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3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
A friend of mine once sat me down and made me watch the documentary Loose Change. For those that don't know Loose Change is a detailed documentary positing the idea that 9/11 was a false flag operation. Its modus operandi is to follow the money. Without question, it's a disturbingly convincing film on many levels but at a certain point I began to think about the urgency with which my friend needed to believe he now possessed secret inside information. I could sense how he felt it empowered him. To believe you have the secret to a plot is to be transformed from a bystander to an insider. And the zeal with which he wanted to convert me to his way of thinking was religious in essence. He had that glazed intent look Jehovah's Witnesses have on your doorstep. However, there's no denying the big four American conspiracy theories, all of which debunk the comforting notion that America is a democracy, are compelling stories. DeLillo described the JFK assassination as a story about our uncertain grip on the world and you could say the same about 9/11 and the Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy assassinations. What they all had in common was they enabled hugely profitable wars to be continued or begun.
DeLillo in his novel doesn't follow the money nor does he pay much attention to Vietnam. Nevertheless, he creates a hugely plausible depiction of how JFK came to be killed. Libra is probably Delillo's only novel which has what might be described as an exciting plot. In fact, it's a novel that makes you think a lot about the role plot plays in life. A plot, you could say, is a kind of secret harmony of converging forces. We'd all like to think there's a plot to our lives. We're happiest when we feel we are in control of the plot. Unhappiest when it appears someone else is plotting against us. In DeLillo's book Oswald is constantly scrambling around on the fringes of conventionality in search of a plot for his life. What he most wants is to be seen, acknowledged - in other words, a slice of fame. He's a brilliant multifaceted character, riddled with warring contradictions. You like him for showing kindness to persecuted impoverished black men; you hate him for beating his wife. He's so slippery he eludes every attempt at pinning him down. He's like history itself in this sense.
Since this novel was published Oliver Stone's film JFK has offered a detailed alternative account of the assassination in which Oswald is wholly innocent. In Stone's overly tidy version of events everyone from vice president Johnson, the CIA, the FBI, the Mafia down to lowlife common criminals is in on the plot. The cover up, the doctoring of evidence which probably always takes place after any event that rocks a nation will always arouse the suspicion that the people doing the covering up also committed the crime. I'm not saying I don't believe Stone's version. How on earth can any of us really know? I do know official accounts of historical events are generally self-serving and bogus. But DeLillo's more muddy version of events is, in my eyes, more credible. It begins with an idea by two disgruntled ex CIA operatives who are angry Kennedy is seeking a rapprochement with Castro. Their idea though is to have someone fire a shot at JFK and miss and then blame it on Castro. The idea travels and in its travels changes.
For everyone who's never read DeLillo, the most important living novelist in my opinion, this is the ideal book to begin with.
DeLillo in his novel doesn't follow the money nor does he pay much attention to Vietnam. Nevertheless, he creates a hugely plausible depiction of how JFK came to be killed. Libra is probably Delillo's only novel which has what might be described as an exciting plot. In fact, it's a novel that makes you think a lot about the role plot plays in life. A plot, you could say, is a kind of secret harmony of converging forces. We'd all like to think there's a plot to our lives. We're happiest when we feel we are in control of the plot. Unhappiest when it appears someone else is plotting against us. In DeLillo's book Oswald is constantly scrambling around on the fringes of conventionality in search of a plot for his life. What he most wants is to be seen, acknowledged - in other words, a slice of fame. He's a brilliant multifaceted character, riddled with warring contradictions. You like him for showing kindness to persecuted impoverished black men; you hate him for beating his wife. He's so slippery he eludes every attempt at pinning him down. He's like history itself in this sense.
Since this novel was published Oliver Stone's film JFK has offered a detailed alternative account of the assassination in which Oswald is wholly innocent. In Stone's overly tidy version of events everyone from vice president Johnson, the CIA, the FBI, the Mafia down to lowlife common criminals is in on the plot. The cover up, the doctoring of evidence which probably always takes place after any event that rocks a nation will always arouse the suspicion that the people doing the covering up also committed the crime. I'm not saying I don't believe Stone's version. How on earth can any of us really know? I do know official accounts of historical events are generally self-serving and bogus. But DeLillo's more muddy version of events is, in my eyes, more credible. It begins with an idea by two disgruntled ex CIA operatives who are angry Kennedy is seeking a rapprochement with Castro. Their idea though is to have someone fire a shot at JFK and miss and then blame it on Castro. The idea travels and in its travels changes.
For everyone who's never read DeLillo, the most important living novelist in my opinion, this is the ideal book to begin with.
Don DeLillo has done the impossible: written a dull book about the Kennedy assassination. But I guess that’s not too much of a stretch, since he also wrote a dull book about 9/11. For some inexplicable reason, DeLillo inserts the stream-of-consciousness p.o.v of Oswald’s mother discussing her son to an investigator after-the-fact. Normally, this is the kind of technique that I would eat up, but here it seems rather pointless, since he only does it for about one page a handful of times. It’s not nearly enough material to get insight into either the mother or Oswald’s psychopathology. And why only his mother? If these had been more extended digressions, or if she had been relating her thoughts in conjunction with the events as they transpired, then one could argue it was symbolic of Oswald’s super-ego intruding into the narrative, and might give us greater insight into his own thinking. If we take it as an illustration of an earlier declaration of theme -- that secrets are a dream-state, and that conspiracy is a type of construction of mythic narrative (the conspirator-as-writer or vice versa) -- then we fail to gain any insight into either conspiracy or secrets, as the mother’s p.o.v. provides no real secrets at all because the intrusion of her thoughts are too brief and too few. One might argue that DeLillo does this ironically to reveal how stream-of-consciousness p.o.v doesn’t work; but this would only suggest that he really just doesn’t know how to use it. (I don’t think that’s the case, by the way.) In the end, I found it to be merely a gimmick without a payoff.
I could say the same for the entire novel. The only interesting characters are the ones drawn from real life -- and he manages to give a portrait that is less compelling than non-fiction depictions I’ve read. The “real” story (in scare quotes because we can only piece together events that must necessarily include conjecture) is far more interesting than DeLillo’s fictional speculation -- even the “dull,” non-conspiratorial version that Oswald was simply a lone wolf. The frame narrative about the FBI agent constructing this information after-the-fact (like Oswald’s mother, like DeLillo -- yes, I get it) doesn’t add to our understanding of either the theme mentioned above or Oswald’s perspective. And if DeLillo’s point is that the agent -- like the author -- can necessarily NEVER do this, that we experience “reality” as Marina sees Oswald through the tv screen at the department store or as Oswald “sees” himself shot by Ruby, then all the more reason I can’t stand this type of postmodernist claptrap. Literature -- fiction in particular -- should give us a valuable perspective into our lives and shared experiences. It should be a gateway to a new understanding, not a bludgeon to dull the edges.
Even more frustrating than reading this novel has been my experience reading the academic response: DeLillo is definitely postmodern...he’s critiquing the postmodern; he’s writing in the realist mode...he’s writing an anti-realist novel; he’s constructing myth...he’s avoiding the trappings of myth. And the contradictions go on and on -- not the kind of contradictions that lead to a genuine stasis or understanding of a writer/text/experience/perspective, but the kind that seem to be arguments that exist merely for the sake of argument. If that’s the case, then the result becomes a purely academic experience (in all the meanings of the word “academic”) as empty, dull, and fruitless as the FBI agent constructing events in the novel. I get the feeling that DeLillo writes novels that elicit precisely the type of response he is trying to critique.
Beyond [b:White Noise|11762|White Noise|Don DeLillo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1521562981l/11762._SY75_.jpg|327422], I really can’t find anything to like in DeLillo’s fiction, and the discussions around his work are even more annoying. Although I did like one aspect of the novel: the pun on the dust jacket front flap (I'm assuming it was intentional?) from the marketing department: "A major new novel of tremendous scope..." (SCOPE. I see what you did there!)
I could say the same for the entire novel. The only interesting characters are the ones drawn from real life -- and he manages to give a portrait that is less compelling than non-fiction depictions I’ve read. The “real” story (in scare quotes because we can only piece together events that must necessarily include conjecture) is far more interesting than DeLillo’s fictional speculation -- even the “dull,” non-conspiratorial version that Oswald was simply a lone wolf. The frame narrative about the FBI agent constructing this information after-the-fact (like Oswald’s mother, like DeLillo -- yes, I get it) doesn’t add to our understanding of either the theme mentioned above or Oswald’s perspective. And if DeLillo’s point is that the agent -- like the author -- can necessarily NEVER do this, that we experience “reality” as Marina sees Oswald through the tv screen at the department store or as Oswald “sees” himself shot by Ruby, then all the more reason I can’t stand this type of postmodernist claptrap. Literature -- fiction in particular -- should give us a valuable perspective into our lives and shared experiences. It should be a gateway to a new understanding, not a bludgeon to dull the edges.
Even more frustrating than reading this novel has been my experience reading the academic response: DeLillo is definitely postmodern...he’s critiquing the postmodern; he’s writing in the realist mode...he’s writing an anti-realist novel; he’s constructing myth...he’s avoiding the trappings of myth. And the contradictions go on and on -- not the kind of contradictions that lead to a genuine stasis or understanding of a writer/text/experience/perspective, but the kind that seem to be arguments that exist merely for the sake of argument. If that’s the case, then the result becomes a purely academic experience (in all the meanings of the word “academic”) as empty, dull, and fruitless as the FBI agent constructing events in the novel. I get the feeling that DeLillo writes novels that elicit precisely the type of response he is trying to critique.
Beyond [b:White Noise|11762|White Noise|Don DeLillo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1521562981l/11762._SY75_.jpg|327422], I really can’t find anything to like in DeLillo’s fiction, and the discussions around his work are even more annoying. Although I did like one aspect of the novel: the pun on the dust jacket front flap (I'm assuming it was intentional?) from the marketing department: "A major new novel of tremendous scope..." (SCOPE. I see what you did there!)
Libra is the fictional story of Lee Harvey Oswald's life, from beginning to end. It's also the story of the researcher who is trying to find the truth to write a report for the CIA,sorting through the overwhelming amount of data being sent to him. The book also follows a number of peripheral characters, including Jack Ruby and other names I should probably recognize if I could retain any amount of American history. Truth be told, I had a very difficult time keeping track of who was who and definitely gave up trying after awhile. I think this book would mean more to my parents' generation who lived through this event, or a history buff who loves the "what if" of conspiracy theory. I did not enjoy DeLillo's way of changing the voice (first person to third person to first person) with no distinction. Confusing.
Food: tuna noodle casserole. I never loved tuna noodle casserole. Sure the crunchies on top were yummy, but I had to pick around the mushrooms from the cream of mushroom soup and everything just seemed to squish together without any real texture and I didn't like mushing though my dinner. It feels like it comes from a different era, belonging to the time of aspic and ambrosia salad. Perhaps that's where it should have stayed.
Food: tuna noodle casserole. I never loved tuna noodle casserole. Sure the crunchies on top were yummy, but I had to pick around the mushrooms from the cream of mushroom soup and everything just seemed to squish together without any real texture and I didn't like mushing though my dinner. It feels like it comes from a different era, belonging to the time of aspic and ambrosia salad. Perhaps that's where it should have stayed.
I've always felt that DeLillo was slightly incomprehensible in his writing. I had read White Noise and End Game previously and been both impressed and confounded by a lot of the narrative. Libra is definitely a much more accessible book than those two and, whilst perhaps not as piercing as White Noise, is certinly entertaining and thought-provoking.
I had to keep thinking of James Ellroy's American Tabloid as a companion piece to this book - both concern the JFK assassination, both act to humanise the players involved and both make some serious historical assertions as to what actually happened on November 22, 1963. Where Ellroy's book was near defamatory, sharp and immense fun to read, DeLillo's focuses on making Oswald a person moreso than a figure and succeeds admirably at that. The recurring monologues of Oswald's mother that popped up throughout the narrative were also a great interpretation of existing historical information.
Where the book perhaps didn't succeed are in regards to the ignorance of the other half of the assassination attempt nearing the end. By setting up these interesting intelligence figures in the first half of the book and then robbing us of their perspectives and insights closer to the narrative end was disappointing, as was the final sign off of Nicholas Branch, the official CIA chronicler of JFK's death.
I had to keep thinking of James Ellroy's American Tabloid as a companion piece to this book - both concern the JFK assassination, both act to humanise the players involved and both make some serious historical assertions as to what actually happened on November 22, 1963. Where Ellroy's book was near defamatory, sharp and immense fun to read, DeLillo's focuses on making Oswald a person moreso than a figure and succeeds admirably at that. The recurring monologues of Oswald's mother that popped up throughout the narrative were also a great interpretation of existing historical information.
Where the book perhaps didn't succeed are in regards to the ignorance of the other half of the assassination attempt nearing the end. By setting up these interesting intelligence figures in the first half of the book and then robbing us of their perspectives and insights closer to the narrative end was disappointing, as was the final sign off of Nicholas Branch, the official CIA chronicler of JFK's death.
While well written in a post modernist style, I found this a complicated read, and I think that people who were more aware of the whole story of the assassination of JFK, and all the conspiracy theories surrounding it would find this a more fulfilling read.
DeLillo is a master of prose. Libra has shown me that I have a lot to learn when it comes to writing.
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
emotional
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes