Characterizations in Libra

One of the most compelling things about Libra thus far for me has been the rich characterizations of the different people in the novel. It's clear to me that DeLillo really did his research on these people and I find myself having a hard time picking out the fictional characters from the people who were actually involved in the events surrounding the assassination of JFK.

The prime example of these characterizations is the myriad of individuals that make up the CIA team who are plotting to have a shooter take a shot at the president (but miss) and the people that they are working with to further this plot. Win Everett and Lawrence Parmenter are the chief conspirators of this plot and they each have their own finely detailed backstories and motives. Everett is a CIA agent who, after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, was "exiled" to teach at Texas Women's University. He is a "true believer" and really hates Fidel Castro and his Communist revolutionaries. Parmenter is also an ex-CIA agent and Bay of Pigs veteran who shares some of Everett's feelings on the Cubans. But these characters are the fictional ones!

The real characters are even more outlandish and difficult to believe. For example David Ferrie is a crazy maximally skilled mercenary airplane pilot (he is described as being able to "fly the plane backwards"). Not only that he was arrested for "crimes against nature" (referring to his homosexuality) but he is also apparently a little bit of a pedophile. To top it all off he has a strange condition that prevents him from growing hair on his body and as a result he wears a bad toupee and pasted on eyebrows.

Besides just the the depth of their characterization and the amount of detail provided about these people, DeLillo's focus on these other players in the assassination really helped me put aside my existent knowledge of the events that occurred and become absorbed in the plot of the novel. Because of this focus on other characters being paralleled with a depiction of Lee Harvey Oswald in his youth, I almost missed the scene where he was mentioned as a promising prospect for the shooter. Parmenter is having a conversation with George de Mohrenschildt (another unbelievable character who actually existed and played a role in the actual events of JFK's assassination) and George offhandedly mentions a young man by the name of Lee that could work for the plot. Juxtaposed with the "In [location]..." chapters I knew it referred to the Lee we were seeing as a child. But because of the spotlight being turned away from the Lee Harvey Oswald that I recognize as "the man who shot JFK" I almost didn't make the connection that this was the same man.

I came into this book with a bit of apprehension about reading a story that I thought I already knew a bit about. But DeLillo's detailed and in depth characterizations and focus on seemingly everyone but the adult Lee Harvey Oswald, allowed me to get past what I knew and become absorbed in the storyline that he presents. I'm excited to see what happens next.

Time Travel in Kindred

Reading Kindred right after Slaughterhouse Five creates easy comparisons between the two forms of time travel that we see in these novels. SF takes us through Billy Pilgrim's journey as he is "unstuck in time" and showcases a very different form of time travel in "schizophrenic" episodes that throw Billy to different scenes in his life, randomly and without warning. Time travel in Kindred  has a more "conventional" depiction and shows us Dana, who is thrown back in time when her ancestor is in danger of dying and returns when her own life is threatened. I'm not yet sure which style I prefer, both are very interesting and make for different plot dynamic in the novels. 

One thing that is a really apparent to me as I continue to make my way through Kindred is that Dana doesn't seem to fully comprehend the fact that time passes much, much faster in Antebellum South while she is in the present. For example, the initial period of Dana being gone for a few minutes in the present, lasted weeks in the past. This large stretch of time that passes in the past makes for a disparity in what Dana perceives about the characters of the past and what has actually happened to them. 

This is especially true of Rufus, Dana's ancestor. When Dana first travels back in time to save Rufus, he is a small child and Dana tries to create some good influences so that he has the chance to grow up a little different from the stereotypical slave owner people around him. When she returns, after about a week in the present, 10 years have passed in the past and Rufus is a very different person then. Dana doesn't quite realize this and is a bit put off as to why she seemed to have no effect on him despite the best of her efforts. Then after she leaves Kevin behind and returns (3 days later in the present) 5 more years have passed in the past. This naïveté and lack of comprehension of the true passage of time in the past really us represented by the scene where Rufus pulls a gun on her to prevent her from leaving. 

All of this influence on Rufus that has happened in the time that Dana is gone makes me wonder what has happened to Kevin in the 5 years that she left him in the past and what influences have changed his character.