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3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
Just couldn't do it. Wasn't interested in subject matter, and couldn't follow all the different characters. Should I try another Don DeLillo? This was my first.
Fictional account of Lee Harvey Oswald's life leading up to Kennedy assassination.
Pensavo di leggere questo libro e trovarlo meraviglioso come Pastorale Americana ma invece non mi è proprio piaciuto. Ho faticato a finirlo e ho fatto molto (lunghe) interruzioni nel corso della letteratura.
L'ho trovato confusionario e poco comprensibilmente (anche se in tutta onestà una parte della colpa è da imputare più alla mia scarsa conoscenza del periodo storico che alla narrazione) e lo stile di scrittura non mi è piaciuto. Riconosco che DeLillo sa sicuramente scrivere ma il modo in cui lo fa non rispecchia per niente il mio gusto personale, anche qui era tutto molto confuso.
Ho trovato che spesso si passasse di palo in frasca senza spiegazioni del rapporto logico tra gli eventi e per questo c'è poca chiarezza narrativa.
Ho però apprezzato moltissimo il personaggio di Nicholas Branch, mi ha affascinata molto.
L'ho trovato confusionario e poco comprensibilmente (anche se in tutta onestà una parte della colpa è da imputare più alla mia scarsa conoscenza del periodo storico che alla narrazione) e lo stile di scrittura non mi è piaciuto. Riconosco che DeLillo sa sicuramente scrivere ma il modo in cui lo fa non rispecchia per niente il mio gusto personale, anche qui era tutto molto confuso.
Ho trovato che spesso si passasse di palo in frasca senza spiegazioni del rapporto logico tra gli eventi e per questo c'è poca chiarezza narrativa.
Ho però apprezzato moltissimo il personaggio di Nicholas Branch, mi ha affascinata molto.
Great writing--feels like non-fiction, and works well when read soon after or before reading Stephen King's 11/22/63.
Some books call out to you from the shelf. Why should I read a book about the JFK assassination--let alone a work of fiction? Because this masterpiece of a novel, with all of Delillo's exquisite decorative touches, probably comes closer to what actually happened than The Warren Report or any of the hundreds of nonfiction books written on the subject.
Writers: This is how it's done.
Readers: You will never be same after reading this book.
Writers: This is how it's done.
Readers: You will never be same after reading this book.
Somewhere along the line I got this notion in my head that DeLillo wasn't for me. I have no idea how that got lodged in my head, but it could not be more wrong. This is only my second of his works (after being quite delighted with White Noise), but between his subject matter (the American zeitgeist) and his writing style (dark, funny, smart, biting, while somehow being lyrical), I think I might be hooked. Some of his passages are simply enjoyable on their own:
In Libra he tells the tale of how Lee Harvey Oswald came to shoot JFK in 1963. It's told in the type of "jump cut" style more common to film. Within chapters, DeLillo shifts to different characters/locations or moves forward/backward in time, adding to what is an overwhelming, disorienting feeling of being caught up in forces that even those supposedly pulling the international strings don't fully comprehend nor control. His is not so much a theory of what actually happened as a tale with closure served up as a kind of dressing to cover this historical wound.
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WORDS I LEARNED WHILE READING THIS BOOK
prelapsarian | panatela | shvartzer
The faintly musty smell, the coolness of the small room, the familiar labels on jars and cans made him feel like an ancient and tired child, someone allowed to relive the simplest, the deepest times, moments that left a scar on the heart---not an evidence of some detailed pain but only of time itself, systemic, heavy with loss.
In Libra he tells the tale of how Lee Harvey Oswald came to shoot JFK in 1963. It's told in the type of "jump cut" style more common to film. Within chapters, DeLillo shifts to different characters/locations or moves forward/backward in time, adding to what is an overwhelming, disorienting feeling of being caught up in forces that even those supposedly pulling the international strings don't fully comprehend nor control. His is not so much a theory of what actually happened as a tale with closure served up as a kind of dressing to cover this historical wound.
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WORDS I LEARNED WHILE READING THIS BOOK
prelapsarian | panatela | shvartzer
This novel has several interesting themes regarding elevating subject matter and the validity of nationbuilding. It focuses around real details of Lee Harvey Oswald and parallels his journey with some fictional conspirators. I like that DeLillo makes both of them seem equally insane, but that didn't stop the FBI sections from being mostly boring. Add onto that a layer of an investigator piecing together the evidence, and DeLillo's questioning of trying to bring more connections to the subject matter that there may be... while heightening the connections and making them more cerebral himself. I think he's questioning. Overall, I think I was supposed to be way more interested than I am and know more about the JFK assassination than I do.
P.S.: The Narrator on this was incredibly monotone and really didn't do the novel any favors.
P.S.: The Narrator on this was incredibly monotone and really didn't do the novel any favors.
“The kids made a racket in the next room. Ruth Paine told her two neighbors that Marina’s husband was having no luck finding work. He was living in a rooming house in Oak Cliff until he could find a job and an apartment for his family. Marina was due any day, of course.” – Libra, Pg. 320
DeLillo has a tendency of inserting non-sequiturs into his writing: little one-off sentences disconnected from everything surrounding them. They are there to add either to the scenery or to a character’s mindset. At first, I found this writing style truncated, slippery; but as the book goes on this style becomes more frequent and purposeful. These one-off sentences highlight the scatter-brained nature of Oswald and the conspiratorial CIA unit he becomes enveloped in. It is an impressive literary technique because it sneaks up on you. It also happens to be exhausting to read. Like its main character, Libra is a contradiction.
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I’m not sure what I expected reading Libra. Here was an author I had only heard of tangentially; I had never read White Noice, Mao II, or any of his other works. Even the underlying story of the book was not a subject I was knowledgeable on. I simply knew the bare basics: JFK went to Dallas and did not come back. I only picked up Libra because I was at a book fair and I recognized the name on the cover. Don DeLillo. A stutterer’s worst nightmare. Libra was, at times, just as difficult to read as his name is to pronounce. One-off sentences litter and interfere, making for a read that started off truncated and frustrating, but generally became easier to cope with as the story develops. We know from the start that this book will end with that fatal, fateful day in Dallas, and as we get closer to the event, DeLillo’s skill as a storyteller and expert plotter begin to shine.
But there are many hurdles before the stellar latter half. Libra alternates between chapters about Oswald’s life and chapters about a conspiratorial fringe-CIA unit. Although the CIA portions are well-done from a structural standpoint, Libra loses most of its power when Oswald disappears. DeLillo’s CIA characters leave a lot to be desired. Win Everett, TJ Mackey, and more fail to leave an impression, and these chapters are ridden with redundancy. It does not take long to grasp these characters’ motives, but that does not stop DeLillo from incorporating scene-after-scene of men from the CIA sitting in their homes, trying to survive their wives and their domestication while they dream of past battles and future missions. These chapters are necessary for the structure to work, but they mostly fail to register, until the latter half when DeLillo excitingly intersects the two plots.
The chapters surrounding Oswald are far more compelling: an odd mix of distant and intimate. We feel simultaneously like we are in Oswald’s head while at the same time viewing him as a stranger. What are Oswald’s desires? What is he shooting for (in both the aspirational and literal sense)? Is he a visionary or an idiot? Does he deserve our sympathy or our pity? DeLillo keeps his subject at the perfect distance, a subject we can ponder but never fully understand.
In the paragraph immediately following Oswald striking his wife, we get a line about how much Oswald loves her. Oswald is a walking contradiction, everything and nothing: a “zero in the system,” while also being one of the most important Americans in history. He spends the whole book flailing around for a purpose, ignorant of the purpose others have already forced on him. He is just as much a victim of “the system” as he is a victim of his own flaws that he is powerless to overcome. A foreboding, fatalistic surge rears its head through the novel.
The chart of events in a person’s life read as inevitable and horrifying. DeLillo subtly implies that what happened that day in Dallas may have been preordained, a notion that bewilders and horrifies me. Are coincidences simply that, or are they subtle cues that events of one’s life have already been written down? Maybe it is a coincidence that Oswald ordered two firearms at different times, and they arrived the same day. Maybe it is coincidence that Oswald passed away at 24, the age I happen to be. Or maybe it’s fate.
DeLillo has a tendency of inserting non-sequiturs into his writing: little one-off sentences disconnected from everything surrounding them. They are there to add either to the scenery or to a character’s mindset. At first, I found this writing style truncated, slippery; but as the book goes on this style becomes more frequent and purposeful. These one-off sentences highlight the scatter-brained nature of Oswald and the conspiratorial CIA unit he becomes enveloped in. It is an impressive literary technique because it sneaks up on you. It also happens to be exhausting to read. Like its main character, Libra is a contradiction.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I’m not sure what I expected reading Libra. Here was an author I had only heard of tangentially; I had never read White Noice, Mao II, or any of his other works. Even the underlying story of the book was not a subject I was knowledgeable on. I simply knew the bare basics: JFK went to Dallas and did not come back. I only picked up Libra because I was at a book fair and I recognized the name on the cover. Don DeLillo. A stutterer’s worst nightmare. Libra was, at times, just as difficult to read as his name is to pronounce. One-off sentences litter and interfere, making for a read that started off truncated and frustrating, but generally became easier to cope with as the story develops. We know from the start that this book will end with that fatal, fateful day in Dallas, and as we get closer to the event, DeLillo’s skill as a storyteller and expert plotter begin to shine.
But there are many hurdles before the stellar latter half. Libra alternates between chapters about Oswald’s life and chapters about a conspiratorial fringe-CIA unit. Although the CIA portions are well-done from a structural standpoint, Libra loses most of its power when Oswald disappears. DeLillo’s CIA characters leave a lot to be desired. Win Everett, TJ Mackey, and more fail to leave an impression, and these chapters are ridden with redundancy. It does not take long to grasp these characters’ motives, but that does not stop DeLillo from incorporating scene-after-scene of men from the CIA sitting in their homes, trying to survive their wives and their domestication while they dream of past battles and future missions. These chapters are necessary for the structure to work, but they mostly fail to register, until the latter half when DeLillo excitingly intersects the two plots.
The chapters surrounding Oswald are far more compelling: an odd mix of distant and intimate. We feel simultaneously like we are in Oswald’s head while at the same time viewing him as a stranger. What are Oswald’s desires? What is he shooting for (in both the aspirational and literal sense)? Is he a visionary or an idiot? Does he deserve our sympathy or our pity? DeLillo keeps his subject at the perfect distance, a subject we can ponder but never fully understand.
In the paragraph immediately following Oswald striking his wife, we get a line about how much Oswald loves her. Oswald is a walking contradiction, everything and nothing: a “zero in the system,” while also being one of the most important Americans in history. He spends the whole book flailing around for a purpose, ignorant of the purpose others have already forced on him. He is just as much a victim of “the system” as he is a victim of his own flaws that he is powerless to overcome. A foreboding, fatalistic surge rears its head through the novel.
The chart of events in a person’s life read as inevitable and horrifying. DeLillo subtly implies that what happened that day in Dallas may have been preordained, a notion that bewilders and horrifies me. Are coincidences simply that, or are they subtle cues that events of one’s life have already been written down? Maybe it is a coincidence that Oswald ordered two firearms at different times, and they arrived the same day. Maybe it is coincidence that Oswald passed away at 24, the age I happen to be. Or maybe it’s fate.
medium-paced