Customer Reviews

Libra

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is an impressive book in that it is able to string many different elements of Kennedy Conspiracy theories into a coherant plausible scenario. In terms of the historical grasp of the period the author succeeds. However the writing style is cumbersome by employing a non traditional narrative style of free association by some of the characters. The book is weak on suspense suprisingly so for a conspiracy book. The character development is fairly week outside of Oswald. Also the charcter of Nicholas Branch who was writing a secret history for the CIA should have been expanded.The book is poorly edited even accounting for the unorthodox narrative style. There are grammatical errors and punctuational errors in the manuscript that make it somewhat difficult to read. I give it 5 stars for being a historical novel and 1 star for the writing style.

Libra is a fictional "biography" of Lee Harvey Oswald following his life and the plans that were underway during the seven months before the Kennedy assassination to make him the scapegoat. DeLillo, of course, takes liberties with the facts but he has produced a real page-turner and made Oswald into an entirely sympathetic character who may not have had the purest of motives but was not the one who fired the fatal shot.

Interestingly, DeLillo attributes an inordinate amount of luck to the fact that the motorcade appeared when and where it did. Several coincidences occurred to make the assassination possible, totally out of the control of those planning it. And yet it still worked.

The most fun part of reading it was noticing the ideas presented in the film JFK (filmed three years after Libra was published) appear in this book, making it a familiar territory. David Ferrie, in particular, is a major character and Guy Bannister appears often, also, as does Jack Ruby. De Lillo has obviously done his research.

Having just seen JFK again, I picked this up as sort of a "companion" novel and it worked well in that capacity. I felt that the movie did not really touch on so much of Oswald's life and that Libra filled in those gaps well.

DeLillo's sense of time and place are commendable and I think this was probably a good training ground for his epic Underworld, which has sat on my bookshelf, collecting dust for many years and which I will most likely now pick up and read.

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 an elegantly written book that took me as deeply into the mind of Lee Harvey Oswald as I care to go, and by so doing allowed me to feel some compassion for a character (at least in this fictional version) I've likened more to a weasel than a human being. From boyhood to his young adult death Mr. Dellilo's Oswald is a character in search of self who never gets there. He's a shy, stupid, somehow charming boy who should be protected, but whose grandiose delusions would eventually put any protector off. You'd miss him in a crowd - until he pulled a gun. Oswald and Jack Ruby are the most defined characters in the book, with Oswald's mother weighing in with self-defining monologues that are a pleasure to read, but a pain to sympathize with. She's a whiner with an interesting whine.

The remaining characters are thin, never as low-down as you'd expect, and don't seem at all realistic as plotters in the assassination of the century.

"Libra," is not a mystery, not a thriller, not even much of a drama. If anything it's a meditation on character - or at least on Oswald's character. I'd recommend it for the beautiful writing, (phenomenal dialogue) but certainly not as a page-turner.

After reading the hefty Underworld and the sparse Body Artist, I wondered what DeLillo, a man who has a gifted use of language, would do with a more conventional narrative. With Libra, I began to get my answer and was not all that impressed.

Although not completely conventional, the story is more straightforward than the other books I have mentioned. Although a story dealing with conspiracy and assassination, it is basically lacking in suspense and action; for this reason, it must rely more on things like character, in particular that of Lee Harvey Oswald.

DeLillo portrays Oswald as a pathetic individual, a malfunctioning human whose failure is inevitable. You don't really empathize with Oswald; instead, you observe him with the same fascination you would give to a train wreck. The other characters in this story are more weakly depicted.

There are better novels dealing with the Kennedy assassination and possible conspiracies associated with it. I recommend American Tabloid by James Ellroy, which is much better (and Ellroy's sequel, The Cold Six Thousand, while weaker, is also very good). For DeLillo, while this is not a bad book, he is better off with his more unconventional stories.

I must recommend Libra as a work of fiction while suspending judgment as to the "truth" of the account. Also I will nitpick: DeLillo makes at least one mistake: he calls the newsman who was friendly with Jack Ruby "Joe Long," as per most versions. But it is known that the man in question was Gary De Laune, later a sportscaster for CBS in San Antonio. Of course it is possible that DeLillo left in this mistake on purpose. Writers are crafty that way.

don delillo's libra is part character study (rendering the obscured figure of lee harvey oswald into focused clarity so that his sensibilities, his nuerosis, his passions become visible as well as his humanity), part historical analysis (we can see demonstrated in the narrative structure that axiom of history being at the will of eros and human emotion, that all plots, in this case the jfk assasination plot, no matter how fine tuned, are unconsciously driven towards death and must always unravel), part conspiracy theory (delillo's posits his own spin on the actors and aims of the assasination, ex-cia members seek to bolster public support for a reinvasion of post-bay of pigs cuba by a fake attempt on jfk's life, originally intended to occur in miami, with a fabricated trial of paper leading back to cuban intelligence to appear as retaliation for cia covert assasination attempts on castro, oswald is wound into the web by chance and circumstance). but most of all it is pure fiction.

the novel is rigorously researched and the story penetrates deep into the facts, as it is explicitly fiction, bringing what could be a banal historical tract into glowing and animate life, one can feel oswalds heavy breathing as he reads trotsky in a new orleans library or feel the cramped crowd sizzling as the motorcade crawls through the streets of dallas. in libra, we are given a glowing snapshot of american history and we see the national narrative not as a tale of benevolent heroics or moral crusading, but rather as pure passion, human blood-rush and alienation, desperate forces reacting in the only way they know how. this is human history, the rage of achilles.

libra is not only a strong counter narrative to dominant conceptions of contemp. american history, it also stands on its own as masterful literature. libra is smart and ruthless and funny. delillo's prose is tightly woven and reads elegantly, jewelled with beaming images that scald in your mind permanently. the author's ear for dialogue and natural cadence is uncanny, he can rave and he can orate and he can street-talk and he can love-whisper. managing to juggle almost eight to ten satellite characters in the story and allow oswald room to breath as a the central figure, delillo's catchs a panorama of personalities (agitated housewife, court marshalled marine, cia director, oswalds aged mother, private investigator, etc) and weaves them beautifully.

i say three cheers for libra.

This is the second Delillo book I have read (the other Underworld) and I was not disappointed. Upon finishing the book, I desired to read another by him. His style is incredible, and beyond my own words of explanation. To me, a recurrent theme in this book, and in Underworld, was the theme of freedom and captivity. Did Oswald finally find the freedom in his own life while in his Dallas Cell?

Example:
"Lee Harvey Oswald was awake in his cell. It was beginning to occur to him that he'd found his life's work..."

"This was the true beginning"

"His life had a single clear subject now, called Lee Harvey Oswald"

"The more time he spent in his cell, the stronger he would get. Everybody knew who he was now. This charged him with strength. There was clearly a better time beginning, a time of deep reading in the case, of self-analysis and reconstruction. He no longer saw confinement as a lifetime curse. He'd found the truth about a room. He could easily live in a cell half this size"

Is freedom in the eye of the beholder?

I highly recommmend this book to any reader interested in the assasination. Delillo is truly the artist of our time.

Delillo cuts a nice middle ground between two strikingly opposing viewpoints about the Kennedy assasination, showing how both of them disintegrate in the whirling amorphous cloud of incomprehension surrounding the event. Those who think Oswald acted alone, without any support, can of course look at the evidence. It seems almost impossible that the assasination was carried out by one man, acting alone. Dellilo, however, does not stop there (like Oliver Stone does in JFK), rather he charts a conspiracy that has no author, one that feeds upon and acts for itself. There is no "shadowy man" operating behind the conspiracy, there are no hands operating the marrionettes--they exist for themselves. The effect is far less insidious as the portrait of the government painted by some conspiracy theorists. On the other hand, it is far more frightening. None of the characters in Dellilo's account really know why they are doing what they are doing. None of them speak to one another. In the end, the assasination of JFK just sort of happens--Oswald never has a moment of clarity where he says "Yes, I am going to assasinate the president." The orders from the CIA (and yes, the CIA is involved in Dellilo's account, though not in the way many people believe)get muddled, translated, until a seemingly innocent plot to ready the United States to face an oncoming Communist threat devolves into one of the most harrowing moments in U.S. history. The shots ARE fired, though it becomes quite difficult to tell exactly who is fully responsible for those shots.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in either the assasination of Kennedy or the ways in which conspiracy theories get propagated in our society. Dellilo asks us to think about how much agency we have in our own lives, about how terrorist acts get played out, about how conspiracies often have no cohesion, no single center of authority. The book refuses to offer any answers. And because of this, I think it one of the most compelling, interesting, and thought provoking portrayals of both the "making" of an event and its inscription into history. For Dellilo forces us to not only consider how an event gets "carried out," but also how it is remembered, how it is inscribed upon the consciousness of a country reeling from its very real effects.

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, if you can even call it that, statements are much more connected to the narrative here than in his other work. For example, Nicholas Branch, the present day narrative [1988] follows a contemporary CIA analyst poring over all the data on the assassination begins examining the physical evidence. There are so many abstractions and difficulties the presence of real objects somehow 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.