Journal of Information and Computational Science ISSN: 1548-7741

Historiographic Metafiction in Don DeLillo’s Libra

J. Britto Jenobia Dr. V. Sekar PhD Scholar, Department of English Associate Professor of English National College (Autonomous), Trichy-1 National College (Autonomous), Trichy-1 Affiliated to Bharathidasan University Affiliated to Bharathidasan University E-mail:[email protected] E-mail:[email protected]

Abstract: Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific or objective, efforts to explain reality. Many postmodern writers combine elements of previous genres and styles to create a new narrative voice. An important element of postmodernism is its acknowledgement of previous literary works. Many postmodern writers employ metafiction in their writing in order to make the readers aware of its fictionality and the presence of the authors. Among the postmodern techniques, Historiographic Metafiction is a term which was created by Linda Hutcheon. Historiographic Metafiction refers to the novels that fictionalize actual historical events and characters. Don DeLillo has positioned himself in a postmodern world with a relative ease and penchant for modern realism. Don DeLillo exhibits a ‘perpetual quest for reality’. Don DeLillo’s Libra is a novel which is based on the assassination Of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. This article focuses on the postmodern technique, Historiographic Metafiction in Don DeLillo’s Libra through the characters Oswald and Nicholas Branch. Key Words: Historiographic Metafiction, Post Modernism, Don DeLillo, Assassination of John F Kennedy, History based on the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, Nicholas Branch.

Introduction: Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific or objective, efforts to explain reality. Postmodernism stems from a recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in human understanding, but rather is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own particular and personal reality. In the postmodern understanding, reality only comes into being through the interpretations of what the world means to an individual.

Many postmodern writers combine elements of previous genres and styles to create a new narrative voice. An important element of postmodernism is its acknowledgement of previous literary works. Many postmodern writers employ metafiction in their writing in order to make the readers aware of its fictionality and the presence of the authors. Among the postmodern techniques, Historiographic Metafiction is a term which was created by Linda Hutcheon. Historiographic Metafiction refers to the novels that fictionalize actual historical events and characters.

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Historiographic Metafiction:

Linda Hutcheon in her A Poetics of Postmodernism labels postmodern historical novels as “Historiographic Metafiction”. Historiographic Metafiction thematizes the theory of contemporary historiography and problematizes the distinction between history and fiction. Linda Hutcheon’s definition is governed by the paradox created by the intermingling of metafictional self- reflexivity and historical reality in novels. In the analysis of postmodern historical novels, the metafictive elements, intertexuality, self- reflexivity, non- linear narrative and parodic intention foreground the process of historiography. Historiographic Metafiction attempts to use historical material within the parodic self- reflexivity of metafiction which aims at undermining realism.

Historiographic Metafiction is not only concerned with the question of the true- value of objective historical representation but with the issues of who control history. One of the attempts of Historiographic Metafiction is to focus on past events and historical personages which history chooses not to include. The excluded events are fore grounded, their stories are retold and alternatives histories are composed in Historiographic Metafiction. As a result, a multiplicity of history is achieved since Historiographic Metafiction write alternative versions to the already accepted one.

Don DeLillo and his works:

Don DeLillo has positioned himself in a postmodern world with a relative ease and penchant for modern realism. Don DeLillo exhibits a ‘perpetual quest for reality’. Don DeLillo is a famous American novelist, whose journey as a writer began in 1960. He was greatly influenced by John Dos Passos and Thomas Pynchon. Quoting Lionel Trilling words, Don DeLillo exhibits a “perpetual quest for reality” in his writings. Don DeLillo as a writer has written many short stories along with the novels. His first novel Americana was published in 1971. He has written seventeen novels till 2016. His other novels are as follows: End Zone(1972), Great Jones Street(1973), Ratner’s star(1976), Players(1977), Running Dog(1978), Amazons(1980), The Names(1982), White Noise(1985), Libra(1988), Mao II(1991), Underworld(1997), The Body Artist(2001), Cosmopolis (2003), Falling Man(2007), Point Omega(2010) and Zero K(2016).

Analysis of the Title: This article analyses Don DeLillo’s Libra as postmodernist historical novels in line with the form historical fictions have taken with an introduction of postmodernism. The study argues that Don DeLillo’s Libra can be regarded as subversive texts that problematize the boundary between history and fiction and claim the objectivity of historical representation. The study categorizes the novel of Don DeLillo as representatives of Historiographic Metafiction.

Don DeLillo’s Libra explains historiographic metafiction by examining the historical events on John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s assassination. Don DeLillo’s novel Libra is a work of

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imagination based on the life of Lee Harvey Oswald and the events surrounding President Kennedy’s assassination. Libra is named after the astrological sign of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, which symbolizes balance and Harmony. Don DeLillo’s Libra was published in 1987. Don DeLillo regards John Fitzgerald Kennedy assassination as one of the formative events of the nineteenth century American history, an event that changed the way Americans think and feel about reality. Don DeLillo himself has commented,

[The JFK assassination] had an effect on Americans that we’ll probably never recover from. The fact that it could happen. The fact that it was on film. The fact that two days later the assassin himself was killed on live television. All of these psychological shockwaves that are still rolling (Interview with Arensberg, 42).

Don DeLillo explains the reason why John Fitzgerald Kennedy assassination left a permanent mark in the American psyche. An additional reason is the unresolved nature of ambiguity, uncertainty and mystery in which John Fitzgerald Kennedy assassination is disguised.

Libra serves to symbolize Oswald’s uncertain search for balance in American society. Libra is Don DeLillo’s ninth novel which is a fictional account of how the lives of Lee Harvey Oswald and John Fitzgerald Kennedy intersected in Dallas. Like most works of historical fiction this novel throws back the readers into the history and politics of the era through the amalgamation of real and fictional characters, and also through the actual and imaginary events. Don DeLillo acted as a biographer to the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. He brings together ‘fragments of history’ and manages to inject a historical essence into the narrative. In Libra Don DeLillo’s novelization of John Fitzgerald Kennedy assassination can be regarded as Historiographic Metafiction.

Lee Harvey Oswald: Lee Harvey Oswald’s criminal activities in America and in Russia and fact that he lived only a few miles away from Bronx, where Don DeLillo lived gives a contemporary and an intimate touch of history to the novel. Don DeLillo tried to put in proper perspective the psyche of Lee Harvey Oswald. Don DeLillo counts on the circumstances in the life of Oswald as a marine, a Marxist, a husband, a killer to produce a ‘micro history’ which is solely that of an individual. In Libra, Don DeLillo explores a transitional moment in American national consciousness. The assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy ends a certain kind of political innocence. Don DeLillo recognizes the event as a turning point in which the effects of the media serve as a fundamental change in American’s relationship to the world.

In Libra Don DeLillo examines the changes surrounding the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Don DeLillo attempts to change the official gunman story of the warren commission Report or the multiple possibilities of conspiracy theory, around the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Instead, Don DeLillo provides a straight forward biography of Lee

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Harvey Oswald focusing on the plots of various government and anti-Castro agents activities against John Fitzgerald Kennedy in the wake of the failure of the US-backed invasion of Cuba. In Libra Don DeLillo approached recent American history, drawing from the evidence, testimony and analysis complied in the after moth of Kennedy’s murder. The novel recreates the traumatic moment in Dallas “the seven seconds that broke the back of the American century” (Libra, 181) and offers “a way of thinking about the assassination without being constrained by half-facts or overwhelmed by possibilities, by the tide of speculations that widens with the years” (Libra, 458). The novel is the imaginative recreation of a particularly important and difficult historical event. Libra is also a speculative study of the origins of American historical and cultural moment. Don DeLillo puts the puzzle of Lee Harvey Oswald at the centre of his novel but also invents a small scale conspiracy involving the principles of CIA officers, anti-Castro Cubans and a few key players from the mob. Don DeLillo’s Libra is complex in structure. Libra weaves together the stories of various assassination participants, both real and imagined. The principal figures in John Fitzgerald Kennedy assassination are fleshed out in the novel Libra. Particular attention is given to Don DeLillo’s character Lee Harvey Oswald. Don DeLillo fills in the narrative gaps with a variety of fictional characters.

Libra traces Oswald’s travel from place to place and contradictory life story from his teenage years in the Bronx and New Orleans, through service in the Marines and defection to the Soviet Union. The novel explains his shadowy existence in Louisiana and Texas and finally to his death in police custody. This is a novel of motion and mobility of restlessness and fleeting attachments that anticipate Oswald’s attempts to project himself into history. Don DeLillo’s Oswald, imagines history as an impersonal metaphysical force that will at once give him a permanent identity and sweep him out of his isolation: “History means to merge. The purpose of history is to climb out of your own skim. He knew that Trotsky had written that revolution leads us out of the dark night of the isolated self. We live forever in history, outside ego and id” (Libra, 101).

Although Oswald imagines finding his way into history through action and secrecy, emulating Trotsky his attitude toward the power to be history is essentially passive. The passivity makes him vulnerable. If he casts himself as Trotsky at one moment Oswald also fantasies that he is Herb Philbrick, the protagonist of the 1950s television show.

Don DeLillo structures his text around a compound, discontinuous narrative, with different historical moments irrupting upon one another. Lee Harvey Oswald’s immersion in Marxism does not prevent him from seeing history as an independent force, almost a willing character with power to direct individual human force. He desires to enter history, but instead becomes “a subject and object of a historically determined ideology” (Libra, 34). David Ferrie, a real character, calls history “the sum total of all the things they aren’t telling us” (Libra, 321).

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Nicholas Branch: Don DeLillo introduces an element of historiographic self-reflection through the figure of Nicholas Branch, a retired CIA officer. Nicholas Branch is charged with writing a secret history of John Fitzgerald Kennedy assassination. Nicholas Branch analyses the limited stream of materials forwarded to him by the CIA officer, and incorporated it into the definite history. Through the volume of information he acquired Nicholas Branch recognizes the insufficient information of the two favoured approaches to John Fitzgerald Kennedy assassination. Nicholas Branch as a historian questions everything. He questions everything, including the basic suppositions we make about our world of light and shadow, solid objects and ordinary sounds, and our ability to measure such things, to determine weight, mass and direction, to see things as they are, recall them clearly, be able to say what happened (Libra, 300-301).

Nicholas Branch knows that it is different to make history with the information acquired from the CIA officer. “It is premature to make a serious effort to turn these notes into coherent history. May be it will always be premature. Because the data keeps coming. Because new lives enter the record all the time. The past is changing as he writes” (Libra, 301). This recorded history is “the data-spew of hundreds of lives” (Libra, 15). John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s assassination and Lee Harvey Oswald’s murder history is not recorded by one but thousands of witnesses, which establishes historical consensus. John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s assassination is the first postmodern historical event. John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s assassination is narrated from the points of view of characters both real and invented, combining actual evidence with fiction.

Conclusion: Don DeLillo’s Libra is an example of Linda Hutcheon’s term Historiographic Metafiction, because in addition to simply being about historical event, it demonstrates a self- conscious awareness of itself as a work of fiction. Libra reveals itself as a work of metafiction in more subtle ways, particularly in the manner in which the novel regards history not as a naturally occurring and easily accessible sequence of self- contained and self- evident events, but as a human linguistic construct. The self-referential questioning of history is carried out primarily through Don DeLillo’s fictional CIA Analyst Nicholas Branch. Compared to other characters in the novel Libra, Nicholas Branch is given relatively little attention. Six short sections of the novel Libra totaling about twenty four pages describe Nicholas Branch’s impossible tasks and render the details of his explanation on history. Nicholas Branch sections are considered as one of the important sections in the novel Libra. Because they deal with the problem of archive and the ways in which historical knowledge is created. Don DeLillo uses Nicholas Branch to illustrate the difficulty of writing a truly accurate account of a historical event. Towards the end of the novel Libra, however, Nicholas Branch describes an interesting change in the nature of the documents brought by the curator. Don

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DeLillo through the character Nicholas Branch and the archival material explained the novel Libra as Historiographic Metafiction. By analyzing the novel Libra Don DeLillo used History in metafictional aspects to make the readers understand the historical events the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Through his writing Don DeLillo makes the readers understand that Libra is a novel and not to be regarded as history. Don DeLillo’s novel Libra presents credible and well-researched account of assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Don DeLillo’s account of John Fitzgerald Kenned assassination is convincing and persuasive. The narrative structure of the novel, as well as the obvious research from which the assassination history is constructed, creates a believable account of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Libra’s account of John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s assassination has shaped our collective memory of this monumental historical event.

WORKS CITED Aaron, Daniel. “How to read Don DeLillo”. Frank Lentricchia Ed. Introducing Don DeLillo.

Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 1991, Print.

Carmichael, Thomas. “Lee Harvey Oswald and the Postmodern Subject: History and Intertextuality in Don DeLillo’s Libra, The Names and Mao II”. Notes on Contemporary Literature. Summer, vol. 34, No.2, 1993. Courtwright, David T. “Why Oswald missed: Don DeLillo’s Libra.” Novel History: Historians

and Novelists Confront America’s Past (and Each Other). Ed. Mark C. Carnes.

New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001, Print.

DeLillo, Don. “American Blood: A Journey through the Labyrinth of Dallas and JFK.” Rollingstone Magazine, December 8, 1983. DeLillo, Don. Libra. New York: Penguin, 1988, Print. DeLillo, Don. “Seven Seconds.” Interview with Ann Arensberg. Conversations with Don

DeLillo. Ed. Thomas DePietro. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005, Print.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. London: Routledge, 1988, Print.

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