We will never know. :(
I was about to write my blog post on our main bud Lee Oswal and why he is a Libra, but then it kind of hit me that all of my blog posts this year have been about characters. So, time for something different! Now I have to come up with something to write about besides the characters… :(((
Omg Libra was confusing. There were the chapters that were titled with dates and the one that were titled with places, and omg I would flip the page and see that nice big In Moscow or something of the sort in bold and almost breath a sign of relief. The calm between the storms, the clarity within confusion–whatever was going on it felt like Lee's story was the only one I could truly follow.
So, I’m kind of huffing and puffing reading this stuff–darn authors writing books that people can’t understand–and I pretty much just threw in the dice on all of this conspiracy theory and let the words pass over me. Whatever is understood is what will be understood.
Yet now as I’ve gotten deeper into the book, and Lee’s gotten more frustrating and less likeable, and all of the pieces of this plot puzzle starting to come together/explained to me, I think it actually might have become my favorite part of the book.
The entire book reads so much as a fictional story and is so unbelievable that sometimes I have to remember that Kennedey’s assassination actually happened. But at the same time, what really happened? It’s real, it's not real; every page of Libra is a question of truth or fiction.
It’s almost like this great persuasive essay. To be fair DeLillo isn’t really coming on too strong as far as convincing their readers, so great less as how persuasive it is but more its impressiveness.
But holy crap DeLillo did their research. I’ve never gotten into conspiracy theories, but you almost have to come to appreciate it as like this great work of art. This stuff is imagination on another level. It plays with fact and fiction so uniquely from all of the other books we read this semester too. The fiction from Mumbo Jumbo to Ragtime to Kindred has always been pretty clear; it’s a literary tool, a metaphor, and its complete fantasy. There's no time travel or dancing virus, and even though Ragtime existed a little bit more realm of possibility you are kind of rolling your eyes at DeLillo the whole time for playing puppets with all of these historical figures.
Libra was historical fiction so fictional you forget what’s real but dealing with a reality that's impossible to explain without fiction. It’s a meta-universe post modernist's field day.
The holes in history and coincidences are so crazy that it’s almost more unrealistic for it to be fate than some crazy plot. His smooth journeys to and from the Soviet Union? His murder two days after JFK’s shooting by what investigators have only found some relatively standard civilian (not to throw any shade Jack Ruby). Hanging out in a movie theater after? What is going on. ABC news even posted an article about it last month; 60 years later and it’s still haunted everybody. Actually, this I found really funny, according to this article Trump signed an order to release all of the JFK assassination records, for the interest of the public good (Leath). But it just goes to show, we really don’t know–what is history what is true what is fiction–DeLillo’s version does really make some sense.
Have I been persuaded? Was there this guy named Lee, independently acting, and just kind of out of the spur of the moment and craziness shot our man the president. Or did the CIA, Castro, etc. etc. actually fit together in this crazy plot. I can’t dispute it, it’s not real enough to be real, so I guess I will have to be content with never knowing.
Works cited:
Delillo, Don. Libra. London, Penguin Books, 1988, accessed December 17th 2025
Leath, Mason. “62 Years Later: Why JFK’s Assassination Still Fuels Some of America’s Biggest Conspiracy Theories.” ABC News, ABC News Network, 24 Nov. 2025, abcnews.go.com/US/62-years-jfks-assassination-fuels-americas-biggest-conspiracy/story?id=127749991.
Hi Eve!!! I enjoyed reading your blog post!!! I really liked how you made this post sort of like you were reacting to the book all over again. I completely agree with you that most of the book was really hard to follow. I completely agree with all the arguments you were making. Delillo makes the book so that you are able to create your own idea of what happened because we don't actually know. Good Job!!!!
ReplyDeleteHi Eve, you do a great job of highlighting how wild of a concept Libra really is. Historical fiction in general seems to be a wacky version of fanfiction meshed with a history book, but once you throw in one of the craziest moments in history, JFK's assassination, things get a whole lot weirder. I honestly don't know a lot about the assassination, so to me, the fictional characters were as real as the ones who actually existed. In any case, it's interesting to see how Delillo addresses the question - was Lee acting alone? what were his motivations? - in just a short 456 pages. Great work!
ReplyDeleteHi Eve! You summed up my thoughts on Libra pretty perfectly. The last few chapters were the only chapters that actually made me feel like I knew what was going on, and I also found myself forgetting that the novel wasn't a complete fiction. The way that DeLillo wraps it all together almost makes it seem like there's no way to explain away some of the coincidences, and it makes it all seem made up. This book also confused me quite a lot, so I'm glad I'm not the only one. Great blog!
ReplyDeleteHi Eve! I completely agree; this book had many parts (especially the non-Lee sections) that seemed like they were meant to confuse the reader. This whole book seems larger than life, making all of the real and fictional elements fuse together. I also definitely felt like the ending left the reader wondering whether there was more to the assassination than real historical reporting or if DeLillo is just a really good liar. Great post!
ReplyDeleteHi Eve!! This book was a pretty difficult/annoying read for me. I also had the experience of everything sort of fitting in at the end. I honestly wish DeLillo was more clear about what was real and fake since I think that was a big reason I didn't really process the book well; to me everything was equally real and fictitious at the same time. It kind of added to the book's mystery though, and I guess in retrospect it was worth the weird reading experience. Great blog!!
ReplyDeleteHi Eve, you're blog post was very engaging to read as always. I agree that Delillo's version of this story was incredibly hard to follow at first, but as everything came together, the plot became one of the highlights of the book. I'm personally not super convinced, but I think there are so many potential holes in any story, including the reality, that I'm not really going to be fully convinced of any story. And that's okay!
ReplyDeleteI like the way DeLillo depicts the plotters as "inserting their fiction into the world": part of what a conspiracy entails, as we've discussed, means threading the "evidence" beforehand to put investigators off the track, so we get this weird ability for plotters to control the narrative of history both as it is happening and when it is reconstructed later. This is a particularly maddening possibility for JFK investigators, as there are SO MANY odd variables to account for in Oswald's biography. But in DeLillo's narrative, as the date 22 November approaches, we get the plotters (Wayne Elko, TJ Mackey, etc.) starting to flip out at the fact that *they are actually about to do this*. Can you imagine waking up that morning and thinking about the day ahead? KNOWING that you're about to throw a massive wrench into literally everything about American culture, politics, and society at the time? That it is REAL? It just seems like a realistic detail to me, that the guys driving through the night to make this happen would have these moments of *holy crap I can't believe we're even doing this!* Imagine being Lee, sitting in that window, gun in hand, watching the limo round the corner. DeLillo puts us in that perspective, and even though I've read the book multiple times AND I'm familiar with the history (there's no timeline wherein Kennedy is NOT killed), I still can't believe it's about to happen, every time.
ReplyDeleteI liked how real and relatable this post felt, especially your confusion turning into appreciation as the book went on. The way you talked about letting the conspiracy wash over you and then slowly realizing how impressive DeLillo’s research was made Libra feel way less intimidating. Your point about not knowing what’s fact or fiction perfectly shows why the book is so frustrating but also kind of amazing.
ReplyDeleteHi Eve!! I totally agree with what you said about the book, and it does kinda suck that we'll probably never know what happened. I also liked that you added that photo from CNN at the end, it shows that the assasination was an event that really left everyone across the country questioning. Great post :)
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