Libra (Penguin Modern Classics)

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DeLillo was already a well-regarded cult writer in 1985, when the publication of White Noise brought him widespread recognition and the National Book Award for fiction. He followed this in 1988 with Libra, a novel about the Kennedy assassination. DeLillo won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Mao II, about terrorism and the media's scrutiny of writers' private lives, and the William Dean Howells Medal for Underworld, a historical novel that ranges in time from the dawn of the Cold War to the birth of the Internet. [1] [2] He was awarded the 1999 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction in 2010, and the 2013 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. [3] At the end of the novel, Oswald is buried under an alias in a grave in Fort Worth in a small ceremony attended by his immediate family members. readers see the story the same way - that finally we're interested less in the physical events of the assassination than in the pitiable and stumbling spirit underlying them - proves ''Libra'' to be a triumph. The prize honors "an American literary writer whose body of work is distinguished not only for its mastery of the art but for its originality of thought and imagination. The award seeks to commend strong, unique, enduring voices that—throughout long, consistently accomplished careers—have told us something about the American experience." [3] In a statement issued in response to the award, DeLillo said, "When I received news of this award, my first thoughts were of my mother and father, who came to this country the hard way, as young people confronting a new language and culture. In a significant sense, the Library of Congress Prize is the culmination of their efforts and a tribute to their memory." [55] Underworld went on to become DeLillo's most acclaimed novel to date, achieving mainstream success and earning nominations for the National Book Award and the New York Times Best Books of the Year in 1997, and a second Pulitzer Prize for Fiction nomination in 1998. [37] The novel won the 1998 American Book Award and the William Dean Howells Medal in 2000. [38]

Oswald is portrayed as a misfit antihero, whose overtly communist political views cause him difficulties fitting into American society. Raised by a single mother in The Bronx, Oswald enlists in the military in the 1950s and is stationed at the Naval Air Facility Atsugi in Japan, where he amuses his fellow marines with his earnest left-wing ideology. Oswald defects to the Soviet Union after the end of his service and is interviewed by the KGB about the U-2 reconnaissance planes he observed at Atsugi, although he is unable to furnish much useful information. Following a suicide attempt, Oswald is moved to Minsk, where he works in a factory and meets a young woman, Marina, whom he marries. In the early 1960s, Oswald and Marina relocate to Texas. Libra was awarded the inaugural Irish Times International Fiction Prize, as well as a nomination for the 1988 National Book Award for Fiction. [13] [4] His own theory, while at odds with the Warren Commission's, nevertheless discounts conspiracy in favor of a motivation embedded in coincidence, intuition and astrology - hence the book's title. ''Certainly,'' he said, ''I DeLillo's papers were acquired in 2004 by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, [40] reputedly for "half a million dollars". [20] There are "[one] hundred and twenty-five boxes" of DeLillo materials, including various drafts and correspondence. [20] Of his decision to donate his papers to the Ransom Center, DeLillo has said: "I ran out of space and also felt, as one does at a certain age, that I was running out of time. I didn't want to leave behind an enormous mess of papers for family members to deal with. Of course, I've since produced more paper—novel, play, essay, etc.—and so the cycle begins again." [20] sense of his own character. It's easy to imagine such a man committing murder almost at random. Maybe the assassination was not so much a scheme as a long, helpless, headlong plunge downward.DeLillo has described his themes as "living in dangerous times" and "the inner life of the culture." [4] In a 2005 interview, he said that writers "must oppose systems. It's important to write against power, corporations, the state, and the whole system of consumption and of debilitating entertainments... I think writers, by nature, must oppose things, oppose whatever power tries to impose on us." [5] Early life and influences [ edit ]

Adam Begley of the London Review of Books deemed it the author's best book up to that point, praising him for avoiding caricature in portrayals of disturbed individuals such as Ferrie and Ruby and "[leaving] room for pity, if not for compassion." Begley also argued that DeLillo "never seems overwhelmed or constrained by the facts of the case. Nor is he vexed by contradictions and omissions. Libra displays his genius for creative paranoia: he fills the gaps in the record with his imagination, spinning a brilliant web out of a heap of improbable coincidences." [7] asked if it's true, as the novel states, that President Kennedy's brain has been missing from the National Archives for more than 20 years: ''This, evidently, is fact.'') Mr. DeLillo relied heavily on the blame? And finally, what if they decided in the end that a successful attempt would be even more effective than an unsuccessful attempt?That such a book could come from a writer who has "never made an outline for any novel that I've written. Never," seemed extraordinary. Underworld represented an expansion of talent that encompassed baseball, the bomb, the Cuban Missile Crisis, real people and invented ones, and left critics open-jawed in awe. "There is no doubt that it renders DeLillo a great novelist," wrote Martin Amis. The epilogue of Underworld even reflects on the internet in a way that makes the metaverse seem like a twinkle in the author's eye. "Is cyberspace a thing within the world or is it the other way around? Which contains the other, and how can you tell for sure?" Not bad for 1997. Kennedy's life that would implicate Castro supporters? And what if they seized upon Lee Harvey Oswald - a onetime defector to Russia, sole member of his own unauthorized branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee - as the man In a January 29, 2010, interview with The Wall Street Journal, DeLillo discussed at great length Point Omega, his views of writing, and his plans for the future. When asked why his recent novels had been shorter, DeLillo replied, "Each book tells me what it wants or what it is, and I'd be perfectly content to write another long novel. It just has to happen." [19] While DeLillo is open to the idea of returning to the form of the long novel, the interview also revealed that he had no interest in doing as many of his literary contemporaries have done and writing a memoir. [19] DeLillo also made some observations on the state of literature and the challenges facing young writers: Following this early attempt at a major long novel, DeLillo ended the decade with two shorter works. Players (1977), originally conceived as "based on what could be called the intimacy of language—what people who live together really sound like", [23] concerned the lives of a young yuppie couple as the husband gets involved with a cell of domestic terrorists. [23] Its 1978 successor, Running Dog (1978), written in four months, [14] was a thriller about a hunt for a celluloid reel of Hitler's sexual exploits.

with the inequities of capitalism, or his extensive readings in Marxism, you catch a glimmer of intelligence. ''I'm not an innocent youth who thinks Russia is the land of his dreams,'' he tells one Russian. it's not at all like that. It's an eerie sense of getting close to the man himself. It's a sense of history, but of a peculiar kind -a history on the margins, a history that people don't really want to know.''

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of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. ''I invented scenes and dialogues, of course, but I tried to stay as close to what I understood to be the actual Oswald as I could,'' Mr. DeLillo said, noting that fiction asked if it's true, as the novel states, that President Kennedy's brain has been missing from the National Archives for more than 20 years: ''This, evidently, is fact.'') Mr. DeLillo relied heavily on the a morass of eyewitness accounts, hair samples, chemical analyses, then the accounts of the dreams of eyewitnesses and then 25 years of novels and plays and radio debates about the assassination. He's not really part of the story, and more associates - first the two former colleagues he trusts most and then other men less predictable, less controllable, as his plan takes on a life of its own. Nicholas Branch will reappear only rarely, sinking ever deeper in a morass Libra received critical acclaim and earned DeLillo the inaugural Irish Times International Fiction Prize, as well as a nomination for the 1988 National Book Award for Fiction.