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.
First off, I definitely agree that it can be frustrating whenever there is dialogue in this book, especially when the two Jacks were talking. Not to mention that I was also struggling with understanding their actual topic of conversation. (All this suspicious talk really gets jumbled up in my head.) Aside from this, it's quite wild to think about how DeLillo mixes in every detail known about each person known to be involved in the assassination. Lee Oswald, Jack Ruby, the like - they're all scales, Libras, balancing every conflicting trait or detail of themselves to create probably the most layered conspiracy theory around this assassination.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like one of the most interesting aspects of this novel is, as you mention, how a lot of different information is presented but it's never clear what the real story is. It's kind of funny because this book is ostensibly a narrative about "the real story" of what happened leading up to the JFK assassination, but in the end, even though we have a lot of information, the real explanation is still very elusive.
ReplyDeleteI think your point that Nicholas Branch is a perfect representative of DeLillo speaks to your argument that Libra is a quintessential piece of postmodernist fiction. In the process of refusing to accept the "dominant explanation of history" DeLillo has to accept all realities, weaving them together in this amazingly complex -- but possibly true -- conspiracy theory.
ReplyDeleteReading you blog post got me thinking about the relation between postmodern ideas on history and the actual practice of history. There have been many written works on the nature of science, but to actually do science one doesn't need to know any of that. Maybe it is the same way for history. If historians are predominantly involved with answering questions about the past, maybe most of the postmodern observations matter very little. Probably not though.
ReplyDeleteHoly cow. I didn't think about that section enough. Nice analysis. I think you're right that DeLillo creates really ambiguous characters who balance many different characterizations like a scale, in order to emphasize the postmodern nature of perceptions of the JFK assassination. His characters are one really powerful way to introduce all the different possible explanations. I think not only are his characters libras, but the title fits book itself because the narrative tries to balance so many internal contradictions. It's a good example of a postmodern history - one that takes into account so very many possible characterizations and narratives.
ReplyDeleteI agree that one of the most fascinating things DeLillo does with his fictional narrative is allow for multiple interpretations or historical narratives to coexist: so Oswald is somehow *both* acting as a "lone gunman" AND as part of a wider conspiracy. Or Ruby is *both* shooting Oswald out of a deep emotional sense of patriotism AND as a kind of mob hit-man. The assassination plot is *both* about Cuba and organized crime. And so on.
ReplyDeleteIt's worth noting that he's not just playing games with us here: it's entirely possible for both possibilities to be true in each of these cases (Ruby is manipulated into thinking he'll be hailed as a hero for killing Oswald even while he's also convinced that Latta will hear about it and reward him richly). Fiction allows us to see that there may not be one single explanation for anything, and people's actions (maybe especially when their actions are so extreme and beyond the pale of usual human behavior) are often a result of a complex combination of factors and intentions.