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Guests | April 18, 2013
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More copies of this ISBNThis title in other editionsLibraby Don DeLillo
Staff Pick
The Kennedy assassination is front and center in Libra, Don DeLillo's fictionalized biography of Lee Harvey Oswald. There isn't a German loan word big enough to fully describe DeLillo's talent. Using basically the same cast of characters that James Ellroy does in The Cold Six Thousand, DeLillo comes to eerily similar and equally frightening conclusions. Both put a fresh slant on a stale subject and both delve into the larger forces which collude to make history. It's great to have two of my favorite writers tackle the same subject. Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:In this powerful, eerily convincing fictional speculation on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. When "history" presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the president will galvanize the nation against communism, the scales are irrevocably tipped.
A gripping, masterful blend of fact and fiction, alive with meticulously portrayed characters both real and created, Libra is a grave, haunting, and brilliant examination of an event that has become an indelible part of the American psyche. Review:"Don DeLillo's cold and brilliant novel begins with thirteen-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald and his mother — that American Medea, Marguerite — watching television in the Bronx....DeLillo flies by night, and enters, an exorcist, into rooms and dreams. In each room, he finds a secret and a coincidence, a loneliness and a connection, even a kind of theology...But language is DeLillo's plastique. Out of gnarled speech, funny, vulgar, gnomic, he composes stunning cantatas for the damned to sing. Libra is as choral as it's cinematic." John Leonard
Review:"It's his best novel, because it goes right to the source — to Dallas in November, 1963, the primal scene of American paranoia....DeLillo's portrait of Oswald is unexpectedly touching. It's what gives Libra the full heat of feeling....For the first time, DeLillo's work has the incendiary concentration of great fiction: his writing about Oswald is a long fuse that seems to lead straight to the heart of things." Terrence Rafferty, The New Yorker
Review:"....[T]ragic and dramatic as are the catastrophes of the great classical tragedies, but with an entirely American twist." Charles McGrath, The New York Time Books of the Century
Review:"Libra is, in fact, another conspiracy theory, although considerably more literate and entertaining than most....Given {his} preoccupations, it was probably inevitable...that DeLillo would get around to the assassination, that nexus of paranoia." Paul Gray, Time
Review:"One is dazzled by the virtuosity of Libra's construction, by the pungency and ellipses of the dialogue, and by the descriptive brilliance with which the lowlife characters materialize before one's eyes....Libra should be read for the boldness of its enterprise, its unflagging liveliness of surface and pacing, the engaging idiosyncrasy of its style, and, above all, for its vision of an outlaw element in American life devoted to the well-oiled mechanism of sudden death." Robert Towers, The New York Review of Books
Synopsis:On November 22, 1963, in the streets of Dallas, Lee Harvey Oswald's path intersected with the President John F. Kennedy's and the world witnessed the terrifying explosion of America's dreams. In Libra Don DeLillo applies his masterful imagination to Kennedy's assassination and creates eerily convincing speculation about one of America's most compelling mysteries.
Synopsis:In this powerful, eerily convincing fictional speculation on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. When "history" presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the president will galvanize the nation against communism, the scales are irrevocably tipped. A gripping, masterful blend of fact and fiction, alive with meticulously portrayed characters both real and created, Libra is a grave, haunting, and brilliant examination of an event that has become an indelible part of the American psyche. Synopsis:Now with a new introduction by the author—“a thriller of the most profound sor”
—Chicago Tribune “Libra operates at a dizzyingly high level of intensity throughout; i‛s that true fictional rarity—a novel of admirable depth and relevance tha‛s also a terrific page-turner” —USA Today “DeLill‛s novel is like a stop-motion frame of the crossfire, a still picture of an awful moment.... [His] prose has a quality of demented lyricism” —The New Yorker About the AuthorDon DeLillo is the author of thirteen novels and the recipient of numerous awards including the National Book Award and the Jerusalem Prize.
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