Excavating 'Underworld', disinterring 'Ulysses' Don DeLillo's dialogue with James Joyce

Abstract

This article examines James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) as an unacknowledged intertext of Don DeLillo's 1997 epic Underworld. After identifying a series of overlaps in the writing modes and philosophical outlook of both writers, the article proposes that DeLillo uses the methods and adopts the motives of Joyce in the consolidation of his own epic of the United States. The scope of the article is threefold. First, it examines the role and the nature of myth as considered by the authors. It unravels a thread of association linking DeLillo, through Joyce, to the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico, who assigned myth a concrete historical substance. Second, the article examines both authors' conceptions of national identity and their reconfiguration of the epic hero. Finally, it examines the role of language in the national epic and the shared linguistic experimentation of Joyce and DeLillo, in their alternation between the oral and the written. The emphasis of the article falls upon uncovering links between the contemporary, the modern and the antique. Thus, DeLillo's Underworld is envisioned as part of a deep, trans-generic literary tradition rather than the autonomous construction of contemporaneity. This provides a new context and mode of interpretation, casting a fresh light upon the role of the contemporary American novel as a commentary on the tenor and texture of national life.