Customer Reviews

The Underground City: A Novel

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Underground City is a big book, long (755 pages), complex, very ambitious, with many moments of brilliant writing. John Stone, an American secret agent, witnessed a massacre committed towards the end of World War II, in which dozens of French resistance fighters were killed. Part 2 of this 3-part book (over 300 pages) is devoted to this history. Part I takes place immediately after the war. Dujardin, who was responsible for the massacre, is standing trial. Stone is the key witness for the prosecution. It is clear that Dujardin collaborated with the Germans, but the Communist party comes to his defense in an attempt to bring down the French government. Alexi Carnot, who also witnessed the massacre, lies to save Dujardin's life. Carnot is 20 years younger than Stone but is a born leader, as Stone learns when he is sent to locate and work with the underground resistance to help them prepare for the invasion of the allies on France's Mediterranean shores. The relationship between Stone and Carnot is brilliantly portrayed. Less so is their relationship with Adriane, who they both loved. Part III finds Stone in Paris in the aftermath of the trial. His having worked with the underground communists has made him politically suspect (McCarthy era). He's depressed and turns to drink to solace his wounds. The only bright spot in his life is Solange, a young Parisian widow, who tries to save him.
Part I introduces the reader to several personalities that are taken up by this history: Sheppard - the American Ambassador to France; Mersault - a French intellectual with political clout; and a host of reporters. They are all there in Part III. Sheppard, whose son was also involved in the massacre, is depressed. The reporters come in and out and even manage to get a more suitable end to the Dujardin affair. But it is Mersault's judgment of Stone that helps me understand why I felt so frustrated with how this book was coming to an end. After getting Stone out of prison (drunken disorder) and cleaning him up, he tells him: "You haven't earned the right to pity yourself, yet, Monsieur. You made no conscious sacrifice. You were pushed onto the stage by events which you were unable to foresee. You didn't take the hard road to glory by your own brave choice. You took it by accident." In the course of this dialogue the reader is forced to think a bit more about the condition of the French during this war. How easy it was for the Americans to come in and fight Hitler, an obviously evil man. But what about the French whose future was uncertain and who had to live and survive under brutal conditions.
All in all, I feel that this is a worthwhile read. Lots of great action writing. Less so on the human relations side, especially when women are involved. And a bit too much pontification from the politicos. Perhaps in the 1940s and 50s they spoke like that.

H.L. Humes (aka, "Doc") has enjoyed an element of avant garde noteriety for decades, in part due to his role in the foundation of the petit magazine, "Paris Review" and his post-LSD presence on several prestigious college campuses in yet another guise, to wit, possible acid burnout or post-modern visionary. His books and career have been resurrected by a favorably reviewed and recently released documentary film by his daughter, Immy Humes. He was the author of two books, both of which were out-of-print for about 50 years and both of which have been re-released by Random House, which obviously hopes to capitalize on the revival of interest in his life.

"The Underground City" is a sprawling and hugely ambitious work which recounts the "life and times" of Mr. John Stone, former expert novice cellist and sometimes secret agent, a function he performed in WW-II Occupied France on behalf of the Allies, just before the D-Day landings. Secondary characters include the always erudite US Ambassador to the Fifth Republic (Sheppard and his bizarre, Royalist son, Berger), a French bon savant (Mersault), a collaborator (Dujardin) , a Communist true-believer (Carnot), a love interest, various newspaper reporters and a sewage engineer. The book is also larded with various colorful tertiary characters to create the canvas of la vrai France.

The plot line reduces a post-war trial of Dujardin who was party to an SS-perpetrated massacre of various minor French (and one American) underground members. Carnot, initially assumed to be amongst the dead, emerges without one arm (unexplained loss) in the thrall of the nihilist/Communist lawyer and Party boss Picard to foil the conviction, create domestic dissention in France, ruin Stone's reputation and then depart for "brain surgery" in the USSR; this all in an effort to topple the French government. Regretibly, this, the entire framework of the novel, is inadequately developed and, short of an otherwise inexplicable nocturnal confession by the Chief Engineer of The Party, Mr Picard ("I am a devotee of chaos") conveyed over brandy in the appropriately magnificent den of Mersault, there is no further elaboration. French domestic dissention, replete with troop call-ups and police action and all, simply drops from the story. Stone's credibility is seemingly destroyed, only to later (and without further attempts to explain it) be resurrected by nomination for the French Legion of Honor.

In essence, this book attempts to replicate the prodigious work of Tolstoy ("War and Peace") or Sigrid Undset (14th Century Norway in "Kristin Lavrandsdatter"): it fails dismally in this regard. The writing is erudite to the point of being ponderous. The book is prolix to a fault and the various vignettes amount to annoying distractions. Worse, characters such as the newspaperman, "Sharktooth" are completely developed, only to play no significant role in the drama. Women appear as props, Sheppard is an aristocratic, pontificating, tendentious East Coast Brahmin (whose speech patterns strive to emulate William F. Buckley, Jr., but fail miserably): he is just a monumental bore. Mersault is a cartoonish post-academic snob, possibly meant to invoke Alan Dulles. Stone is a superannuated adolescent, whose odyssey about Paris seems intended to suggest echoes of Leopold Bloom in Dublin. His only salvation is drink and he is insufficiently witty to pull of the drinker's role a la Kingsley Amis. The novel's most monumental accomplishment is it's length: about 750 pages.

Still, the segment of the novel that deals with Stone's wartime adventures (leaving out "Colonel Jay", another stand-in type) is interesting and provoked sufficient attention to keep me wondering for the remainder of the book when the "good part" would resume: it never did. In fact, the penultimate "adventure" is a drinking bout in a local bistro with an improbably erudite and ennui-riven engineer of the Paris sewer system.

In summary, this is not a book which deserves comparison with even such minor classics as "Under the Volcano", which is just about the best accolade NPR's Alan Cheuse could muster in the introduction. If you are looking for WW-II atmospherics, try Furst's books, instead: they are unpretentious and interesting European spy novels.

You know immediately this is an exceptional novel, one you won't put down. Suspicion permeates the book, but after all, our hero is a secret agent working with the French Resistance. Expect to be wowed. Glad it has been brought to light after all these years.