the significance of the "Zapruder film" and "Unterwelt" in this analysis?
These films function as "mise-en-abyme"—nested representations that mirror the novel's own structure. While the Zapruder film provides an unauthorized reality, the fictional Unterwelt offers artistic authority; together, they symbolize DeLillo's attempt to fuse the two within his own writing.
- Quote paper
- Mag.phil. Otmar Lichtenwörther (Author), 2002, Don DeLillo's "Underworld": The artful reality of simulacra, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/29113
