Libra (1988)

I was hoping to like Don DeLillo’s 10th novel (and nominee for a National Book Award) more than I actually did. It reminded me of three things that all came later: director and cowriter Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie JFK, Norman Mailer’s lengthy journalistic account of Lee Harvey Oswald in his 1995 Oswald’s Tale, and Stephen King’s 2011 science fiction novel 11/22/63. In all cases the author (or auteur) marinated for years or decades in JFK assassination lore, with all its tantalizing red herrings, and then regurgitated a unified field theory of just what happened, more or less. Libra is among the early versions of this exercise, favoring the sinister CIA bloc of theorists. It’s early enough that it predates what has evolved into the before and after debunking of Gerald Posner’s Case Closed in 1993, which I still haven’t read. I know it says something about me that I know the others and not that one. DeLillo focuses more on Oswald, tracking his youth and his time in Russia and after. His assassination attempt on conservative activist Edwin Walker is here, his marriage to the Russian Marina, his travels from Dallas to New Orleans back and forth, his mysterious street activities. George de Mohrenschildt. David Ferrie. Guy Banister. All here. Jack Ruby too. And finally November 22. Such strange characters populating this murky submerged historical scene. I probably should have read Libra sooner. I’m sure it was revelatory in its time and fascinating as one of the first and best of its kind (the overheated paranoid kind). It has lost some of that by now, and honestly that’s probably more me than the novel. Although I will say, having previously slogged through Underworld, it may simply be that I don’t get along well with DeLillo’s writing, which is discursive and suggestive unto the death. I would recommend it as part of any plunge into the JFK assassination mythos, maybe even one place to start. Of the four I’m talking about here, I like Oswald’s Tale best and then 11/22/63. I haven’t seen Stone’s JFK since it was new. I suspect it might grate more now but I remember it as entertaining and think it could well be so still. As for Libra, I think it gets Oswald right, which would have been harder to do without the KGB transcripts Mailer had access to. But Libra, at this juncture, even as fiction, might be a little too open to amorphous conspiracy theories.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)