Folks should talk about this as a Great American Novel tbh

I give this book 5 out of 5 libras ♎♎♎♎♎

This was unlike any other DeLillo I've read, but as beautifully written. The intrigue, the character development, the mystery all builds toward the inevitable end.

Not being well versed in American history, I found this story to be very realistic. I couldn't distinguish between what was historical fact, what was completely fabricated, and what was somewhere in between.

I definitely recommend this one!

My first DeLillo was White Noise and I liked it just fine. Libra, though, was a different experience altogether. The author's framing of the Kennedy assassination as Shakespearean tragedy through fact and imaginings is an astounding work. The dialogue is superb, approaching Cormac McCarthy's best. The countless characters all spring to life. I couldn't tell where the real ended and the fiction began but didn't care. The story, the possibility of what might have happened is compelling enough. The takeaway is that everybody involved lost, chiefly America and Oswald's mother, alone at her son's grave with a thousand questions likely never to be answered. A read I cannot recommend highly enough.

There are a number of reasons I chose this one to occupy a couple of weeks of reading time in my life. First, I wanted an introduction to DeLillo since I understand he can be difficult to read, yet I wanted to be entertained. The subject matter is near and dear to my heart, as the Kennedy assassination spawned perhaps the greatest assortment of conspiracy theories in our nation’s history. Most of the story occurred during the period of history in which I was born (1960) and marks and colors a substantial portion of the collective history which informed my upbringing. My own father was fascinated with the event, being unafraid to ask hard questions in Dallas when vacationing there. My daughter lives in Dallas now and on a cold March day we toured the book depository (I was astonished at the proximity of the street from the 6th floor, it felt very probable that this could have happened). Lastly, I remember purchasing this book for my father when it came out back in 1988, back when I was reading book reviews voraciously – I don’t think he ever read it and I’m guessing the first edition hardback is gathering dust somewhere (and I have asked him now to find / read it – I intend to retrieve that original for my own collection!).

I did not debate with myself much in giving this top rating because, in total, it is highly entertaining and artfully arranged and written. Like the event itself, it is a swirl of characters and backstory. It shouldn’t surprise me, but somehow it often does, that the heart of man never changes. Even when I was a babe, a time I want to think when people were more generous or normal, they were just as venal, petty, hateful, weak-willed and conniving as they are today. It helped that I knew the plot, and recognized the name of characters. Otherwise the tale would have seemed preposterous and I would have accused the author of excessive indulgence in fantasy. The Oswald character is rendered in all his contradictory and confused state of mind, dyslectic yet intelligent, moving from one minor failure to another, seeking a grand stage. I had forgotten he had attempted to assassinate a public figure before JFK. This novel captured the fervor and deep fear of communism, from Russia to China to Cuba. The motivations made sense of the conspirators, anger at the first catholic president for not supporting the invasion of Cuba leading to the Bay of Pigs fiasco. The massive CIA and other agency apparatus run amuck, disgruntled and powerful shadowy agents concocting plots that went awry yet by coincidence came together. DeLillo must have delighted when he realized the truth of the history is best told in novel form, since reality (alas) will never be known by mankind. In a way this event strikes at the heart of all historical accounts in that the particular events cannot be known to perfection. Reality is stranger than fiction, and what a startling plot where an idea to create a failed assassination plot spirals out of control and leads to a cavalcade of events ultimately leading to the violent death of the most flamboyantly powerful man in the world (sealing his fate as a most cherished man and what some consider, certainly falsely, the end of innocence for its time). The sordid backdrop of New Orleans hardliners and peripherals, aka Jack Ruby, was brilliantly told.

DeLillo did some strange things with first and third person, switching within the same paragraph. That was an intentional device, I’m sure, but to what effect I can’t understand. All I know is the entire concoction worked beautifully and this was a page turner for me. The characters, even when un-knowable, are deep and real and carefully nuanced. I’ll give you one little snippet to show you the talent of this writer (p. 295), when an unemployed ex-agent was enjoying being back in the game, sitting in the swamps of Florida with other like-minded ex-warriors, training for some yet to be identified mission:

“The wind was battering the shack. They talked for hours, telling funny and bloody stories. Wayne felt sweet and light as Jesus on a moonbeam.”

A remarkable work of fiction. Delillo chronicles the life of Lee Harvey Oswald in tandem with the fictional conspiracy by the CIA to have him arrive at the Texas Book Depository on the 22nd November 1963. Delillo "extends and embellishes reality" in order to raise questions about the nature of truth and the legitimacy of fact, especially those surrounding polarising figures and events like the JFK assassination. There is also an incredibly interesting subtext to do with free will in Libra. A series of quite alarming coincidences have the fictional version of Oswald arrive at a place he seemingly knew he was destined for before the intervention of any outside forces. The parallel lines that dictate the direction of our lives intertwine and intercept one another on numerous occasions, yet sometimes it does seem that we had no choice in the matter at all. Delillo also includes what I imagine to be a fictional portrayal of himself whilst researching the novel in the JFK chronicler Blanch. This is a refreshing subplot that addresses the realiability of historiography and testimony that not only cements the novel into the historical-fiction genre, but also neatly summises the texts postmodern characteristics whilst the page-turning narrative concludes itself with the ending we are all so familiar with.

This fucking book, man, it just leaves me at a complete loss for words. I've heard people discredit the terrific work DeLillo did to make Oswald a compelling and complex character - maybe DeLillo's most compelling and most complex character - because Don was working with a real person and therefore had plenty of raw material to go with, but I insist that it takes just as much talent to sculpt what is known of Oswald (his upbringing, his politics, his time in the war) into a real and weirdly relatable anti-hero. DeLillo pulls him out of the realm of history and makes a goddamn person out of him, and all it takes is a maybe-implausible - but certainly, you cannot deny, all sorts of fun to read about - conspiracy to do so. DeLillo uses that conspiracy as a jumping-off point for an in-depth study of Oswald's motivations; his determination to make a mark on history is pulled against by the plot he finds himself wrapped up in, a plot that puts Oswald on strings and pretty much leaves the strings visible. This is what they talk about when they say "character-driven writing."

So what does that make Libra? Proof that DeLillo can do character and write in a more traditional mode? Well, it's still DeLillo, so that's not quite the case. Libra may be a character-driven novel, but it's also a thriller, and a thriller in the DeLillo mode, which means he spoofs some thriller conventions (notably the sudden escalations and ridiculously tangled webs of players vs. players), affirm others (the fast pace, the violence, the political undertones), and stay in the DeLillo-space for still others (the paranoia and conspiracies). DeLillo's a smart guy, so it's hard to take this as some YouTube nutjob yelling his head off about the Grassy Knoll and the holes in the Warren Commission, and yet it's equally hard for me to fully buy into DeLillo's disclaimer at the beginning that insists Libra is intended to be pure speculation and isn't supposed to provide any answers.

Which I'm sure is the idea, and could even be a little joke on DeLillo's part, since I'm sure he's aware that he's perceived as existing on the brilliant/crazy faultline by his fans and his detractors alike, but it's hard for me to know what to make of this novel, if it was intended as a straight-but-sophisticated historical thriller (I feel Running Dog is more obviously parody, but this isn't Running Dog), even an attempt to legitimatize the genre, or an Eco-style parody of our fascination with the currents of history. It's also hard for me to know if DeLillo honestly believes what he puts out here. I know Kennedy had his enemies and am not naive enough to believe that politicians don't throw other politicians under the bus on the daily, and yet I wonder if this is the ravings of an exceptionally talented lunatic. I know it's an in-depth analysis of the currents of history centered around a fascinating and often demonized figure, but it could also be completely crazy. Or dead the fuck on. Either way, DeLillo's prose is the best it's ever been, the portrayal of Oswald is masterful, and the montage-style climax is out of this world good. Due for a reread.

“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.”

This was a magnificent novel, far better than the other books of DeLillo's that I have read imo. This is the best piece of contemporary historical fiction I can think of, even though that is not exactly a thriving genre. It is a wonderful read - savvy and cynical, well-researched, and peppered with incisive humor and moments of brilliant writing. DeLillo has learned from Hemingway; he is terse and direct with descriptions of both the inner and outer worlds, and he makes his phrases tell. He has an eye for the convincing detail and the passing thought that reveals a complex character. Amazingly, I felt that I understood Oswald, perhaps the murkiest and most baffling character in American history, after reading this book. DeLillo does a marvelous job of getting inside the head of this quirky and subversive young man, what his dreams and ideas may have been like, his inner demeanor and approach to the world.

This is the (fictionalized) story of Lee Harvey Oswald, from his teenage years; but there are big gaps and the book does not follow a neat chronological pattern. Intercut with the main narrative are vignettes of the supposed conspiracy leading up to the assassination, told through a mixture of historical characters like Guy Bannister and David Ferrie, and fictional CIA and mafia operatives. DeLillo's take on it is this: a disgruntled CIA bigshot sets in motion an operation to take a bogus shot at the president in order generate support for a second assault on Cuba (not so far-fetched, as the recently released papers on Operation Northwoods shows). The sub-commander of the operation decides to go for a kill and, using his network of right wing nuts and Cuban exiles, sets up the attempt which features Oswald as the patsy. This is as plausible an explanation of the assassination as any, and there is a colorful cast of characters and a coldly humorous portrayal of the spook business to back it up. Oswald's life, through his stint in the marines, to his defection to Russia and return, is starkly but interestingly delineated. DeLillo's tight, imaginative style, with its cool edge, is particularly well suited for the story of this oddball, this twisted idealist and game player. Libra richly deserves the popularity it has achieved.

"Facts all come with points of view."
--Talking Heads

I became reasonably convinced that Libra is Don DeLillo's masterpiece about halfway through. After slogging through the first quarter of the novel -- you're introduced to dozens of characters, and they're all revealed to you in that customarily opaque way that any reader of DeLillo will instantly recognize, and the dialogue only takes you so far because DeLillo characters don't talk to each other so much as around each other, and it takes a while to get on solid footing, except you never really get on solid footing with DeLillo, because he forces you to slow down, he writes prose that you can't glide over, and even when you have a handle on what's going on, he throws in a line that comes seemingly from nowhere but feels absolutely essential to your understanding of the novel, so you have little choice but to re-read the page, and so skimming is not an option, and even after all that close reading you STILL aren't given clear portraits of his characters, especially THESE characters, these men who live in the shadows, ruminating, plotting, conspiring, and instead you get to know them only through the sheer accretion of detail, which is all a roundabout way of saying that you have to stick with it because DeLillo assumes you're a patient and knowledgeable reader, and everyone knows what singular event this complicated engine with all its moving parts is chugging toward -- it all suddenly clicked into high gear.

I've been an admirer of DeLillo's for a while, but never before have I been sucked into his world so completely as I did while reading Libra. More focused than the sprawling Underworld (though it does contain that breathtaking prologue) and less zany than White Noise (indeed, this book is as airtight and humorless as they come), this fictionalized account of the Kennedy assassination is a taut, frighteningly plausible re-imagining of the event that "broke the back of the American century." And it seems to me that it's the perfect representation of everything DeLillo is about.

One such DeLillo hallmark on display is that sense of inexorability and dread hanging over every page. The plot to kill Kennedy may have started with a handful of disgruntled agents choosing to go off the reservation, but by November 22, 1963, the event seems almost preordained. And in DeLillo's version of Oswald, a treatment so sympathetic it led George Will to call it "an act of bad citizenship," you have a terrifically complex character, someone who believed he existed to shape history, but in truth, was someone shaped entirely BY history. Consider how after the assassination, Lee Oswald instantly and irreversibly becomes Lee Harvey Oswald, a name change so jarring that his mother no longer recognizes him as her son, but as a media creation forced into action by outside, alien forces.

For a while I played the game that I'm sure most readers played (especially now that it's so easy to do), firing up the Internet and comparing what's real versus what DeLillo conjured up. But at some point I stopped, because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether Win Everett and Larry Parmenter are less real than David Ferrie, or if Lee Oswald really said and thought those things while in Minsk, or if Jack Ruby really was commissioned by the Mafia to take Oswald out. To read this book and assume you've read what DeLillo believes happened is short-selling the novel. The lasting image for me is of DeLillo's stand-in Nicholas Branch, the semi-retired CIA agent being asked to write the secret history of the assassination, alone in his study with mountains upon mountains of material, all the minutiae and trivia and arcana given to him by some unknown, god-like Curator. There is no making sense of all that documentation, but because it is documented, because we have Oswald's pubic hair and Jack Ruby's mother's dental records, and every single frame of the Zapruder film noted and memorized, it assumes there should be sense to make, that if you crawl deep enough into the rabbit hole you will emerge with a coherent narrative. And the joke is that of course you won't. Libra may come off as deadly serious, but it sells that dark joke for all it's worth.

So, I like to read, and I want to fancy myself as a writer. After finishing Don DeLillo's Libra, I can honestly say that I am still a reader. If anything has changed in that department, maybe, I'd say I'm now a flabbergasted reader. As far as me being a writer, this here book has certainly made me question that, at least as far as whether I am a great writer or not. Don DeLillo certainly is an excellent writer. His book is a weird and suspenseful folding of fiction and reality surrounding the Kennedy assassination and government agents and bad people and good people and confusion and WTF moments abound, all of it amounts to storytelling distilled with mastery. I'm not going to read anything for a little while so that the book can stay with me.

UPDATE: Now read for a third time as part of a publication-order re-read of all DeLillo's books. Well, I say all, but I did skip Ratner's Star because I really didn't like it when I re-read it a couple of years ago. Libra, however, is now confirmed, again, as my favourite DeLillo book. Hopefully, the review below from last time I read it will explain why...

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"Think of two parallel lines," he said. "One is the life of Lee H. Oswald. One is the conspiracy to kill the President. What bridges the space between them? What makes a connection inevitable? There is a third line. It comes out of dreams, visions, intuitions, prayers, out of the deepest levels of the self. It is not generated by cause and effect like the other two lines. It is a line that cuts across causality, cuts across time. It has no history that we can recognize or understand. But it forces a connection. It puts a man on the path of his destiny."

I am re-reading my way through what I consider to be Don Delillo's "purple patch". I've re-read The Names and White Noise and soon I will re-read Mao II and Underworld. In essence, this is Delillo's output in the 1980s and 1990s. So now this - Libra, the story of Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

The central event of this novel is such a significant event that it is hard to know where to start. Perhaps it is important that there isn’t an agreed factual history of the assassination but there is such a multitude of facts and theories. One of the (possibly underplayed) key strands of the novel is set in a time well beyond 1963 as an analyst attempts to write a definitive history but is overwhelmed by the quantity of data he is sent. Is there any other historical event that has generated such a plethora of facts and theories for such a short duration. DeLillo refers to it as "…the seven seconds that broke the back of the American century" which is such a wonderful phrase because it says firstly that it was a very brief period of time but secondly that it was such a major event. When I was growing up, people used to say that everyone knew where they were at the moment Kennedy was shot (I was only 2 years old, so could make a guess but not be 100% sure).

DeLillo does not set out to invent a new conspiracy theory in this novel. As in the quote at the start of my review, he presents us with two strands (plus the later analyst). In one, a well-established conspiracy theory, some CIA agents who are appalled at the failure of The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba realise that they cannot any longer directly attack Castro. So they launch a plot to fake an assassination attempt on the President of the USA with a manufactured trail of evidence that will point to Cuba and open up the door to have another attempt at removing Castro. Somehow (and this is possibly one of the key points of the book), that plot transmutes into one where the plan to shoot at Kennedy but miss becomes a conspiracy to kill him. They need a central person who can take the fall and Lee Harvey Oswald becomes their choice. In the second strand, which starts much earlier, we trace the life story of Lee Oswald. This story starts many years before 1963 and gradually catches up until the two strands merge.

Reading the book with the benefit of hindsight, which all readers must do as it was written 30 years after the events it depicts, adds a huge sense of anticipation to the book. The CIA plot chapters are dated and gradually head towards 22 November and the tension builds for the reader who knows what that date means. Oswald’s chapters are named according to the places he lived. As readers with knowledge of what is going to happen, we can appreciate the irony of statements like this that come as Oswald returns to the USA from Russia:

"If they could only make it Texas, things would be all right."

The book is called Libra because that was Oswald’s star sign and this is important to the book. Libra is represented by scales and the subject of balance is key. Oswald vacillates between the USA and Russia/Cuba, searching for stability and balance. He becomes the factor that tips the balance in the conspiracy.

There is a dreamlike quality to much of the narrative. The overall chronology jumps between the stories which is slightly unsettling (the biggest example of this is Oswald’s attempt to assassinate General Walker: in the CIA timeline, it happens very early on in the book, but we get to it about 200 pages later in Oswald’s personal story). But the narrative chapter by chapter is also dreamlike with ideas thrown out and then re-referenced paragraphs, pages or chapters later but without warning or context. There are apparently random thoughts, like a stream of consciousness.

For me, this is a masterpiece of fictionalised history. It mixes real and imagined people seamlessly. It fleshes out a possible background for Oswald and for the assassination plot that incorporates known documents and facts but also imagines things no one could actually know. The narrative and the dialogue is captivating. And all along, we wonder what it is that actually linked Oswald to the conspiracy - was it the "third line" that “comes out of dreams, visions, intuitions, prayers…”

Coincidence. He learned in the bayou, from Raymo, that Castro’s guerrilla name was Alex, derived from his middle name, Alejandro. Lee used to be known as Alek.

Coincidence. Banister was trying to find him, not knowing what city or state or country he was in, and he walked in the door at 544 and asked for and undercover job.

Coincidence. He ordered the revolver and the carbine six weeks apart. They arrived the same day.

Coincidence. Lee was always reading two or three books, like Kennedy. Did military service in the Pacific, like Kennedy. Poor handwriting, terrible speller, like Kennedy. Wives pregnant at the same time. Brothers named Robert.

Completely engrossing.

John F. Kennedy - assassinato - 22 de Novembro de 1963 - Dallas

Don DeLillo (n. 1936) escreve um romance sobre a "história" do assassinato de John F. Kennedy – um estudo sobre os homens que moldaram a história, num relato sobre os acontecimentos trágicos que ocorreram em Dallas, na manhã de 22 de Novembro de 1963.
Durante três anos DeLillo investiga e analisa inúmeros documentos – com destaque para o Relatório da Comissão Warren, processos judiciais, artigos de jornais e revistas – escrevendo um romance, num registo que oscila entre a realidade e a ficção, as diferentes teorias da conspiração, desvendando e projectando personagens dominadas por sentimentos e comportamentos ambíguos.
Uma escrita complexa e intimista sobre as forças e os detalhes que criaram as motivações para a concretização de um acto radical por parte de Lee Harvey Oswald – tornando-se num “peão” das várias teorias da conspiração sobre o assassinato de Presidente dos Estados Unidos da América. “As conspirações são portadoras de uma lógica própria. Há nas conspirações a tendência para se aproximarem da morte. Ele acreditava que a ideia da morte faz parte integrante da natureza de todas as conspirações. Neste aspecto, uma conspiração de homens armados assemelhava-se a um enredo narrativo. Quanto mais conciso o enredo de uma história, mais provável é que culmine na morte." (Pág. 247)


Lee Harvey Oswald (1939 - 1963)

Oswald é um perdedor, solitário e instável, com um comportamento errático e patético; uma daquelas pessoas que se agarram loucamente ao significado de cada coincidência, por mais insignificante que ela seja. “Lee Harvey Oswald estava acordado na sua cela. Começava a ocorrer-lhe que encontrara a obra da sua vida. Depois do crime vem a reconstrução. Ele terá de analisar os motivos, terá que explorar toda a questão, aliás riquíssima, da verdade e da culpa. Será tempo de reflectir, de virar aquele acontecimento do avesso no seu espírito. Eis ali um crime que, manifestamente, gera matéria para uma interpretação profunda." (Pág. 472)
“Libra” – título inspirado no signo astrológico (Balança) de Oswald - é um excelente livro de ficção escrito a partir de material e informação factual sobre um dos acontecimentos mais trágicos da História Mundial - o assassinato de John F. Kennedy.


Jack Ruby (Jacob Rubenstein) assassina Lee Harvey Oswald a 24 de Novembro de 1963