Customer Reviews

Libra: A Novel

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In the very first chapter of this profoundly provocative novel, we take a ride in a speeding New York City subway with a truant Lee Harvey Oswald. As the young Oswald stares out the front window, little does he realize how much the rest of his life would be just like this: being carried away by a powerful machine and only catching flickering glances of the things and people along the way. Released very close to the 25th anniversary of JFK's assassination, LIBRA does not attempt to seriously propose a conspiracy theory. What he does do is take some of the facts, some of the tempting coincidences, and several of the possible scenarios, and create a labyrinth of intrigue and a world filled with shadows within shadows. This is a creepy book that haunts you, to use a tired cliche but I can't think of how else to put it. (Apparently the assassination is a favorite topic for DeLillo, as the Zapruder film and discussions about JFK conspiracies reappear in DeLillo's later book, UNDERWORLD.) Underneath it all is a dark struggle between what is planned and what occurs: strategy versus chance, conspiracy versus spontaneity, the best laid plans... etc. In LIBRA, the scales tip one way then the other and, yet, the result is the inevitable tragedy of November 22, 1963. This is what historical fiction should be.

DeLillo's Libra is a fascinating read, not only because its topic is one of America's most traumatizing events in recent history--not the assassination of president Kennedy is the point of interest in the book--but the question: What made this event so terrifying, why had it such an impact?

In answering this question DeLillo leaves out the obvious reasons: JFK's popularity and people's hopes connected with his politics. Instead, he puts the focus on a more profound problem: With the assassination of JFK the American people were woken up from their dream of security and regularity. A conclusive explanation of the how and why of the event could have put them back to sleep. Such an explanation is not available though. It is just not the way history works, and DeLillo skillfully shows exactly that in his book. He depicts a conspiracy that gets out of hand and Oswald as a manipulated and constructed individual.

Presenting his version of the events, DeLillo at the same time questions its validity. Reading his novel we become aware of the impossibility of drawing the right conclusions of the mass of hard facts and vague hints--the infinite possibilities of what can be held for the truth. Therefore, any historical account can only be a possible version of the real. In so far, DeLillo's Libra places itself somewhere between fiction and history.

Libra is a novel that deserves every attention.

For me, what makes this book so great is not the light it may or may not shed on history; it is Mr. DeLillo's virtuosic prose and the singularly mesmerizing narrative voice produced by that prose.

As far as I can judge, DeLillo first achieved this degree of clarity and force with 'The Names,' his sixth (seventh?) novel, and he's continued to refine and improve it ever since. Reading to oneself is a special and private act; DeLillo engages and penetrates this privacy the way few novelists known to me have approached. He expresses a fearless grasp of human nature with language so wondrously charged with poetic energy that the act of reading it is like somehow experiencing fine music through print. This quality pervades his later novels and at least surfaces in all of them, and is the main reason I like DeLillo (not the JFK conspiracy junk that is 'Libra's' narrative pretext).

Critics have pointed out, with some justification, that DeLillo's characters are too often like one another. These objectors should be delighted with 'Libra'; the characters are distinct and superbly actualized: Boy Oswald, Win Everett, Jack Ruby, and Marguerite Oswald are all really amazing.

On the surface Libra is a novel about the history of the assassination of President John Kennedy and an insightful narrative about the man who is said to have pulled the trigger: Lee Harvey Oswald. But as with all such histories, the seemingly clear surfaces merely reflects the latest scriblings on what is really a deeply inscribed palimpist of human chronicle. Based on years of painstaking research and written from the perspective of a CIA historian assigned to produce a complete and secret history of the event, Don Delillo presents an intimate look at the man who has since become the symbol for America's shattered dreams and the subject of countless conspiracy theory scenarios. In so doing Delillo produces an image of Oswald that attempts to transcend the simplistic tropes to which he has been so often cast and, instead, represent Oswald as he really was: a lonely, impressionable, self-contradictory young man with a identity fractured by modernity.

In Libra, Oswald is not only the small meek looking man gunned down by Jack Ruby as a stunned nation was instantaneously transformed into subjects of the media panopticon, but also a dedicated Marxist, a US Marine, a husband, father and son. Thus, he gets what most assassins do not: a human face, if not a multitude of them. As the story progresses, Oswald's multiplicitous character is transformed and molded from "mere pocket litter", a "cardboard cutout" into a ready-made villain of a fading American ideal. How this transformation is accomplished, rather than the result of Oswald's actions, is really what Delillo is trying to fide an answer for. Whether or not he succeeds in discovering this depends upon the value that is given to history in modern society, and the implicit logic that this type of epistemological inquiry anticipates.

In Libra history is not simply an objective accounting of human accomplishment and action, but something constructed by men in small rooms. Libra is about understanding the influence of the apathetic forces of chance, randomness and cosmic disorder, which are then transformed into simplistic narratives that allow us all to sleep at night.

Libra is a book for anyone who wonders about the substance of American history and the ways in which this substance is created. It is a novel that throws into question many of our most cherished truths, one that requires the re-examination of the notions of human agency, identity, fate and ultimate nature of our postmodern reality. A great novel that offers many insightful answers as well as being a highly readable and engaging work of contemporary American fiction.

*Libra* is Don DeLillo's fascinating take on what has become an American version of a classic Greek tragedy: the assassination of John F. Kennedy. You'd think by now that this subject had been pretty well drained of any interest by all the books, movies, TV mini-series, articles, exposes, interviews, etc., but, to his credit, DeLillo has managed to reinterpret this mythic event for the commentary it makes on our contemporary culture. Conspiracy, paranoia, corruption, secrecy, violence, racism, consumerism, moral ambiguity, relativism, the sense that reality itself is up for interpretation, that the center does not cohere, that even with all the tapes and cameras running we still can't say for sure that this happened or didn't happen...this nightmarish landscape is the one DeLillo delineates in this absolutely fascinating novel.

DeLillo's Oswald is a construct particularly suited to our postmodern times--the archetype of the outsider as a total enigma, a blank, an empty container, a chess piece neither black nor white, waiting to be given a designation, a purpose, a place on the board of history. He has a gripe, but he's not exactly sure who it's against. Everyone is the enemy. He is the true idealist: good always exists far away, in this case, in the idea of communism, the ideas of Russia, Cuba, Castro. Always in an "idea." Reality, however, is something much different, much more ambiguous.

I somehow hadn't realized how young Oswald was--24 when he was killed by Jack Ruby. Only 24 and yet he'd already been in the Marines, traveled to Japan, defected to Russia, married and had babies, returned to the U.S., engaged himself as a pro-Castro activist, shot the president of the United States. DeLillo tries to make some sense of this, portraying Oswald as an angry young man burning with purpose and a desire to make his mark on history, but ultimately unfocused, confused, and tragically misguided.

*Libra* is a novel, a work of fiction, and as such, DeLillo speaks through all the characters, not only Oswald and other historical personages, but composite, as well as entirely imaginary characters, giving them emotions, thoughts, motivations, obsessions, and memories that he could not possibly verify as belonging to the actual persons, but he does a perfectly credible job of rendering these people believable. You feel they very well *could* have felt and perceived things the way DeLillo describes...and that seems part of the deeper theme running through the novel: that one's interpretation of what happened leading up to and on November 22, 1963 and forever after that fateful date is just as valid as any other interpretation. The events recounted in *Libra* are so compellingly told, so `realistic' they now seem a part of the official record of not only the assassination, but of `history' itself. I'll have a hard time from hereon out separating the `facts' of the Kennedy assassination from my memory of DeLillo's retelling in *Libra.* Reality itself, as DeLillo implies, is a fiction. All plots have their own logic and lead to death.

I find it interesting, that nowadays the vast majority of Americans ((last I heard it was something like 75%)) find it more likely that JFK was murdered as the result of a conspiracy and government cover-up than they believe the official government record of the event. What does that say about what we've learned about our government in the days since November 22, 1963? Of what they are capable of doing? What does it mean that we no longer trust authorities to give us the truth, that the very standards for truth have been called into question, that, as a result, no "truth" is unquestionable, no "truth" is certain?

Underneath the compulsively readable surface of this literary potboiler, this postmodern political thriller, DeLillo, as always, asks the serious questions that matter most. And, as always, the answers are maddeningly elusive.

An incredible novel in every regard--five stars easy.

The Kennedy Assassination, the warp and depth of conspiracy theory, the underbelly of US political life, weird men in small rooms plotting to integrate themselves into the fabric of history. Of course! Lee Harvey Oswald is a perfect subject for Delillo's fiction, which from the off has held all of these themes as an integral part of its fabric.

Libra is a compelling read, a convincing fictional hologram of the life of Lee Harvey Oswald. Delillo writes his story - opening with his tortured riding of the subway in the Bronx, through his childhood, spell in the marines, the Russia period, his marriage, the weeks and days leading up to Dallas - as part of a conspiracy version. There are plots, there are counter plots, there are freakish creative senior CIA officials wanting retribution for the Bay of Pigs. Lee Harvey Oswald, himself an artist manque 'he wanted to write short stories of contemporary American life' slots into this conspiracy, then at the end, the story slots back to fit the official version of events, the lone gunman story.

Some critics accused Delillo of bad citizenship, fanning the fires of conspiracy, the subject of so many cranks and weirdos, the sort of people for whom stories like this are their lifeblood. But Delillo is too intelligent and subtle a novelist to play that game. His purpose was to create a compelling fictional version of events - and compelling they are, his grasp of fringe American lives and tooled down dialogue is immense - which sheds light on the facts from an oblique angle. My understanding of the event that broke the back of the American century was heightened by reading this novel, not because I read it as a true version of events, but because the convincing characters Delillo draws (Libra contains some of Delillo's most accomplished characters, especially women - Oswald's mother and Russian wife, his 'beggar bride'), and the language he uses show just what it might be like to be a tortured, frustrated white man desperate to ingrain yourself with something mega, and the disorienting bewilderment once that is accomplished. Take this paragraph, from after the killing:

'Whenever they took him down, he heard his name on the radios and TVs. Lee Harvey Oswald. It sounded extremely strange. He didn't recognize himself in the full intonation of the name. The only time he used his middle name was to write it on a form that had space for that purpose. No one called him by that name. Now it was everywhere. He heard it coming from the walls. Reporters called it out. Lee Harvey Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald. It sounded odd and dumb and made up. They were talking about someone else.'

Don't fault me for quoting Shakespeare. I teach high school kids, I deserve it.
The term applied to Paris by Lady Montague is, for me, the best description I can think of for DeLillo's portrayal of Oswald. He is the perfect communist- one ready to be molded in support of his cause.
I cannot say enough about this book other than be prepared for a second reading. It's too well crafted a masterpiece for one reading. The puzzle is too intricate.
By far DeLillo at his conspiratorial paranoid best.
I was in awe of DeLillo's construction. Oswald's life story juxtaposed with the plot being crafted. Each Oswald chapter is meant to parallel the conspirators looking for their patsy. In that vein, let me say that David Ferrie is one of the greatest characters ever put on paper- and yes, I know he was a real person.
Once again, it's too amazing for me to do it justice. Don't come looking for history. Come in search of great literature. Come in search of a great crime thriller. Come for the political intrigue. Come for a jaw dropping, skull shattering tour de force. DeLillo at his unquestionable best.

Like most of the reviewers, I loved Libra. However, I had a nagging feeling that the last forty or so pages were not as "tight" and solid as the rest of the book. Although it may have been a function of my own sense of the book's end, and a desire for a fantastic finale, and not the writing itself, but there were many questions and plotpoints left unaddressed. Basically - great build-up, disappointing finish. Maybe a follow-up novel built around the plotters' reaction to the Ruby assassination of Oswald or SOMETHING . . . or is this Delillo's point - everyone has a feeling of something left quite unanswered and unfinished.

In Libra, Delillo deals with one of the most well-known and well-documented events in recent history. The volumes of information, of images, of rumor, of intrigue dominate the story of JFK's assassination. Wisely, Delillo chooses to focus on a more peripheral and much less understood individual, Lee Harvey Oswald. There are so many contradictions in the case for and against Oswald. Was he alone? Was he innocent? Was he part of a team? These questions slide into obscurity as Delillo reconstructs Lee Harvey Oswald/O. H. Lee/A. J. Hidell/William Bobo. The inconsistent Oswald.

The book unfolds with alternating chapters between two narratives of the past, and one in the present [1988]. One of the pasts is Oswald's life starting as an adolescent boy in the Bronx, which eventually collides with the other, beginning in April 1963 as a group of disenfranchised former CIA men decide to create a plot to make an attempt on the President. They do not intend to kill him. Shoot and miss is the plan. But as Delillo famously says, "Plots carry their own logic. There is a tendency of plots to move toward death." So here we have a postmodern explanation for the mystique of conspiracy theory. There isn't an ordered lattice of events and characters, conducted by a deliberate intelligence. There is chaos, only ordered by a downward tendency toward death and destruction. It's Chaos Theory applied to human and political systemms.

Libra is also Delillo's most accessible book, at least in the context of the others I have read, (all but Underworld, The Names, and Mao II). Unlike White Noise, the people in Libra seem somewhat real. They are not totally so for that would mean that we understand them, which we don't. Delillo always creates fractured, composite views of his characters. We get glimpses, often contradictory, into their past and their intentions. Maybe it's because I have read a lot of his work, but Delillo's philosophic statements, if you can even call them that, are much more connected to the narrative here than in his other work. For example, Nicholas Branch, in the present day narrative, is a contemporary CIA analyst poring over all the data on the assassination. At one point he begins examining the physical evidence. There are so many abstractions and difficulties in this investigation that the presence of real objects provides a glimpse of something like truth. "The Curator sends the results of ballistics tests carried out on human skulls and goat carcassess, on blocks of gelatin mixed with horsemeat...They are saying, 'Look, touch, this is the true nature of the event. Not your beautiful ambiguities.'" These sections contain some of the most poignant and valuable insight in any of Delillo's work I have seen.

Libra is an interesting, if somewhat complicated work that both illuminates and obscures the character of Lee Harvey Oswald. This isn't as frustrating an experience as it might sound. By the novel's conclusion it would be cheap to wrap up such a sad and desolate story with niceties and tidy endings.

First thing, the larger of the two reviews (I think Publisher's Weekly?) featured by Amazon for this book is very good. Don't expect an explanation of an event disguised as a novel. In Libra, DeLillo is not trying to explain an event in history; he wants to drop us into the lap of that event in all its complexity and nuance. "If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working of a scheme. .. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It's the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. Or perhaps not." This is the ambiguous world of the Kennedy assasination, the subject of this jewel of a novel. Particularly vivid in these pages is Jack Ruby: explosive and insecure, cruel in one moment, caring the next. And of course, Oswald. We watch Oswald's slow loss of identity. In Libra he disappears from history -- gradually losing touch, direction, hope, meaning. He does not appear to drive himself, nor is he driven by CIA or FBI or other operatives who, try what they will, essentially find him impregnable. Yet, history it what he makes, or finds. It is the Russian character so much involved in Oswald's ersatz defection, Kirilenko, who best seems to understand Oswald as "some kind of Chaplinesque figure, skating along the edges of vast and dangerous events. Unknowing, partly knowing, knowing but not saying, the boy who had a quality of trailing chaos behind him, causing disasters without seeing them happen, making riddles of his life and possibly fools of us all." He is encouraged by an operative not to find a place in history -- "wrong approach Leon" -- but "to get out. Jump out. Find your place and your name on another level." Reading Libra is participating in a waking dream, a graceful juxtaposition of conspiracy and coincidence, coverging at a point in time, at a place in Dallas. Libra is evocative of the whole tragedy, a novel that puts you on edge, not because the outcome is uncertain, but because, at a deep level, one fears to follow DeLillo's exploratory threads. Not a pleasant ride, but a powerful read.