The trajectory of the ball of the famous home run to Bobby Thomson, Polo Grounds, New York 1951 .
Don de Lillo is therefore an author belonging to the current so-called postmodern American novel, which is perhaps the greatest exponent along with Thomas Pynchon (the famous writer 'recluse' - the author of 'Deceit of Lot 49 - which no one has ever seen and of which the 'last known photo dates back to the '50s. here BBC documentary). Underworld is the title of a book published in 1997, the novel on which I will start to extend 'the cycle of the dialogues', which began with reference to films alone, including excerpts from written texts. But first some information on the novel and its author:
On De Lillo:
"farther away from the so-called minimalism, generous and abundant, is a writer in search of the Great American Novel - the phoenix chased by every self-respecting U.S. writer, the novel that tells all about ' America, represent, speak with her voice. "
the novel:
With White Noise and Libra (an 'impressive reconstruction of a cross between fantasy and reality is viewed from the assassination of Kennedy by Oswald ) Underworld (a magnificent fresco of fifty years of America) is one of the three great American novels "De Lillo
Thomson's home run in the Daily News, 1951.
This is the biography of a baseball, from October 3, 1951 until the '90s. The ball is the thread that holds together the stories of many characters, which in turn are interwoven (and saturated) in the Great American History. Reading you are then to follow the passage of the ball through the story (but at the same time we see the story go inside the ball, the two processes become complementary) in a location where you mingle and show glimpses of life Bronx, the atomic bomb (an imaginary American presence post-war almost obsessive in the book), the masked ball of Truman Capote, a myriad of new and old, the passing of the existence of a network of fake and real characters (in the chapters of the novel, which are not ordered in time - see below - is rapidly changing time of day and local wires that bind different story unfolds only slowly).
These include for example, Lenny Bruce (the famous comedian, who has dedicated a song Bob Dylan and the Beatles immortalized in album cover Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - the fourth from the left face up ) and John Edgar Hoover (FBI director from 1924 to 1972), which assists with Frank Sinatra playing perhaps the most famous in the history of baseball, that tra i Giants e i Dodgers a New York ( 3 ottobre 1951 ) vinta con un miracoloso fuoricampo di Bobby Thomson (prima foto sopra).
“Tra loro c’è anche J. E. Hoover. Sta guardando dall’ampio corridoio in cima alla rampa. Ha detto a Rafferty che resterà alla partita. Andarsene non servirebbe a niente. La Casa Bianca darà la notizia tra un’ora. Edgar odia Harry Truman, gli piacerebbe vederelo contercesi su un parquet, stroncato da un attacco di cuore, ma non può criticare il presidente. Dando la notizia per primi, impediremo ai sovietici di presentare l’ accaduto a modo loro, indorando la pillola. E in una certa misura allenteremo la tensione del pubblico. La gente capirà che abbiamo retained control of news, if not the bomb, which is something "(Underworld, p. 23 The Triumph of Death. )
First page of The New York Times, October 4, 1951.
While Edgar just think of the bomb dropped by the Russians, the game ends with the famous home run and go down in history (there have even shot a documentary ), making Branca and Thompson (pitcher and batter, respectively) two characters famous, so much so that the two will meet again years later immortalized in the White House with President Nixon (in a photo in the novel is an object that will find their hung in many places).
But who has returned home with the historic ball, still remains a mystery.
"Nobody has the ball - said Sims - The ball never came up. Not he's never known anything, whoever had the hands. This is part of ... how do you say? ... Mythology of that game. Nobody has ever come forward to claim the authenticity of the ball with credible arguments. Or has come forward about a dozen people, each with a baseball, which is substantially the same "(p. 100 Underworld. Spring-Summer 1992). The
ball is not the protagonist of the book (there is a protagonist in the book if not history, a choir with many or almost all the main characters, one of which, Nick - raised in the Bronx, Catholic education - for biography and type of analysis was considered an alter ego author), it is rather a hole in history (the so-called 'true') which begins another story (true, false, true-false-and, when mixed, one should question Carlo Ginzburg way).
(Photo of the loss. The pylon 35, at least according to the novel, is green - the ball seems to have bumped into. I have not checked on any photos of the Polo Grounds, the stadium where he played in the match, if the information is correct)
The ball becomes the hinge of a large texture that takes place before the reader, in which momentous events, people objects, sometimes insignificant details, the ball itself, waste of any kind ("nuclear waste, general rubbish, sentimental fetishes, erotic art" is another leitmotif together the atomic attack) are mixed and bind, presented with a narrative technique that allows us to jump from one to another at will, presents them temporally and spatially separated, connecting them with references, details that we meet in several places (Storms) in the course of its progress:
"Reading this prose can be as strange to use a web browser: the narrative focus moves from character and character as fast as we are introduced to them, and regularly change the time frame to show me more connections between the main actors in history. This device - the literature as hypertext - is particularly effective in the early parts of the novel, and the technique does not intrude ever in the history itself. "
appears briefly in the history of chincaglie a collector of baseball, a paranoid old (young at a later step) locked in una cantina piena di oggetti per la magior parte insignificanti raccolti nel corso di anni ("spazzatura nostalgica dei tempi andati" , secondo un commento di un amico del compratore della sfera - Primavera-state 1992) tra i quali la palla, che ha rintracciato inseguendola per 22 anni e ricostruendone la storia a ritroso fino al giorno dopo il match (poi c'è un buco nella sua storia, del collezionista):
“- Marvin : La gente colleziona, colleziona, non fa che collezionare. C’è gente che insegue qualsiasi oggetto del periodo della Germania nazista. Nazisterie. Grandi collezioni che cercano la grande storia. Ciò significa forse che gli oggetti accumulati in questa stanza are totally insignificant? What is a word I'm looking for, it sounds as if you inject a vaccine into the muscle of the arm?
- Brian : Harmless says.
- Marvin : Yes here is harmless. What should I be harmless? Again, this is history, the last pages. History upside down. Happy, tragic, desperate. "(Underworld, p. 181. Mid eighties \\ early nineties)
The book is a collection of species, such as chasing the story cheMarvin collects the ball backwards, up and down breadth of America.
"The ball did not carry either lucky or unlucky. It was an object that changing hands. But pushing people to tell him things, tell him the family secrets and personal stories unmentionable, sobbing heart on his shoulder. Because they knew that he was their, you know, their instrument of relief.
Their stories would have taken a different relief, would be absorbed by something larger, the long journey of the ball itself and the absurd Marvin march through the decades. "
not the stories told by Marvin to be the subject of the book, rather than that of Marvin and his research is a ten-year history-which is interrupted in the first part - of the many that make up the story. In the song that inspired the box that I propose, Nick, the protagonist of one of the threads of the novel (he works in the treatment of industrial waste, all sorts of objects, the last stage of the 'story' of each object), talk to a priest to a reformatory in which it was locked up (for killing a man they still know very little, but I will not dwell on this aspect). However, given that the dialogue has nothing to do with the ball, send it back to the next operation, replacing it with another exchange of words pseudo-Orwellian whose protagonist is always the old paranoid, walking in his basement to a collection showing the visitor:
said Marvin: - I grew up in the Midwest. The Cleveland Indians were my team. And yesterday evening, when I came here by plane for business, I read an article in the journal of the airline, the piece on her and her collection, and I tried the irresistible impulse to contact you and see these things.
touched the cuffs of the silk smoking jacket of Babe Ruth.
- It 's been my daughter convinced me to do the interview, - said Marvin. - Do you think I'm becoming a sort of a how-his-name.
- Recluse
- Yes, an old recluse with only half the stomach. So now my picture is in the back pocket of twenty thousand seats. This is the idea that you have of going out and meeting people. They stick me in there along with the vomit bags.
Brian said - I was at an exhibition of machines and showed me a strange effect.
- That is the effect that he did?
- machines of the fifties. I do not know.
- She is self-pity. Do you think that is escaping from something but do not know what. Feeling alone in life. He has a job, a family and a will already prepared, at his age, because what counts is prepared to die, a legal death, with all the papers in order. Dying viable, so the heirs can convert everything into cash. At one time he thought he had the same size as the entire universe. Now it is a splinter lost. Look at the machines once and remember a goal, a goal.
- It 's ridiculous, right? But probably it is also irrelevant.
- Nothing is irrelevant - said Marvin - You are worried and scared. You see that the cold war is ending, and it leaves her breathless.
Brian passed through a turnstile from an old baseball field. Creaked with a sound nostalgic .
- The Cold War? - He said - Well, I do not think that is ending. However, if this were so, so much the better. I'd be happy.
- Let me tell you something that perhaps has never been the case.
Marvin was sitting in a chair next to an old trunk of equipment on cu era impressa la scritta “Boston Red Stockings”. Indicò con un gesto ampio la poltrona dall’altra parte del baule e Brian andò a sedersi .
- Bisogna che i leader di entrambe le parti facciano continuare la guerra fredda, è l’ unico elemento di stabilità. E’ onesta, è affidabile. Perché quando la tensione e la rivalità finiscono, allora sì che comincia il vero incubo. Tutto il potere e l’intimidazione dello stato smetteranno di circolare nel suo sangue e lei non si ritroverà più ad essere .. oddio, cosa volevo dire?
- Non lo so.
- Ah, sì, non sarà più il punto di riferimento principale. Perché verrà aggredito da altre forze bellicose pressing. The Cold War is his friend. For her, it must remain predominant.
- The accent on what?
- Do not you know? He does not understand the whole thing is linked to dominance in the world? Did not you see what is happening in England? Forty women who experience around an air base to protest against bombs and missiles. Some of them are men in disguise. There are Buddhists who play their drums.
Brian did not know how to react to these comments. He wanted to talk about old baseball players, the size of the stadium and nicknames of minor league towns. That was why he had come to surrender to nostalgia, to listen to his anecdotes OpSite famous, now classic stories of stupid actions and wild brawls, duels continued to launch until dusk, the stories collected by Marvin half a century - Eros heavy memory that stands out from other baseball sport.
Marvin sat with eyes fixed on the scoreboard, the cigar burned lievemete frayed end.
- I thought we talked about baseball
- We're talking about baseball. This is baseball. They see the clock? - Said Marvin - It 's still about three and cinquantaquantotto. Why? Perhaps because it is the time when Thomson struck the boundary on the launch of Branca? He called
Branker .
- or why that is the day when we discovered that the Russians had detonated an atomic bomb. He wants to know something of that game?
- What? - Brian did.
- There were twenty thousand empty seats. And you know why?
- Why?
- I laugh in your face.
- No, I promise.
- All right then. She is my guest and I want to feel at ease.
- Why so many empty seats for the biggest game of the year?
- many years - Marvin interjected.
- for many years.
- Why do some events have an element of unconscious fear. In my heart I am convinced that people sensed the disaster in the air. It had nothing to do con chi avrebbe vinto o perso la partita. Sentivano una forza tremenda che avrebbe obliterato.. è questa la parola?
- Sì, obliterato.
- Allora, che arebbe completamente obliterato la partita. Deve sapere che per tutti gli anni Cinquanta la gente è rimasta chiusa dentro casa. Uscivano solo per salire in machina. I parchi pubblici non erano pieni di gente così come adesso. Un museo era una serie di stanze vuote con cavalieri in armatura e un guardiano insonnolito ogni sette secoli.
- In altre parole.
- In altre parole, c’era una tendenza sotterranea a restarsene a casa. Perché nell’aria incombeva una minaccia.
- E’ lei vorrebbe dirmi che la gente ha avuto un’intuizione su questa giornata particular?
- Yes, it's as if they knew. Sensed that there was a link between the game and shocking that an event would occur on the other side of the world.
- This game in particular.
- not the day before or the day after, because it was the lot of all-or-nothing between the two most hated rivals in the city. People had the impression that the game was tied to something much bigger. So went through the mental process of asking, I really want to go out and find me in the crowd, which is the worst place to be where if something horrible happens, or you'd better stay home with my family and my new TV brand come suggerisce il buon senso, nel suo mobiletto impiallacciato d’acero.
Con sua sorpresa Brian non respinse questa teoria. Il che non significa necessariamente che vi credesse, però non la respinse. Ci credeva provvisoriamente, qui in questa stanza sotto il livello della strada, in una casa di legno, nel pomeriggio di un giorno di feriale a Cliffside Park, New Jersey. Era liricamente vera, mentre usciva dalla bocca di Marvin Lundy e arrivava all’orecchio medio di Brian, indimostrabilmente vera, remotamente e in ammissibilmente vera, ma non del tutto avulsa dalla storia, non priva di autentica storia interiore .
- E devo dire che la faccenda ha un interesse perché quando fabbricano una bomba atomica, questa is beautiful, the radioactive nucleus do the same size as a baseball - said Marvin.
- I had always believed that the size of a grapefruit.
- No. The ball was a major league baseball to regulate, not less than twenty-three inches in circumference, according to the rules. "
END
(Emphasis added of the non-dialogue is mine)
The post is put together from various reviews of the book which I have drawn (and which I translated it) freely 1 , 2 . From an old article Republic and one from the Sunday Times . For a number of additional articles on the work of De Lillo (the last novel, Omega Point, was released in February) here. The post title is also a quote from the novel: "The difference comes when you hit the ball. Then nothing is the same. The men trip, getting up from their squatting positions, and everything submits to the flight of the ball splashing away like a stone on water [...]" (Underworld, p. 23 The triumph of death. )
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