"I wanna die just like JFK / I wanna die in the USA": Libra and DeLillo’s Curation of the Kennedy Archive
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25071/2369-7326.40260Abstract
Don DeLillo reimagines and revisions the Kennedy assassination in Libra. Nicholas Branch, a retired senior analyst for the CIA, has been hired on contract to write a definitive account of the events at Dealey Plaza on November 22nd, 1963. In the process, Branch subsumes the role of the museum curator; he meticulously combs through the received records in order to challenge accepted versions of “history”. As the novel’s character-as-curator, Branch examines, positions, interprets, and displays the artifacts at hand to outline the numerous plots swirling around the assassination. This paper will demonstrate how DeLillo, through Branch, reimagines the space of the novel, transforming it into a museum display that challenges the Warren Commission’s “Single-Bullet Theory” and its “Lone-Gunman Theory”, to instead suggest the possible presence of multiple shooters. As the novel’s character-as-curator, Branch meticulously places the objects on display and leaves it to the reader to decide which view to adopt or accept.
References
“About the Museum.” JFK.org. The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, 2014. Web. 5 March 2015.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Epic and Novel: Toward a Methodology for the Study of the Novel.” Critical Theory Since Plato. Ed. Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle. Boston: Thompson Wadsworth, 2005. 912-25. Print.
Benjamin, Walter. “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken, 1969. 253-64. Print.
Bernstein, Stephen. “Libra and the Historical Sublime.” Postmodern Culture 4.2 (1994): 20. Web. 12 June 2016.
Boxall, Peter. Don DeLillo: The Possibility of Fiction. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203315422
Butter, Michael. “Historiographic Metafiction.” The Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Fiction. Ed. Brian W. Shaffer. Malden: Blackwell, 2010. Print. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444337822.wbetcfv2h012
DeCurtis, Anthony. “‘An Outsider in this Society’: An Interview with Don DeLillo.” Conversations with Don DeLillo. Ed. Thomas DePietro. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2005. 52-74. Print.
Don DeLillo. Americana. New York: Penguin, 1971. Print.
Don DeLillo. Libra. New York: Viking, 1988. Print.
Don DeLillo. Underworld. New York: Scribner, 1997. Print.
Giebelhausen, Michaela. “The Architecture Is the Museum.” Marstine 41-69.
Green, Jeremy. “Libra.” The Cambridge Companion to Don DeLillo. Ed. John N. Duvall. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008. 94-107. Print. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521870658.008
Herbert, Shannon. “Playing the Historical Record: DeLillo’s Libra and the Kennedy Archive.” Twentieth-Century Literature 56.3 (2010): 287-317. Print. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-2010-4001
The Jesus and Mary Chain. “Reverence.” Honey’s Dead. Def American Recordings, 1992. CD.
Johnston, John. Information Multiplicity: American Fiction in the Age of Media Saturation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998. Print.
Johnston, John. “Superlinear Fiction or Historical Diagram? Don DeLillo’s Libra.” Modern Fiction Studies 40.2 (1994): 319-342. Print. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.0.0464
Lentricchia, Frank. “Libra as Postmodern Critique.” Introducing Don DeLillo. Ed. Frank Lentricchia. Durham: Duke UP, 1999. 193-215. Print.
Lindauer, Margaret. “The Critical Museum Visitor.” Marstine 203-225.
Martinon, Jean-Paul. The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating. London: A & C Black, 2013. Print.
Marstine, Janet. “Introduction.” Marstine 1-36. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470776230.ch
Marstine, Janet, ed. New Museum Theory and Practice. Malden: Blackwell, 2006. Print. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470776230
Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations 26 (1989): 7-24. Print. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2928520
Norden, Eric. “Jim Garrison Interview.” Oct. 1967. Playboy. Playboy, n.d. Web. 17 Aug. 2015.
Radford, Andrew. “Confronting the Chaos Theory of History in DeLillo’s Libra.” Midwest Quarterly 47.3 (2006): 224-243. Print.
Robinson, Andrew. “Walter Benjamin: Messianism and Revolution.” CeaseFire. CeaseFire Magazine, 15 Nov. 2013. Web. 14 June 2016.
Thomas, Glen. “History, Biography, and Narrative in Don DeLillo’s Libra.” Twentieth-Century Literature 43.1 (1997): 107-124. Print. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/441866
Wilcox, Leonard. “Don DeLillo’s Libra: History as Text, History as Trauma.” Rethinking History 9.2/3 (2005): 337-353. Print. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13642520500149541