A review by palefire
Big Bang by David Bowman

5.0

Lethem's introduction is excellent, but you should probably read AFTER you read this fractured novel which is the grandson of dos Passos' Manhattan Transfer and U.S.A., and John Brunner's Stand On Zanzibar. This appears to be a 'novel' full of 'facts' which are surely creative speculations. Great fun for me since I'm old enough to remember these years. So very many characters (see below) who swirl around in the lead up to the titled Big Bang as JFK gorily bites the dust. The 600 pages of crisp dialogues, plots and descriptions entertained me more than I thought possible. An easy five stars rating.
(Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Lee, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Dr. Benjamin Spock and his wife, Jane, George Plimpton, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe, Leslie Fiedler, J. D. Salinger, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning, Elizabeth Taylor, Raymond Chandler, Sylvia Plath, Jack Kerouac, Frank Sinatra, Maria Callas, Ann Margret, Elvis, William de Kooning, Ngô Dihn Diem, Aristotle Onassis, John F., Jacqueline, Robert, & Joe Kennedy, William S. Burroughs, Robert McNamarat, Lee Harvey Oswald, James Tippit, LBJ and Lady Bird, Montgomery Cliff, Clark Gable, John Huston, Eli Wallach, Krushchev, Richard and Pat Nixon, Ernest Hemingway, H.L. Hunt, E. Howard Hunt and many more.)