So we've finally gotten to sections in Libra where Oswald and the conspirator's plots are intersecting and they're interacting. I'm writing this going into what I assume will be the chapter on Kennedy's assassination (In Dallas). Here are my thoughts:
I don't love Delillo or his style. He is playing with postmodernism which I like and think is cool, but there are moments where I feel he is being esoteric and coy with the information he gives us and the cryptic phrasing, in a way that is interesting but frustrating. For instance the dialogue. Delillo rarely gives us moments where we see "..." Blank said, which is frustrating because it's easy to lose track of who's talking. However, with that complaining out of the way, here's what I do like a lot--and it's some of the postmodernism stuff on narrative and objectivity.
So throughout the book, Delillo is playing with the fact that all his characters are all over the place, and hard to pin down in the historical record. One of the things that is interesting about all the main players from the actual historical record is that there are so many theories. People believe Jack Ruby was in on the murder of JFK and that's why he killed Oswald, people believe he was just a patriot, people believe his Jewishness had something to do with it (this could just be anti-semitism, I didn't look into it), that his role with the cops was suspicious and that they were in on it, that he was in debt to the mob and that's what pressured him into doing it, etc. There are a lot of narratives. And Delillo--a good postmodernist--is hesitant to not explore and accept all the different possibilities, so he sets them all up. He has Ruby talk about how he struggles as a Jew in Dallas, is incredibly insecure about his masculinity and patriotic, friends with the cops, having money troubles, and talking to the mob (and willing to talk to the FBI, so maybe he'll get contracted by the CIA). All of the possible narratives are given a starting point when we first meet Ruby.
Then look at Oswald, who is constantly in flux as a person who is anti-Kennedy and Pro-communism and Castro, but also someone who served in the American military. He is full of contradictions as a person and is easily influenced. When Ferrie takes him to the astrologist and they talk about the characteristics of a Libra, we get this made more explicit. Oswald is balancing "positive Libra" which is headstrong, and full of belief, and also "negative Libra" where he is impulsive and easily influenced by whoever is around him. This is not only an interesting analysis of Delillo's character Oswald, but also addresses the problem with him in history, which is that he doesn't make a lot of sense. He has all these conflicting narratives, seeming simultaneously headstrong and susceptible, both steadfast and impulsive.
Not to mention David Ferrie, a man who explicitly says that he "believes in everything" after taking Oswald to the astrologist. He believes in science, he believes in magical explanations. He takes in every possible explanation and tries to build a world-view out of all of them.
These things aren't just confusing attempts at dealing with historical people being difficult to pin down, they are deliberately postmodern characterizations. The fact that no narrative is above another (even though Delillo is proposing a narrative, he isn't proposing it as one that supersedes another theory), leads Delillo to try to show that any narrative can be set up via historical data, and characterizations. Jack Ruby can be traced to so many different motivations, so, therefore, they are all valid, in fact his motivations were probably multi-faceted, and so it's important for Delillo to explore all of them. Just think of Nicholas Branch, someone with all the information, having trouble creating an accurate narrative, because so many different narratives can be backed up by information. Nicholas Branch--though I didn't talk much about him in this post--is truly just Delillo just exploring historiography as postmodernism. Honestly it is one of the most interesting parts of this book.
