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Chapter 6 - The Kennedy Assassination

Paranoid Suspicions

from Part II - History and Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2022

By
Skip Willman
Edited by
Jesse Kavadlo
Jesse Kavadlo
Affiliation:
Maryville University of Saint Louis, Missouri
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Summary

The Kennedy assassination traumatized a nation, and the official investigation conducted by the Warren Commission (1963–64) contained discrepancies that invited conspiratorial speculation. Subsequent investigations by the Church Committee (1975–76) and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1976–79) raised questions regarding the covert activities of the CIA, particularly the enlistment of the Mafia to assassinate Castro, which reframed the entire Kennedy assassination. Skepticism regarding the findings of the Warren Commission and revelations from the Church Committee fueled a cultural paranoia that pervades the work of Don DeLillo, particularly in a run of novels from Players (1977) and Running Dog (1978) through The Names (1982) and Libra (1988). Deeply indebted to the findings of these three flawed investigations, DeLillo’s fictionalization of the life of Lee Harvey Oswald, Libra, mines this paranoia, but also contextualizes the JFK assassination within an American social totality marked by contradictions and antagonisms. By exploring historical trauma in a way that calls into question official history, Libra represents an exemplary work of what Linda Hutcheon calls historiographic metafiction.

Keywords

Don DeLilloKennedy assassinationWarren CommissionCIAChurch CommitteeHouse Select Committee on AssassinationsParanoiaLee Harvey OswaldLibraHistoriographic metafiction
Type
Chapter
Information
Don DeLillo In Context , pp. 58 - 67
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

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