Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Oswald's "long and determined dream of high destiny.", January 14, 2006
Mailer's "non-fiction novel" of Lee Harvey Oswald is stunning, not just for the new information he has uncovered about Oswald's life in Russia between 1959 and 1961, but because Mailer has ordered this information to provide true insight into Oswald's psyche. At nineteen and just out of the Marines when he flew to Moscow, Oswald intended to apply for Soviet citizenship, believing that Marxism was "purer" than capitalism. Remaining in the USSR for two and a half years, he married Marina and fathered a child before becoming disillusioned with his poverty and deciding to return to the US.
In the USSR, Oswald was under constant KGB surveillance, and Mailer's first-ever access to the KGB files and his effective use of them give the reader a sense of who Oswald was between the ages of twenty and twenty-two. All the everyday aspects of his life, his constant fights with Marina (and his eventual physical abuse of her), his belief that he is meant for "high destiny," and his inability to find success and purpose in his Russian life, despite his high ideals, show a young man frustrated in every aspect of life.
Using files from the KGB, Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and books written about Oswald by Gerald Posner, Priscilla McMillan, Jim Marr, and Carl Oglesby, Mailer presents an astounding amount of historical data. Keeping his prose style journalistic and factual, Mailer uses his talents as a Hollywood script-writer to create dramatic dialogues appropriate to the facts, bringing events to life and making this long novel move quickly. Making frequent use of flashbacks, he fills in background detail, recreating Oswald's life as a young boy in New York--his truancy, his assignment to a youth center (where he was picked on), his relationship with his overbearing mother, and his constant loneliness.
When Oswald returns to Dallas in 1963 with his wife and daughter, he still has dreams, still sees himself as "an instrument of history," and is still frustrated and unhappy. His claim of responsibility for the April, 1963, assassination attempt on Gen. Edwin Walker, a John Birch Society supporter, whether or not it is true, shows him acting out his belief that he is an instrument of history in the months leading up to Nov. 22, 1963. Six months after the assassination attempt on Walker, Oswald takes advantage of the accident of history that has brought the JFK motorcade past the window of the Depository where he works, and he acts out his self-declared destiny.
Presenting all the information available to him, Mailer maintains a balanced point of view. Though he mentions contacts Oswald made with the FBI, his attempt to go to Cuba, Mafia attempts to kill Castro, and Oswald's strange connection with Baron George De Mohrenschildt, a Russian emigre with some CIA ties, he draws no conclusions due to lack of evidence, leaving those to the reader. This fine novel organizes mountains of raw material, some of it new, to provide glimpses of who Oswald was and what may have motivated him. n Mary Whipple
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
decent book from a decent writer, February 26, 2000
Mailer is a skilled writer and thanks to him being allowed access to thousands of KGB surveillance files compiled on Lee Oswald he is able to paint an almost human picture of Oswald's time in Russia and one almost forgets the crime he is accused of commiting.I do believe though that the charting of Oswald's life when he returns to the USA is perhaps tainted by the opinions of people who did not have any respect for him prior to his infamousy and this may be why the book cannot be wholly trusted as a truthful study. Furthermore, he relies too heavily on the work of Pricilla Johnson, the biographer who had met Oswald in Moscow and became a so-called confidante to Marina Oswald after the assasination, a friendship she exploited to write a best selling story of Marina's time with Oswald. Clearly, Marina does not know what she believes as over the years her account of life with Oswald has changed as often of as the weather. Mailer himself does try to keep away from the controversy surrounding Oswald's possible guilt and gives little away as to what his own opinion is in this matter. For this reason he does redeem the book coming across as a genuine story teller in this regard. In Mailer's own words the subject remains as great a mystery as it was all those years ago. Worth buying to read about Oswald's time in Russia.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Oswald's War Against All, May 21, 2007
Long as it was I regretted reaching the end of this book. Oswald's Tale purports to be a work of fiction. In fact, it impossible not to appreciate the wealth of research and analysis that informs the pages of this dense text. It becomes increasingly clear that Oswald very likely acted alone. Indeed, this is only a question because of the tributaries of zealots that seemed to work on the fringes of formal organizations, including the FBI and the MAFIA and so on. Yet, Oswald very likely acted independently; it would have been practically impossible for any one organization to control him. The novel Libra had it very nearly correct with its assessment that, had Oswald be chosen, it would very likely have been because he could have been depended upon to miss his target, or otherwise bungle the job. No one but Oswald propeled himself onto to the stage of Cold War history. In Oswald's world, his sense of destiny was confirmed by the chance occurrence of being employed in the Texas Book Depository in Dallas, stationed along the very route that President Kennedy's motorcade took that day in November. In addition to the quality of the writing and analysis, the book is to be commended for focusing so intently on Oswald's marriage to Marina, and the relationship he had with his mother, Margueritte. Like so many tragedies, one is all too easily reminded of Shakespeare's Richard, "my kingdom for a horse." Had Cuba provided Oswad a visa enabling him, ultimately to return to the Soviet Union he had already abandoned, history might well have taken a different course. Instead, Oswald's dyslexia, his sense of greatness, his determination and his lack of abilities in so many areas coupled with his gifts in others: all conspired, with chance playing its part, to place Oswald in the book depository from which he assasinated President Kennedy and subsequently murdered Dallas PD Officer Tippit.
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