Libra (Contemporary American Fiction)

I come to DeLillo's Libra via James Ellroy's American Tabloid. Ellroy has his own take on the Kennedy assassination, but he praises DeLillo's take very highly. When Ellroy praises, I listen. I see now why Ellroy loves the book. DeLillo's take is very persuasive and executed with high art. DeLillo's Oswald is an alienated loner, seeking to connect with something important. He's not sure what that is--a momentous event, a large historical process? He distrusts all governments--ours, the USSR's, the Mexicans'--and moves mercurially between ideologies. He serves in the military; he defects to Russia; he leaves Russia; he flees his mother though she is the only steady point in his life; he marries a Russian woman but beats her and drives her away. As those who would seek to exploit him realize, he is both vague and weak but sometimes strong and determined. He has been bullied and brutalized in the past but he has somehow survived; he could be the perfect tool. It is an old principle in literary study that the more you get to know a character the more you like that character, even if the character is radically flawed. DeLillo is working against that principle and he does so successfully. The more we get to know Oswald . . . the more we get to know him. We do not like him; we simply begin to understand him as a figure more pathetic than malevolent, more sad than savage, more lost and doomed than the other characters in the shadows who populate his world. The other dark forces--Castro-hating CIA agents, bitter Mafiosi, uber-weird right-wingers like David Ferrie--are beautifully realized and ultimately part of the strange stew in which Lee Harvey Oswald ultimately finds himself. In capturing the characters DeLillo is capturing the times. He does that very well. He also captures the places, particularly New Orleans and Dallas, though we get a feel for Miami as well. DeLillo's structure is largely chronological, but he switches between characters and points of view and offers an overall impression that coheres very nicely. Much of the character depiction is phenomenological, with a summation of experiences, impressions, insights, glimpses, momentary realizations. This is very Ellroyesque and we can see DeLillo's influence in many ways. Finally, this is a piece of historical fiction which is very plausible, very moving and very, very sad. The writing is generally exquisite. The characters and events (as Conrad would say) have been very carefully contemplated. In Heart of Darkness Conrad writes of the `brooding gloom' that hangs over London and its environs. If it's brooding gloom that you want, here, in Libra, is God's plenty. Highly recommended.

This book is DeLillo’s take on the Kennedy assassination. DeLillo is the exemplar of what I think of as peak 80s male fiction. It took Hemingway and Fitzgerald and distilled that through the chaos of the sixties and Thompson and Mailer etc. and created their own brand. It is good but is kind of cold and antiseptic – I’m old enough that it was the hallmark of “serious” literature when I was young but feels dated and stilted like some sort of baby MFA student is trying to be too serious about things. You get that here. The thing is that you know how this book is pretty much going to go if you have a sense of the details around the assignation and Oswald’s life. DeLillo does manage to make it interesting, as it becomes a psychological portrait not only of Oswalt but of his relationships with his mother and his wife. Weirdly, I feel a real kinship and sympathy for the person that DeLillo creates as Lee Harvey. He’s a bit of a patsy and he wants to make the world better but more than anything he is just a smart kid lost in his own world.

My criticism of Don Delillo would be tentative before Libra. His novels include randomness and tediousness, ordinariness magnified and also downplayed. I could read with a question mark hanging over almost every page, asking what is the point. I enjoy the scenes; I enjoy the subtle characterizations and seeing items disappear and usually reappear as bigger, more obvious pieces of a puzzle. With Libra, now Delillo has another strength that I suggest is beyond criticism. It now appears that the author knew the exact wording of the last page before he started page 1. He had an answer in every sequence. The novel is as imperfect in its telling as the story of Lee Harvey Oswald is historically. I believe that to be intentional, having the ability to see Delillo’s technique in other works by contrast. The dialogue now is mature and focused, never random and window-dressing. Oswald almost has to be interesting no matter his treatment, but these other anonymous figures made famous only by the JFK movie flash and come back according to a well-timed pace. Although I knew Oswald would get to the point of going to the Soviet Union and working in Dallas, I was satisfied by the relationship he had with his mother and with the streets of New York, then New Orleans. It does invoke empathy. Oswald never becomes likable because he never learns how to spell and complete his own prophecy of intellectual revolt and short story writer. Although he is consistently a peon, he maintains the ability to surprise and to approach cult status; he’s never at the point of “loved to hate”. His relationship with Marina, sometimes violent but then very intimate and quiet, is a perfect example. The “patsy” claim is another and more famous one. Jack Ruby was Jewish. His club was burlesque and the one in Dallas was not the only one. He did not belong at Oswald’s death, but in 1963 our security measures had a long way to go. Ruby killed himself in jail, he wished, by ramming his head into walls and by standing in water with his hand in a socket, but in reality he had to die more slowly by cancer in 1967. He was a perplexed Bob Ford-type figure. The biggest mystery is why Ruby killed Oswald. There was $40K involved, a loan that would be forgiven. He was also trying to be a Jewish hero, lamenting a few times how bad things would be had Kennedy’s killer been a Jew. Politically, he had no more allegiance than Oswald had clarity. The U-2 story is one to follow. I can remember the last name of the pilot, Powers, who had a strange death himself after the Soviets let him go. The real politics in this novel belongs to the radical right Oswald hated, a General Walker, whom Oswald failed to kill from just a few yards in his first attempt at being a sniper. “Raymo eased the gun barrel over the fence” on page 397. Oswald fired first, and then there was this magic bullet.

Muy bien, para el precio

Don DeLillo has filled in blanks, connected dots, added color to the black and white Zapruder film. This is the story of the myth that is the JFK assassination. But it isn't. It is a tale of men who couldn't move on from broken dreams, from delusions of grandeur, from failure.

Excellent story around Kennedy's assassination. Gripping and informative, it mixes fact, fiction and hypothesis and it is difficult to put down. It is my first DeLillo novel and won't be the last.

Libra è il segno zodiacale di Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald è un figlio dell' America, di quell' America in cui nasce e muore il 25/11/1963, così come è un figlio dell' America John Fitzgerald Kennedy,assassinato a Dallas il 23/11/1963, proprio da Oswald. Il cecchino solitario del Book Depositary, almeno secondo la “lone gunman theory” del voluminoso rapporto Warren. DeLillo narra di come, a volte il caso, a volte gli uomini, abbiamo favorito l' incrocio tra Lee, il capriccio della Storia, e JFK, il fascinoso presidente. Il testo scorre su due piani paralleli che confluiscono nel magistrale finale. La storia, la causalità, il tempo, il destino impongono la congiunzione. C'è Lee, la sua infanzia, gli stenti,il rapporto stretto con la madre, le vessazioni, la dislessia, la rabbia, la voglia di riscatto, le letture marxiste, i Marines.E' strano, solitario, non integrato.Ha un sorriso beffardo.Lascia i Marines, entra in Russia, dove vive,controllato dal KGB, e lavora in fabbrica per due anni, sposa una russa, Marina, deluso dall' URSS, ritorna negli Stati Uniti. C' è la ricostruzione fittizia del complotto ad opera di agenti della CIA costretti ai margini, di cubani anticastristi, di ex-FBI. Pieni di rancore, traditi, scottati dalla disfatta della Baia dei Porci. Tra queste due flussi narrativi naviga Nicolas Branch che, venticinque anni dopo, è incaricato di preparare un dossier segreto sull' assassinio di JFK. Chiuso in una stanza, tra migliaia di documenti, reperti, fotografie,perizie balistiche,testimonianze.Una mole impressionante di dati nella quale è impossibile districarsi. C' è tutto e il contrario di tutto. Libra.La Bilancia.Nel tentativo di rimanere in equilibrio tra le ombre, le contraddizioni, le coincidenze,la duplicità, DeLillo non tenta di fornire risposte certe, ma si assume pienamente l' enorme responsabilità di condurci in quei sette secondi che hanno cambiato l' America, lì nel vortice della Storia, perché “la Storia è la somma totale delle cose che non ci hanno raccontato”.

Très très bon livre qui se lit très bien avec une intrigue qui colle plutôt bien aux faits historiques. A lire!