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Lee Daniel

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Lee Daniel is currently reading

The 42nd Parallel (U.S.A. #1)

by John Dos Passos

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Jun 07, 2016 07:56PM

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Libra

by Don DeLillo

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Lee Daniel said: " (Scribbled at 4AM, not proofread or anything) There was a time I felt like the protagonist in this novel, when I was young: I wanted to be swept up in large swaths of history. Don't laugh, but it's true. I saw myself in this larger discourse, this la (Scribbled at 4AM, not proofread or anything) There was a time I felt like the protagonist in this novel, when I was young: I wanted to be swept up in large swaths of history. Don't laugh, but it's true. I saw myself in this larger discourse, this larger web of language and idiom that wasn't bound by time or location or my body. This obsession, this fantasy, it was a space not just to call my own, but to explore, play, fiddle, and daydream. Literature provided the point of the spearhead in life, giving me direction and meaning in a world so seemingly devoid of it. Each page was a jigsaw piece in a much larger puzzle that only became more clear as the novel drew closer to completion, and each finished portrait was itself a page in a vast, vivid storybook that is a national, socio-political dialogue.

Delusions of grandeur, I understand.

Every character in this book, whether it is Lee Harvey Oswald, the CIA black-ops agents, or the JFK's postmortem researcher, is caught up in this struggle, whether they are caught up in the fantasy world of K. Marx, the global Cold War, or the uniquely American soap opera drama of the Kennedys. Delillo here stuns with the width and breath of his scholarship and attention to detail for such a broad topic as this. It's really Pynchon-esque in this regard (though both artists methods couldn't be further apart). Reading "Libra," you gain a sense of the inner workings of backwater government covert ops or prisoner detainment facilities in the USSR, circa early 60s. U-2 training grounds and university bunkers of classified government data on the assassination. Or the courthouse proceedings where "Oswaldovich's" own mother testified for her son in a truancy case in one of the most revealing, yet harrowing passages of the novel (thus far). Whereas "Underworld" dazzled with its prose and heart, "White Noise" stung with its satire, and "Mao II" blinded with its prescience, "Libra" disorients with its depth. And what's puzzling, to at least this uninformed doodler, is where reality ends and fiction begins even despite the author's afterward (which, I admit, I snuck a peek at). More thoughts to come as I get further in the novel, or as I certainly read more supplementary material.

Even so early in the book, it comes as no surprise that purveyors of strict historical literalism will not be satisfied: the aim of "Libra" is not to recount history as it happened, persay, but to use history as the groundwork for a larger drama to unfold, namely that of men struggling against the immense tide of history and what that does to the souls that it envelops for those who wish to engage in such folly. For starters, it certainly doesn't follow the now generally accepted motivating factors of the assassination. Oswald is depicted as a pawn in the CIA's game to curry the American public's favor to launch a counter offensive in the Cold War's Cuban front against Castro. Setting Lee up for a purposefully failed assassination attempt against the president's life, the CIA wishes to instill enough fear in the collective American unconscious to provoke violence against Castro's life. Without just cause for war, Cuba may be forever a thorn in the American's economic/cultural side for decades to come, or worse, the global disapproval of the head of state making an attempt of a world leader's life without provocation, especially considering the tensions that exist between the Soviets and the West during this time in American history. For Delillo, history hangs in a precarious balance beyond the imagination of the public eye, and even further, this balance rests on the shoulders of a very select few, most notably Lee Harvey Oswald, who is painted as a dyslexic loser and loner whose reach extends past his intellectual grip.

One of the most uncanny things about this book is the way in which it reminds me of Nabokov's "Lolita." Readers are presented with protagonists that have committed atrocious acts in both novels: Humpert (squared) is, let's face it, a child molester and Oswald killed the leader of the free world. Both Nabakov and Delillo render their subjects so clearly, so deftly, that we begin to sympathize with them, despite the awful things they have done. I frequently find myself spinning along in the narrative, identifying with character(s), when suddenly the scene shifts, leaving Oswald and company in sharp relief against the backdrop of history, serving to remind the reader of the events that are about to unfold. Oswald is crafted as humanely as possible here, without prejudice or judgment passed, as he is used as a pawn in the government's game. As the pages turn, the reader begins to share in the complicity of the assassination the closer one relates to the protagonist in an awe inspiring feat by Delillo. ...more "

Apr 29, 2016 12:59AM · see review

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Infinite Jest

by David Foster Wallace

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Lee Daniel said: " Post modern masterpiece. Laugh on every page while maintaining both artistic integrity and satisfying critique on our modern condition. Currently re reading before the David Foster Wallace movie comes out that is semi-about the book. "

Aug 11, 2015 06:23PM · see review

Lee’s Quotes

“Abstruse dullness is actually a much more effective shield than is secrecy. For the great disadvantage of secrecy is that it’s interesting.”
― David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

40 likes

“--and then you're in serious trouble, very serious trouble, and you know it, finally, deadly serious trouble, because this Substance you thought was your one true friend, that you gave up all for, gladly, that for so long gave you relief from the pain of the Losses your love of that relief caused, your mother and lover and god and compadre, has finally removed its smily-face mask to reveal centerless eyes and a ravening maw, and canines down to here, it's the Face In The Floor, the grinning root-white face of your worst nightmares, and the face is your own face in the mirror, now, it's you, the Substance has devoured or replaced and become you, and the puke-, drool- and Substance-crusted T-shirt you've both worn for weeks now gets torn off and you stand there looking and in the root-white chest where your heart (given away to It) should be beating, in its exposed chest's center and centerless eyes is just a lightless hole, more teeth, and a beckoning taloned hand dangling something irresistible, and now you see you've been had, screwed royal, stripped and fucked and tossed to the side like some stuffed toy to lie for all time in the posture you land in. You see now that It's your enemy and your worst personal nightmare and the trouble It's gotten you into is undeniable and you still can't stop. Doing the Substance now is like attending Black Mass but you still can't stop, even though the Substance no longer gets you high. You are, as they say, Finished. You cannot get drunk and you cannot get sober; you cannot get high and you cannot get straight. You are behind bars; you are in a cage and can see only bars in every direction. You are in the kind of a hell of a mess that either ends lives or turns them around.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

189 likes

“Most of us come to the church by a means the church does not allow.”
― Flannery O'Connor

33 likes

“How I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature.”
― Don DeLillo, The Names

tags: ghoul, liberation, novel

411 likes

“A novelist has to know enough about a subject to fool the passenger next to him on an airplane.”
― David Foster Wallace

tags: writing-life

12 likes

More of Lee’s quotes…