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3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
dark
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A book of two halves, it seems inconsistently written. It seemed to me that in the first half, DeLillo intended to write a book about a more complicated CIA plot, but by the second half he became infatuated with writing in the voice of Lee Harvey Oswald, and unceremoniously drops several of the characters, never to pick them back up.
Still a fascinating book, and a page-turner. The language and voices are excellent. If I could, I'd rate it 3.5.
Still a fascinating book, and a page-turner. The language and voices are excellent. If I could, I'd rate it 3.5.
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Note to self/shelf — read this Sept 9 NYT article after finishing the book. And this Sept 9 Vanity Fair article.
In Libra, Don DeLillo demonstrates his remarkable ability to create engaging dialogue and vivid settings. However, the novel reads more like a compendium of vignettes rather than a cohesive story and the momentum was difficult for me to pick up when I sat down to relax and read long sections of the book.
It's the literary equivalent of engaging in amazing sex, but needing to stop every three minutes to go wash some dishes or file paperwork. Even though I knew what the ending was going to be, it felt like labor to get there.
It's the literary equivalent of engaging in amazing sex, but needing to stop every three minutes to go wash some dishes or file paperwork. Even though I knew what the ending was going to be, it felt like labor to get there.
Rate this novel as four stars with a moral caveat. Nonfiction novels are always problematic to my taste. Yes Don DeLillo kept my attention by telling a very interesting story about Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of John Kennedy, however the novel’s mix of fiction and reality impacts our collective view of the event with a fictional narrative instead of the truth. Also find making money off of a national tragedy distasteful whether it’s Oliver Stone direction of JFK or Don DeLillo authoring Libra.
I like the idea of _Libra_ as well as the insights Delillo has to offer more than I liked the experience of reading the book itself. It's not that it wasn't a good read - his prose in this one has a nice snappy quality. But to me the problem was what Delillo himself says about the JFK assassination through this book: it was and is one of the most over-determined events of the past century. Perhaps Delillo was fighting a losing battle as soon as he decided to write an "imagined" account of Lee Harvey Oswald's life leading up to the assassination - even in 1988, I would think Delillo had been up against too much history, too many other fictional portrayals, too much everything. So _Libra_ comes off as a bit of a lame duck. And maybe there's a kind of beauty in that: Delillo gives us his take on a large, dense and unwieldy cultural/historical text which - big surprise - remains fundamentally unreadable and unknowable.
“Who did the president, who killed Kennedy, fuck man! It's a mystery! It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma! The fuckin' shooters don't even know!”
A near-perfect example of historical fiction. Perhaps the biggest flaw is that DeLillo is too convincing. Confident in areas of concoction and well-researched everywhere else, Libra is awfully easy to read as a history of the JFK assassination. Looking towards other great works of historical fiction (Mason & Dixon, The Sot-Weed Factor), the lines between fantasy and reality aren’t as blurry, it is typically pretty clear when the author is being imaginative. The research for this novel is so thorough, some characters don’t even have wikipedia pages but can be found listed on government webpages, making it pretty difficult to determine who is entirely fictional and who is not.
This aside, Libra is so unbelievably good. A slow burner, I picked it up back in September and put it down at page 40. I finished it on my second attempt, but it took 200 pages over 2 weeks to get invested. Not entirely sure what preventing me from being completely enraptured from the start, the prose is incredible. DeLillo has a unique way of turning several concise, simple sentences with no flashy vocabulary into a paragraph teeming with significance. The shifting-of-perspectives are great, too, Libra is near blissful to read.
I think that the main reason that this book feels so authentic and real is because DeLillo never lets you leave your position as reader, you are firmly placed in an omnipotent position and there isn’t even a chance to place yourself in the shoes of characters. Scenes change quickly with no notice, emotions are described matter-of-factly, you are not seeing the situation as the character sees the situation. This makes for a really interesting read, given the themes of paranoia and control. Back to Pynchon, the biggest dealer in literary paranoia–he puts you right into the conspiracy, you begin to question your own role in the narrative, you get your own dose of delusion. Libra is different, the paranoia is not smothering or oppressive, it is something you look down at from above, not something you must look through to see anything. Despite this sensation of being apart from the plot, DeLillo occasionally gives really candid glimpses into the effects of paranoia on the main players of the JFK assassination conspiracy. "It means the end of loyalty. The more complex the systems, the less conviction in people. Conviction will be drained out of us. Devices will drain us, make us vague and pliant.”
Really, Libra is remarkable for keeping the incredible intrigue of America’s greatest conspiracy relevant going into the next century. Personally, I was never interested in the JFK assassination, I never cared about this particular history, the way that I have heard it spoken about in my life did not pique my interest in any way. However, even after finishing Libra, I find myself jumping from wikipedia page to wikipedia page on people involved in the assassination. I cannot recommend this book enough.
“If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working of a scheme. Silent nameless men with unadorned hearts. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It's the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act.
But Maybe not.”
A near-perfect example of historical fiction. Perhaps the biggest flaw is that DeLillo is too convincing. Confident in areas of concoction and well-researched everywhere else, Libra is awfully easy to read as a history of the JFK assassination. Looking towards other great works of historical fiction (Mason & Dixon, The Sot-Weed Factor), the lines between fantasy and reality aren’t as blurry, it is typically pretty clear when the author is being imaginative. The research for this novel is so thorough, some characters don’t even have wikipedia pages but can be found listed on government webpages, making it pretty difficult to determine who is entirely fictional and who is not.
This aside, Libra is so unbelievably good. A slow burner, I picked it up back in September and put it down at page 40. I finished it on my second attempt, but it took 200 pages over 2 weeks to get invested. Not entirely sure what preventing me from being completely enraptured from the start, the prose is incredible. DeLillo has a unique way of turning several concise, simple sentences with no flashy vocabulary into a paragraph teeming with significance. The shifting-of-perspectives are great, too, Libra is near blissful to read.
I think that the main reason that this book feels so authentic and real is because DeLillo never lets you leave your position as reader, you are firmly placed in an omnipotent position and there isn’t even a chance to place yourself in the shoes of characters. Scenes change quickly with no notice, emotions are described matter-of-factly, you are not seeing the situation as the character sees the situation. This makes for a really interesting read, given the themes of paranoia and control. Back to Pynchon, the biggest dealer in literary paranoia–he puts you right into the conspiracy, you begin to question your own role in the narrative, you get your own dose of delusion. Libra is different, the paranoia is not smothering or oppressive, it is something you look down at from above, not something you must look through to see anything. Despite this sensation of being apart from the plot, DeLillo occasionally gives really candid glimpses into the effects of paranoia on the main players of the JFK assassination conspiracy. "It means the end of loyalty. The more complex the systems, the less conviction in people. Conviction will be drained out of us. Devices will drain us, make us vague and pliant.”
Really, Libra is remarkable for keeping the incredible intrigue of America’s greatest conspiracy relevant going into the next century. Personally, I was never interested in the JFK assassination, I never cared about this particular history, the way that I have heard it spoken about in my life did not pique my interest in any way. However, even after finishing Libra, I find myself jumping from wikipedia page to wikipedia page on people involved in the assassination. I cannot recommend this book enough.
“If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working of a scheme. Silent nameless men with unadorned hearts. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It's the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act.
But Maybe not.”