UNDERWORLD - ABOUT FRAGMENTS OF TIME, J. EDGAR HOOVER, AND A BASEBALL
Main Article Content
Abstract
Considering the recent critical perspectives on the fictions of the late 1990s, the paper interprets the narrative structure and the construction of the networks of time in the novel Underworld by Don DeLillo. Reviewing the dominant theoretical frames for the interpretation of history and narrative, historiographic metafiction proposed by Linda Hutcheon and the postmodern understanding of history as a collage of elements by Frederic Jameson, the paper examines the ideas of structuring the time in narrative from the perspective of now. Timeframe is thus interpreted as a sequence of present moments designed, recorded and repurposed as “future past moments” defined by the process of archive fever and the accelerated recontextualization of the ‘snapshots’, characters and historical figures. We propose that the idea of this structure is to bring light to seeing history as a series of contingencies rather than a teleological sequence with a predesigned outcome, and to emphasize the view on the past as a series of accidental nows. To illustrate these points the paper analyses the positioning in the structure of the narrative of the two key motifs of the novel, the baseball and the character of J. Edgar Hoover.
Downloads
Metrics
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
References
Currie, M. (2007). About time: Narrative, fiction and the philosophy of time. The frontiers of theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748630400
DeLillo, D. (2014). Underworld. New York: Scribner. Retrieved March 10, 2022, from https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=67404390-FBEF-4C52-BB18-4E629474DFE9
Duvall, J. N. (2002). Don DeLillo’s Underworld: A reader’s guide. Continuum contemporaries. New York: Continuum.
Duvall, J. N. (2017). Historical Fiction. In S. J. Burn (Ed.), American Literature in Transition, 1990–2000 (1st ed., pp. 124–139). Cambridge University Press. Retrieved February 28, 2022, from https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/9781316477069%23CN-bp-9/type/book_part DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316477069.009
Huehls, M. (2017). Historical Fiction and the End of History. In R. Greenwald Smith (Ed.), American Literature in Transition, 2000–2010 (1st ed., pp. 138–151). Cambridge University Press. Retrieved March 6, 2022, from https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/9781316569290%23CN-bp-10/type/book_part DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316569290.010
Hutcheon, L. (1989). The politics of postmodernism. London; New York: Routledge. Retrieved March 6, 2022, from http://site.ebrary.com/id/5001592
Jameson, F. (2005). Postmodernism, or, The cultural logic of late capitalism. Post-contemporary interventions (11. printing in paperback.). Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.