Structure
American Tabloid is divided into five sections, is exactly one hundred chapters long (many are less than a page in length), and covers exactly five years. The narration eschews both exposition and lengthy dialog exchanges.
All chapters begin with the chapter number, the location (usually the name of the city), and the date ("MM/DD/YYYY"). The action of the book is completely sequential.
Each chapter has a limited third person narrative voice from the point of view of one of the three main characters. Interspersed between the chapters are "document inserts" reproducing newspaper clippings, letters, and transcripts of telephone calls. Flashbacks occur, but only in the present tense memory of the protagonists.
Read more about this topic: American Tabloid
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“Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason.”
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