In Episode 42, DDSWTNP’s Summer of Underworld comes to a conclusion with guest Jesse Kavadlo, who draws on his New York and Fordham University past and his many years of DeLillo scholarship to discuss Part 6 and the Epilogue with us. This episode digs into connections between this mafia-associated novel and The Sopranos, the deeper meanings of Nick’s shooting of George Manza, and the questions of belief, miracles, and art raised by the reactions to the Angel Esmeralda in the Epilogue. Together with Jesse we share thoughts about Albert Bronzini’s distillation of DeLillo’s themes, the presence of other violence in the basement room where Nick raises that sawed-off shotgun, and how his final confrontation with Brian Glassic in Kazakhstan rounds out his history. Doubling, oedipal anger, and elements of circularity and balance in the narrative occupy our attention, as do the enduring meanings in DeLillo of sacrificial victims, gunshots and gun violence, and the possibilities of redemption and aestheticism in images of recycling. We suggest throughout the bottomless associations of so many images in this novel and the way regionalism and highly local cultures ramify with the national and epic scopes DeLillo is interested in. Jesse gives not just great analysis but great voice and performance to some passages we close-read together (including the book’s amazing Joycean ending), and we cover a few ideas about the ways Underworld relates to contemporary popular cultures of cinema, television, and digital forms. As DeLillo’s big novel passes age 29 we offer the last of six total episodes in this series, and at the very end we reflect briefly on the Summer of Underworld and express our gratitude to Jesse Kavadlo and our other guests in this endeavor: John Duvall, Curt Gardner, Patrick Whitmarsh, and Mark Osteen. As we say in the coda too, we'd love to hear from you -- send us your feedback on any or all of our episodes, whether on Instagram messages or ddswtnp@gmail.com. For a profile of Jesse Kavadlo’s writing, see: https://jessekavadlo.com/
In Episode 42, DDSWTNP’s Summer of Underworld comes to a conclusion with guest Jesse Kavadlo, who draws on his New York and Fordham University past and his many years of DeLillo scholarship to discuss Part 6 and the Epilogue with us. This episode digs into connections between this mafia-associated novel and The Sopranos, the deeper meanings of Nick’s shooting of George Manza, and the questions of belief, miracles, and art raised by the reactions to the Angel Esmeralda in the Epilogue. Together with Jesse we share thoughts about Albert Bronzini’s distillation of DeLillo’s themes, the presence of other violence in the basement room where Nick raises that sawed-off shotgun, and how his final confrontation with Brian Glassic in Kazakhstan rounds out his history. Doubling, oedipal anger, and elements of circularity and balance in the narrative occupy our attention, as do the enduring meanings in DeLillo of sacrificial victims, gunshots and gun violence, and the possibilities of redemption and aestheticism in images of recycling. We suggest throughout the bottomless associations of so many images in this novel and the way regionalism and highly local cultures ramify with the national and epic scopes DeLillo is interested in. Jesse gives not just great analysis but great voice and performance to some passages we close-read together (including the book’s amazing Joycean ending), and we cover a few ideas about the ways Underworld relates to contemporary popular cultures of cinema, television, and digital forms.
As DeLillo’s big novel passes age 29 we offer the last of six total episodes in this series, and at the very end we reflect briefly on the Summer of Underworld and express our gratitude to Jesse Kavadlo and our other guests in this endeavor: John Duvall, Curt Gardner, Patrick Whitmarsh, and Mark Osteen. As we say in the coda too, we'd love to hear from you -- send us your feedback on any or all of our episodes, whether on Instagram messages or ddswtnp@gmail.com.
For a profile of Jesse Kavadlo’s writing, see: https://jessekavadlo.com/
Texts cited and discussed in this episode:
John Duvall, Don DeLillo’s UNDERWORLD. Continuum Contemporaries Reader’s Guide. 2002.
Graley Herren, The Self-Reflexive Art of Don DeLillo. Bloomsbury, 2019.
Jesse Kavadlo, Don DeLillo: Balance at the Edge of Belief. Peter Lang, 2004.
—, “Recycling Authority: Don DeLillo’s Waste Management.” Critique 42.4 (Summer 2001): 384-401.
Walter Kendrick, “Fiction in Review: Journeying Through Underworld.” The Yale Review 86.2 (April 1998).