n  “Facts are lonely things.”n

American history is profoundly dark in its timeline. From the slaughtering and near genocidal extermination of the Native Americans to the 9/11 attacks, American history presents itself as an almost constant struggle for survival. History has not been so kind when it comes to America. Inevitably, and understandably, it is so very interesting, and the American people are also equally interesting. Their history is internationally relatable due to the ancestral voyages undertaken, and their subjective stories illuminate the overall objectified view of Uncle Sam. Libra refuses to show America from a political, sociological or a generalised historical standpoint. Instead, in Tolstoyan fashion, DeLillo examines the ‘six seconds that broke the back of the American century’ artistically. Not a single detail is left unnoticed. The scariest part is: What is real? Fact, hypothesis, speculation and fiction are all methodically rolled into one, creating this postmodern odyssey.

Libra, an immensely impressive work by American writer Don DeLillo, is one of those books that defines the feeling of America, past, present and future. It’s stylish in its execution, believable in its convictions, thrilling in its story and downright disturbing in its resolution. I remember having these exact feelings whenever I watched the certain episodes of the X-Files— you know, with governmental corruption, conspiracies and paranoia seeping from every frame. Libra does this, utilising words, and every sentence counts, as he ruthlessly dissects America during the Cold War, leaving the sugarcoating and flag-waving patriotism at the back door.

Libra, in all its glory, terrifies the reader with its powerful examination of Lee Harvey Oswald and the events leading up to the assassination of JFK. However, as great as it already is, Libra is so much more than being about Lee Harvey Oswald. DeLillo is reflecting back to America of the 50’s and early 60’s, with visually arresting scenes, taking us back to Cold War era as an artistic tool in order to comment on the America of today. Although written in 1988, it still packs a punch that would immediately startle Sonny Liston, with its messages still unsettling us in our post 9/11 world. Don DeLillo isn’t showcasing the past from a politically oriented point of view, as the book is neither conservative or liberal in its underpinnings; instead, it’s a metaphysical shadow, a nameless dread, that looms over these events, seeing it differently from the grounded senses of a human being. It’s a deeply philosophical look, almost epic in scope and as analytical as anything written by Solzhenitsyn. Like I stated earlier, not a single detail is left unnoticed. How DeLillo accomplished this, I will never know.

Don DeLillo places Lee Harvey Oswald as the Great Man, the centre of the universe, the Napoleon of the twentieth century, in his quest for remembrance. From the first page, we are instantly dropped into Lee’s world as a young boy, following his upbringing, his discovery of Marxism, political science, Cuba, the military, Japan, Soviet Russia, military espionage and his increasing bitterness of America. DeLillo hurls the facts at breakneck speed and is relentless in his storytelling, blurring fact and fiction so successfully that I refuse to even separate them, fearing I would ruin a work of artistic genius. I cannot describe how I felt when I read the scene with shot down U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers being interrogated by the Russians. This real life incident was recreated perfectly for the book, and sent paranoid shivers up and down my spine.

Philip K. Dick was firm in his views on subjective reality. He believed that ‘objective reality is a synthetic product’. His written thoughts are permanently embedded in my mind: Reality is illusory, fragmented, highly subjective and downright confusing. Everything from the curious eyes of a human being has to be questioned, measured and analysed extensively before contributing to the past, and even then, did it necessarily happen that way? Or has it been a collective agreement to preserve objectivity? So as the story progresses, reality is laid bare, the past is tested and actions are questioned from the viewpoint of DeLillo, disguised as a fictional agent assigned to piecing the past together years after the event. Here the reader is bombarded with an array of information, paranoia, conspiracy and startling insights into the nature of being, time, existence, DeLillo waxing the philosophical with his stark brutality. In postmodern fashion, our senses are shellshocked and we have to do nothing but go along with the ride.

n  “He questions everything, including the basic suppositions we make about our world of light and shadow, solid objects and ordinary sounds, and our ability to measure such things, to determine weight, mass and direction, to see things as they are, recall them clearly, be able to say what happened.”n

Each page has the power to genuinely unsettle the reader. I recall having to close the book many times in order to breath normally again before reopening the pages. The final part is unforgiving and continuously impressive, evoking nostalgia, invoking fear, advocating a sort of coherent truth. Its tension is utterly superb. The paranoia of the Cold War-world will never fail to disturb. Don’t let that put you off though, as Libra is one of the most powerful statements of America ever written.

n  “The truth of the world is exhausting…”n

"There is a world inside the world."

When I first learned about the JFK assassination, it was the first instance that the world was not what it appeared to be. I remember falling into any bit of information I could find whether it was books, the Oliver Stone movie or my family's encyclopedias. This exploratory revelation was life change and developed a healthy change from the naivety of the world.

Reading Libra as a man of my age, I was very quickly absorbed into Delillo's "work of imagination". Having started a few of Delillo's books before and not being too impressed, I was very much so with Libra due to subject matter, and the contrast at times between what seemed as cold informative writing mixed with emotional aspects of the individuals as human beings, fathers, husbands and brothers. The characters in the JFK assassination story are all here from LHO to Jack Ruby and various FBI and CIA agents known to have some connection to the real life story.

"Plots carry their own logic. There is a tendency of plots to move toward death. He believed that the idea of death is woven into the nature of every plot. A narrative plot no less than a conspiracy of armed men. The tighter the plot of a story, the more likely it will come to death. A plot in fiction, he believed, is the way we localize the force of the death outside the book, play it off, contain it. The ancients staged mock battles to parallel the tempests in nature and reduce their fear of gods who warred across the sky. He worried about the deathward logic of his plot. He'd already made it clear that he wanted the shooters to hit a Secret Service man, wound him superficially. But it wasn't a misdirected round, an accidental killing, that made him afraid. There was something more insidious. He had a foreboding that the plot would move to a limit, develop a logical end."

Mostly, Delillo seems to use this plot as a vehicle to meditate on the aspects of plots in our personal lives and beyonds. And though there are obvious parts and plans at play, that there is perhaps, and most likely something beyond that is also at play. In fact, the title of the book is taken from the astrological sign of Lee Harvey Oswald's birth. Don't be mistaken, this book is not about astrology. It is determined to explore the meaning and purpose of plot in the lives of the world, the country and the individual players. We get so caught up in our plans that we lose track of possible outcomes that could be to the detriment of those involved and beyond.

"He believed that nothing can be finally known that involves human motive and need. There is always another level, another secret, a way in which the heart breeds a deception so mysterious and complex it can only be taken for a deeper kind of truth."

The combination of action and philosophy made this a super memorable thriller. I may be biased based on the subject matter for my affinity to this story though I am not a Delillo diehard and probably won't end being one even after reading this five star read. I'm semi-objective and semi-subjective and maybe somewhere in between saying this is a definite top ten book of the year for me.


"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's not generated by cause and effect like the other two lines. It's 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."

"Destiny is larger than facts or events. It is something to believe in outside the ordinary borders of the senses, with God so distant from our lives."

"A fact is innocent until someone wants it. Then it becomes intelligence."

"He believed that nothing can be finally known that involves human motive and need. There is always another level, another secret, a way in which the heart breeds a deception so mysterious and complex it can only be taken for a deeper kind of truth."

"Knowledge was a danger, ignorance a cherished asset."


"A thousand years from now, people will look in the history books and read where the lines were drawn and who made the right choice and who didn't. The dynamics of history favor the Soviet Union. This is totally obvious to someone coming of age in America with an open mind. Not that I ignore the values and traditions there. The fact is there's the potential of being attracted to the values. Everyone wants to love America. But how can an honest man forget what he sees in the daily give-and-take that's like a million little wars?"

"Every room has a music that tells you things if you know how to listen."

"I'll tell you what it means. these orbiting sensors that can hear us in our beds. It means the end of loyalty. The more complex the systems, the less convictions in people. Conviction will be drained out of us. Devices will drain us, make us vague and pliant."

"Maybe what has to happen is that the individual must allow himself to be swept along, must find himself in the stream of no- choice, the single direction. This is what makes things inevitable. You use the restrictions and penalties they invent to make yourself stronger. History means to merge. The purpose of history is to climb out of your own skin. He knew what Trotsky had written, that revolution leads us out of the dark night of the isolated self. We live forever in history, outside ego and id. He wasn't sure he knew exactly what the id was but he knew it lay hidden in Hidell."

"Signs that you exist. Evidence that Lee Oswald matches the cardboard cutout they've been shaping all along. You're a quirk of history. You're a coincidence. They devise a plan, you fit it perfectly. They lose you, here you are. There's a pattern in things. Something in us has an effect on independent events. We make things happen. The conscious mind gives one side only. We're deeper than that. We extend into time. Some of us can almost predict the time and place and nature of our own death. We know it on some deeper plane. It's almost a romance, a flirtation. I look for it, Leon. I chase it discreetly."

"Create coincidence so bizarre they have to believe it. Create a loneliness that beats with a violent desire. This kind of man. An arrest, a false name, a stolen credit card. Stalking a victim can be a way of organizing one's loneliness, making a network out of it, a fabric of connections. Desperate men give their solitude a purpose and a destiny."

Caso alguém queira iniciar-se na obra de DeLillo, talvez deva começar por este romance, que eu traduzi para a Sextante em 2013. Por coincidência, a minha tradução foi editada precisamente no 50.º aniversário do assassínio de JFK.

O título do romance, «Libra», deve-se ao facto de Lee Harvey Oswald, o assassino de JFK (pelo menos a fazer fé na tese «oficial»), ser do signo Balança. Ora, DeLillo sublinha ao longo do romance o carácter cheio de contradições de Oswald: um homem cobarde e corajoso, ponderado e tresloucado, um disléxico que lia avidamente, uma figura heróica e grotesca. E põe na boca de uma personagem esta reflexão: «Este rapaz está sentado nos pratos da balança, pronto a pender para um lado ou para o outro.»

Ao longo deste romance, DeLillo faz do assassínio de Kennedy e das circunstâncias que o rodearam o símbolo perfeito de uma América paranóica, desconfiada da própria sombra, violenta e impiedosa. Sublinha que a vida, em toda a sua banalidade, contém em si inúmeros labirintos. Que não precisamos de inventar teorias da conspiração muito elaboradas para explicar a torrente de coincidências e paradoxos com que somos confrontados a cada passo.

Por fim, sob a capa da insignificância, da loucura fanática, Oswald personifica, neste romance, a profunda solidão do ser humano. A mãe de Oswald, Marguerite, é tão fascinante na sua loucura e destempero que DeLillo não resiste a encerrar as quatrocentas e cinquenta e tal páginas de «Libra» com uma catilinária desvairada desta mãe, convencida de que o filho foi um joguete nas mãos da História, nas mãos dos serviços secretos, do governo. É a voz dos amantes desequilibrados das teorias da conspiração, mas é também a voz da dor genuína de uma mãe que perdeu o filho querido. Os assassinos também têm mãe, os assassinos também têm quem chore por eles. E é este, talvez, o mistério mais indecifrável de toda esta história, que DeLillo conta em estilo magistral: Kennedy era fácil de amar, Oswald era um ser profundamente desamorável. O que fazer com ele, como amá-lo?

Most people don't like playing with known history facts but its done with so such skill, the getting into Oswald head his serious nature, but living in a fantasy world with his limited skills a Russian wife with the American dream that he can't provide for his leftist political ideals. in spite of the murdering of the president of the united states you get the feeling this guy can't get a break he's like beaten dog. The other character who may or may not be a real person or based on a real person the CIA agent who is looking at the events after they transpire. This is the second time I read this book I hope someone take a crack at this text.

This book of DeLillo was a brilliant dive into the background of Kennedy's presumed assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald (with a cameo of his killer Jack Ruby). It is well-written and well-paced and a great read. I would put it on the level with Mao II and White Noise but below Underworld. So an essential DeLillo as long as you have UW under your belt already.

In earlier times, the bullet had been other things, because Pythagorean metempsychosis is not reserved for humankind alone.

—Borges, "In Memoriam, J.F.K." (trans. Andrew Hurley)

Literature is the attempt to interpret, in an ingenious way, the myths we no longer understand, at the moment we no longer understand them, since we no longer know how to dream them or reproduce them. Literature is the competition of misinterpretations that consciousness naturally and necessarily produces on themes of the unconscious, and like every competition it has its prizes.

—Deleuze, "Desert Islands" (trans. Michael Taormina)

Much of the literature of the twentieth century is a warning against the dream of absolute knowledge. This is less some new thing, some modernism, than a resuscitation of pre-realist narrative modes, from meta-fiction to satire, from Homer to Sterne. Conrad's and Faulkner's broken and partial narratives, Joyce's linguistically constructed reality, Woolf's and Lawrence's insistence on the unconscious, Borges's self-parodic idealism, Nabokov's "game of worlds," and more. The ethical postulate here, compatible both with belief (because God works in mysterious ways) and skepticism (because what do I know?), is that the world will always elude every abstraction. Every abstraction, therefore, should be regarded as the aesthetic production that it manifestly is, and evaluated on its usefulness or beauty. Granted sufficiently rich accounts of beauty and usefulness, accounts capable of encompassing what we think of as knowledge and morality, this ethic has to our artists seemed superior to the murderous self-assurance of the Enlightenment's worser offsprings, legitimate and illegitimate, such as religious fundamentalism and scientific socialism.

DeLillo's Libra is a bravura contribution to this tradition. A fictional hypothesis as to the nature and purpose of the Kennedy assassination, the novel portrays a gallery of various intelligence operatives, right-wing extremists, Cuban exiles, and mobsters as they conspire to lure the U.S. into war against Fidel Castro. Their first plan is to simulate a communist assassination attempt against the President, but they eventually get around to plotting an actual assassination for which they will frame a young mysterious man with communist ties. That man, of course, is Lee Harvey Oswald, and Libra gives us in alternating chapters his bidungsroman-cum-tragedy from his youth in the Bronx through his period in Japan with the Marines and his defection to Russia to his falling in with the conspirators in New Orleans and his eventual death at the hands of Jack Ruby. The Oswald chapters of Libra—named for Oswald's astrological sign, symbolic of the suspended judgment in which he lingers—are the novel's glory. I have read about half of DeLillo's novels and so far Oswald is the deepest and most complicated character has has created. A man who feels himself fated to join the current of history, he is in fact subject to chance, whim, and authority. But in the course of his quest for higher meaning, he becomes a kind of roving eye, an observer of the world's panorama, a Cold War flâneur on the cross-haired boulevards. A frustrated writer, dyslexic and desiring to write short stories about American life, Oswald is a largely sympathetic warning about how the aesthetic imagination may go wrong by confusing its visions with the shape of history. DeLillo astoundingly reinvents Oswald as a kind of Raskolnikov or Dedalus, a brilliant young man lost in the labyrinth of his confusion and verging on violence or abandonment. In this way, Oswald mirrors the men who use him to bring their own visions into reality, though all they get of their vision is the President's head half blown off, rather than the deposition of Castro.

Likewise, the novel shows through its own elaborate mirroring structures the identity of left- and right-wing totalization. Above or below it all, as the writer's and reader's surrogate, is the CIA historian Nicholas Branch, tasked with writing the history of the assassination but increasingly aware that the construction of a coherent narrative out of the factual morass will be impossible. That this impossibility is convenient to his masters does not escape him, nor should it escape us, but DeLillo takes the step Branch does not and provides an aesthetic reconstruction—literature, an interpretation—out of the event that is both too large in its mythic proportion (slain king, dying young god) and too small in its infinitude of quotidiana to understand. DeLillo's interpretation is partial but openly fictional, and in its quiet emphasis on aesthetic perception, it invites its own critique and contestation, it summons rival visions into being.

I haven't look into the Kennedy assassination in many years, but DeLillo's version seems not wholly implausible, at least in its assignment of motives to deep state agents, Cuban exiles, and mafiosi. It bears a superficial resemblance to the case laid out in Oliver Stone's sublimely ludicrous JFK, but whereas Stone presents a paranoiacally seamless and all-but-overt conspiracy, complete with LBJ saying things like, "You'll get your damn war," DeLillo far more convincingly depicts a ragtag operation dogged at every turn by accidents, coincidences, cross-purposes, and mixed motives. If DeLillo's version is not what happened—and he doesn't claim that it is—it is probably a good approximation of how something like this might have happened. Stone's agitprop extravaganza, like so many works of the fascistic imagination ("Remember our fallen king"), is avenged by history through camp. But DeLillo's seriousness of purpose and eye for irony achieves something close to tragedy; he even rescues in advance David Ferrie, one of the novel's most fascinating and sympathetic characters ("This man is strange even to himself"), from Joe Pesci's unforgettably and unforgivably over-the-top performance. (I should note here that students of the historical record argue that Ferrie has never been justly dealt with by any theorists of conspiracy.)

These questions of history and politics are all somewhat beside the point, though, due to the novel's own all-but-overt fictionality, its recursive reflections on what it means to be in or to understand history. No arid philosophical exercise, this is a fully inhabited novel. In the famous preface to an infamously ill-named book, Conrad wrote, "A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line." That a novel could aspire to the condition of art in this sense was a new idea in Conrad's time, and he helped set the standard. The standard involves a richness of thought and sensation—what Nabokov called "sensuous thought"—on every page. James said the novelist is a person on whom nothing is lost. A novel is an invention, sentence by sentence; in a potboiler, each sentence must advance the plot, but in an art-novel, each sentence must advance the vision. Libra is so inventive, so surprising on an almost paragraph by paragraph basis, that DeLillo seems never to lose anything. You watch him as if he were a live performer. I can quote almost at random. How a secretary laughs with Ferrie in the homophobic Cold War years:

"Why are homosexuals addicted to soap opera?" Ferrie said absently. "Because our lives are a vivid situation."

Delphine fell forward in bawdy laughter. Her upper body shot toward the desk, hands gripping the edges to steady her. She sat there rocking, a great and spacious amusement. David Ferrie was surprised. He didn't know he'd said something funny. He thought the remark was melancholy, sadly philosophical, a throwaway line for an aimless afternoon. Not that this was the first time Delphine had reacted so broadly to something he said. She considered his mildest comic remarks automatically outrageous. She had two kinds of laughter. Lewd and bawdy and abandoned, the required worldly response to Ferrie's sexual status, her sense of a kind of anal lore that informed the sources of his humor. Softer laughter for Banister, throaty, knowing, wanting to be led, rustling with complicities, little whispery places in her voice, a laughter you could not hear without knowing they were lovers.

How a garage looks, how money looks, how a conspiratorial Sunday feels in New Orleans:

Sundays the street was empty and the garage was closed and looked like an abandoned Spanish church inside the lowered grille, with light falling through the high dusty windows. This was where he met Agent Bateman, who had a key to the office. They went through the office and sat in one of the cars set aside for the Secret Service and FBI. He told Bateman what he'd learned at 544 Camp, which wasn't a hell of a lot. He wanted to use the Minox but Bateman said no, no, no, no. He gave Lee a white envelope containing a number of well-wrinkled bills, like money saved by children.

"Like money saved by children"—and these are incidental moments, near throwaways. But as Woolf also argued, the basic unit of a novel is not the sentence but the chapter. Quoting can't give a sense of the novel's long rhythms, a staccato swell, the tap-tap-tap of DeLillo's little imagist/cubist typewriter paragraphs gathering to a crescendo through a series of advances and retreats. Libra also works by this measure, though aided by history, to be sure. Given the subject matter, this book perhaps has more in common with classical tragedy—the fated hero, the slain leader, the hidden knowledge, the chorus authoritative and aghast—than most modern novels, but by its last sixty or so pages it is positively roaring with the noise of everything coming together, even the things not planned for, with a mystique that only fictional narrative can treat with anything like dignity because all fiction, unlike all conspiracies and conspiracy theorizing, comes under the saving sign of irony, the sign of true-and-not-true, the sign of it-feels-like-this-and-it-seems-like-that, the highest freedom, as Lukács said before making his own entrance into history and into Russia, in a world abandoned by God:

That's how it went, that's the kind of summer it was. One day he was going after roaches with a pancake flipper, mashing them flat—one of those soft plastic flippers that are always on sale. He'd lost his job. They fired him because he didn't do the work, which seemed reasonable enough. Storms shaking the city. They shot Medgar Evers dead in Jackson, Miss., a field secretary of the NAACP. Later they would dynamite the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, four Negro girls killed, twenty-three injured. One day he was hunting down roaches in his kitchen, unshaved, wearing clothes he hadn't changed in a week. The next day found him in a gawky Russian suit and narrow tie, with his looseleaf notebook at his side, engaging in radio debate on Conversation Carte Blanche, another public-affairs show on WDSU. This time they'd checked up beforehand and had questions ready about Russia and his defection, catching him by surprise. Working the bolt on the Mannlicher. Cleaning the Mannlicher. They had plans for him, whoever they were. Heat lightning at night. It was easy to believe they'd been watching him for years, working things around him, knowing the time would come.

I could criticize elements of Libra, certainly. There are a few conspirators too many, I think, and by the end even DeLillo seems to have lost interest in firmly differentiating between Parmenter and Everett, among Frank, Raymo, and Wayne. I suspect, though obviously cannot prove, that the novel began with an Underworld-like ambition to canvas the America of the Kennedy years, but the tragedy of Oswald becomes grander and more compelling than anatomizing America; at times, I thought the conspiracy material might be usefully relegated to a bookending prologue and epilogue around Oswald's story, however much hard-won research DeLillo would sacrifice and however much stunning prose we would miss. But it it seems ungrateful even to complain about a novel this good written in my lifetime, its characters rescued from the real world and made to live in art, Jack Ruby and Marguerite Oswald, its vision of roiling outcast America, far from New York and Washington, far left and far right, black and Cuban and Catholic and Jewish, a true diversity traduced in today's paeans to "diversity" as dreamed by grim and anesthetic bureaucracies. I would put Libra without hesitation among the great works of assassination and apocalypse and irony and skepticism and national or sub-national epic, with Macbeth and Demons and The Secret Agent and Under the Volcano and Invisible Man, and with all the great warnings not to confuse the map for the territory. Metempsychosis (met him pike hoses) is a real intuition—DeLillo can make us feel that we are Oswald, and Borges's bullet now seems to be incarnate everywhere—but proper material for the artist, the only responsible truth-teller, the one who admits it is all a lie. I would give up this novel for Oswald to have forgotten about history and written those short stories, but I needed this novel to know that.

Libra is an especially powerful novel, certainly DeLillo at his best (I know some people can find him a bit hit and miss but he generally always hits a home run for me). This novel ticks all my boxes; it grapples with an historical event (the assassination of JFK) in a way that leans heavily on facts but is nonetheless fictionalised and uses this to explore broader questions about a moment in time, social structures and values, and big ideas about humanity. Somewhere in here there is a great passage about the line between the facts of historical events, the truth about people’s lives, and imagined realities which I think really nails what DeLillo is up to here. This isn’t a novel about what Lee Harvey Oswald is or isn’t responsible for, it’s a novel about the political and cultural concerns that shaped American society in the early 1960s. Although a challenging read, I found it immensely engaging, thoughtful, and interrogative.

Epic poems are wearisome, Poe said. This is a work of genius - but I'm relieved to be done.

Libra is what great historical fiction should be carefully researched and empathetic in presentation of people, time, place and events. It is revelatory of the motivations, inclinations and ideas that drive us, and create history.

About Secrets. ““When my daughter tells me a secret,” Win said, “her hands get very busy. She takes my arm, grabs me by the shirt collar, pulls me close, pulls me into her life. She knows how intimate secrets are. She likes to tell me things before she goes to sleep. Secrets are an exalted state, almost a dream state. They’re a way of arresting motion, stopping the world so we can see ourselves in it. …there’s something vitalizing in a secret. My little girl is generous with secrets. I wish she weren’t, frankly. Don’t secrets sustain her, keep her separate, make her self-aware? How can she know who she is if she gives away her secrets?”

DeLillo proceeds to tell a story, and the secrets behind… the personal biographies of those involved.

Spying on Secrets. “Larry was part of the Groton-Yale-OSS network of so-called gentlemen spies, many of them now in important Agency positions. He was not old money, not quite elect, but still a member, ready to accede to the will of the leadership. They were the pure line, a natural extension of schoolboy societies, secret oaths and initiations, the body of assumptions common to youn...(truncated passage) … “Oh we are the jolly coverts, we lie and we spy...” … “ you run the risk of catching it. Comprende? Whatever you set your mind to, your personal total obsession, this is what kills you. Poetry kills you if you’re a poet, and so on. People choose their death whether they know it or not.”

The Times. “There were times when Larry thought lunch in a superior restaurant was the highlight of Western man.”

Lee’s Ideology. “I wouldn’t be completely honest if I said I could pin him down, pin him right to the spot. He may be a pure Marxist, the purest ofbelievers. Or he may be an actor in real life. What I know with absolute certainty is that he’s poor, he’s dreadfully, grindingly poor. What’s the expression I want?” “Piss-poor.”

Spy Luncheon Consensus. “They looked at each other and laughed. They laughed in appreciation of the richness of life, the fabulous and appalling nature of human affairs, the good food and drink, the superior service, the wrecked careers, the whole teeming abscess of folly and regret. … flush and well fed, a little tipsy, all the right things. The Honduran ambassador said hello. A man from Pemex stopped to tell a richly filthy joke. It was a lovely lunch. It was great, rich, lovely and perfectly right.”

The Examination. “ A printout of the names of witnesses, informers, investigators, people linked to Lee H. Oswald, people linked to Jack Ruby, all conveniently and suggestively dead. In 1979 a House select committee determined there was nothing statistically abnormal about the death rate among those who were connected in some way to the events of November 22.

Win’s Conclusion. “The truth is he hasn’t written all that much. He has extensive and overlapping notes—notes in three-foot drifts, all these years of notes. But of actual finished prose, there is precious little. It is impossible to stop assembling data. The stuff keeps coming. There are theories to evaluate, lives to ponder and mourn.”

The Organization. “For twenty-some-odd years in the Bureau I lived in a special society that pretty much satisfied the most serious things in my nature. Secrets to trade and keep, certain dangers, an opportunity to function in tight spots, wave a gun in people’s faces. That’s a charmed society.”
Member Characteristics. “you’ve got criminal tendencies, and I’m not saying this is true of you or me, one of the places to make your mark is law enforcement.”

Religious Right. “The Minutemen are leaner, move close to the ground. But there’s a fervor I don’t trust. They’re waiting for the Day. They’ve got their ammo clips hidden in the garage and they know the Day is fast approaching. They get their politics all mixed up with the second coming of Christ.”

The Target. “Everything is supposed to be something. But it never is. That’s the nature of existence.” “I know. You studied philosophy where was it.” … “It’s not just Kennedy himself,” Banister was saying on the other side of the door. “It’s what people see in him. We’re supposed to believe he’s the hero of the age. Did you ever see a man in such a hurry to be great? He thinks he can make us a different kind of society. He’s trying to engineer a shift. We’re not smart enough for him. We’re not mature, energetic, Harvard, world traveler, rich, handsome, lucky, witty. Perfect white teeth.” …
“I believe deeply there are forces in the air that compel men to act. Call it history or necessity or anything you like. What, do you sense in the air? That’s all I’m saying, T-Jay. Is there something riding in the air that you feel on your body, prickling your skin like warm sweat.” … “He’d seen too many evasions and betrayals, fighting men encouraged and then abandoned for political reasons. They didn’t call it the Company for nothing. It was set up to obscure the deeper responsibilities, the calls of blood trust that have to be answered.”

Bedtime Talk. Win. “I’ll tell you what it means, these orbiting sensors that can hear us in our beds. 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.” Mary. “She encouraged him tacitly, creating receptive fields around him, stillnesses. A wifely labor as natural to her as choosing curtains. By now she was adept at discharging an air of shy curiosity and although there was no longer any real work for him to do, she still wanted to know, wanted badly to hear.”

Lee Oswald. “We lead more interesting lives than we think. We are characters in plots, without the compression and numinous sheen. Our lives, examined carefully in all their affinities and links, abound with suggestive meaning, with themes and involute turnings we have not allowed ourselves to see completely. He would show the secret symmetries in a nondescript life.” … “ There were too many ironies and coincidences. A shrewd person would one day start a religion based on coincidence, if he hasn’t already, and make a million. Yes called him Ozzie the Rabbit for his pursed lips and dimples and for his swiftness afoot, as they saw it, when there was a scuffle in the barracks or one of the bars off-base. He was five feet nine, blue-eyed, weighed a hundred and thirty-five, would soon be eighteen years old, had conduct and proficiency ratings that climbed for a while, then fell, then climbed and fell again, and his scores on the rifle range were inconsistent.”

Lee in Russia. “He got out of bed and walked to the window. Hurrying people, long lines for buses. He washed and shaved. He put on a white shirt, gray flannel trousers, the dark narrow tie, the tan cashmere sweater, and stood in his bare feet at the window once more. Muscovites, he thought. After a while he put on his socks and good shoes and the flannel suit coat. He looked in the gilt mirror. Then he sat in one of the old chairs in the lace-curtained room and crossed one leg carefully over the other. He was a man in history now.” … “The secret he’d carried through the Marine Corps for over a year, his plan to defect, was the most powerful knowledge in his life up to this point. Now, in the office of some bald-head official, he tried to explain what it meant to him to live in the Soviet Union, at the center of world struggle.” … KGB Response. “USSR is only great in literature,” he said. “Go home, my friend, and take our good wishes with you.” He wasn’t kidding either.” … “ He had two hours to leave the country. The police official who called with this news did not seem to know Oswald had talked to a passport official earlier in the day. Lee tried to explain that the first official had not given a deadline, had held out hope that his visa might be extended.” … “in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He began to describe the man’s office, his clothing. He felt a rush of desperation. The second official didn’t know what he was talking about. It was this blankness that caused his terror. No one could distinguish him from anyone else. There was some trick he hadn’t mastered which might easily set things right. Other people knew what it was…” … “For the first time he realized what a dangerous thing he’d done, leaving his country. He struggled against this awareness. He hated knowing something he didn’t want to know. There is a world inside the world. I’ve done all I can. Let others make the choices now. Felt time close down. Felt something mocking in the air as he slipped off the edge of the only known surface we can speak of, as ordinary men, bleeding, in warm water.” … He was down to twenty-eight dollars. He wrote in Russian in his notebook. I have, he has, she has, you have, we have, they have.”

KGB Listens. “I want to write short stories on contemporary American life. I saw a lot. I kept silent and observed. What I saw in the U.S. plus my Marxist reading is what brought me here. I always thought of this country as my own.” … “ “When I read Hemingway I get hungry,” Kirilenko said. “He doesn’t have to write about food to make me hungry. It’s the style that does it. I have a huge appetite when I read this man.” Oswald smiled at the idea. “If he’s a genius of anything, he’s a genius of this. He writes about mud and death and he makes me hungry. You’ve never been to Michigan?” … “We have large subjects to cover,” he said. “So: I would like you to call me Alek.” … KGB Opinion. “But idealists of course are unpredictable. They tend to be the ones who turn bitter overnight, deceived by lies they’ve told themselves. Men who defect for practical reasons are easier to manage and maintain.”

Lee Returns to USA. “The sewer system is a form of welfare state. It’s a government funnel to the sea. I like to think of people being independent, digging latrines in the woods, in a million backyards. Each person is responsible for his own shit.”

Win’s Exams the Evidence. “After Oswald, men in America are no longer required to lead lives of quiet desperation. You apply for a credit card, buy a handgun, travel through cities, suburbs and shopping malls, anonymous, anonymous, looking for a chance to take a shot at the first puffy empty famous face, just to let people know there is someone out there who reads the papers.” … “ the megaton novel James Joyce would have written if he’d moved to Iowa City and lived to be a hundred. Everything belongs, everything adheres, the mutter of obscure witnesses, the photos of illegible documents and odd sad personal debris, things gathered up at a dying—old shoes, pajama tops, letters from Russia. It is all one thing, a ruined city of trivia where people feel real pain. This is the Joycean Book of America, remember—the novel in which nothing is left out.” … “ Can a photograph be lonely? This sadness has him fixed to his chair, staring. He feels the souls of empty places, finds himself returning again and again to the pictures of the second-floor lunchroom in the Texas School Book Depository. Rooms, garages, streets were emptied out for the making of official pictures. Empty forever now, stuck in some picture limbo. He feels the souls of those who were there and left. He feels sadness in objects, in warehouse cartons and blood-soaked clothes.”

We’re 1/2 way through. The remainder unfolds the plot, the story leading to the final act if you will.
We’ll conclude here, but hope you’ll read it through (or visit pg 2 of my high lights) to the mother’s conclusion.

“You cannot state the truth of this case with simple yes and no. I have to tell a story. This is a boy the other children teased. It was torn, torn shirts and a bloody nose. Listen to me. I will write books about the life of Lee Harvey Oswald. I have information pertinent to the case. I am all over the world. I have struggled to raise my boys on mingy sums of money and today I am everywhere, newsreel and foreign press” … “ When the truth is that the mother is neglected. If you research the life of Jesus, you see that Mary mother of Jesus disappears from the record once he is crucified and risen. Where is the mother who raised the boy? When the boy is dead, do they build a box around the mother?”

Impatto imminente

Una boccia su un tavolo da biliardo impatta su un'altra. Proviene da un punto relativamente remoto. L'impatto non è altro che l'evoluzione di un percorso partito tempo prima, effetto sulla stecca, deviazioni di sponde, abilità e strategia del giocatore, posizione iniziale delle bocce. L'impatto che si osserva è l'epilogo.
Come ci si è arrivati, a quell'impatto?

Questa è la domanda che si è fatto DeLillo con questo intrigante libro.

Il tempo è il 22 novembre del 1963. Il luogo è Dallas, sulla decappottabile presidenziale. L'impatto è tra la testa del presidente John Fitzgerald Kennedy e un proiettile sparato da un fucile di precisione.

Chi ha sparato? Lee Oswald, dicono le indagini. Forse.

Aiutato da qualcuno? Forse.

Come ci è arrivato lì, un uomo come Lee Oswald? Come è arrivato a imbracciare un fucile e a sparare? E' stato un suo percorso personale? O ci è stato portato? C'è chi l'ha selezionato per le sue inclinazioni? O chi ha tramato nell'ombra per plasmare la sua mente e spingerlo in questa direzione senza possibilità di ritorno? Quest'uomo è stato abilmente manovrato magari affascinandolo con l'idea di essere ricordato nei libri di scuola come l'uomo che uccise il presidente degli Stati Uniti d'America?

De Lillo si fa la domanda. E in questo bellissimo libro parte da lontano e ipotizza ragioni, sviluppo e svolgimento dell'azione, partendo dal punto di vista proprio di Oswald, uomo non mentalmente stabile, solitario, abbastanza debole, incline alla violenza, spinto da ideali (chiederà asilo in Russia) nemmeno troppo chiari per lui.

Chi è Oswald? Un assassino, un sovversivo, un pazzo, un poveraccio in balia degli eventi, un burattino manovrato? O una vittima?

Il libro inizia molto prima dello sparo di Dallas e termina subito dopo. Non è stato per me immediato entrare nella trama, perché molti dei personaggi non sono presentati e non sapendo che ruolo abbiano poi nella vicenda è necessario darci dentro con Google. Ma dopo poche pagine il libro inizia a volare alto e diviene estremamente interessante (uno dei migliori libri di Delillo letti fin'ora).

Delillo si è documentato meticolosamente per scrivere il libro e dare alla luce la sua visione dei fatti. Complotto? Coincidenze? Chissà, forse nessuno potrà ormai dirci com'è andata davvero. Anche se non nego di far fatica a immaginare che un apparato, la CIA, comandato dal Presidente possa arrivare a (far) uccidere il Presidente stesso.

Mi sono domandato spesso, durante la lettura, quanto JFK debba la sua notorietà a ciò che ha fatto come Presidente degli Stati Uniti d'America e quanto invece alle sue vicende private (donne...) e alla sua morte violenta, su cui, leggevo, sono stati scritti circa 40000 (quarantamila!) libri.

Un gran bel libro comunque questo di Delillo. Interessante per la prospettiva assolutamente innovativa e per la scrittura, veramente bella e coinvolgente.

I'm told that the Don DeLillo who wrote this masterpiece is the same guy who wrote Underworld and White Noise, but as far as I'm concerned that's a plainly ridiculous theory and I'm not buying it at all and I've hired a private investigator to get to the bottom of why there are two Don DeLillos and why this one hasn't sued the other idiot for giving him a bad name. It's a mystery.

Libra is entirely great. Its vocals, its backing, the bass, the drums, man alive the drums, the harmonies - celestial, Wilsonian is the only word. And - of course - the lyrics.

As we know it's about that JFK thing. The whole thing, all of it. So yes, this is the ur-conspiracy we are dealing with, which all the other conspiracies use as the template. Given my well-advertised detestation of all things conspiracytheoretical, you might think I would want to give Libra the widest of berths. Being a contrarian means I couldn't. I take contrary opinions to myself too. I had to pay my dues. I had to stare the god damned conspiracy in its jowles, I had to rummage in its belly and pick over what it ate last night, ugh, all its grimy details, its filthy postulates and its mind-damaging Agatha-Christie's-Murder-on-the-Orient-Express conclusion that - gasp, look away now - they ALL did it!

So I looked and stared and rummaged and poked and turned affadavits over in my hand and ran the tape found in the camera up Marilyn Monroe's backside, all of that. Ech. It's so displeasing. It does not make you a better person.

This book is like dancing with Don DeLillo, and dancing with the young President, and dancing with the handsome man who has no face, and cannot be named, while ten quaaludes are slushing through your blood system and dark hands are pouring margaritas for you at each slow waltzlike revolution of the enormous ballroom from whose windows the glitterball reveals gun barrels glinting. Through all the slow-as-the-Devonian-Age build up to even the first faint gleamings of the plot to kill John Kennedy your brain gets reformed, your aesthetic sense gets taken down and reworked with minor chords replacing all the major ones, its like a dream but a weird lovely one, one of those thousand year long dreams you wake from on some Sundays when the world can take long minutes to suck back into place... how long have I been away? Whose face is on my own head now? It takes so long to read Libra, it's such a slog through all this stuff which might have gone down like that or might on the other hand, or not, or partly.

What DD does in his gradually accelerating sarabande is to take the absolute standard CIA/Mafia/Teamsters/FBI/Cubans conspiracy and weave all the ghosts and spirits together, voices humming like a hive, all the five hundred characters, into a symphony of incidence and co-incidence wittingly but at the same time blindly moving like a giant shoal of fate towards the moving target in the limousine in Dallas on the day that Deep Purple by Nino Tempo and April Stevens was number one on the Billboard charts.

This is a fantastic novel. The imposter "Don DeLillo" could never have written it.

4.5

I'm finally convinced that DeLillo is a genius, and I'm also convinced that everything in this novel is factually accurate. Don't be modest, Don.