Big Bang (novel)

Big Bang

First edition cover
Author	David Bowman
Language	English
Publisher	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date	January 15, 2019
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	624
ISBN	978-0316560238

Big Bang is a 2019 novel by American writer David Bowman, published almost seven years after his death. The introduction is by Jonathan Lethem ^[1] and was excerpted in The New Yorker . ^[2] It is Bowman's fourth book and the only one not published in his lifetime. ^[3] Bowman worked on it for more than a decade. ^[4] Its working title was Tall Cool One. ^[5]

The novel is set in the 1950s and early 1960s, and includes fictionalized versions of John F. Kennedy, Norman Mailer, Pat Nixon, E. Howard Hunt, Carl Djerassi, Marilyn Monroe, Willem de Kooning, Ngo Dinh Diem, a pre-fame Jimi Hendrix, Lee Radziwill, Benjamin Spock, and other politicians, writers, celebrities, and notables of the era. ^[6] Bowman had referred to Big Bang as a "nonfiction novel." ^[7]

Critical reception

In its review of Big Bang, The New York Times called Bowman "an abundantly talented writer." ^[8] Kirkus Reviews wrote that the book "is sui generis, the kind of novel that invents its form out of its own frenzied convocation of voices and moments: the 20th century in all its majesty and fear." ^[9]

Critics have compared Big Bang to Don DeLillo's Libra and Underworld . ^{[10] [8]} DeLillo, as a young adman, appears as a character in Bowman's book. ^[10]

References

1. "Big Bang". Little, Brown. May 8, 2018. Archived from the original on July 1, 2019. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
2. Lethem, Jonathan (January 2, 2019). "David Bowman and the Furry-Girl School of American Fiction". The New Yorker.
3. Schaub, Michael (January 15, 2019). "'Big Bang' is a quixotic quasi-history of the wild years before JFK's assassination". Los Angeles Times .
4. Bowman, David (June 4, 2019). "Among the Dark Horses with David Bowman's "Big Bang" - Los Angeles Review of Books". LA Review of Books. Retrieved May 16, 2020.
5. Bowman 2019, p. xviii.
6. Bowman 2019.
7. "Fiction Book Review: Big Bang by David Bowman. Little, Brown, $32 (624p) ISBN 978-0-316-56023-8". Publishers Weekly.
8. Williams, John (February 10, 2019). "An Encyclopedic Novel Intent on Reliving the Baby Boomers' Touchstone Moments. All of Them". The New York Times.
9. "Big Bang by David Bowman". Kirkus Reviews.
10. "'Big Bang' praises famous men (and women)". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Works cited

• Bowman, David (2019). Big Bang: A Nonfiction Novel. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN   978-0-316-56023-8.