Lee Harvey Oswald's Dream Biography
Libra is Lee Harvey Oswald’s dream biography. In Don Delillo’s telling, Lee is pardoned for his crime of murdering a president and only receives significant judgement for having abused his wife Marina. His writing the “historical diary” is depicted as just endearing, and his relationships with women in Minsk are made to seem redemptive and romantic. Sympathy towards him is shown down to the title of the book, Libra. Referencing Lee’s star sign, its uncertainty is meant to represent his contradictory character. Yet I never found myself thinking of him as contradictory or complex, but just as an arrogant character created by Delillo. The premise of Libra is the center of a lot of its problems. When someone so blatantly violent and troubled kills someone, there should be no decision to write a book imagining that they were not behind the attack, bringing up unlikely circumstances for the purpose of entertainment and contemplation. When it comes to a fake moon landing or whether aliens created fire, there is no harm in entertaining ideas as long as they don’t spread fear, but when someone has been killed, blaming the government instead of a clearly crazy man spreads hate and skepticism, and romanticises the life of a murderer. Lee’s childhood was unfortunate and I sympathized with him in the beginning, but his adult decisions should not be depicted as endearing, pitiful, or romantic: all of which are sprinkled into Delillo’s writing. A man capable of murder should not be given a platform that pardons him from his crimes and depicts him as endearing and pitiful. I found Lee’s “historical diary” to be particularly obnoxious, and reminiscent of the writing left behind by school shooters today (Delillo, 150). He describes his life with minute detail and sticks a deeper, special meaning to situations in which he, in actuality, felt insecure. He wanted to be special in the army but felt left out, leading him to say he was arrested in the army not for a childish reason but due to “politics” (293). He gives himself the story that he is not just a regular soldier, but a troubled conflicted one, a representation Delillo endorses by depicting the rest of the army as regular men just going along with the higher-up commands. Still, Delillo does agree that his longing to be special is not meaningful but a stumbling effort to be well-known by people, regardless if his impacts are good. Lee does not want to change the world for the better or influence the political world to create good, he wants attention, and we are just giving it to him. I began to find that Delillo playing so much into Lee’s troubled life also feels somewhat indicative of his own character as well. Purposely bringing in his misspelled words or writing that he is “misarable” when a girl rejects him softens him to the public and brings sympathy to a lot of problematic behaviors (157). This subtle endearment towards troubled men also appears with Delillo’s depiction of Jack Ruby, a violent strip club owner that protects his “girls” (185). These characters, written by Delillo, seem, to some extent, noble and intriguing. In reality, Lee was a serial dater with no real respect for women, and Jack Ruby owned a strip club. Adding clarifications that he also “protected” the women does not soften my view on Ruby, but harden my view on Delillo. He found it necessary to justify his actions with added misogyny. And while the book was written in a time where this romanticization was normal, we are reading it in a time that it is not. What solidified a lot of my ideas was seeing the photos of Lee Harvey Oswald in the army and holding the guns. His facade of being mysterious and special, created by Delillo, turned into just a scary man in a photo, staring down a camera or hastily bringing a gun down for a photo. He is a violent, sexist, narcissistic man with a troubled past who killed a president and wants attention. Why are we giving it to him? DeLillo, Don. Libra. Viking Press, 1988.
Hi Diza!! I really liked reading your blog post. I also really disliked Lee Harvey Oswald and didn't really like how DeLillo tried to instill sympathy for him in the reader. I think your point about Jack Ruby is interesting - I never really noticed how DeLillo also tried to make him somewhat sympathetic, but agree with your points. Great blog post!
ReplyDeleteHi Diza, I definitely agree that Lee Harvey Oswald's character is kind of annoying. Throughout the book, DeLillo tries to help explain his character by showing his background he comes from. While it helps humanize his character, I feel like the fact that he doesn't change even when he matures later on life shows how he isn't a redeemable person.
ReplyDeleteHi Diza, I really agree with your view on Oswald's character and the concern about giving him attention. I also find DeLillo's descriptions of the past feel like he's justifying him, though I'm not sure if that's quite the right word(? I feel like he's more just laying out the plausible sequence of events in Oswald's life rather than directly provoking sympathy from the readers. Either way, great post :D
ReplyDeleteI truly don't see the same degree of unambiguous admiration for Lee or justification of political violence in this novel that you do, and I'm a little perplexed as to what you're referring to at times. DeLillo does not depict him as innocent at all: he is caught up in a larger plot, most of which he remains unaware of, but he believes he is making these choices for himself. He murders the police officer in cold blood, shooting him at point-blank range. He also attempts to murder the president, even if his final shot misses and the fictional Raymo is the one who finishes the job. As for the author passing judgment on the character, I'm not sure we need DeLillo to step in and tell us that it is criminal and bad to assassinate a president--Lee is depicted as guilty in a range of ways, but he is also the victim of a murder himself, when he should have been afforded a fair trial like anyone else. I suppose I see a lot more ambiguity in DeLillo's portrait, where you see the author as celebrating the assassin with no critical irony.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is obnoxious and counterproductive to casually assert all kinds of conspiracy theories based on no evidence, but if indeed elements of our government WERE involved in either the plot itself or a coverup, I'm inclined to say that should be brought to light. I don't see the novel as denying that Oswald shot Kennedy--we literally get a first-hand narration of Oswald aiming and firing the gun, and hitting his target. This book is just one among many perspectives that are skeptical toward the idea that he's doing this all on his own. If we cut off all exploration of a possible further plot--a suspicion for which there is a good deal of evidence, which is why 63 years on we are still obsessed with this story--simply because it's impolite to think such things about our government, then arguably we're part of the coverup as well.
You might prefer Mailer's nonfiction biography, _Oswald's Tale_. He does not conceal his ultimate disgust with the subject of his analysis, and in the end he concludes that Oswald indeed acted alone. I don't think this book could be accused of "romanticizing" Oswald. But I'm still not sure that's what DeLillo does, either.
Hi Diza, this was a really interesting and passionate blog post. I think you might be overlooking some of the more nuanced aspects of the novel to make the narrative fit your point, but you make some interesting points in your blog. Maybe we just see these things differently, but I would argue that Lee is depicted as unsettling and strange more than anything else, which is a depiction that seems to fit with the disturbing nature of his real life identity. Maybe it's just a difference in reading comprehension skills between the two of us, but I personally think that DeLillo's portrayal of Lee is much more nuanced than you assume it to be. Great blog!
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting perspective. In my opinion, this book is harmless, showing more how to take historical events and turn them into fiction than anything else. It does not mock the death, nor put down the gravity of the situation. Additionally, books about difficult material tend to be the most important to talk about. Pushing something like this aside doesn't seem right, especially when it brings up concepts of an inside shooter, which is very interesting given our society now and in the last 50 years. I love how passionate this post is though!
ReplyDeleteHi Diza!! I really appreciated your unwavering hate for Libra's premise. I see your point in that it's distasteful, and I honestly agree for the most part. I think where our agreeance falters, though, is whether it should exist or not. I feel like these types of books have their place on bookshelves, and I think it's in a way good that we have stuff like this. But maybe that's just my privilege speaking as someone who's never had something this traumatic publicly happen to me or my family, let alone it be turned into conspiracies and everything. Great blog!!
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