The Fictional and Nonfictional Life of Lee Oswald in Libra
Don DeLillo's Libra follows the highly controversial, conspiracy-ridden story of President John F. Kennedy's assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald. It is a quintessential work of historical fiction, with many elements of well-documented history blended seamlessly with fictional augmentation and supposition where holes in the documented record reside. Particularly, it covers the unpredictable character of Lee Oswald. There is no doubt that Oswald had a very strange life. Much of the covered events in Libra are well-documented, real events - his service in the Marine Corps, his court-martial after shooting himself, his defection to the Soviet Union, and his subsequent suicide attempt, selling of national secrets, and his defection back to the United States. Many characters, such as George de Mohrenschildt and Jack Ruby, were real and known to have interacted with Lee. His pot-shot at General Walker is extremely likely to have actually happened. Lee did in fact "create" a New Orleans branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which he claimed had 35 members under his famous pseudonym "A.J. (Alek James) Hidell" (when in fact he was the sole member, and when his "branch" was not even acknowledged by the national organization). There are also records of him buying the two guns under "Hidell." His journey between cities - Moscow and New Orleans and Dallas and Mexico City - all really happened. And of course, on the infamous day of the assassination, Lee was found at the scene, murder weapon still in the room where he shot from. In fact, Libra is as accurate as to include the fact that he was held at gunpoint by a police officer shortly after, vouched for by his employer, and grabbed a can of Coke right after. His comment on Marxism versus Communism was in fact one of his last words. As we can see by these examples and numerous others, where the events of Libra intersect documented history, everything is as "accurate" as history.
Nonetheless, the majority of Libra centers around the undocumented or undocumentable parts of the narrative, and it is here in the cracks of history and the depths of the unknowable that DeLillo flourishes. Like we have seen in other great works of historical fiction, an invisible tapestry of implausible-but-technically-possible connections is woven to fill the gaps between documents. The main premise of Libra is that these events in history and others DeLillo constructs are part of a larger plan by disillusioned CIA agents to fake, or not so fake the assassination of the President with Lee as the scapegoat. The censored state secrets Lee gives to the Soviets is the top-secret U2 plane, which comes up later with Ferrie. The well-known pseudonym "Hidell" is given a backstory, one that is completely unknowable but nonetheless completely in character. Numerous other small details are prevalent throughout Libra that are characteristic of historical fiction.
Libra is an insanely complex work of literature that contains countless layers of historical-fiction-esque ambiguity. This is partially due to DeLillo's genius, and partly from the prime ground that is the Kennedy assassination. The nature of Oswald as such an unusual character, and the fact that much of it is based in reality, leaves much to be constructed in regards to his internal motivations, character, personality, and thought processes. The conflicting documents and various conspiracies surrounding the event - including two government investigations that directly conflict in conclusion - are the perfect ground for weaving the web of historical-fictional connections between characters both real and fake.
I like your emphasis of the *undocumentABLE* nature of a lot of what DeLillo explores via fiction in this novel: if we compare his work to that of Nicholas Branch within the novel, it's as if DeLillo's "placeholders" (like Everett, Parmenter, Mackey, Raymo, Vasquez, Dupard, etc.) all correspond to "real" actors in the plot whose existence has been classified or covered up by the CIA. So the novel creates the fiction of an "official historian" whose research is able to fill in the "gaps."
ReplyDeleteRemember that Branch, even with all of the "evidence" he has access to (which includes elements of DeLillo's fiction), he still has to resort to "theories" to try to account for certain aspects, and he never is able to figure out what the deal is with the "Oswald doubles" all over Texas. There is a pervasive sense that, even with the ability to "document" all the evidence, a cogent story might not emerge. Maybe the story itself isn't necessarily cogent--the most mind-boggling aspects of this story, for me, are the coincidences. Branch has to acknowledge that sometimes unlikely coincidences just happen: Lee takes a job based on his wife's friend's husband's recommendation, weeks before anyone in the White House even knows Kennedy will be in Dallas on this particular motorcade route. There's no way to account for Lee working in that building as part of a conspiracy--it's just a lucky(!) coincidence, if you're part of the conspiracy. Or an unlucky coincidence, if you're a Kennedy. But no conspiracy theory can be airtight, for this reason--there is always the contingency of coincidence, which cannot be controlled. According to Ferrie, it must be "in the stars." "There are no coincidences."
There's a lot of this usage of fiction to fill in the gaps of history that you mentioned sprinkled a lot through Libra that I really enjoyed. In my opinion, the Kennedy assassination is sort of the dream 'playground' for historical fiction to be explored as a genre. This is somewhat unrelated but at some point I was wondering what it would have been like if Doctorow wrote Libra. I think he's the one person we read that went the most nuts with the genre, and it would be interesting to see how he would approach the Kennedy assassination. There's so many already incredibly strange events and an essence of random flow to the actual history that we know of that kind of reminds me of his writing. Back on topic though, it's really fun seeing how DeLillo navigates this playground of perfectly set up coincidence and manipulable history to create a pretty darn convincing narrative. It's crazy how much of it is real.
ReplyDeleteGood post Jon. Like many young American historians, I myself have at various points gotten really into the JFK assasination. Now I am no conspiracy theorist but I find myself relating to Branch in the sense that I find myself wanting to gather as much information as possibly as if that will help me to connect the dots. This being said, I agree that this work is incredibly complex and well put together but it is also insane to think about how much research DeLillo must have done.
ReplyDeleteGreat post Jonathan! By focusing on the undocumentable parts of Lee's history, Delillo attempts to portray his narrative in the most convincing way possible. These untold parts in our real history are the most significant and improvised parts in Delillo's narrative. At these points, Delillo only needs to portray plausible events, not factual ones, allowing him to cultivate his plot without triggering the readers' doubt and suspicion. Mixing fact, fiction, coincidence, and conspiracy, Delillo creates a very convincing narrative of JFK's assassination, writing conclusions for some character's while leaving the rest of the plot's aftermath to the readers' wild imaginations.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I definitely agree that it is the nature of good historical fiction to blur the line between documentable and documentable history. The truth of the matter is that this entire Delillo narrative could have taken place without our knowing. Along the story of the novel I did find myself asking if certain plot points were real or fake, out of a curiousity built from that exact blurred line. Great post!
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