Dreamerika!, Alan Burns's fourth novel, first published in 1972,
provides a satirical look at the Kennedy political dynasty, serving up
an idiosyncratic hotch-potch of history that gives an old tragedy new
meaning. For this book, Burns collected newspaper clippings, headlines,
cartoons and photographs, cut them up, filed them and then interspersed
them throughout his text to create a collage of contrasting effects.
Presented in a fragmented form that reflects society's disintegration,
Dreamerika! fuses fact and dream, resulting in a surreal biography, an
alternate history which lays bare the corruption and excesses of
capitalism just as the heady idealism of the 1960s has begun to fade.