Having read all of Libra, I'm still very conflicted on what to think of Lee. When he was trying to kill Kennedy, I was both rooting for him to take the shot and also angry that he would try to do that. His life was quite unfortunate, and the day before he failed to reconcile with his wife, leaving behind most of his money and his wedding ring. I just can't help but pity this poor man who was manipulated into being the scapegoat for this large operation of killing JFK. Lee also seems to fail at everything he does, no matter how serious it is. It's shown when Lee decides to shoot himself, which is a serious thing to do, but ends up using a little gun to shoot himself in the arm. It's similar to when Oswald tries to kill JFK. It's one of the most, if not the most, serious thing he could possibly do, but he misses and Raymo kills JFK. Throughout the whole part in Oswald's perspective, I was rooting for Oswald to take the shot and kill JFK, as dark and terrible as that sounds. Throughout the book it seems that Oswald was experiencing one failure after another. He couldn't avoid being court martialed for having an unauthorized gun, and after the court martial was suspended, he gets a second one for 'wrongful use of provoking words to a staff noncommissioned officer.' Then Lee has the brilliant plan to kill General Walker which fails in multiple aspects. First off, Lee planned to kill Walker on April 17th and ends up doing it on April 10th, which is funny that Lee manages to mess up, but I wasn't too surprised he couldn't carry out his goal on the right day. Secondly, he shoots a bullet, which only barely grazes Walker's right forearm, then runs away and decides to listen to the radio to see if he hit Walker. This is something that seems to make Lee seem like a genius and an idiot. I mean, he manages to plan out a decently elaborate plan, but manages to botch it up in almost every single way possible. Lee gets the date wrong and misses the target horribly.
Then there's the assassination of JFK. He plans out everything seemingly perfectly and is completely prepared. But he doesn't even think to wonder if he's being used. I'm not sure why the thought never crossed his mind (until he sees JFK being shot by somebody else), though maybe that's because I've never been in a situation like what Lee was in. It seems like Lee's a dedicated and careful planner but also a complete idiot. His actions don't always seem to have any sort of solid logic behind it. He sees JFK get shot and he immediately starts thinking about what story he's going to follow. This is one of the many reasons I'm conflicted on what to think of Lee. I was (in a twisted way) proud of Lee for deciding to try to assassinate JFK because it seemed he was completely serious about doing it and everything about the moment seemed to be in Lee's favor (ignoring the part where he had to wait for Raymo to have a clear shot if he were to miss). It makes me really wish that Ruby hadn't killed Lee so we could possibly know more about Lee. I'm sure that Lee surviving would have created more questions still because he's the type of person who you can never know if he's telling the truth or not.
So overall, I'm as sure that Lee's one of the most complicated people/characters I've ever read/learned about as I am that my name is Eric (so that means I'm completely sure that Lee's a complicated person, if my sentence was too confusing). He was confusing to the end, but I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Libra wouldn't be the same without it.
DeLillo indeed invented a number of these "confusing" details about Lee's life, but the fact is that Oswald the historical figure is full of ambiguity and paradox and uncertainty. Maybe no one's life, under such careful scrutiny and speculative analysis, would "make sense," but Lee's story seems designed to confuse and misdirect. (And DeLillo doubles down on this by having Win "construct" Lee to be full of twists and turns and ambiguities, because these make him "more real.") The cold war was an era where political discourse sought clear binaries (communist or not; Eastern or Western; etc.), but life itself was full of grey areas. DeLillo depicts Lee in this sense as a reflection of his times: there are so many overlapping plots and pseudonyms and angles being played, and he just taps into this (as when he proposes both that he can act like AND still actually serve as a "false defector" by pretending to be one for Russian purposes but ALSO imagining himself telling his story AS a false defector, presumably once the "pretend" is up and he cashes in on what he's learned while pretending. I get dizzy just trying to keep track of the levels of illusion being maintained here!)
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