When I read through Don Delillo's Libra, the character of Lee always intrigued me. It felt like Lee was always reinventing himself in a variety of different ways. Every single chapter was a different Lee. A different face of the man. It was fascinating and it reminded me of some other book that I read. But it evaded me for so long.
After thinking hard about this forgotten book it finally came to me. The other book was Phillip Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, which is a very interesting read that I encourage anyone who is interested in different historical perspectives to take a look at. Basically the point of the novel is to take the historical figure of Jesus Christ and split him into two characters. There's the miracle working, peace loving, and genuine teacher of Jesus, and his brother the cold, calculating, and manipulative Christ who is obsessed with making a powerful organization in his brothers wake. This was the book I was waiting to make the connection with, because we can turn Oswald into two different people to fit into the narrative.
I think if we were to split Oswald into separate people I think it would look like this. Lee would be the lonely and bullied child who's desperate to see himself in the spotlight for once. Harvey, the despicable smirking young adult that waits in silence to piss off whatever authority is hanging over him. Finally, Oswald the blood thirsty assassin that always tries to cement himself into history by writing fake diaries and coming up with alias'.
Although this is a fun thought experiment to separate the man, Lee Harvey Oswald, into different yet easier to understand personalities, I think it would spoil his legacy. I think that one of the main factors that keeps Oswald so interesting sixty years later, is his unpredictability. Oswald is an enigma, even to the narrator of Libra. No one knows exactly why he does the things he does except for him. If we divided him up like I mentioned above, we'd lose that measure of chaos that is essential to Oswald. The magic of Oswald would be over and we'd know exactly what he (or they) did and why.
Even though Don Delillo's Libra is supposed to be centrally be about the JFK assassination and the plots that surround it, I find that the character of Lee is what keeps us guessing and keep us interested in the proceedings. Lee's apparent simple mindedness and baffling complexity keeps us interested in his story and by splitting him up into multiple people I feel the story would lose a lot of it's charm.
Lee's multifactedness is further highlighted by his marriage with Marina. In some instances Marina sees the young man that she fell in love with in Russia. At other times we see Lee beating his wife. These are two different facets of Lee that as readers we are able to see. Especially since as readers we have seen Lee from his early childhood, we have an unique perspective on his life.
ReplyDeleteI've never thought of doing this before, splitting a name into three different parts as representations of three pretty much different people. I do agree, though, that this is a cool way to do it, and of course Lee Oswald, with his multifaceted personality, is a perfect representation of this.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how the name Hidell would fit in with the different aspects of Lee. Lee/Harvey/Oswald seems to think of Hidell as his chance to be the stone-cold badass he's always wanted to be. This is a really cool post and it totally makes sense that DeLillo would use Lee's various names to represent parts of his personality. I'm going to go read that book now, it sounds really interesting.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree - part of the allure of the assassination is that Lee is so hard to understand, and it's hard to pin down exactly why it happened. Splitting him into three versions of himself helps us to understand him, but it does take away the mysterious and unpredictable nature of Lee Harvey Oswald.
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