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He's not a realist, you're right, but most of his most celebrated passages (say the opening chapter in Underworld or the description of the mass wedding in Mao II) definitely qualify as a very heightened form of naturalism, which his dialogue invariably seems at odds with - which I'm sure he would say is key to his overall message (whatever that may be).
Incidentally, I really couldn't get into Libra. No particular reason, I just couldn't get interested in it. I never finished Underworld, either, but I think that's kind of standard, even with a lot of DeLillo fanatics. I think the idea with Underworld is just to read the first chapter, declare him a genius and then quickly move on to something else before the rest of the book starts to inspire any doubts. (See also the first chapter of Ian McEwan's Atonement.)
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