The life below the ground

by Wendy Lesser

Underground -- the word connotes danger and sanctuary, the subway and the bomb shelter, the desperation of the fugitive and the peace of the tomb. The idea of the underground is as pervasive and subtle a theme as we have in Western literature, myth, song, and social criticism, and yet this intense source of metaphor has never been explored in a manner broad enough to connect all its themes. * Wendy Lesser, editor and publisher of the Threepenny Review, leads the reader through familiar underground worlds in literature, such as Dante's Inferno and Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, through the lost lands such as Troy that archaeology reveals, through the political and criminal underworlds that capture the headlines, and into the powerful fantasy undergrounds such as Alice's Wonderland. Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Ralph Ellison, and others emerge as visionary users of underground as metaphor for the human condition. * In its scope and breathtaking originality, The Life Below the Ground