Libra: Don DeLillo

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As Branch hints, there is more to the case than meets the eye, but the government is quick to say Oswald is working alone. On November 22, 1963, as President Kennedy's motorcade is passing through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Oswald shoots at him from the Texas School Book Depository, while a small group of Cuban exiles fires from behind the grassy knoll. But these are flaw-specks in a book that is genuinely dread-filled--a story that everyone knows he doesn't really know, and which DeLillo worries, and prods, and deepens with sure artistry. The only thing he knows about the assassination is what they tell him, and it isn't until he watches someone else's bullet kill Kennedy that he knows his understanding has been manipulated by those around him. While DeLillo's characters never really open up to the readers, they can still be haunting and memorable.

Reconozco que es una lección interesante para quién le guste indagar en los hechos que rodearon el asesinato de JFK. the death of lee harvey oswald is a harrowing, moving experience, the best sequence of many excellent sequences in the book.The character Nicholas Branch, tasked with writing the secret official CIA history of the assassination, concludes that the effort will be never-ending and the whole truth ultimately unknowable.

When he does hit top form though: which I believe he absolutely does here, it's such a rewarding reading experience.delillo brilliantly gets imaginatively "inside" the minds of his characters, and their memories and the forces that drive them. Oswald’s story, leading up to 22 November 1963, is interwoven with another story taking place in the novel’s present – the story of Nicholas Branch, a CIA historian who has spent many years working on a secret CIA history of the assassination. Second, DeLillo, in writing an openly fictional book that does not claim to tell the “truth” about the assassination, is able to get at some real truths – truths regarding both the way in which historical moments unfold, and the ways in which human beings try to make sense of that history.