I first noticed David Bowman's novel Big Bang when I recently did a search of titles by Jonathan Lethem, one of my favorite writers. I hadn't seen any new novels by Lethem since his "COVID novel" The Arrest in 2021, so I was interested to see Big Bang pop up in my search. It turns out that Big Bang was not written by Lethem at all, but he had written the introduction to the book. Both the introduction and the novel are very entertaining. Big Bang is an encyclopedic walk through the American social landscape of the mid-20th century. Influenced by DeLillo, particularly the novel Underworld, Bowman puts a dizzying array of personalities on the page, writing blunt and often very funny vignettes about the lives of a diverse set of well-known '50s and '60s characters such as: JFK, Jacqueline Kennedy, Aristotle Onassis, Richard Nixon and Ngo Dinh Diem, Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Lee, Dr. Benjamin Spock and his wife, Jane, J.D. Salinger, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow, Marilyn Monroe, etc. (just a representative list). Major events in American society and politics are also part of the story, such as the Cuban missile crisis, Watergate scandal, "Red scare" of the '50s, etc. Central to the story is the assassination of JFK (the Big Bang?). The book starts and ends with this event, presumably the pivotal moment starting the downward shift of US culture/society over the past half century. After reading the 600+ pages of this loosely structured book (very roughly chronological but seemingly random in the choice and sequence of individual episodes), the reader feels both exhausted and excited. It's particularly satisfying for Baby Boomers who have actually lived through all the stuff narrated in the book.
For a review of the book by New York Times, click here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/10/books/review-big-bang-david-bowman.html
