Underworld - Don DeLillo

Longing on a large scale is what makes history. This is just a kid with a local yearning but he is part of an assembling crowd, anonymous thousands off the buses and trains, people in narrow columns tramping over the swing bridge above the river, and even if they are not a migration or a revolution, some vast shaking of the soul, they bring with them the body heat of a great city and their own small reveries and desperations, the unseen something that haunts the day--men in fedoras and sailors on shore leave, the stray tumble of their thoughts, going to a game.
The sky is low and gray, the roily gray of sliding surf.

This book is incredible. DeLillo has composed a masterful collage depicting the last half of the twentieth century. It begins with the Giants/Dodgers playoff game in 1951 and includes topics as varied as Lenny Bruce, J. Edgar Hoover, art projects in a desert, suburbs, and nuclear bombs. Having lived through this time period, I am awed at how DeLillo can peel away the layers of history and hype to reveal a gritty realism. There is a strangeness about the time reflected in the writing.

DeLillo creates moods and surreal situations to uncover truth. The books jumps around in time driven by themes more than a plot. Reading it was like being in a dream about the past fifty years and seeing what was underlying the times. It was a dream I didn't want to awaken from, even after 8oo pages. Rich and complex, the book is filled with great insight and philosophical musings.