Libra (Penguin Modern Classics)

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DeLillo has stated that Libra is not a nonfiction novel due to its inclusion of fictional characters and speculative plot elements. [1] Nevertheless, the broad outline of Oswald's life, including his teenage years in New York City, his military service, his use of the alias "Hidell", [2] and his defection to the Soviet Union are all historically accurate. Both the Warren Commission and the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations implicated Oswald in the attempted assassination of General Walker. [2] [3] Many other characters in the novel, including FBI agent Guy Banister, Oswald's friend George de Mohrenschildt, and his wife Marina were real people. In an author's note at the close of the book, DeLillo writes that he has "made no attempt to furnish factual answers to any questions raised by the assassination." [1] White Noise's influence can be seen in the writing of David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Lethem, Jonathan Franzen, Dave Eggers, Zadie Smith and Richard Powers (who provides an introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of the novel). [25] Among the 39 proposed titles for the novel were "All Souls", "Ultrasonic", [20] "The American Book of the Dead", "Psychic Data" and "Mein Kampf". [29] In 2005 DeLillo said "White Noise" was a fine choice, adding, "Once a title is affixed to a book, it becomes as indelible as a sentence or a paragraph." [29] The writing in White Noise is wonderful, and yet the extended metaphors and the revisiting of Wagnerian-fascist mythology through the filter of Middle America can strike one as evasive. It is as though American reality, in all its excess, is too resistant to critique; only the glancing blows of satire, symbolism, or imported magic can score a point or two against it. The systems novel is itself subsumed by the system, of which publishing and readers dulled by white noise are just another aspect. After all, there is not a single reference to Bhopal or Union Carbide in the footnotes of the Library of America edition. The journey continues through the North Bronx, the working-class neighborhood where DeLillo, whose parents were Italian immigrants, grew up and attended college at Fordham University. Finally, the train passes into Westchester’s leafy environs. The novel refers to the report of the Warren Commission as the novel that " James Joyce would have written if he'd moved to Iowa City and lived to be a hundred," as it comprises an almost encyclopedic picture of American life in the 1950s and 1960s comparable to the detailed depiction of Dublin in Joyce's novels. [4]

The Warren Commission found that Oswald acted alone, while the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that Kennedy's assassination was likely the result of a conspiracy. As a teenager, DeLillo was not interested in writing until he took a summer job as a parking attendant, where the hours spent waiting and watching over vehicles led to a lifelong reading habit. Reflecting on this period, in a 2010 interview, he stated, "I had a personal golden age of reading in my 20s and my early 30s, and then my writing began to take up so much time". [8] Among the writers DeLillo read and was inspired by in this period were James Joyce, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Ernest Hemingway, who was a major influence on DeLillo's earliest attempts at writing in his late teens. [9] I have another style question: There’s an argument to be made that a book like “Zero K” embodies what might be thought of as late style. Do you see any validity in thinking about it in that way? When I think of “Zero K,” to the extent that I can remember it, I think visually. One of the characters, Jeff, walking along long corridors and then the secret desert compound and the underground chamber, cryonic suspension, people hoping to resume life at some point. There are famous athletes who did that. he tries to renounce his United States citizenship but it's early-closing day at the embassy; he tries to defect to the Russians but they're not so sure they want him. Still, sometimes when he's discussing his dissatisfactionThe story, about a college professor who teaches "Hitler studies", takes aim at modern life: consumerism, paranoia, technology. It's full of riffs and jokes: "California deserves whatever it gets," goes one. "Californians invented the concept of lifestyle. This alone warrants their doom." It satirises our reliance on devices and our deadened responses: "The smoke alarm went off in the hallway upstairs, either to let us know the battery had just died or because the house was on fire. We finished our lunch in silence." him to go where the facts could not. ''In this version, we know how it happened, so the novel, working within history, is also outside it, correcting, clearing up, finding balances and rhythms. I think readers are willing to a homeless man who himself could not grip things tightly and hold them fast, whose soul-scarred loneliness and rage led him to invent an American moment that echoes down the decades.'' That Mr. DeLillo has been able to make Classic book review: Libra". Christian Science Monitor. 22 November 2009. ISSN 0882-7729 . Retrieved 22 December 2019. The book follows two related but separate narrative threads: episodes from Oswald's life from his childhood until the assassination and his death, and the actions of other participants in the conspiracy. A secondary parallel story follows Nicholas Branch, a CIA archivist of more recent times assigned the monumental task of piecing together the disparate fragments of Kennedy's death.

field. Certain preoccupations, however, tend to reassert themselves: the assassination of President Kennedy, the labyrinthine underworld of spies and terrorists and (most notably in ''White Noise,'' which won the American DeLillo followed The Body Artist with 2003's Cosmopolis, a modern reinterpretation of James Joyce's Ulysses transposed to New York around the time of the collapse of the dot-com bubble in 2000. This novel was met at the time with a largely negative reception from critics, with several high-profile critics and novelists—notably John Updike—voicing their objections to its style and tone. don't think there was any orchestrated attempt by established offices in any intelligence agency.'' Still, he added, ''I don't know any more than you do what happened in Dealey Plaza that day. I purposely This novel discusses the events that helped shape the assassination on November 22, 1963. This story describes Oswald's life as a young boy, as an adolescent in the Marine Corps, his marriage, and his role in Kennedy's assassination. It is the form that allows a writer the greatest opportunity to explore human experience....For that reason, reading a novel is potentially a significant act. Because there are so many varieties of human experience, so many kinds of interaction between humans, and so many ways of creating patterns in the novel that can't be created in a short story, a play, a poem or a movie. The novel, simply, offers more opportunities for a reader to understand the world better, including the world of artistic creation. That sounds pretty grand, but I think it's true. [13]look at this coldly in the light of right and wrong. . . . How would I live in America? I would have a choice of being a worker in a system I despise or going unemployed.'' of a conspiracy does emerge, I expect it will be much more interesting and fantastic than the novel.'' KIM HERON In the novel, Oswald is portrayed as an odd man with dyslexia. DeLillo describes Oswald as a complicated man who readers can easily identify with. For example, in the novel Oswald is loving towards his wife and children but also beats his own wife and disrespects his mother. The train ride from midtown Manhattan to the picture-book Westchester County suburb where novelist Don DeLillo lives offers a capsule view of virtually the entire spectrum of American life. After leaving Grand Central Station, the train comes up from underground at Ninety-sixth Street on Manhattan’s East Side, rolls serenely through Harlem, then crosses the Harlem River and enters the devastated landscape of the South Bronx.

A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote, "The novel bears dissection on many levels, but is, taken whole, a seamless, brilliant work of compelling fiction. What makes Libra so unsettling is DeLillo's ability to integrate literary criticism into the narrative, commenting throughout on the nature and conventions of fiction itself without disturbing the flow of his story." The reviewer argued that the "subtle juxtaposition of the author's version of events with the Zapruder film" causes the work to "raise meaningful questions on the relationship between fiction and truth." [6] a homeless man who himself could not grip things tightly and hold them fast, whose soul-scarred loneliness and rage led him to invent an American moment that echoes down the decades.'' That Mr. DeLillo has been able to make his

The prize honors "an American literary writer whose body of work is distinguished not only for its mastery of the art but for its originality of thought and imagination. The award seeks to commend strong, unique, enduring voices that—throughout long, consistently accomplished careers—have told us something about the American experience." [3] In a statement issued in response to the award, DeLillo said, "When I received news of this award, my first thoughts were of my mother and father, who came to this country the hard way, as young people confronting a new language and culture. In a significant sense, the Library of Congress Prize is the culmination of their efforts and a tribute to their memory." [55] It isn’t entirely clear at the beginning what this new element might be. Libra’s juxtaposition of character against networked complexity suggests continuity with the previous novels. What is different is how character is approached. In place of the conventional wisdom that a focus on a single, central character offers the greatest unity, immersion, and conflict—and in contrast to his own approach in earlier works—DeLillo treats Oswald as a character best understood in juxtaposition with other characters and their stories. Instead of being focalized through a single point of view, as in The Names and White Noise, the narrative is now sliced through by multiple perspectives. The mode of White Noise – like much of DeLillo's mature work – is postmodernism: fragmented, subjective, layered with extra-literary elements. The words that come from the TV and radio are presented like dialogue, as though those devices are characters, fully paid-up members of the household. ("The TV said, 'And other trends that could dramatically impact your portfolio.'") The self-referential media mash of DeLillo's world, where brand names become a mantra (the working title for White Noise was Panasonic, but he was refused permission to use it), makes perfect sense in the 21st Century, where our experiences are endlessly processed, photographed, commented on, reshaped and shared. It's a world that has seen, as the British writer Gordon Burn put it in his book Best and Edwards, "the electronic society of the image – the daily bath we all take in the media – replace the real community of the crowd."