The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/Secret Agency: American Individualism in Oswald's Tale and Libra: Difference between revisions

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 {{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>Secret Agency: American Individualism in ''Oswald's Tale'' and ''Libra''}}
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 {{byline|last=Balter|first=Barrie|abstract=Norman Mailer’s ''Oswald’s Tale'' and Don DeLillo’s ''Libra'' are expressly political works. Oswald’s bid for selfhood is a nuanced critique of individualism in American life. Mailer reads Oswald’s crime as an Emersonian act of self-making—both audacious and peculiarly American. ''Libra''’s critique of Oswald is similarly inextricable from its critique of American culture. Mailer and Don DeLillo follow the trajectory of a seemingly unremarkable man who claims a role in history by killing the president of the United States. Unlike “empirical” accounts of the assassination, the narratives of Mailer and DeLillo posit for Oswald a culturally significant motive that is at once personal and expressly political: When Lee Harvey Oswald fires on Kennedy he doesn’t just end the President’s life, he begins his own. |url=https://prmrl.us/mr03bal}}
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 Oswald’s credo is essentially populist, as Mailer points out. It is attractive to “the mass of Americans,”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=507}} which is to say, a wide swath of working-and middle-class people. Like Mailer’s own work, the contradictions inherent in Oswald’s system are intended to “[mount] a pincers attack on the status quo,” but are both in spite of this and because of this, peculiarly American in stance. In rejecting both the “Soviet Communist International Movement” and State intrusion into private life (centralization and taxation) Oswald’s politics are almost purely reactionary. No sooner does Oswald characterize his system as “opposed to Communism, Socialism, and capitalism (sic),” he makes it clear that his anticipation of “the final destruction of the capitalist system” makes way for a new and specifically ''American'' Communist Party. Such a party must declare independence from the “domination and influence” of its Soviet motherland, thereby acting to “free the radical movement from its inertia” and transcend its current status as a “weakened” and “stale class of fifth columnists of the Russians,” in the service of “[safeguarding] an independent course of action . . . an American course.”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|pp=506–507}}
-In Oswald Mailer finds the perfect marriage of Emersonian hero and the prototypical autocrat, Adolph Hitler. In summing up Oswald’s manifesto, Mailer cautions the reader against the inevitable outcome of revolutionary thought: “Has there ever been a dictator who did not issue comparable statements in the early years of his revolution?”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=508}} On the other hand, one of Mailer’s most important authorial “speculations” casts Oswald’s perception of the assassination as an Emersonian act. Extending Priscilla Johnson McMillan’s thesis in her biography, ''Marina and Lee'', Mailer claims that Oswald was “presented [with] a new conflict—to be the instrument of history or the leading man.”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=782}} While Mailer admits, “Oswald may never have read Emerson,” he encourages us to read a passage from Emerson’s “Heroism” as a primary source of insight into Oswald’s character. According to Mailer, “[the passage] ''gives us luminous insight'' into ''what had to be'' Oswald’s opinion of himself as he sat . . . waiting for the Kennedy motorcade—he was committing himself to the most heroic deed of which he was capable”{{Sfn|Mailer|1995|p=783}} (emphasis added). Here Mailer appears to depict the assassination attempt as the result of Oswald’s delusions of grandeur. Ventriloquizing Oswald’s belief that {{" '}}It had become his fate to decapitate the American political process.{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=782}}{{sfn|McMillan|1977|p=518}}{{efn|Ruby’s somewhat breathless and disjointed style may have been influenced by the habitual use of the amphetamine appetite-suppressant, Preludin, which he refers to in his testimony. While long-term use of amphetamines at high doses is known to induce what psychiatrists call “amphetamine psychosis,” Ruby’s self-awareness and insight into his state suggest a certain degree of rationality. This is not to argue that Ruby’s perceptions were entirely objective, but only that, in the service of establishing Ruby’s “tribal” Jewishness, Mailer neglects compelling evidence that Ruby’s fears may have had a basis in fact. See {{harvtxt|Warren Commission|1964|pp=196 and 199}}.}} Mailer cites Emerson on the heroism of dissent: {{" '}}[Heroism] works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is obedience to a secret impulse of an individual’s character{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=783}}
+In Oswald Mailer finds the perfect marriage of Emersonian hero and the prototypical autocrat, Adolph Hitler. In summing up Oswald’s manifesto, Mailer cautions the reader against the inevitable outcome of revolutionary thought: “Has there ever been a dictator who did not issue comparable statements in the early years of his revolution?”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=508}} On the other hand, one of Mailer’s most important authorial “speculations” casts Oswald’s perception of the assassination as an Emersonian act. Extending Priscilla Johnson McMillan’s thesis in her biography, ''Marina and Lee'', Mailer claims that Oswald was “presented [with] a new conflict—to be the instrument of history or the leading man.”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=782}} While Mailer admits, “Oswald may never have read Emerson,” he encourages us to read a passage from Emerson’s “Heroism” as a primary source of insight into Oswald’s character. According to Mailer, “[the passage] ''gives us luminous insight'' into ''what had to be'' Oswald’s opinion of himself as he sat . . . waiting for the Kennedy motorcade—he was committing himself to the most heroic deed of which he was capable”{{Sfn|Mailer|1995|p=783}} (emphasis added). Here Mailer appears to depict the assassination attempt as the result of Oswald’s delusions of grandeur. Ventriloquizing Oswald’s belief that {{" '}}It had become his fate to decapitate the American political process.{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=782}}{{sfn|McMillan|1977|p=518}}{{efn|Ruby’s somewhat breathless and disjointed style may have been influenced by the habitual use of the amphetamine appetite-suppressant, Preludin, which he refers to in his testimony. While long-term use of amphetamines at high doses is known to induce what psychiatrists call “amphetamine psychosis,” Ruby’s self-awareness and insight into his state suggest a certain degree of rationality. This is not to argue that Ruby’s perceptions were entirely objective, but only that, in the service of establishing Ruby’s “tribal” Jewishness, Mailer neglects compelling evidence that Ruby’s fears may have had a basis in fact. See {{harvtxt|WC5|1964|pp=196 and 199}}.}} Mailer cites Emerson on the heroism of dissent: {{" '}}[Heroism] works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is obedience to a secret impulse of an individual’s character{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=783}}
 Oswald did read ''Mein Kampf'', lent to him by Russian émigré and possible CIA agent, George de Mohrenschildt. Although he comes off as more Machiavellian than libertarian, de Mohrenschildt and Oswald occupy a cer- tain common ground:
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 If we take into account Mailer’s division of American society into a dichotomy between the Rebel, a “frontiersman in the Wild West,” and the Conformist, “a Square cell, trapped in the totalitarian tissues of American society,”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=339}} his comparison of Oswald to Emerson and Hitler is problematic. While such a comparison immediately suggests itself as a trenchant critique of the dark side of American individualism, Mailer makes no attempt to address its ramifications. As a number of critics have pointed out ({{harvtxt|Menand|2002}}, {{harvtxt|McCann|2000}}, and {{harvtxt|Patell|2001}}) Mailer’s agon is with liberalism rather than individualism. But in this case, Mailer’s failure to address the contradictions and, perhaps more importantly, the affinities between Emerson’s Individual and Hitler’s Superman mar an otherwise sharp critique of American values in both the Cold War and the Reagan/Bush era.
-. . .
+Mailer’s personal biases (or perhaps, “obsessions”) also cloud a potentially superb reading of Jack Ruby. While Mailer’s vivid descriptions of Ruby are some of the most compelling in ''Oswald’s Tale'', his treatment of Ruby’s testimony and Ruby himself, rather than illuminating the ways that race and class inform political power, reveals the ways in which Mailer’s “fetishization of racial difference”{{sfn|Dickstein|1999|p=35}} and preoccupation with tribal identity encourage a reversion to stereotype.
+Mailer calls Jack Ruby “a spiritual brother to Oswald,”{{Sfn|Mailer|1995|p=740}} and (like Nicole in ''Executioner'') Ruby functions as a kind of secondary protagonist in the novel. In a section entitled “The Amateur Hit Man,” Mailer describes Ruby as:
+{{quote|A minor thug from the streets of Chicago . . . [h]e is of the Mob in the specific values of his code, and yet never a formal member in any way—too wacky, too eager, too obsessed with himself, too Jewish even for the Jewish mob. All the same, he is pure Mafia in one part of his spirit—he wants to be known as a patriot in love with his country and his people. He is loyal. Select him and you will not make a mistake.{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=733}} }}
+Like Oswald’s attraction to Marxism, Ruby’s identification with the Mafia serves specific personal agendas that are at odds both with each other and with the organization itself. If Oswald cannot be loyal to any personal or political connection, Ruby is loyal to too many. As Mailer points out, this intense loyalty makes Ruby both a true member and an eternal outcast from the familial “nostra” of the Mafia. But this is also true of his relationship to American identity. Narcissistic (“obsessed with himself ”), unapologetically ethnocentric (“too Jewish even for the Jewish mob”), and self-consciously patriotic (painfully anxious to prove his love for “his country and his people”), Ruby’s conflicting loyalties make him vulnerable to exploitation. His liminal position—neither insider nor outsider—makes him equally expendable to the Mafia and the Warren Commission, and therefore, like Oswald, an ideal candidate to carry out the political errands of opposing organizations. Also like Oswald, Ruby sees himself as a patsy, telling Earl Warren “I have been used for a purpose.”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=740}}{{sfn|WC5|1964|p=211}}
+In Mailer’s work, the tragedy of Ruby’s life is that, unlike Oswald, he ''knew'' he was “just a patsy” from the beginning, but had no power to prevent it. Mailer’s reconstruction of Ruby’s testimony before the Commission suggests that Ruby was the sacrificial lamb for a number of political agendas. Not only was he coerced to kill Oswald and accept full responsibility for the act, but the Commission’s failure (or refusal) to recognize the danger of his position forced Ruby back to a cover story that served its purposes. During his testimony before the Commission, Ruby petitions Earl Warren in vain for protection, claiming “there will be a certain tragic occurrence happening if you don’t take my testimony and somehow vindicate me so ''my people'' don’t suffer because of what I have done”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=740}}{{sfn|WC5|1964|p=211}} (emphasis added).
+Ruby, in his testimony, refers to either “his people” or “his “family” at least three times. While Ruby seems to use the terms to refer solely to his immediate family, Mailer interprets Ruby’s usage of both phrases as a reference to the Jewish people as a whole. This interpretation of Ruby’s reference to “my people,” while far broader than Ruby seems to have intended, illuminates Mailer’s view of Ruby’s position in the larger context of American identity. Mailer’s depiction of Ruby’s Jewish identity as a kind of tribal connection that subsumes American identity seems (like that of Oswald’s sexuality) overdetermined. But, as Sean McCann reminds us, Mailer is no liberal. Rather than celebrating a civic identification, Mailer’s “fiction and social criticism emphasize the way that, in its celebration of ‘deep’ and ‘familial’ kinds of political obligation—of communities unified by ‘common history’ and bound by moral ties antecedent to choice—the republicanist vision lends itself to a fascination with racial exclusivity.”{{sfn|McCann|2000|p=298}}
+A more accurate sense of the nature of Ruby’s concerns is indicated by his interchangeable use of the phrases “my people” and “my family.” Earlier in his testimony, Ruby has told the commission “my whole ''family'' is in jeopardy” qualifying this with, “My ''sisters'', as to their lives”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=737}} (emphasis added). Ruby goes on to list the members of his family by name, including his sisters and his in-laws, claiming again “they are in jeopardy . . . just because they are ''blood-related to myself''”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=738}} (emphasis added). While the Jews are very arguably Ruby’s “people,” Mailer’s contention that Ruby acted on orders from the Mafia and therefore feared its retaliation for “talking,” contradicts, even without Ruby’s own references to his sisters, his own reading. While Mailer attempts to impute to Ruby a simplistic “tribal” loyalty “antecedent” to any other, Ruby’s actual comments suggest a more basic and politically assimilable loyalty to the members of his immediate family.
+Ruby’s conflict arose from a far more complex negotiation of competing ''loyalties'' to various identities than Mailer’s limited vision of mutually exclusive loyalty shifting among competing tribes. While Mailer goes out of his way to defend his interpretation of Ruby as obsessed with paranoid fantasies of Jewish persecution, he is uncharacteristically silent regarding evidence that, given the ethnic and racial stratifications of the American South in the early 1960s, Ruby’s fear of anti-Semitism was not wholly irrational. Mailer chooses to focus on Ruby’s blood ties to his ethnic identity rather than explore the disturbingly widespread ~and documented! influence of pseudo-“nationalist” organizations like the John Birch Society.
+The basis for Mailer’s assessment that Ruby is “all-but-insane,”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=740}} which is to say, paranoid, is most likely an apparent non sequitur in Ruby’s testimony before the Commission in which he claims that “[t]he Jewish people are being exterminated at this moment. Consequently, a whole new form of government is going to take over our country, and I won’t live to see you another time.”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=740}} In order to explain this mysterious comment, Mailer sets it up with a projection of Ruby’s thoughts ''before'' he speaks. This is the second prominent moment of Mailer’s authorial “speculation,” in an otherwise “faithful” and “accurate” examination of the historical record, and reads like pure authorial invention. Ruminating on Ruby’s predicament, Mailer suggests that Ruby associates the Mafia’s retaliation against him and his family with the Nazi persecution of the European Jews:
+{{quote|The people outside who will punish him if he rats on them are evil. And evil has no bounds, as Hitler proved. So, if Jack Ruby tries to explain to the Warren Commission that he was only an agent in the death of Oswald, a pawn for the Mafia leaders who passed the order down the line . . . then there will be Mafia leaders rabid with rage . . . In retaliation, they will yet kill all the Jews. The safety of the Jews always hangs by a hair, anyway.{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=739}} }}
+Ruby may not have been in an entirely rational state, but a number of sources, including newspaper articles and the testimony of General Edwin Walker, suggest that his fear of anti-Semitism was not as paranoid as Mailer depicts.{{efn|A 1961 letter written by Morris Udall attests both to Walker’s affiliation with the John
+Birch society, and to the Society’s position that communists were infiltrating the United States government: “[T]he testimony revealed that Gen. Walker is a member of the John Birch Society, an organization whose leader says former President Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and other high officials of our government have been Communist dupes.”}} It is more likely that Ruby’s conflation of the Mafia with the Nazi party, and his references to “a new form of government” taking over is a conscious metaphor, which is to say, an oblique reference to something Ruby believes too dangerous to assert directly: that fringe elements (specifically the John Birch Society) were acting on the political fate of the United States—forces that Ruby apparently fears will ultimately hold legitimate government power, as the Nazi party did in Germany. In fact, it seems more likely that the Jews that Ruby speaks of as being persecuted “at this moment” are not European Jews, but American Jews whom he sees as vulnerable to extreme right-wing organizations such as the John Birch Society and Ku Klux Klan.
+Ruby in fact makes an almost explicit reference to his “use” by not only the Mafia, but also (inadvertently) the John Birch Society. In what seems like another ''non sequitur'', Ruby abruptly changes the topic, commenting,
+{{quote|[T]here is a John Birch Society . . . in activity, and @General# Edwin Walker is one of the top men of this organization—take it for what it is worth, Chief Justice Warren.
+Unfortunately for me, for me giving the people the opportunity to get in power, because of the act I committed, has put a lot of people in jeopardy with their lives.
+Don’t register with you, does it?{{sfn|Mailer|1995|pp=738-139}}{{sfn|WC5|1964|p=198}} }}
+Ruby goes on, claiming that “If certain people . . . want to gain something by propagandizing something to their own use, they will make ways to present certain things @so# that I do look guilty,”{{sfn|WC5|1964|p=209}} and that “I am used as a scapegoat and there is no greater weapon you can use to create some falsehood about some of the Jewish faith, especially at [''sic''] the . . . heinous crime of . . . killing . . . President Kennedy.”{{sfn|WC5|1964|p=211}}
+A number of sources indicate that Ruby’s anxiety about being scapegoated, particularly as a Jew, was well founded, and not to be dismissed as wholly paranoid. In an article on the effects of presidential assassinations, Murray Edelman and Rita James Simon argue that the motives of political actors are frequently discounted in the service of national unity. This may be one reason why the Commission discounted Ruby’s testimony so easily: “[A]fter every assassination there are emphatic high level assurances that the polity is healthy ... and that the assassination was the work of a psychotic or . . . whose actions in no way reflect a widespread movement of or extensive discontent.”{{sfn|WC5|1964|p=202}} Edelman and Simon also give credence to Ruby’s fears regarding accusations about his involvement in the Kennedy assassination. As they point out, accusations of ideological extremism are politically useful: “Like other efforts to interpret and use the shock of the assassination in order to influence public opinion, it casts the authors’ adversaries in the role of ''scapegoat''” (emphasis added). Furthermore, they argue, “this relationship between accuser, accused and public opinion was even more apparent when the extremist groups were the accusers.”{{sfn|WC5|1964|p=216}}
+Edelman and Simon’s argument also supports Ruby’s conflation of anti-Communism and anti-Semitism into a generalized right-wing agenda. Edelman and Simon claim “the charge that the assassination was a Communist plot came almost entirely from the extreme right wing.”{{sfn|Edelman|Simon|1969|p=216}} This charge was apparently the official position of the John Birch society, which maintained that both Kennedy and Oswald’s deaths were the result of a Communist conspiracy. According to Edelman and Simon, the John Birch Society approved a “statement by [a] former Congressman . . . that Oswald was a Communist and that when a Communist murders he acts under orders.”{{sfn|Edelman|Simon|1969|p=216}} Edelman and Simon also quote a February 1, 1964 New York Times article in which Gerald G.K. Smith, whom they characterize as “long active as a right-wing extremist and anti-Semite,” directly links Oswald’s alleged Soviet loyalty with Jewish sympathy for Ruby. In it Smith claims that Kennedy was himself a Communist and was assassinated by a Communist because Kennedy planned to thwart the Soviet Union and embrace right-wing ideology and (using Ruby’s more identifiably Jewish given name), that {{" '}}a Los Angeles Jew was raising money to free Rubinstein.{{' "}}{{sfn|Edelman|Simon|1969|p=216}}
+The testimony of General Edwin Walker, the victim of Oswald’s first assassination attempt, and a fellow John Birch member, suggests that he shared Smith’s view of the assassination as a Communist plot. Furthermore, Walker clearly attempts to link Ruby to a Kennedy assassination plot based on extremely flimsy evidence.{{efn|It is worth noting that General Watts is at pains to distance himself from Walker, commenting that, “My opinion and General Walker’s don’t generally jibe.”{{sfn|WC11|1964|p=415}} }} Committee attorney Wesley Liebeler questions him:
+{{quote|
+Mr. Liebeler: Do you know if anyone discussed the assassination with Oswald prior to the time he assassinated the president . . . do you have any indication of that?<br />
+General Walker: I have no personal knowledge that they did.<br />
+Mr Liebeler: Do you have any indication that they did?<br />
+General Walker: I certainly do. . . . The indications seem to be not only mine . . . that Oswald and Rubenstein had some association.<br />
+Mr. Liebeler: Can you indicate what it was?<br />
+General Walker: Well I am wondering about one thing, how Rubenstein can take his car in to be fixed and Oswald can sign the ticket and pick up the car.<br />
+Mr. Liebeler: Now can you tell us where and when that happened?<br />
+General Walker: I haven’t been able to verify that it happened for sure, but I have been told it happened.<br />
+Mr. Liebeler: Who told you that?<br />
+General Walker: My information came from a repairman, from another fellow to a friend of mine, to me.<br />
+Mr. Liebeler: Could you give me the name of that person? General Walker: I don’t think it is necessary. I think you have all the information.{{sfn|WC11|1964|pp=419–120}} }}
+In addition to his obvious wish to cast Ruby as a conspirator, Walker (like Smith) insists on referring to him as Rubenstein, in spite of the fact that the Committee does not do so. Walker’s heightened awareness of racial and ethnic difference is further underscored by several other references, including a shooting that he read about in the paper, which included “a Latin type running away.”{{sfn|WC11|1964|p=418}}
+Perhaps more disturbing is the fact that the tone and content of Walker’s testimony before the Commission indicate that, far from being marginalized by his association with an extreme-right-wing political organization, Walker instead seems to expect preferential treatment by the Committee for himself and his colleague, General Clyde J. Watts. In fact, the atmosphere in the room is apparently so congenial (or at least, Walker and Watts are so relaxed), that the presiding attorney for the Commission, Wesley Liebeler is moved to remark, “Since this is almost a friendly, if I may say so, session, I assume that we can take it that the remarks you are making will be under oath, is that correct?”{{sfn|WC11|1964|p=415}} Furthermore, Walker repeatedly takes control of the questioning, often refusing to provide information and instructing the Commission on what kind of information he is willing to give, telling Liebeler, “I would prefer you to question me on which way you want me to discuss this case and I will answer what is necessary,”{{sfn|WC11|1964|p=418}} and offering “I will answer that at some later date if you find it necessary, I will reconsider it.”{{sfn|WC11|1964|p=422}}
+Mailer’s uncritical acceptance of Ruby’s seemingly bizarre and paranoid statements regarding the fate of the Jews is telling, particularly given his skepticism of Ruby’s cover story, not to mention his compelling readings of Ruby’s other comments as veiled attempts to point the Commission in the direction of Mafia involvement:
+{{quote|We all know @Ruby’s# famous story or cover story. He was grief- stricken by the death of JFK, so bereaved that he shut down his strip-joints for the weekend, and was so appalled at the possibility that Jacqueline Kennedy might have to come to Dallas to testify in Oswald’s trial that he decided to shoot the accused—‘the creep,’ as he would call him. But only at the last moment did he so decide. No premeditation . . . Yet never on the face of it has a crime seemed to belong more to the Mafia.{{sfn|Mailer|1995|pp=733–734}} }}
+The credence Mailer gives to the Mafia involvement theory suggests that he is no opponent of the notion of special-interest groups vying for power. Furthermore, Mailer’s exhaustive research for his “Talmudic” commentary makes it unlikely that he overlooked the potential validity of Ruby’s arguments. However, as McCann points out, Mailer is not particularly interested in depicting or combating the victimization of Jews, the enmities of white nationalist groups, or the hegemonic power of high-ranking white officials. While clearly no fan of Reagan, Hitler, or the John Birch Society, Mailer lacks the quintessentially liberal interest in ameliorating difference and fostering social harmony. On the contrary, it is in these oppositions that his vision of the nation inheres. As Sean McCann points out, “the separatist politics of black nationalism partake for Mailer a higher degree of integrity than integrationism ever did”;{{sfn|McCann|2000|pp=325–326}} Mailer sees such divisions as a location for the {{" '}}explosive individuality{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1995|pp=325–326}} celebrated in all of his novels.
+In choosing to champion a heroic “Emersonian” Oswald over the “snarling little wife abuser,”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=607}} Mailer celebrates the possibilities of American individualism in something of a critical vacuum. Without an equally acute treatment of the ramifications of his “psychopath,” Mailer’s argument, while audacious, is somehow incomplete.
+Herein lies the difference between DeLillo and Mailer’s accounts of the trajectory of Lee Harvey Oswald. Unlike Mailer, DeLillo is a liberal; his depiction of Oswald is a critique of the very psychopathic personality that Mailer celebrates more or less uncritically. Like DeLillo, Mailer suggests that Oswald—as Psychopath—“may indeed be the perverted and dangerous front-runner of a new kind of personality which could become the central expression of human nature before the twentieth century is over.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=345}} However, for Mailer, the primacy of the psychopath has a Darwinist inevitability that he sees as a morally neutral bid for survival within the conditions dealt to us by society: “For the psychopath is better adapted to dominate those mutually contradictory inhibitions upon violence and love which civilization has exacted of us.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=345}}
+While both Mailer and DeLillo disapprove of the tenor of such a civilization (which they seem to agree was both expressed and brought to fruition by Reagan’s policies in the 1980s), they do so on different grounds. This is not to say that ''Oswald’s Tale'' is not, like ''Libra'', a social critique, but only that its goal is not a progressive bid for social change.
 ===Notes===
-{{Notelist}}
+{{Notelist|30em}}
 ===Citations===
@@ Line 212: / Line 273: @@
 * {{cite book |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |author-mask=1 |date=2005 |title=A Mirror in the Roadway: Literature and the Real World |url= |location=Princeton |publisher=Princeton UP |ref=harv }}
 * {{cite book |last=Duvall |first=John |date=2002 |title=Productive Postmodernism: Consuming Histories and Cultural Studies |url= |location=Albany |publisher=SUNY UP |ref=harv }}
+* {{cite journal |last1=Edelman |first1=Murray |last2=Simon |first2=Rita James |title=Presidential Assassinations: Their Meaning and Impact on American Society |url= |journal=Ethics |volume=79 |issue=3 |date=1969 |pages=199–221 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
+* {{cite book |last=Emerson |first=Ralph Waldo |date=1940 |title=The Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson |url= |location=New York |publisher=The Modern Library |ref=harv }}
+* {{cite book |last=Glazer |first=David |date=1954 |title=Individualism and Equality in the United States: “Individualism Reconsidered” and Other Essays |editor-last=Riesman |editor-first=David |location=Glencoe, IL |publisher=Free Press |ref=harv }}
 * {{cite news |last=Heron |first=Kim |date=July 24, 1988 |title=Haunted by His Work |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/06/specials/DeLillo-libra.html |work=New York Times Book Review |pages=1 |access-date=2021-06-22 |ref=harv }}
 * {{cite book |last=Howe |first=Irving |date=1957 |title=Politics and the Novel |url= |location=New York |publisher=Columbia UP |ref=harv }}
+* {{cite book |last=Jameson |first=Frederic |date=1981 |title=The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act |location=Ithaca, NY |publisher=Cornell UP |ref=harv }}
+* {{cite book |last=Jameson |first=Frederic |author-mask=1 |date=1991 |title=Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism |location=Durham, NC |publisher=Duke UP |ref=harv }}
 * {{cite book |last=Jehlen |first=Myra |date=1994 |chapter=Literary Criticism at the End of the Millennium; or From Here to History |title=Aesthetics and Ideology |editor-last=Levine |editor-first=George |location=New Brunswick |publisher=Rutgers UP |ref=harv }}
 * {{cite book |last=Karl |first=Frederick |date=1983 |title=American Fictions 1940–1980 |url= |location=New York |publisher=Harper and Row |ref=harv }}
+* {{cite news |last=Kihss |first=Peter |date=February 11, 1964 |title=Kennedy Target of Birch Writer |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/02/11/archives/kennedy-target-of-birch-writer-article-says-he-was-killed-for.html |work=New York Times |location= |page=18 |access-date=2021-06-27 |ref=harv }}
+* {{cite news |last=Kihss |first=Peter |author-mask=1 |date=February 1, 1964 |title=Kennedy’s Death Found Exploited |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/02/01/archives/kennedys-death-found-exploited-extremists-held-capitalizing-on-need.html |work=New York Times |location= |page=19 |access-date=2021-06-27 |ref=harv }}
 * {{cite book |last=Lacan |first=Jacques |date=1977 |title=Ecrits: A Selection |translator-last=Sheridan |translator-first=Alan |url= |location=New York and London |publisher=W. W. Norton |ref=harv }}
+* {{cite book |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |date=1986 |title=Critical Essays on Norman Mailer |url= |location=Boston |publisher=G. K. Hall and Co. |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
+* {{cite journal |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |author-mask=1 |title=Mailer’s Cosmology |url= |journal=Modern Language Studies |volume=12 |issue=3 |date=Summer 1982 |pages=1–29 |ref=harv }}
 * {{cite journal |last=Lentricchia |first=Frank |title=Don DeLillo |url= |journal=Raritan |volume=8 |issue=4 |date=Spring 1989 |pages=1–29 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
 * {{cite journal |last=Lentricchia |first=Frank |author-mask=1 |title=''Libra'' as Postmodern Critique |url= |journal=South Atlantic Quarterly |volume=89 |issue=2 |date=1990 |pages=431–453 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
@@ Line 228: / Line 298: @@
 * {{cite book |last=Menand |first=Louis |date=2002 |chapter=Norman Mailer In His Time |editor-last=Farrar
 |editor-first=Strauss |title=American Studies |location=New York |publisher=Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux |pages=146–161 |ref=harv}}
+* {{cite journal |last=O’Hara |first=Daniel T. |title=On Becoming Oneself in Frank Lentricchia |url= |journal=Boundry |volume=19 |issue=1 |date=Spring 1992 |pages=230–254 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
 * {{cite book |last=Olster |first=Stacey |date=2002 |chapter=A Mother (and a Son, and a Brother, and a Wife, et al.) in History: Stories Galore in ''Libra'' and the Warren Commission Report |title=Productive Postmodernism: Consuming Histories and Cultural Studies |editor-last=Duvall |editor-first=John N. |location=Albany |publisher=SUNY UP |pages=43–59 |ref=harv }}
 * {{cite book |last=Patell |first=Cyrus K. |date=2001 |title=Negative Liberties: Morrison, Pynchon, and the Problem of Liberal Ideology |url= |location=Durham |publisher=Duke UP |ref=harv }}
-* {{cite book |last=Poirier |first=Richard |date=1971 |title=The Performing Self |url= |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford UP |author-link= |ref=harv }}
+* {{cite book |last=Poirier |first=Richard |date=1972 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=The Viking Press |ref=harv }}
+* {{cite book |last=Poirier |first=Richard |author-mask=1 |date=1971 |title=The Performing Self |url= |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford UP |author-link= |ref=harv }}
 * {{cite magazine |last=Sawhill |first=Ray |date=April 1995 |title=No Ordinary Secret Agent: Mailer Talks About Lee and the KGB |url= |magazine=Newsweek |pages=60 |ref=harv }}
 * {{cite journal |last=Schultz |first=Donald E. |title=Kennedy and the Cuban Connection |url= |journal=Foreign Policy |volume=26 |issue= |date=1977 |pages=57–64 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
 * {{cite book |last=Sturken |first=Marita |date=1997 |chapter=Personal Stories and National meanings: Memory, Reenactment, and the Image |editor1-last=Rhiel |editor1-first=Mary |editor2-last=Suchoff |editor2-first=David |title=The Seductions of Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
-* {{cite journal |last=Thomas |first=Glen |title=History, Biography, and Narrative in Don DeLillo’s ''Libra'' |url= |journal=wentieth Century Literature |volume=43 |issue=1 |date=1997 |pages=104–124 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
+* {{cite journal |last=Thomas |first=Glen |title=History, Biography, and Narrative in Don DeLillo’s ''Libra'' |url= |journal=Twentieth Century Literature |volume=43 |issue=1 |date=1997 |pages=104–124 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
-* {{cite book |author=United States. Warren Commission |date=1964 |title=Hearings Before the President’s Commission |volume=5 and 11 |url= |location=Washington, D.C. |publisher=United States Government Publishing Company |ref={{SfnRef|Warren Commission|1964}} }}
+* {{cite book |author=United States. Warren Commission |date=1964 |title=Hearings Before the President’s Commission |volume=5 |url= |location=Washington, D.C. |publisher=United States Government Publishing Company |ref={{SfnRef|WC5|1964}} }}
+* {{cite book |author=United States. Warren Commission |author-mask=1 |date=1964 |title=Hearings Before the President’s Commission |volume=11 |url= |location=Washington, D.C. |publisher=United States Government Publishing Company |ref={{SfnRef|WC11|1964}} }}
 * {{cite book |last=Žižek |first=Slavoj |date=1991 |chapter=The Obscene Object of Postmodernity |title=Looking Awry |url= |location=Cambridge |publisher=MIT UP |pages=141–145 |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
 * {{cite book |last=Žižek |first=Slavoj |author-mask=1 |date=1989 |title=The Sublime Object of Ideology |url= |location=London |publisher=Verso |ref=harv }}