Forgot to post this last month when I reviewed Stephen
King’s 11/22/63 …
One of the better things in the novel is King’s envisioning
of George De Mohrenschildt, an acquaintance of Lee Harvey Oswald’s during the
summer of 1962. An informal leader
in the ex-patriot Russian community,
with a German accent to boot, with import-export ties in the third world,
suspicion has long had it that De Mohrenschildt had CIA
ties. King doesn’t weigh in on this one
way or the other, but focuses on the character of the strange, domineering man
that most of the conspiracy books only hint at:
What interested me was the way de Mohrenschildt
listened. He did it as the world’s more
charming and magnetic people do, always asking the right question at the right
time, never fidgeting or taking his eyes from the speaker’s face, making the
other guy feel like the most knowledgeable, brilliant, and intellectually savvy
person on the planet. This might have
been the first time in his life that Lee had been listened to in such a
way. (page 494).
Or how about this scene, a few pages later:
“Be courageous, Lee!
When they come, stand forward!
Show them this!” He grasped his
shirt and tore it open. Buttons popped
off and clattered to the porch. The
jump-rope girls gasped, too shocked to giggle.
Unlike most American men of that time, de Mohrenschildt wore no
undershirt. His skin was the color of
oiled mahogany. Fatty breasts hung on
old muscle. He pounded his right fist
above his left nipple. “Tell them, ‘Here
is my heart, and my heart is pure, and my heart belongs to my cause!’ Tell them ‘Even if Hoover
rips my heart out of me, it will still beat, and a thousand other hearts will
beat in time! Then ten thousand! Then a hundred thousand! Then a million!” (page 498)
This occurs during a picnic with the wives and kiddies.
Every line of dialogue King put in this guys mouth rang
true. The character – previously a
black-and-white photo in a couple of used JFK assassination books – came to
life for me. One of the better parts of
the novel.
No comments:
Post a Comment