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3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
Historical fiction at its finest. DeLillo's Oswald is perfect.
Fictionalised account of the life of Lee Harvey Oswald.
In a combative writing style, DeLillo blends fact with fiction to present a cast of pugnacious men sounding off about politics, supported by a smattering of downtrodden women.
DeLillo's skill as a writer is not in question.
In a combative writing style, DeLillo blends fact with fiction to present a cast of pugnacious men sounding off about politics, supported by a smattering of downtrodden women.
DeLillo's skill as a writer is not in question.
fantastic novel with Delillo's characteristic blend of shallow characters and storytelling conveyed with seamless technique. He leaves the reader with a smooth, amoral mental universe of solipsistic desire, comfortably enacted by the book's CIA characters.
Analogically, DeLillo is perfectly cast as narrator of the JFK assassination plot: his strengths match the story's highs, and his weakness track the lows.
Analogically, DeLillo is perfectly cast as narrator of the JFK assassination plot: his strengths match the story's highs, and his weakness track the lows.
This is a very controlled book about a very ramshackle conspiracy. Amazing how many threads DeLillo weaves throughout, leading to a startling crescendo of violence and emotion.
See the truth and know it, if you can.
It's easy to see why David Foster Wallace - or, indeed, anybody - likes Don DeLillo: his dense, lingually contorted novels leave a stronghold on one's mind beyond the fact. In my case, I seldom remember the plots, but I can remember certain scenes or feelings invoked, mainly as few authors have managed both in the same way before.
It's less about the contents and more about a general sentiment.
Workmen carried lanterns along adjacent tracks. He kept a watch for sewer rats. A tenth of a second was all it took to see a thing complete. Then the express stations, the creaky brakes, people bunched like refugees. They came wagging through the doors, banged against the rubber edges, inched their way in, were quickly pinned, looking out past the nearest heads into that practiced oblivion.
As the book states, this is about the Kennedy assassination. Oswald was a Libra. Does he buy into the whole Oswald-did-it-thing? Does anybody care?
There is political intrigue here. Language snakes around as a man hits the person he's romantically entangled with, which turned me into near-vomit; one of the fores of DeLillo's strengths are how he can describe dramatic detail with few words and yet, together with the use of idiomatic expressions in dialogue, refrain from sounding tart or obtuse.
She saw him from a distance even when he was hitting her. He was never fully there.
Yes yes yes yes. God is alive and well in Texas.
Paragraphs turn into short stories at times:
“I’ll tell you a good sign,” Lee said. “I order the handgun in January, I order the rifle in March. Both guns arrive the same day. My wife would say it’s fate.” “What did you tell her about tonight?” “She thinks I’m at typing class. I dropped out of typing class two weeks ago. I got fired from my job last Saturday was my last day.”
“I have the primitive fear,” Ferrie said. “All my fears are primitive. It’s the limbic system of the brain. I’ve got a million years of terror stored up in there.” He wore a crushed sun hat, the expressive brows like clown paint over his eyes. He handed Wayne the rifle. They watched him walk to the lopsided dock and climb into the skiff.
All in all, I really got into this book around the 350-page mark. Was it worth it? Yes.
This is one of my all time favorite novels that I've read for the second time around.
If you read the plot summary, it sounds like the high-minded literary version of Oliver Stone's JFK, but they treat their shared subject matters quite differently. Stone's film is like a methed up kabuki play. It's so histrionic, and the cast is playing at caricature more than character. I love the movie, and I think that was his intention in creating it, but the tone of this book is very different.
It's quiet, and subtle, and deeply sorrowful. Oswald's characterization is incredibly heartrending--what a feat, to make a figure like Oswald the subject of empathy!
The prose is dense and rich and intoxicating. The author has managed to tease out so many themes of modern American life from the Big Bang of this historical moment. I walk away from this book feeling as if all of these elements of postmodernism--the unknowability of truth, our anxieties about teetering on the edge of annihilation, and our deeply rooted, resigned cynicism--came bursting out of that moment in time. It just sets my head on fire.
Finally, I noticed some interesting parallels between David Ferrie and Blood Meridian's Judge Holden. Aside from the alopecia, both characters seem to occupy this strange space almost outside of their respective narratives, as if they're some kind of pagan god, whispering temptations into the ears of their victims. Ominous stuff!
If you read the plot summary, it sounds like the high-minded literary version of Oliver Stone's JFK, but they treat their shared subject matters quite differently. Stone's film is like a methed up kabuki play. It's so histrionic, and the cast is playing at caricature more than character. I love the movie, and I think that was his intention in creating it, but the tone of this book is very different.
It's quiet, and subtle, and deeply sorrowful. Oswald's characterization is incredibly heartrending--what a feat, to make a figure like Oswald the subject of empathy!
The prose is dense and rich and intoxicating. The author has managed to tease out so many themes of modern American life from the Big Bang of this historical moment. I walk away from this book feeling as if all of these elements of postmodernism--the unknowability of truth, our anxieties about teetering on the edge of annihilation, and our deeply rooted, resigned cynicism--came bursting out of that moment in time. It just sets my head on fire.
Finally, I noticed some interesting parallels between David Ferrie and Blood Meridian's Judge Holden. Aside from the alopecia, both characters seem to occupy this strange space almost outside of their respective narratives, as if they're some kind of pagan god, whispering temptations into the ears of their victims. Ominous stuff!
I loved this.
Of course when I read it I was going through my serious JFK phase. I don't always like fictionalised accounts of things I've read a lot of non-fiction about, but I really, really loved this.
I think that's partly because LHO is, or appears, so enigmatic. What makes a man? What forms him? What choices are made that ripple outwards? He was so young, at twenty-four only a couple of years older when he died than I was when I read this, and yet he'd done so many odd and unusual things. And no one can explain him. So much of the evidence is contradictory. When I was younger I found the inexplicable strangeness, the unknowable-ness, of the events of 1963, incredibly frustrating. There must be an answer, but I will never know what it is. I used to hate that. Surely one day there'd be an answer. I thought that when I first read about it, round the twentieth anniversary, when I was eleven. At the fiftieth anniversary, not so much. This lack of closure is less concerning to me now.
Other good fictional or partly-fictional JFK related books: Oswald's Tale, by Norman Mailer, about LHO's time in Russia, and American Tabloid, by James Ellroy, dealing with the CIA, the Mob, the Bay of Pigs and the election and assassination of JFK.
Libra is a fantastically well written and fascinating novel, and still, shockingly, the only DeLillo I've read.
Of course when I read it I was going through my serious JFK phase. I don't always like fictionalised accounts of things I've read a lot of non-fiction about, but I really, really loved this.
I think that's partly because LHO is, or appears, so enigmatic. What makes a man? What forms him? What choices are made that ripple outwards? He was so young, at twenty-four only a couple of years older when he died than I was when I read this, and yet he'd done so many odd and unusual things. And no one can explain him. So much of the evidence is contradictory. When I was younger I found the inexplicable strangeness, the unknowable-ness, of the events of 1963, incredibly frustrating. There must be an answer, but I will never know what it is. I used to hate that. Surely one day there'd be an answer. I thought that when I first read about it, round the twentieth anniversary, when I was eleven. At the fiftieth anniversary, not so much. This lack of closure is less concerning to me now.
Other good fictional or partly-fictional JFK related books: Oswald's Tale, by Norman Mailer, about LHO's time in Russia, and American Tabloid, by James Ellroy, dealing with the CIA, the Mob, the Bay of Pigs and the election and assassination of JFK.
Libra is a fantastically well written and fascinating novel, and still, shockingly, the only DeLillo I've read.