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"We lead more interesting lives than we think. We are characters in plots, without the compression and numinous sheen. Our lives, examined carefully in all their affinities and links, abound with suggestive meaning, with themes and involute turnings we have not allowed ourselves to see completely." So writes DeLillo in Libra, and this is exactly what he does in turning real life misfit and presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald into a unique and depthful fictional character. This novel is a masterpiece of plotting and planning and the very plausibility of the whole conspiracy DeLillo has created proves its success. He has clearly reviewed Oswald's biography in depth and created a conspiracy story that not only adheres to that biography and brings it to life. DeLillo's Oswald is his own foil for the reader - he is a character who sometimes inspires sympathy and other times hatred. He is vicious and also broken himself. He struggles desperately and acutely and he also causes struggles for his family. He's an unstable man with a bit of a God complex ("He wanted subjects and ideas of historic scope, ideas that touched his life, his true life, the whirl of time inside him."), and he manages to become infamous in history, just as he always thought he should be. Contradictions like these, in Oswald's character and actions, are a key theme of the novel. His sign is the titular libra, which is represented by a set of scales, and DeLillo frequently notes moments when Oswald teeters on the edge of a decision or an action and could easily end up going either way. Late in the novel, one of the conspirators says of Oswald, "He believes in his heart that he's a dedicated leftist. But he is also a Libran. He is capable of seeing the other side. He is a man who harbors contradictions." DeLillo also has a lot of interesting things to say about history - what it is, why it is, how we both create it and are shaped by it. Some examples: "The purpose of history is to climb out of your own skin. He knew what Trotsky had written, that revolution leads us out of the dark night of the isolated self. We live forever in history, outside ego and id." "He thought the only end to isolation was to reach the point where he was no longer separated from the true struggles that went on around him. The name we give this point is history." "There's a pattern in things. Something in us has an effect on independent events. We make things happen. The conscious mind gives one side only. We're deeper than that. We extend into time." I'm not usually very excited by detailed plotting, but here I was fascinated and it's because DeLillo is so very successful in tying every element so closely to his fantastic characterization of Oswald. Not a moment or event is out of line, and without fail everything becomes more and more complex and interesting (never tighter or resolved) as the novel progresses. I think part of DeLillo's point in creating this one possible scenario for who Oswald was and why he did what he did is to show that we can never know the truth. Nicholas Branch, a frame-story character who is trying to write a definitive account of the assassination, carries this theme in the novel: "He believed that nothing can be finally known that involves human motive and need. There is always another level, another secret, a way in which the heart breeds a deception so mysterious and complex it can only be taken for a deeper kind of truth." Themes: history, conspiracy, Kennedy assassination, character and plot, politics, Russia/America relations, Cuba, politics, CIA, contradiction

2022-11-14 17:01