Not necessarily in the plot department but in the CONSPIRACY department, because I was desperately breathing for some concrete conflicting evidence after the rather dry account of Oswald's life. Don't get me wrong, the doc was very good for summarizing the life and works of our buddy Lee and catching us up to speed with the vaguer aspects of his narrative sections in Libra, but the different historical tangents for which there could have been a conspiracy departure never really elaborated as far as I wanted. And I mean, I'm a conspiracy buff (COUGH Lizardmen killed JFK COUGH), but I also heard agreement from my peers, one in particular saying "it could have been Oswald, the mafia, the KGB, the CIA, or something Cuban that assassinated JFK. Simple!" So yeah, a bit blue-balling with the unresolved conspiratorial threads.
I'm loving Libra for it's dedication and entertainment of these themes. Totally a breath of fresh air after so much confusion and doubt to the previous theories! Best of all, Libra has been perfectly (and sometimes chillingly) intertwining the real events with some serious conspiracy suggestions. I was legitimately shocked on page 58, when Nicholas Branch was rattling off all the extremely coincidental, but very real deaths that occurred surrounding the case. I had to pick my jaw up off the ground when I looked this stuff up and it was all factual, and yet I'd never heard of it in my life! There's an excellent mind-blowing effect in foreboding the deaths of characters we just met only pages ago, dropping readers so quickly back to history and fact that a scintillating sinking feeling occurs upon reading it. That's a good conspiracy and it's what I came to see, gosh-diddly-darn it!!
That said, it seems like we're only scratching the surface at the moment; most of the conspiracies have just been splayed out to observe and ponder upon, rather than enacted quite yet. It's an admittedly enjoyable purgatory in the conspiracy novel, entertaining the plausible theories and gauging just how awry these plans might go in the course of Libra. Delillo is off to a good start.
Yeah I personally am enjoying the speculation because I never really learned much about the assassination in the first place. No where in my mind can I remember going over it in school. I got a brief overview about what other people have learned and it didn't seem like much anyway. Most people seemed to have been told that Lee Harvey Oswald was a madman so it's interesting to read from this perspective that suggests he may be conscious of his actions.
ReplyDeleteBefore starting this novel and the class discussions around it, I did not have any sense of how shrouded in mystery the assassination of President Kennedy could be. As you point out, DeLillo has done a masterful job in the first few chapters of setting up the conspiracies and hinting at where they will lead. We all know that JFK is going to get killed, so instead the plot is driven by how that will occur, and what curious coincidences emerge surrounding it.
ReplyDeleteI've also really been enjoying the narrative that DeLillo has created. You mention his intertwining of facts and to I completely agree that these seemingly minute details that you discover are true can really have a significant affect on the reader's perception of the narratives realism.
ReplyDeleteI am really enjoying the conspiracy that Libra is presenting. I really enjoy the disillusioned CIA agents story, just because it is just that right amount of reasonable for a conspiracy theory, rather than something absolutely ridiculous, like say 'Lizardmen'.
ReplyDeleteLol I was bummed I missed doc but now that I'm hearing how "blue-balling" it was, I'm a little less sad. I couldn't agree more though, the novel is off to a great start, and I too am loving this alternate/fiction theory that's constructed around a lot of facts. I feel like a lot of conspiracy stuff involves many people being sheeple, but DeLillo really respects the intellect of his readers.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I really liked the documentary because it's cool to see in the book what stuff actually happened-- if gives me a weird feeling like before you watch a horror movie and it says "based on a true story".
ReplyDeleteIt also reinforces the sort of attitude Lee has within the book and brings him to life a little more.
Frontline, I think, made a deliberate effort to try and distance itself from getting entangled in the conspiracy theories--maybe to a fault. As the title of the show indicates, a biographical investigation of Oswald is the main focus (and he's a pretty fascinating character in his own right, even if we take the lone-gunman approach). But it's true that the documentary tends to downplay or ignore some particular issues that could have been explored further: de Mohrenschildt is not mentioned at all; Ferrie is introduced as a controversial possible connection between Banister and Oswald, but we never really find out *why*.
ReplyDeleteThat said, the doc clocks in at nearly two hours running time. If they had pursued even a fraction of these threads, it would have been a lot longer.
I'm definitely on the side that JFK's assassination is a lot more complicated then it seems. That Oswald most definitely didn't act alone. All the neat and tidy coincidences that are present in the JFK assassination are a bit too much for me. So Delilo presenting his own spin on the events, and doing a really good job of fleshing out the details is great.
ReplyDelete