It took me six years to get through this book. While this time stuck, it was a long time coming. That prologue is a nexus. At novella length, and all at once an omniscient look at a baseball game and a snapshot of mid-century America, it's both hubristic and miscalculated. DeLillo's language and knack for perfect syntax are always welcome, but boy did he commit to writing a Long Book and only slightly nail the landing. The novel is at its best in its most human and quiet moments, and his scenes of dialogue here are some of the most naturalistic of his career. His most recent novellas have become essentially dadaist works of non sequitur dialogue, sometimes veering into the nightmarish, but this novel appears to be the final vestige of early-period DeLillo, where his characters usually replicated the actions and voices of real people. But what is the book ultimately saying about America? Or people? Or society? Honestly, not that much.