Publication
Penguin (2011), Edition: Re-issue
Original publication date
1988
Collections
Subjects
Awards
National Book Award (Finalist — Fiction — 1988)
LA Times Book Prize (Finalist — Fiction — 1988)
National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist — Fiction — 1988)
Irish Times International Fiction Prize (Winner — 1989)
Description
A fictional speculation of the events leading up to the assassination of John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald.
User reviews
LibraryThing member nmhale
I skipped this story in college, in a semester when I was so overloaded with books that I couldn't read them all. Being the compulsive person that I am, I always knew that one day I would get back to it. Now, ten years (Ten years! I can't believe I just wrote that.) after graduating, I finally did.
Libra is a complex book. It weaves the most intricate conspiracy theory about the assassination of President Kennedy that I have ever read (granted, I don't usually read conspiracy theories), based on the understanding that this is just a fictional reconstruction of what might have been. The book is split between multiple points of view; chapters alternate, focusing either on Lee Oswald's personal history or the various intelligence men who constructed an elaborate back story to justify their attack on the president's life. There are so many voices in this book that I can't begin to capture them all.
Lee is a prominent figure, of course, as he gets primary attention for half the novel. The other men, and occasional women, who comprise the narrative are involved in layers of deception, deception of others and themselves. Lee is the worst of all the deceivers, as he constantly tries to reinvent his identity and, at the same time, create aliases to hide behind. He deludes himself into believing that he is this other persona, such as the Communist Lee who defects to the Soviet Union (until he is sick of the life there), or the Military Lee who will be an expert marksman and fighter (except he is never more than mediocre), until his illusion cracks and ugly reality thrusts into his carefully crafted life. He then retreats to his well-groomed mantras of hatred and blame and tries to find some other channel that will allow him to be who he really is. Yet how can that ever happen, when he can never form a solid idea of his own identity? The only constant in his shifting mental landscape is this idea that he is meant to be a part of history. Lee is forever pursuing this goal, and it always eludes him. Until, of course, he takes part in killing the president (according to this book, Lee is not the one who actually kills him, missing terribly on all of his shots). Once Lee has finally found his way in to history, it's not at all what he wanted; no glowing moment of justification and repudiation, but a sad and dingy notoriety, known as an assassin and nothing more.
The other end of the equation, the CIA men and their network of informers and partners and scapegoats, are also fascinating. Win Everett instigates the president's assassination, after he is horribly disappointed in how the whole Cuba affair fell out. Originally, he plans on creating a near-miss on Kennedy's life, and trailing the blame to a communist Cuba sympathizer, galvanizing the country into the war that should have been. As his plans unfold, however, and other people take their parts and develop their own details and pass plans on to still more people, Everett fears that the plan is taking on a life of its own, and shifting into a more menacing conspiracy than he intended. And he is right. Some people don't just want to the president scared, they want him dead.
These two halves of the novel present some profound themes that take this book beyond mere conspiracy theory. Among the many themes, here are just a few: identity, and the juxtaposition between reality and facade, and just where the line between really lays, and how reality can become fantasy and fantasy can become reality, and the idea of unseen forces directing our lives. There are infinite webs of secret societies in this book; some are real and some are imagined, but it is impossible to discern between the two. Lee has delusions of people watching him, but the people he thinks are spying on him are not; however, there are a lot of people who actually are watching him and trying to control him. These ideas are presented with plenty of action, a great grasp of colloquial language, and a rising tension that erupts in the violence I knew was coming, but still somehow hoped wouldn't happen.
I liked the book. It's definitely not a fast read - not because of the language of the book, which is powerful and concise, but because the subject matter is so dense. So many characters weave in and out of the narrative! If you don't mind books that require some mental organization, I think the story is worth the work. It's a fascinating study of the secret world that operates around us, and so carefully constructed that I had a hard time remembering it was just a fictional story. I will never look at the assassination of JFK in the same way again.
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Libra is a complex book. It weaves the most intricate conspiracy theory about the assassination of President Kennedy that I have ever read (granted, I don't usually read conspiracy theories), based on the understanding that this is just a fictional reconstruction of what might have been. The book is split between multiple points of view; chapters alternate, focusing either on Lee Oswald's personal history or the various intelligence men who constructed an elaborate back story to justify their attack on the president's life. There are so many voices in this book that I can't begin to capture them all.
Lee is a prominent figure, of course, as he gets primary attention for half the novel. The other men, and occasional women, who comprise the narrative are involved in layers of deception, deception of others and themselves. Lee is the worst of all the deceivers, as he constantly tries to reinvent his identity and, at the same time, create aliases to hide behind. He deludes himself into believing that he is this other persona, such as the Communist Lee who defects to the Soviet Union (until he is sick of the life there), or the Military Lee who will be an expert marksman and fighter (except he is never more than mediocre), until his illusion cracks and ugly reality thrusts into his carefully crafted life. He then retreats to his well-groomed mantras of hatred and blame and tries to find some other channel that will allow him to be who he really is. Yet how can that ever happen, when he can never form a solid idea of his own identity? The only constant in his shifting mental landscape is this idea that he is meant to be a part of history. Lee is forever pursuing this goal, and it always eludes him. Until, of course, he takes part in killing the president (according to this book, Lee is not the one who actually kills him, missing terribly on all of his shots). Once Lee has finally found his way in to history, it's not at all what he wanted; no glowing moment of justification and repudiation, but a sad and dingy notoriety, known as an assassin and nothing more.
The other end of the equation, the CIA men and their network of informers and partners and scapegoats, are also fascinating. Win Everett instigates the president's assassination, after he is horribly disappointed in how the whole Cuba affair fell out. Originally, he plans on creating a near-miss on Kennedy's life, and trailing the blame to a communist Cuba sympathizer, galvanizing the country into the war that should have been. As his plans unfold, however, and other people take their parts and develop their own details and pass plans on to still more people, Everett fears that the plan is taking on a life of its own, and shifting into a more menacing conspiracy than he intended. And he is right. Some people don't just want to the president scared, they want him dead.
These two halves of the novel present some profound themes that take this book beyond mere conspiracy theory. Among the many themes, here are just a few: identity, and the juxtaposition between reality and facade, and just where the line between really lays, and how reality can become fantasy and fantasy can become reality, and the idea of unseen forces directing our lives. There are infinite webs of secret societies in this book; some are real and some are imagined, but it is impossible to discern between the two. Lee has delusions of people watching him, but the people he thinks are spying on him are not; however, there are a lot of people who actually are watching him and trying to control him. These ideas are presented with plenty of action, a great grasp of colloquial language, and a rising tension that erupts in the violence I knew was coming, but still somehow hoped wouldn't happen.
I liked the book. It's definitely not a fast read - not because of the language of the book, which is powerful and concise, but because the subject matter is so dense. So many characters weave in and out of the narrative! If you don't mind books that require some mental organization, I think the story is worth the work. It's a fascinating study of the secret world that operates around us, and so carefully constructed that I had a hard time remembering it was just a fictional story. I will never look at the assassination of JFK in the same way again.
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LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
Tough to read, for several reasons. Ventures into the dark underbelly of American history. Lee Harvey Oswald is an unusual choice of protagonist, and a very thought-provoking one.
LibraryThing member billable
DeLillo channels Oswald and his world in a spooky way. I was skeptical when I started this novel and never could stop once I started.
LibraryThing member updraught
Although both idea and writing are appealing, the predictability of the story made this a somewhat tedious read. (And by 'predictability' I don't mean knowing what happens to JFK in the end.)
LibraryThing member Djupstrom
An incredibly interesting take on the JFK assassination. This is a good political drama, as well as a good detective story.
LibraryThing member nohablo
Delillo is always a difficult author to get a perfect handle on, but goddamn this was a rip-tide of a book. Reads like an incantation of an assassination, with an eerie fatalistic pulse pumping through the latter half. Frustrating and opaque, as always, at times, but still unnervingly convincing.
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And shi-it, what a first-rate nightmare. Show Less
LibraryThing member becskau
This book is a historical fiction novel about the JFK assassination. The story has several layers, the first being a CIA operative assigned to assemble a non-public history of the assassination, which leads into the bulk of the story, a narrative examining both a small group of ex CIA agents and
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the life of Lee Harvey Oswald and how the two become intertwined. Though this text is definitely more on the challenging side, and I think my students would benefit form exposure to a text like this. I think that both the aspects of postmodernism, it's commentary on current life and narrative style, as well as its grounding in a historical reality could be useful to students. I think that students would struggle with this book but that they would be able to find relatable elements in the story and themes of conspiracy theories. Show Less
LibraryThing member whitewavedarling
I see that this book took serious thought, real research, and a dedication to history and imagination that comes through on each page......but, while I'm normally a fan of Delillo, I had a rough time getting through this book. I'd recommend it to those interested in dense creative nonfiction and
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conspiracy theory, and of course to those interested in the stories built up around the JFK assassination, but otherwise, this isn't one I'd pass on. For this reader, it was just too dense and focused a text. I can appreciate the goal, the writing, and the experiment.....but this read like a wandering conspiracy theory, and I was ready for it to be done fairly early on. Show Less
LibraryThing member lmckend
Plausible account of the JKF assassination and surrounding circumstances. Memorable for a few sentences so well constructed you may have to stop reading, put the book down, and tell someone about it.
LibraryThing member LovingLit
This story pads out and adds to facts that are known of the assassination of JFK on 22 Nov 1963. It is written from the perspectives of a number of people- Lee Harvey Oswald, his wife Marina, and mother Marguerite. As well as various government officials and Intelligence agents who were implicated
The parts of the story are drip fed to the reader in pieces here and there, from different sources. We are left to add it all up, but always with doubt about what is really happening and who is really behind this sad event, and most importantly: why. I think this style reflects the true happenings of operations within an Intelligence agency. There are a select few making plans and information is deliberately withheld from participants in events to protect the plans, as well as the planners. There are multiple back stories, aliases and false leads.
I like to think that it was intended that the reader have trouble following it all, but it was probably my less than analytical brain that had the problems. Regardless of the intensity of the prose, I felt it easy to read and always looked forward to getting my fix of the next few chapters.
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in the conspiracy theory that is told so well in this book. Apart from being superbly written, it is a very clever, and a very real feeling portrayal. The parts of the story are drip fed to the reader in pieces here and there, from different sources. We are left to add it all up, but always with doubt about what is really happening and who is really behind this sad event, and most importantly: why. I think this style reflects the true happenings of operations within an Intelligence agency. There are a select few making plans and information is deliberately withheld from participants in events to protect the plans, as well as the planners. There are multiple back stories, aliases and false leads.
I like to think that it was intended that the reader have trouble following it all, but it was probably my less than analytical brain that had the problems. Regardless of the intensity of the prose, I felt it easy to read and always looked forward to getting my fix of the next few chapters.
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LibraryThing member upstairsgirl
I didn't come to this with a ton of knowledge about the Kennedy assassination - I know the basics, but I feel like I might have enjoyed what DeLillo was doing more if I had a solider background there. It's an interesting conspiracy theory that underlies the narrative, and DeLillo doesn't shy away
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from making his characters look ugly or ridiculous when it's called for. Show Less
LibraryThing member stillatim
I unintentionally finished this days before the 50th anniversary of JFK's death, which made the whole thing even more enjoyable, if that's the right word. Aside from a bit of the good ole American prose (and its general fear of syntax more complex than subject-verb-object), and brief moments of
What is an historical novel* meant to do? One character in 'Libra' suggests that history just is the sum total of what we don't know--presumably what we do know being either 'present' or, perhaps, knowing history makes it less likely to have unpleasant effects: if I know x has a history of beating his girlfriends, I'd warn my friend against dating him. Another character suggests that Oswald, who thinks that he wants to enter history, really wants *out* of history: he doesn't want to be a concrete thing, he wants to be a symbol. And of course he has become just that.
Most of us know nothing about LHO except the image of him being shot, and despite this ignorance, we also feel that he's the image of America's shift (massive generalization alert) from confidence to neurosis. What we know, in this case at least, is just the symbol. But the symbol is not 'in' history; symbols float free of history. So yes, LHO wanted to get out of history, and he did. He's known. But only as a symbol. What we don't know is the real history.
And that's what the historical novel, and narrative art more generally, offers us: some way to understand the messiness of 'history', to burrow under the symbols and decontextualized factoids. Art suggests and plays with what we don't know--here, LHO's personality, wishes and dreams on the one hand, and a possible conspiracy on the other. In other words, the historical novel and conspiracy theories do much the same thing: they try to contextualize symbols, to ground them in history, in the things we don't know. Libra achieves the almost impossible: it confers dignity on LHO and his family by paying attention to history.
Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, dignify nobody, except perhaps the theorist in her own eyes. That's not to say that the urge to produce conspiracy theories is blameworthy. They're attempts to understand and get behind the symbols, just like DeLillo's novel. And the novel itself makes it hard to see what difference there might be between art and theory (aside from intelligence and style). I'm sure there is one, but how can I describe it? Right now, I just don't know.
*: McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian' was published in 1985, three years before 'Libra'... and both feature a villainous, pederastic man who suffers from Alopecia universalis. Conspiracy?
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postmodern angst (can we know anything???), this is an excellent, excellent book. It's easy to read but doesn't ignore the possibility that writing may (I'd go as far as 'should') be noticeable. But most importantly, it's very, very smart. What is an historical novel* meant to do? One character in 'Libra' suggests that history just is the sum total of what we don't know--presumably what we do know being either 'present' or, perhaps, knowing history makes it less likely to have unpleasant effects: if I know x has a history of beating his girlfriends, I'd warn my friend against dating him. Another character suggests that Oswald, who thinks that he wants to enter history, really wants *out* of history: he doesn't want to be a concrete thing, he wants to be a symbol. And of course he has become just that.
Most of us know nothing about LHO except the image of him being shot, and despite this ignorance, we also feel that he's the image of America's shift (massive generalization alert) from confidence to neurosis. What we know, in this case at least, is just the symbol. But the symbol is not 'in' history; symbols float free of history. So yes, LHO wanted to get out of history, and he did. He's known. But only as a symbol. What we don't know is the real history.
And that's what the historical novel, and narrative art more generally, offers us: some way to understand the messiness of 'history', to burrow under the symbols and decontextualized factoids. Art suggests and plays with what we don't know--here, LHO's personality, wishes and dreams on the one hand, and a possible conspiracy on the other. In other words, the historical novel and conspiracy theories do much the same thing: they try to contextualize symbols, to ground them in history, in the things we don't know. Libra achieves the almost impossible: it confers dignity on LHO and his family by paying attention to history.
Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, dignify nobody, except perhaps the theorist in her own eyes. That's not to say that the urge to produce conspiracy theories is blameworthy. They're attempts to understand and get behind the symbols, just like DeLillo's novel. And the novel itself makes it hard to see what difference there might be between art and theory (aside from intelligence and style). I'm sure there is one, but how can I describe it? Right now, I just don't know.
*: McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian' was published in 1985, three years before 'Libra'... and both feature a villainous, pederastic man who suffers from Alopecia universalis. Conspiracy?
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LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
I'm rating this novel with 4 stars, in spite of the fact that I didn't really enjoy reading it very much. This is a fictional account of events leading up to and including the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. If you didn't live through that time, or
Review written December 2016
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if you only know the barest outline of what happened and who was involved, this could be an outstanding literary adventure for you. I appreciated it, without loving it, and I believe that is almost entirely due to the fact that I was once so completely immersed in reading about the Kennedy assassination that I simply cannot distance myself from the history and let the fiction carry me away. This is post-modern stuff, and I soon realized that DeLillo was doing something quite remarkable with his multiple characters and points of view. I think the novel is a masterpiece of imagination, as DeLillo put himself (and me, very often) directly and brilliantly into the heads of Lee Harvey Oswald, his mother, his wife, and many of his associates. He made it clear in an author's note that he "made no attempt to furnish factual answers to any questions raised by the assassination". And by changing the perspective from one character to another throughout, DeLillo also made it difficult to come to any conclusions about what "really" was happening. Any given character only knew--or told-- part of the story, and many of them were thoroughly unreliable narrators. Nevertheless, it's hard not to come away from Libra with a strong impression that in this version of events, Oswald himself didn't believe he fired the shot that killed Kennedy. It's fascinating stuff, but it didn't need fictionalization for me to find it so. Having said that, though, I'm a bit disappointed that I couldn't have read this unquestionably fine piece of work without knowing a blessed thing about the historical events it is based on. I'm pretty sure I would have loved it in that case.Review written December 2016
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LibraryThing member Kristelh
Libra by Don DeLillo is a 1988 book. Don Delillo is a post modernist author. This is his 9th book. Libra is a retelling of the assasination of JFK by Lee Harvey Oswald.. This book will make you believe the conspiracy theories. Not sure of my rating yet. The story is the life of Oswald from
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childhood as a bullied, disadvantaged youth with dyslexia. The assasination, dreamed up after the Bay of Pigs to promote anti Cuban opinion and push America back into conflict with Cuba was dreamed up by disgruntled CIA agents was meant to fail. This book has a lot of espionage in it. It also has a parrallel story of the man who has been assigned to review all the data that has been collected about the assasination and write the history of the assasination Show Less
LibraryThing member DanielSTJ
This chronicles the assassination of John F. Kennedy. For a DeLillo novel, I found it to be a decent on-- but nothing more. Surely, not one of his best.
LibraryThing member jen.e.moore
A fictionalized biography of Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy assassination. Interesting, but not amazing.
LibraryThing member RodneyWelch
I'm convinced that no one who reads this damn thing remembers what it's about beyond the baseball story at the beginning -- and that was nothing special. DeLillo writes a flat, unemotional, uninvolving prose that I can only take in small doses. If Star Trek's Dr. Spock became a novelist, he'd sound
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like DeLillo. Show Less
LibraryThing member pivic
See the truth and know it, if you can.
It's easy to see why David Foster Wallace - or, indeed, anybody - likes Don DeLillo: his dense, lingually contorted novels leave a stronghold on one's mind beyond the fact. In my case, I seldom remember the plots, but I can remember certain scenes or feelings
It's less about the contents and more about a general sentiment.
Workmen carried lanterns along adjacent tracks. He kept a watch for sewer rats. A tenth of a second was all it took to see a thing complete. Then the express stations, the creaky brakes, people bunched like refugees. They came wagging through the doors, banged against the rubber edges, inched their way in, were quickly pinned, looking out past the nearest heads into that practiced oblivion.
As the book states, this is about the Kennedy assassination. Oswald was a Libra. Does he buy into the whole Oswald-did-it-thing? Does anybody care?
There is political intrigue here. Language snakes around as a man hits the person he's romantically entangled with, which turned me into near-vomit; one of the fores of DeLillo's strengths are how he can describe dramatic detail with few words and yet, together with the use of idiomatic expressions in dialogue, refrain from sounding tart or obtuse.
She saw him from a distance even when he was hitting her. He was never fully there.
Yes yes yes yes. God is alive and well in Texas.
Paragraphs turn into short stories at times:
“I’ll tell you a good sign,” Lee said. “I order the handgun in January, I order the rifle in March. Both guns arrive the same day. My wife would say it’s fate.” “What did you tell her about tonight?” “She thinks I’m at typing class. I dropped out of typing class two weeks ago. I got fired from my job last Saturday was my last day.”
“I have the primitive fear,” Ferrie said. “All my fears are primitive. It’s the limbic system of the brain. I’ve got a million years of terror stored up in there.” He wore a crushed sun hat, the expressive brows like clown paint over his eyes. He handed Wayne the rifle. They watched him walk to the lopsided dock and climb into the skiff.
All in all, I really got into this book around the 350-page mark. Was it worth it? Yes.
It's easy to see why David Foster Wallace - or, indeed, anybody - likes Don DeLillo: his dense, lingually contorted novels leave a stronghold on one's mind beyond the fact. In my case, I seldom remember the plots, but I can remember certain scenes or feelings
Show More
invoked, mainly as few authors have managed both in the same way before.It's less about the contents and more about a general sentiment.
Workmen carried lanterns along adjacent tracks. He kept a watch for sewer rats. A tenth of a second was all it took to see a thing complete. Then the express stations, the creaky brakes, people bunched like refugees. They came wagging through the doors, banged against the rubber edges, inched their way in, were quickly pinned, looking out past the nearest heads into that practiced oblivion.
As the book states, this is about the Kennedy assassination. Oswald was a Libra. Does he buy into the whole Oswald-did-it-thing? Does anybody care?
There is political intrigue here. Language snakes around as a man hits the person he's romantically entangled with, which turned me into near-vomit; one of the fores of DeLillo's strengths are how he can describe dramatic detail with few words and yet, together with the use of idiomatic expressions in dialogue, refrain from sounding tart or obtuse.
She saw him from a distance even when he was hitting her. He was never fully there.
Yes yes yes yes. God is alive and well in Texas.
Paragraphs turn into short stories at times:
“I’ll tell you a good sign,” Lee said. “I order the handgun in January, I order the rifle in March. Both guns arrive the same day. My wife would say it’s fate.” “What did you tell her about tonight?” “She thinks I’m at typing class. I dropped out of typing class two weeks ago. I got fired from my job last Saturday was my last day.”
“I have the primitive fear,” Ferrie said. “All my fears are primitive. It’s the limbic system of the brain. I’ve got a million years of terror stored up in there.” He wore a crushed sun hat, the expressive brows like clown paint over his eyes. He handed Wayne the rifle. They watched him walk to the lopsided dock and climb into the skiff.
All in all, I really got into this book around the 350-page mark. Was it worth it? Yes.
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Language
Original language
English
ISBN
0141041994 / 9780141041995
Physical description
464 p.; 5.08 inches
Pages
464