Back in 1988 reactionary columnist George Will wrote that Don Delillo's novel was "literary vandalism and bad citizenship." I read that novel and I thought it was pretty good, solid with a great deal of literary merit. Read what Will wrote because sometimes it pays to read what reactionaries write so that you can do the opposite of what they say. Also, prominent Yale literary Professor/critic Harold Bloom, Ph.D. has several of Don Delillo's novels (including Libra ) listed in his master list of great canonical works of all time. http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtbloom.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/archi...ssassin/f8a4c3c6-8355-43c3-8a04-03d6588688e6/ https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/16/lifetimes/del-r-libra.html
I agree that George Will's opinion is irrelevant but a novel is fiction by definition so it is also irrelevant
Excerpt from Libra: "When is your birthday?" [Clay] Shaw said first thing. "October eighteen," Lee [Oswald] said. "Libra. A Libran." "The Scales," [Dave] Ferrie said. "The Balance," Shaw said. It seemed to tell them everything they had to know. Clay Shaw wore well-made casual clothes and had the easy manner of someone clearly educated to all the right things. When he smiled, a vein seemed to flash from the corner of his right eye to his hairline. He [Shaw] said, "We have the positive Libran who has achieved self-mastery. He is well balanced, levelheaded, a sensible fellow respected by all. We have the negative Libran who is, let’s say, somewhat unsteady and impulsive. Easily, easily, easily influenced. Poised to make the dangerous leap. Either way, balance is the key."
Last excerpts I will post: Ferrie: "There’s something I know about you, Leon, that I find fascinating. It’s something almost no one else knows. Very few people know. You’re the night-rider who took a shot at General Ted Walker two and a half months ago in Dallas." Lee’s mind went blank. "I can’t tell you how I know," Ferrie said. "But there are men who are interested in you. At first I only played a hunch. I thought Leon and I, we have a psychic bond. I took your application to [Guy] Banister. I had an argument all set. I would say to Guy, ‘Here is a man who wants to spy on our operations. He wants to use us but we will end up using him. Not through manipulation or political conversion. He believes in his heart that he’s a dedicated leftist. But he is also a Libran. He is capable of seeing the other side. He is a man who harbors contradictions.’ I was ready to say to Guy, ‘Here’s a Marine recruit who reads Karl Marx.’ I was ready to say, ‘This boy is sitting on the scales, ready to be tilted either way.'’’ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Ferrie talked Lee into having a meal together. Raymo would drive him to Houston tomorrow if that’s what he wanted. Save the bus fare. Enjoy the comfort of the family car. They ate scrambled eggs in Ferrie’s apartment. There were explosives stored under the kitchen table. Ferrie kept his jacket on, wagged the fork as he spoke. "I’ve seen the Fair Play material you keep at 544 [Camp Street]," he said. "I’ve noticed something you haven’t noticed. Librans never notice references to themselves. The official symbol of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee is a man’s hand holding aloft a pair of scales. Two weighing pans hanging from a rigid beam. Everywhere you go. It’s all around you. Which way will Leon [Oswald] tilt?" "I don’t know what they want me to do." "Of course you know." "Tell me where it happens." "Miami." "That means nothing to me." "You’ve known for weeks." "What happens in Miami?" Ferrie took a while to finish chewing his food. "Think of two parallel lines," he said. "One is the life of Lee H. Oswald. One is the conspiracy to kill the President. What bridges the space between them? What makes a connection inevitable? There is a third line. It comes out of dreams, visions, intuitions, prayers, out of the deepest levels of the self. It’s not generated by cause and effect like the other two lines. It’s a line that cuts across causality, cuts across time. It has no history that we can recognize or understand. But it forces a connection. It puts a man on the path of his destiny." http://cache4.asset-cache.net/gc/50...h695JXIxr+SIOuNdSIHCJIPeC8oBie5Co259wM9ycK08= https://www.google.com/search?q=lib...ved=0CAYQ_AUoAWoVChMI7JWC_MyuyAIVyxseCh0zQgvU
George Will is a stupid person posing as a intellectual........fiction though can have a lot of value....yet I usually read non-fiction.
