What is Libra about? DeLillo’s Critique of Completeness
As a novel, Libra is incredibly dense. Characters are introduced to only fill two sentences. To a brutal degree, everything is accounted for. DeLillo makes an attempt to explain everything. In Libra, Don DeLillo constructs a frame story narrative in which CIA analyst Nicholas Branch attempts to piece together the assassination of JFK. Notably, the frame narrative makes multiple nods to modernist writer James Joyce. Throughout the novel, DeLillo uses Branch as an author surrogate to pose questions regarding the need for the overwhelming recording of information as well as the postmodernist rejection of metanarratives as a whole. Permeating throughout DeLillo’s Libra is the desire to write a record. While most apparent in Nicholas Branch’s investigations, the theme also materializes through Lee’s immigration to Russia. “The Kollective,” Lee’s attempt to record “every aspect of Soviet life” is one of the many attempts made by Oswald to find his place in history (212). To him, it hol...