Coming Full Circle | A Look Into Libra's Uncertainties
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After finally finishing Libra, I was left with a pretty distinct aftertaste, though I'm not exactly sure what. Perhaps it was just the realization of being done with this course which struck me, but there's definitely a lot to be said about the novel's ending as well. At the end of Libra, DeLillo sends us off with a weird cross between fulfillment and dissatisfaction, as if we'd experienced so much yet learned nothing from it. In the end, we will never really know the true nature of JFK's assassination, and that might initially leave some of us feeling unsatisfied. But let's unpack this a little further: what is Libra really trying to tell us?
Libra is a perfect example of historiographic metafiction, combining fiction and historical "fact" to create a plausible, alternate reality of sorts. In fact, DeLillo expends a whole lot of effort in his character/world-building, all in an effort to make his story more realistic. And it's this realism that raises more questions for me. DeLillo goes to all these lengths to create this convincing explanation for everything, only to leave us all hanging at the end. There's never a point where we get any closure. Even at the very end of the book, we see Oswald's mother doubting the whole story, the one we just read. I think this is such exemplary postmodernist writing; DeLillo creates this elaborate, interweaving storyline combining historically traceable facts with fictional ones and throws it all in the trash, like just another half-baked conspiracy theory of the time. It's interesting how Libra and Kindred, for example, are so different in the ways they are postmodernist. Kindred comes to this neat conclusion where everything is either explicitly explained or can be pretty easily inferred, whereas Libra seems to branch off, leaving the reader with more questions than they had to begin with. It sort of reflects real life, in a way, where not every story has an ending and not every phenomenon has a concrete explanation.
A novel such as Libra makes us question very nature of truth and knowledge. DeLillo's deliberate ambiguity and the unresolved threads in the narrative prompt us to really think about the limits of our understanding. Our brains are wired to believe what we see, as much as they are to see what they believe; our minds are laughably ill-equipped to deal with our crazy society, which is filled with countless different narratives, historical or otherwise. DeLillo not only critiques the reliability of these narratives but also highlights the subjective nature of reality itself. In a society like ours, crowded with a myriad of different perspectives and voices, it's impossible to come up with one "true" narrative for anything, just as impossible as it is to know what really happened on November 22nd, 1963. Therefore, DeLillo's novel calls us to reimagine our approach to knowledge. Ultimately, Libra suggests that the quest for understanding might be more about the questions we ask, rather than the answers we often prioritize.
Thank you all for a great semester. Seniors, good luck in college. Hope your roommates don't snore.
I really enjoyed this post, especially the second paragraph, when you described all of DeLillo's efforts to give us a conclusive story and then not giving the readers anything. It reminds me of threading a needle, weaving it through fabric, and then cutting the strand before securing it with a knot so that everything could just come apart at any minute. I think, though, that that's another metafictional aspect of this novel. We will never get any closure with JFK's assassination, so why should DeLillo be giving us closure in his novel about said assassination? Yes, he's been seeming to do so throughout the book, but I think given the subject matter, it makes sense that he would leave us hanging.
ReplyDeleteNice post Josh! I feel so often with novels we read, we try and grasp the deeper meaning or a takeaway from it. With Mumbo Jumbo, it was much clearer that Reed was illuminating a broader trend throughout history and he pushes his readers to rethink how they approach certain topics. However, it's a little more difficult when they're novels that depict a specific historical event, and we see this with Libra. You're definitely right with how this takes on a very post-modernist view, offering that this novel is just one of many narratives surrounding the event, and all of them have validity to it based on what you believe. It forces us to be okay with the fact that we may never know what happened and it's an interesting point that there's so much evidence from this event, and yet it is still inconclusive. You raise a really good point about how Libra "calls us to reimagine our approach to knowledge," since this event popularized the conspiracy theory and also was a pivotal moment in which American citizens began doubting the government even more.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that Libra's ending gave me more questions than answers, which I think is in part because the novel forces you to do some background research. I was able to get by in the Kindred reading without and research about the history of slavery, because this is a system which I've been learning about throughout basically every grade level. However, I had to watch some BuzzFeed unsolved episodes to understand the JFK assassination, which ended up making the novel more mysterious as well as the shooting itself.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I think it's really interesting to think that a book like this would urge us to rethink how we think and ask questions. I think that part of it is also that so many conspiracies still exist and are still being talked about today, so the ending leaving us with more questions than answers would kind of fit the theme of the assassination.
ReplyDeleteNice post. Like Khuyen said, it certainly "matters" what is true or not more in Libra than it does in Kindred, Mumbo Jumbo, or Ragtime, which are all clearly don't mind demonstrating to the reader that they are false. Instead of trying to convince you of facts, they are trying to convince you of historical plausibilities or themes that represent larger causes. It's hard to accept that we don't and probably won't know the truth about the JFK assassination because it does matter who killed the president of the United States. However, even if we don't like it, Libra is still working the same way as the rest of the books because, even if Win Everett or Carmine Latta aren't real, the broader forces working against Kennedy definitely are, and it becomes much easier to see how the set of circumstances of the early 1960s could push (or even force?) Lee Oswald to kill JFK.
ReplyDeleteNice post! You make some good points about how Libra calls to attention the subjectivity of reality. You allude to this a bit in your second paragraph, but I think much of this subjectivity comes from our natural tendency to draw conspiracy theories and find a plausible explanation for why something happened. Even in our daily lives, this tendency emerges: for example, we see a friend frowning at us and get swept into an internal rabbit hole trying to pinpoint what we did wrong (even though we may not have been the real cause of their behavior). As we discussed in class, we find discomfort in ruling out events as random chance or coincidence. Sure, it's unlikely that most of what happens in life is a coincidence, but in our search for a specific justification for everything, we end up with different narratives.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I agree that the end of Libra was a little... "well now what?" There was so much information, so much going on, but in the end, we never really know what it was all for. History has already played out, and all Libra does is make us question what we know a little. It's filled with what ifs, and it makes us speculate. I think the purpose of the book was not to propose a solution to the conspiracy, but to make us aware of the gaps in history, and encourage us to question a little.
ReplyDeleteAll of this is an excellent illustration of what I mean when I suggest that the JFK assassination is "the first postmodern historical event" (and I don't think this is a view unique to me). It's this maddening combination of a surfeit of evidence and documentation, but the evidence and documentation both gives a pretty detailed reconstruction of events AND somehow doesn't add up. As Branch starts to realize, the more data he is given, the LESS he seems to know. And in quintessential postmodern fashion, the "videotape" (in this case, super-8 film) ends up raising more questions than it answers. If the modernist worldview would follow the "detective novel" approach and try to accurately retrace everyone's steps to determine what "really happened," DeLillo and the postmodernists would exist comfortably in the knowledge that we will NEVER know, and that all we CAN know must depend at least in part on our "projection of a world." There seems to be no way to offer a satisfying version of this narrative WITHOUT the kinds of fictional "placeholders" DeLillo has created: can we easily imagine a "real" TJ Mackey somewhere out there, living with the secrets and telling no one? If he WERE real, in other words, *we would never know.* And yet it DOES seem to matter, a lot, whether it's possible for agents within the US government to assassinate a president *and succeed fully in covering it up*.
ReplyDeleteAnd isn't it interesting how, despite all these uncertainties, very few people these days are pushing the "Oswald acted alone" narrative? Oddly, the least complicated explanation in this case is the one that seems LEAST plausible to most people. Or, some part of us WANTS to believe that things are more complicated, that there's always another layer. We are all too skeptical to be fooled by the official account. The JFK case itself has made it "common sense" to presume that there's always a cover-up of some kind, especially when the CIA and FBI are involved.
DeLillo does an incredible job weaving fact and fiction in a way that is difficult to parse, ESPECIALLY because he makes it fit into a storyline... I imagine that DeLillo's hypothetical twin could have written a similar novel with various distinct vignettes in the same places that DeLillo exploits that could fit together just as well and make a novel that'd be blended together just as well as Libra is. This thought builds on to your comment on how we know... there's an interesting parallel with Libra and court cases: oftentimes, what is available is only scant evidence and only the most compelling story 'wins'...
ReplyDeleteI think DeLillo does a really good job overwhelming the reader with evidence to the point where it becomes unhelpful and we just start doubting whether anything we know is actually true. I also agree that he's very critical of how we so easily jump to conclusions about some grand conspiracy, even though if there actually was one it was much more likely to be an unorganized mess that succeeded because a few people got lucky. There's also the fact that in Libra Lee has to be manipulated into actually going through with it which makes it unclear what his motives even were.
ReplyDeleteExcellent post! I liked the comparison you made with Kindred and Libra- I think Kindred makes us question moral issues while Libra makes us question truth issues. I thought this sentence "Ultimately, Libra suggests that the quest for understanding might be more about the questions we ask, rather than the answers we often prioritize." was especially interesting- we have mountains of evidence when it comes to the JFK assasination but finding the right question can make all the difference. If the answers are hidden all over a forest, the questions act as the direction of our flashlight. We can ask about Oswald and make narratives about his childhood and such, or we can ask about the cia and conspiracies, or we can look at governments and uncover some dirt. Depending on the question we ask, we'll organize and look differently at the evidence given to us.
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