Libra (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Ted Williams’s head was frozen. It was Ted Williams. Can people return to life? That’s the question. Again, I was thinking visually: rows of people in these pods in cryonic suspension. When I was working on “Zero K,” I was thinking that I’d actually seen such a thing, which of course I hadn’t. The other thing I remember is the odd part titles, “Part 1: In the Time of Chelyabinsk.” “Part 2: In the Time of Konstantinovka.” I did have a reason for doing that but who the hell knows what it was. way of saying it, the evidence was weak.'' Both of these remarks were uttered in private - not recorded, we have to assume, but created, or at least re-created from hearsay, by a writer with a merciless ear for language.

The story, about a college professor who teaches "Hitler studies", takes aim at modern life: consumerism, paranoia, technology. It's full of riffs and jokes: "California deserves whatever it gets," goes one. "Californians invented the concept of lifestyle. This alone warrants their doom." It satirises our reliance on devices and our deadened responses: "The smoke alarm went off in the hallway upstairs, either to let us know the battery had just died or because the house was on fire. We finished our lunch in silence."a b c d DeCurtis, Anthony (17 November 1988). "Q&A: Don DeLillo". Rolling Stone . Retrieved 22 May 2020. T he Names, probably the least known of this trifecta, is soaked in the triumphant self-mythologizing endemic to a superpower. Its protagonist, James Axton, is an American working as a corporate risk analyst in Athens. Axton’s days are an expatriate’s seesawing from mundane activity to joyless pleasure, his sensibilities always at odds with a jagged, old city that now serves as a forward operating base for Americans working the levers of finance, oil, and military aid in Asia and the Middle East. The book follows two related but separate narrative threads: episodes from Oswald's life from his childhood until the assassination and his death, and the actions of other participants in the conspiracy. A secondary parallel story follows Nicholas Branch, a CIA archivist of more recent times assigned the monumental task of piecing together the disparate fragments of Kennedy's death. Libra was awarded the inaugural Irish Times International Fiction Prize, as well as a nomination for the 1988 National Book Award for Fiction. [13] [4]

Authenticating the research was another matter. ''It's legitimate in the sense that it appeared somewhere in print or on sound tapes or film. Beyond that, you're on your own,'' he said. (Thus the careful choice of words when

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And how about the most important character of all? Lee Harvey Oswald has always seemed both much, much too familiar (his rabbity, weak-jawed face staring out of the grimmer sections of every city in America) and endlessly mysterious. To Mr. DeLillo's You’ve been in Manhattan during the pandemic. What are your impressions of the city? If I take a walk, a street that has four people on it will seem almost crowded. We’re supposed to be wearing masks, not everyone does, and one has to veer away from certain people. One has to be consciously aware of who’s coming toward us. Who’s behind us. As much as an individual might look forward to going out for a while, these self-imposed restrictions begin to assert themselves and whatever pleasure one anticipated may not be experienced fully.