[beware: potential spoilers…]
Gosh, where to begin? How ’bout with, I liked it a lot, but a lot about it I didn’t like.
The subject pinned under Norman Mailer’s intense magnifying glass is Lee Harvey Oswald, the man generally acknowledged as the assassin of President John Kennedy. Well, that’s only partially correct. Mailer also takes an extreme interest, it seems, in every single individual who knew Oswald, no matter how peripherally. Half of the book’s 791 pages, I think it’s fair to say, is devoted to long, sometimes rambling recollections from such people. But once he gets Oswald in his sights, refusing to let him go or let him wiggle and worm his way out, then it becomes essential reading.
First, the methodology. Apparently, Mailer sent a team of interviewers into the newly defunct Soviet empire sometime in the early 90s, taking advantage, I suppose, of the new-found freedom of the Russian people to be allowed to speak their minds. This opens up Oswald’s whole “Soviet phase” between late 1959 and early 1962. Then, for the “American phase,” Mailer relies on dozens and dozens of small chunks of testimony, mostly from the Warren Commission and the various other official inquiries, but also including reputable books written by assassination researchers. A large part of his foundation relies upon the book Marina and Lee, written by Patricia McMillan, who scored the first interview with Marina Oswald after the events of November, 1963.
Mailer refrains from spelling out a step-by-step this-is-who-did-it-and-how-it-was-done; in fact, he states early in the book that such a goal is not its intent. There are, he admits, countless other books that can do a better job at that. What Mailer wants most of all is to get in to the mind of Oswald and try to determine if he was capable of such a deed as assassinating the most powerful man in the world.
Overall, I think he does get into Oswald’s head. Mostly through his choice of WC and other excerpts, including, and probably most enlightening, KGB reports (from both electronic eavesdropping and case handler reports on young Oswald’s activities as a defector to the Soviet Union). Mailer’s modus operandi is to ask aloud a question concerning Oswald or scratch a chin suggesting a possibility, then offer two or three or ten excerpts to lead the question in a certain direction toward a certain answer, then provide some dry – and occasionally very witty, even humorous – commentary. It worked.
Some parts of the long novel I sped through; others bogged me down. The interviews with the Russians who knew those young kids Lee and Marina, spewing out recollection from thirty-some-odd years back, required an exercise of the will to get through. Mailer argues that in the Soviet Union anyone who knew Oswald was told to shut up. Such shutting up resulted in the pristine preservation of memories, as opposed to the distortion that happens with constant retelling, what you’d expect on the American side of this tale. However, way, way too much non-essential detail was included. Do I really need to know anecdotes about Marina’s grandmother to understand if Oswald was a killer or not? Or guys who were puppy-dog in love with Marina before she chose Lee (and a ticket out of Minsk)? There must have been a cast of thirty or forty Russians, which made keeping track of this period, as the narrative skated this way and that, a little difficult and required some re-reading.
The second half of the book, however, the American period, was fascinating. The day of November 22 is only given a surprisingly few pages, but the large sections devoted to Oswald’s youth, his stint as a Marine, and his drifting as an United States repatriate are enlightening and page-turning. Lee Harvey Oswald was a paradox, to say the least. Quiet and bookwormish as a boy, yet prone to schoolyard fights and disrespect towards others. An avowed idealistic Marxist who enlists in the Marines. A crack shot or someone who nearly blows off his own foot. A spy – a double agent, perhaps? – or just a loafer who spends his days at the Soviet radio factory with arms folded behind his head and feet up on a chair. How can the man who fired a shot, sniper-style, at an extreme right-wing general in the man’s home, missing inexplicably, panicking to the point of incapacitation – how can such a man coolly fire off three shots within seven seconds at the President of the United States?
Very easily, Mailer determines. Very easily.
I found the final chapters on Jack Ruby superfluous. Also, Mailer’s relentless and repetitive conjectures that Oswald was homosexual, despite absolutely no evidence in favor of it, was bewildering, and somewhat annoying. But the fact remains that no amount of research will shed light, almost fifty years later, on those long stretches of time, hours after work, several days a week, week after week, in city after city, that Oswald spent completely unaccounted. Where was he? Who was he with? What was he doing, what was he planning?
Several characters from the drama are brought to life, life in all its full eccentricities, that are not done in the various other entries into the literature. George DeMohrenschildt, who befriended the Oswalds in Dallas, who may have had CIA ties and may have provided some type of support or guidance for Lee. Marguerite Oswald, Lee’s mother, straight out of a John Steinbeck novel. Oddly, though, there was hardly a mention of the more colorful, more infamous players regular spoken about in this tragedy: David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, Guy Bannister, etc.
And speaking of tragedy, Mailer’s closing words sum up best the whole sad tale of Lee Harvey Oswald: “If it had not been for Theodore Dreiser and his last great work, one would like to have used ‘An American Tragedy’ as the title for this journey through Oswald’s beleaguered life.”
Grade: B+
Other posts on Oswald’s Tale here and here.
Gosh, where to begin? How ’bout with, I liked it a lot, but a lot about it I didn’t like.
The subject pinned under Norman Mailer’s intense magnifying glass is Lee Harvey Oswald, the man generally acknowledged as the assassin of President John Kennedy. Well, that’s only partially correct. Mailer also takes an extreme interest, it seems, in every single individual who knew Oswald, no matter how peripherally. Half of the book’s 791 pages, I think it’s fair to say, is devoted to long, sometimes rambling recollections from such people. But once he gets Oswald in his sights, refusing to let him go or let him wiggle and worm his way out, then it becomes essential reading.
First, the methodology. Apparently, Mailer sent a team of interviewers into the newly defunct Soviet empire sometime in the early 90s, taking advantage, I suppose, of the new-found freedom of the Russian people to be allowed to speak their minds. This opens up Oswald’s whole “Soviet phase” between late 1959 and early 1962. Then, for the “American phase,” Mailer relies on dozens and dozens of small chunks of testimony, mostly from the Warren Commission and the various other official inquiries, but also including reputable books written by assassination researchers. A large part of his foundation relies upon the book Marina and Lee, written by Patricia McMillan, who scored the first interview with Marina Oswald after the events of November, 1963.
Mailer refrains from spelling out a step-by-step this-is-who-did-it-and-how-it-was-done; in fact, he states early in the book that such a goal is not its intent. There are, he admits, countless other books that can do a better job at that. What Mailer wants most of all is to get in to the mind of Oswald and try to determine if he was capable of such a deed as assassinating the most powerful man in the world.
Overall, I think he does get into Oswald’s head. Mostly through his choice of WC and other excerpts, including, and probably most enlightening, KGB reports (from both electronic eavesdropping and case handler reports on young Oswald’s activities as a defector to the Soviet Union). Mailer’s modus operandi is to ask aloud a question concerning Oswald or scratch a chin suggesting a possibility, then offer two or three or ten excerpts to lead the question in a certain direction toward a certain answer, then provide some dry – and occasionally very witty, even humorous – commentary. It worked.
Some parts of the long novel I sped through; others bogged me down. The interviews with the Russians who knew those young kids Lee and Marina, spewing out recollection from thirty-some-odd years back, required an exercise of the will to get through. Mailer argues that in the Soviet Union anyone who knew Oswald was told to shut up. Such shutting up resulted in the pristine preservation of memories, as opposed to the distortion that happens with constant retelling, what you’d expect on the American side of this tale. However, way, way too much non-essential detail was included. Do I really need to know anecdotes about Marina’s grandmother to understand if Oswald was a killer or not? Or guys who were puppy-dog in love with Marina before she chose Lee (and a ticket out of Minsk)? There must have been a cast of thirty or forty Russians, which made keeping track of this period, as the narrative skated this way and that, a little difficult and required some re-reading.
The second half of the book, however, the American period, was fascinating. The day of November 22 is only given a surprisingly few pages, but the large sections devoted to Oswald’s youth, his stint as a Marine, and his drifting as an United States repatriate are enlightening and page-turning. Lee Harvey Oswald was a paradox, to say the least. Quiet and bookwormish as a boy, yet prone to schoolyard fights and disrespect towards others. An avowed idealistic Marxist who enlists in the Marines. A crack shot or someone who nearly blows off his own foot. A spy – a double agent, perhaps? – or just a loafer who spends his days at the Soviet radio factory with arms folded behind his head and feet up on a chair. How can the man who fired a shot, sniper-style, at an extreme right-wing general in the man’s home, missing inexplicably, panicking to the point of incapacitation – how can such a man coolly fire off three shots within seven seconds at the President of the United States?
Very easily, Mailer determines. Very easily.
I found the final chapters on Jack Ruby superfluous. Also, Mailer’s relentless and repetitive conjectures that Oswald was homosexual, despite absolutely no evidence in favor of it, was bewildering, and somewhat annoying. But the fact remains that no amount of research will shed light, almost fifty years later, on those long stretches of time, hours after work, several days a week, week after week, in city after city, that Oswald spent completely unaccounted. Where was he? Who was he with? What was he doing, what was he planning?
Several characters from the drama are brought to life, life in all its full eccentricities, that are not done in the various other entries into the literature. George DeMohrenschildt, who befriended the Oswalds in Dallas, who may have had CIA ties and may have provided some type of support or guidance for Lee. Marguerite Oswald, Lee’s mother, straight out of a John Steinbeck novel. Oddly, though, there was hardly a mention of the more colorful, more infamous players regular spoken about in this tragedy: David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, Guy Bannister, etc.
And speaking of tragedy, Mailer’s closing words sum up best the whole sad tale of Lee Harvey Oswald: “If it had not been for Theodore Dreiser and his last great work, one would like to have used ‘An American Tragedy’ as the title for this journey through Oswald’s beleaguered life.”
Grade: B+
Other posts on Oswald’s Tale here and here.
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