Underworld's subject and date of composition identify it as a postmodern novel, but its epic scope, Joycean reverence for language, and recurring motifs reveal its debt to modernism. Discussing whether or not Underworld is "postmodern," DeLillo told interviewer Richard Williams of the British newspaper The Guardian: In architecture and art it [postmodernism] means one or two different things. In fiction it seems to mean an other. When people say White Noise is post-modern, I don't really complain. I don't say it myself. But I don't see Underworld as postmodern. Maybe it's the last modernist gasp. I don't know.

Whether Underworld is modern or postmodern is a question with no answer (and DeLillo's "I don't say it myself" and "I don't know" suggest both a reluctance to name the books as "modern" or "postmodern" and a dismissiveness towards the modern-postmodern binarism). Even so, it is worth considering a few...