Hazy Boundaries

I realize the post is awkwardly titled, and no this isn't a trashy spin off song to Blurred Lines, but instead I'm referring to the hazy boundaries between history and fiction. Coming into the class this semester I saw history and fiction as polar opposites, with no ambiguous gray areas. History was history, it was fact, it was the veritable truth, and it was what we were taught academically. Fiction on the other hand was a manmade product of the imagination, conceived solely with the purpose of being read for pleasure and entertainment. History was confined to the pages of textbooks and fiction only appeared in the chapters of a novel. As the class dragged on, I later came to realize that there was a lot of intersectionality between the two. Not all fiction was history, but essentially all history is, in some aspects at least, fictional. History by definition is the recorded accounts of past events, but we find that these events are almost always recorded by those who weren't present or even alive in these monumental moments. History acts like a collective memory of society, in which bits and pieces of memories of witnesses and survivors are threaded together into a story until it feels real. But, as we all know, memory is a very finicky thing, and just psychologically speaking, highly unreliable. As we rely on a smattering of memories to come together to form our perception of history, we invite in so much more with each account. We leave room for biases, forgotten details, overarching story lines, and intimate subplots, until we're left with humanity embedded into our histories. Every bit of history we've learned thus far comes with the baggage of time and perspective, and varies from how we've learned it. It's actually ridiculously logical how closely related history and fiction are, I'm just surprised it took me a whole English class to finally acknowledge it.

Caught on tape!

It seems that having concrete "proof' of something tends to further increase suspicion. Who actually killed Caesar (crazy example, I realize)? We have no tangible proof of the murder but we unquestioningly believe what recorded history tell us. Instead, cases like JFK's assassination with tangible video evidence lead to hundreds of conspiracy theories, each wilder than the last. Though Delilo's take on things is highly fictionalized, when compared to many of the other theories and plots that exist alongside it, Libra seems very tame and rather believable. As we watched the clip in class today I couldn't help but realize that the first time I would have seen it, I would have been absolutely transfixed by the injured Kennedy and struggling Jackie O. The end frames in which Jackie clambered over the seat to tend to Kennedy in her signature pink suit would've definitely been my highlight, and like everyone else in the audience, I wouldn't give a second thought to much anything else. Watching the very same clip after reading Libra makes for a completely different experience altogether. Though the murder still remains the focal point of the clip, for me, the person of interest immediately shifted from JFK to Lee. Lee, to most people watching the clip, remains an infamous, static individual, known only for the murder. To us, Lee is a multidimensional character who we've seen grown up with his own share of struggles and principles. Watching his life culminate to this moment has us holding our breaths in an entirely different kind of anticipation as we try to see traces of the young man we've come to know personified through video. I guess in a sentence, watching the clip before Libra was like watching a documentary and watching after Libra was like watching a movie adaptation of the book.

Drawing Parallels

Perhaps a little late for this post (I'm ignoring the weekend reading), but I can't help kind of laughing at the overt parallels Oswald keeps drawing between himself and Kennedy. Maybe laughing is not quite the right word for it, but there's definitely a cruel sense of irony in the analogies that make it darkly humorous. Instead of the the usual convention of show don't tell, Delilo is blatantly telling us, the readers, about the similarities Oswald and Kennedy share. Brothers named Robert, pregnant wives, both have strange handwriting, and various other eerie similarities. While we did have a fairly quiet discussion in class about belief in coincidence, I do have to be open about my pretty firm beliefs in some superstition. The crossing of Kennedy and Oswald's paths in Dallas, is almost too perfect of a situation to be merely coincidental, and I'd have to concede that it was orchestrated by workings outside of our knowledge. I wonder if Oswald had been uninvolved in this whole plot if he would have maybe been a fanboy of Kennedy's much like Marina is a huge devotee of Jackie O. Despite his ultimate role in Kennedy's life, or rather the end of it, you can't help but notice the traces of admiration that sneak into Oswald's thoughts as he compares himself to Kennedy. And perhaps the parallels Oswald notes between himself and Kennedy help for him to see himself as of more historical significance.