Throughout our reading of Libra we have struggled with Delillo's sympathetic portrayal of the most notorious assassin in American history. Although at first I kind of hated Lee and his teenage pseudo intellectualism, by the end of the book I couldn't help but feel for this man who wanted something so bad, was trying so hard to get it, but for whom apparently the only thing standing in his way is his own incompetence. The way I see it, Lee wants two things: he wants to connect with people emotionally and he wants to be a capable and consequential world class spy (these two things seem to contradict, but I won't go into that here. For more on that, see my Libra paper!!!). Lee wants to belong with or to someone the way in which he's never truly been able. And, he wants to be the man in a suit in a smokey bar, playing world powers off of each other. I think this is an important distinction; he doesn't just want to be a player in history, he wants to be a deep thinker and a decision maker.
Unfortunately, Lee has spent his life failing on both of these fronts, as 400 pages of Libra will well attest to.
But here's my theory: Lee's feelings of inadequacy on these two issues are connected. Because when (and only when) Lee does manage to feel like he's playing the important historical role he was always supposed to play is when he finally manages to empathize with people. He feels like he really connects with Konno, Leon and David Ferrie. The first two are people he's trying to give American secrets to, and the third convinces him to kill the president. It is when he's riding on the high of successfully getting into the USSR that he woos and marries Marina (who would have guessed little Ozzie the Rabbit would ever get married??) . And finally, right when he's standing in the third floor window of the Dallas book depository, waiting to assassinate the president? He's thinking about Jackie Kennedy, and how he wants her to look good in photos, for her sake. He thinks Governor Connolly would have liked him a lot. He seems at ease, and his concern is only for others. I can't totally figure why, but it seems like Lee is crippled socially when he feels unfulfilled in life.
