Agreed. Well, except for Ellison; I think he's pretty much a waste of space, a man who's schtick became tiresome long ago. There was a lot of silliness involved in the "new wave". I'd compare it to the Sex Pistols in rock, as an interesting, if embarrassing, necessary step to get to what was next, but overrated on it's own. (Except for Effinger's What Entropy Means to Me; for some reason I love that book!)
I remember a story by someone (I think it was Spinrad, another author I like) riffing on John Dos Passos (forgive if I'm spelling wrong) being praised as something amazing, and I just didn't get it. I might have been more impressed if Heinlein hadn't already done the same thing in Stranger in a Strange Land, but I guess he was too old guard to count. Silly, silly, silly...
The book you're thinking of may be Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar. It certainly copied the style of John Dos Passos' USA Trilogy. A flawed but interesting novel. On the other hand, as far as Stranger In A Strange Land goes, I could never get on board the bandwagon for that one. At a certain point, about 1959 or so, Heinlein became a windy, stiff-necked, get-off-my-lawn old man. I find most of his later stuff patchy to insufferable.