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 holds incredible importance, the culmination of all of his experiences in Russia, a metanarrative for Russian life. The prospect is obviously appealing to Lee. The published Kollective would be right up there with Das Kapital, another “painstaking essay” attempting to serve as the basis for how society might function, a book Lee has read. Marguerite’s attempt to write her own novel also furthers an idea prevalent within Libra, everybody wants to be an author. Lee believes that for his novel to have worth it must be complete in all aspects.


Branch’s research goes one further. He describes the CIA’s attempts to investigate the assassination as “Joycean Book of America, remember--the novel in which nothing is left out” (182). Libra itself is another novel in which virtually nothing is left out. DeLillo himself is almost a perfect foil for James Joyce. Joyce’s magnum opus Ulysses is a fictional novel set in Dublin. Though it isn’t historical fiction and death is far less prevalent, Ulysses bears a resemblance to Libra. Both secondary protagonists are alter egos for the author (Stephen Dedalus is a writer in Ulysses), both books are incredibly dense, both novels end the same way with Joyce’s trademark stream of consciousness by women over their experiences during the novel. What is unique about Ulysses in comparison to Libra is that nothing in it really seems to matter. The book spans over one day and there is no CIA and nobody is assassinated. While writing a Joycean Ulysses is certainly possible, chronicling all the events of one day in Ireland, a “Joycean Book of America” speculating about the assassination of the President and everything leading up to it is impossible. Nicholas Branch and DeLillo do their best. Wayne Elko is a character who seemingly is only introduced to answer the question of why  Lee visited the movie theater after the assassination; an ambush getaway spot where Wayne would kill him? Lee must have beat his wife, that’s why she wasn’t in Dallas with him. The gaps are definitely important. “Somebody will have to piece me together,” Jack Ruby says (215). Nicholas Branch, like Lee in his Kollective, poses to do it by himself. If Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses and its stream of consciousness is the quintessential modernist work, DeLillo’s Nicholas Branch is Libra’s postmodernist answer. Everybody wants to be an author. Everybody wants to detail everything, regardless of its probability.


The question Libra asks is whether it is possible to collect everything about something, to establish a grand narrative. While The Kollective is not published, Marguerite's book isn’t either, and Branch still sits in his office while more material files in; DeLillo finishes Libra. Libra is not really a metanarrative. Though incredibly detailed, Libra does not have to be the Warren Report, writing it DeLillo was not restricted by the need to piece Oswald together. Though not as detailed or factually rigorous as The Kollective, Joyce’s books can illustrate what life was like in Ireland just as well, complete in its own regard. By the end of Libra, Lee has found his place in history, and by the book being finished, perhaps DeLillo has as well.

Comments

  1. KralDecember 20, 2023 at 8:34 AM

    I like your idea that Branch is DeLillo's surrogate as an author, and I think it might be his way of being self-aware and criticizing conspiracy theorists who sift through every detail of an event. I think DeLillo was restricted by the need to piece Oswald together, but was able to do it outside the confines of true history in a fictional narrative.

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  2. MitchellDecember 20, 2023 at 11:04 AM

    In the context of Lee as a writer of his own story ("The Kollective," "The Historical Diary"), I always think of his stated intention as part of his visa application--"to write short stories about contemporary American life" (which is historical, what the real Lee wrote on his visa application). Whether that intention would have made him a Joyce or not is questionable--Kirilenko brings up Hemingway as a point of comparison. Lee's own attempts at writing are, indeed, closer to fiction than historical documentation--rather than an actual diary, for example, he narrates himself slitting his wrists in the first person, as if he's writing as it happens (an explicitly fictional device).

    I sure didn't expect all of the detailed references to _Ulysses_ in any of these blog posts--most Uni students haven't read "Joyce's magnum opus" to the point where they can allude to its concluding chapter (700-something pages in!) as an example of stream of consciousness (much more s-o-c than the final sections in _Libra_, but the fact is that DeLillo ends with women's perspectives as well--this is still a surprisingly specific observation for you to make). I would love to talk _Ulysses_ some time, I do find the comparison to Branch's failed project very interesting. Joyce tries to include "everything" in his fiction, but the consequences of this one ad-salesman's day wandering around Dublin aren't as significant, historically, as what DeLillo is attempting to reconstruct. And Joyce is far more interested (as a modernist) in the interiority of his characters, the interplay between outside and interior. June 16, 1904, is only significant in subjective ways for these specific characters. DeLillo gets into Lee's head, but the (postmodernist) emphasis is always on our ability (or inability) to assemble a persuasive narrative out of these scraps.

    I didn't even get into the Branch as "Joycean" references in class, because I assumed I'd have to do too much explaining about Joyce and we'd lose the thread. Interesting stuff!

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  3. Jonathan OuyangDecember 20, 2023 at 5:25 PM

    This is my first exposure to the idea of Joycean literature, and I can definitely see how Libra is both similar and polar opposite to it here. The two books seem to happen upon a similar literature structure despite coming from completely opposite directions - short time span with extreme detail versus long time span with not nearly all the details.

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  4. TaehanDecember 23, 2023 at 9:14 AM

    I agree with you that Delillo's narrative of completeness is itself a critique on the incompleteness of history. Delillo's exact story could have taken place without our knowing, or Lee Harvey Oswald could really have been a nobody who sided with Castro. Either way, we will never know for sure and that is what makes Libra truly special. Great post!

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