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)

Oswald's Tale (1995)

I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist when it comes to the assassination of John Kennedy, but I sure know the rhythms of the story now. I noticed it when I read Stephen King's 11/22/63 novel a few years ago, and again as I revisited Norman Mailer's lengthy journalistic treatment of Lee Harvey Oswald, focusing on his time in Russia. Once again Mailer is working with Lawrence Schiller, his collaborator on The Executioner's Song. With the Soviet Union over and a temporary opening of Russian government in 1993, Mailer and Schiller gained access to KGB documents regarding Oswald's time living in Russia from late 1959 to 1962. They also conducted interviews with people who knew or were aware of him there. Of course the KGB monitored Oswald closely. Even now, nobody really knows what he was doing there. He might have been a crazy mixed-up guy or anything. He was followed around and bugs were placed in his living quarters. What emerges is a much better sense of this mysterious historical figure, for better or worse filtered through Mailer's novelistic instincts. I think on balance it's for the better, because approaching Oswald as a literary character does seem to yield insights into the even greater mystery of the assassination. Following his movements and public statements closely, in combination with the KGB transcripts of his domestic disputes with his Russian wife Marina (who bore him two daughters and of course moved back with him to the US), does seem to provide a clearer view of Oswald. He was unbelievably young, first—just 20 when he defected to the USSR, just 24 when he was gunned down two days after the JFK assassination. So we start from Minsk, in the first half of this book, and then travel all the familiar ways through Cuba and Dallas and New Orleans and Mexico and finally back to Dallas again. One more time we see the Montgomery Ward warehouse down the street. Somehow I know this story. I'm the right age cohort, plus osmosis. People are still trying to figure out the Jack the Ripper murders too, so there's probably little relief in sight. Mailer is persuasive—first that there is a mystery to be solved, and second that it remains less than fully explained, and finally, that Lee Harvey Oswald, followed shortly by Jack Ruby (and 38 years later by 19 terrorists), may be among the luckiest sons of bitches who ever lived in terms of doing one or two things exactly right. I don't know what happened in Dallas that day, nobody does, but following Mailer the lone assassin theory now doesn't seem any less likely than any of the others, given that nothing in this episode is likely. Mailer wants to quarrel with Gerald Posner, whose Case Closed was new at the time, and I like that. He pokes some holes in Posner's case, but it's easy to see they could well be only small holes. The mystery endures. Indeed, that's Mailer's subtitle here: An American Mystery. Worth reading for further osmosis.

In case it's not at the library.

11/22/63 (2011)

In this day and age it might be true that no one writes more compelling big fat novels than our master of horror, Stephen King. As you probably know (or can tell), 11/22/63 is not exactly horror, but more like straight-up science fiction time travel with a dash of alternate history, plus various moral object lessons. As is my experience with so many King novels, approximately the first third is the best part, busy laying out concepts and embarking on the quest of the plot. After that it's often a lot of attempts to resolve issues large and small, which starts to feel mechanical. For the most part King adheres to the DC Comics precepts of time travel—in short, you can't change history no matter what you do, so don't even try—though it switches up some of the rules and has a few surprises. The core premise is pure baby boomer territory, with our two main heroes traveling back to 1958 in a rift they find in the pantry of a diner. Their mission: thwart the assassination of John Kennedy. Complications ensue, as they will in a novel that runs to over 800 pages. Along the way I was impressed by how much information about that day I have absorbed—no surprise really, as I am a Social Security card-carrying baby boomer myself. This story adheres faithfully to the popular lone-gunman version of events, starring Lee Harvey Oswald as the assassin. King hardly ignores the conspiracies, and doesn't exactly rule them out either, but Oswald is the guy they're trying to stop in this book. In an afterword, King discusses the case and how he arrived at the lone-gunman conclusion for himself. (And once again Case Closed is cited, so enough. I will have to get to it one day after all.) To be clear, on the other assumption about Kennedy's death, I do not agree with the idea that Kennedy's assassination was some critical pivot point of American history (beyond the space program), and it turns out King probably has some reservations about that too. There's not much in the way of profound historical insight here, but the great fun of this book is the getting there, always a wonderful point in works of these proportions, when they are working. King obviously relishes the detail of the period under consideration, 1958 to 1963, with the kind of incidentals at which he can be so good, popular culture markers of songs, movies, TV, news events, and even food, along with familiar family emotional dynamics. There's also a very nice love story here. As always, King's knack for making the ordinary feel portentous is well exercised. He is especially good here at anthropomorphizing circumstances—that is, the daily humdrum of good days and bad days—injecting indelible elements of malevolence into things like paper cuts or stumbling on a sidewalk, as if powerful unseen forces are constantly swirling around us and influencing things. This is a fun one for long days and nights of reading.

In case it's not at the library.