Really a Virtuoso performance. Ford, in this book does right what I have always felt that Delillo fails at, which is the endless and minute description of events exactly as they unfold from within the subjective consciousness of the protagonist. It's a technique which, in this case, renders the main character overwhelmingly human by virtue of the flood of details corresponding, in quality, quantity, and pace, with my own experience of how events unfold. Ford's artifice disappears under the flood of particularities, and only a second reading of one detail or other makes clear that the author is more than talented in his description, he is a virtuoso, capable of avoiding repetition and cliche while flooding the reader with image after image and thought after thought. At the end of the book one realizes that the 3-day Independence Day structure has, in fact, been tightly woven around a set of ideas about independence, one's connection to the world, and the question of one's own innate value, as referenced to contemporary (1980s) politics and the thoughts of the founding fathers...