Underworld (DeLillo Novel) - Literary Significance and Reception

Literary Significance and Reception

The response from critics was very positive with David Wiegand of the San Francisco Chronicle declaring Underworld DeLillo's “best novel and perhaps that most elusive of creatures, a great American novel." The novel has been called ambitious and highly powerful.

Several critics did note that it was overly long and could have benefited from some additional editing. On Salon.com, Laura Miller wrote that “Nick's secret, the one that supposedly provides the book's suspense, proves anticlimactic."

In May 2006, The New York Times Book Review named Underworld as a runner up for the best work of American fiction of the previous 25 years.

The well-known literary critic Harold Bloom, although also expressing reservations about the book's length, has said Underworld is "the culmination of what can do" and one of the few contemporary American works of fiction that "touched what I would call the sublime," along with works by Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, and Thomas Pynchon.