Review: "Big Bang" by David Bowman

Nothing about David Bowman’s posthumous novel Big Bang feels new or original. It follows a very well-worn path by writers who were more famous than he was in his lifetime, creating cult like followings through their eloquent vivisections of 20^th century history. But of all the books that this large 592-page novel will be compared to (not helped by some of the cast of fictionalized versions of real people Bowman sprinkles through the book) I do not think that they are as good as the final book Bowman wrote before his untimely death in 2012. It cribs from authors as varied as DeLillo and Coover (its structure is nearly identical to Underworld and it shares tonal DNA with The Public Burning) and even James Ellroy and his Underworld USA trilogy, but this novel, as long as those others I mentioned, eclipses them in wonderous and imaginative ways, some of which I can put my finger on and some of which I don’t think me or anybody else will be able too. The plot, if you can call it that, concerns the time period of 1950 and 1963 and culminates in the assassination of John F. Kennedy (trust me, that is not a spoiler) and is made up of real people and possibly real history, if you can trust Bowman to tell the truth (you’d be smart if you keep things such as the truth at arm’s length while you read this book). It has no central characters, but it does have a few people who frequently and a few that could be considered the heart of the book. One in particular is Howard Hunt, CIA spy, novelist and one of the people responsible for the Watergate break-in. He is an elusive figure, caught up in strange times and stranger histories that are much bigger than he is, but he plays a role in a lot of the major happenings of the time period the book covers. The heart of the book is easily Jackie Kennedy, whose dreams and desires are dashed in much the same way her husband was so swiftly gunned down in Dealey Plaza (this is not a book obsessed with conspiracies, something else that sets it apart from others like it). While not a tragic figure, she, much like Hunt, must contend with her small place in the world at large despite her celebrity. As I mentioned, what makes this book better than the giants before it is not what it does so much as what it leaves out. It is not concerned with history as a great agent of change as DeLillo sees it, a farce as Coover sees it or a lies told by the real villains as Ellroy sees it, but much like the title of the book, Bowman sees it as pure chaos and any meaning that might be found in it, like connecting Kennedy’s murder with that of Burroughs killing his wife, Mailer stabbing his or Hemingway killing himself, is purely incidental and we are helpless against it, at the mercy something absurd and total. I have not begun to scratch the surface of this brilliant book, and it IS a tragedy that Bowman is not around to offer a follow up. 

Rating: 5/5