But seriously, might not want to read ahead if you haven't done tonight's reading.
Over the course of the past several Libra readings, we have seen the pieces of the JFK assassination fall into place relatively quickly. They're aren't many scenes that don't pertain to the movement of the plot towards the morning of November 22, 1963. The location changes from Miami to Dallas, Raymo, Frank, and Wayne make the drive to Dallas, Lee gets a job at the depository, and there are a couple of scenes with Ferrie convincing Lee to take the shot, and then we have the lengthy section detailing the events of the assassination. I watched the Zapruder film after completing the section, and I was shocked at the time in which DeLillo spends depicting the events of six seconds. Gone are Everett's musings about the nature of secrets. The speed of the novel pointedly picks up right before the assassination.
Speaking of Everett, gone is Everett, in general. His careful planning stages seem to be totally irrelevant at this point. His person out of paper certainly is unnecessary; there's no need to create Oswald -- he already exists. But Oswald isn't really necessary, either. He isn't even the one who kills Kennedy -- it's Raymo who hits him.
The way all of this turns out reminded me of one of the most crucial sections in the beginning of the book: the description of the way that the CIA operates.
"He and Larry Parmenter had belonged to a group called SE Detailed, six military analysts and intelligence men. The group was one element in a four-stage committee set up to confront the problem of Castro's Cuba. The first stage, the Senior Study Effort, consisted of fourteen high officials, including presidential advisers, ranking military men, special assistants, undersecretaries, heads of intelligence. They met for an hour and a half. Then eleven men let the room, six men entered. The resulting group, called SE Augmented, met for two hours. Then seven men left, four men entered, including Everett and Parmenter. This was SE Detailed, a group that developed specific covert operations and then decided which members of SE Augmented out to know about the plans. Those members in turn wondered whether the Senior Study Effort wanted to know what was going on in stage three. Chances are they didn't. When the meeting in stage three was over, five men left the room and three paramilitary officers entered to form Leader 4."
Mackey at this point has taken over control of the actual execution of the operation. Everett's (and Parmenter's) role reminds me more of Senior Study Effort or SE Augmented -- they decide what needs to be done, but don't actually do it, or necessarily know the specifics of how it's being done. Mackey would be SE Detailed and Leader 4, the one who is carrying out the plot. This section is crucial because it establishes the foundation for how conspiracies and plots spin out of control, take a life of their own. Even in this little example, with relatively few players, we see how the higher-ups (Everett) don't know the full extent to what is going on (e.g. that Kennedy will be hit).
Somewhat unrelated: I was reminded of a popular line from the A-Team during class discussion
Or, perhaps you'd like to hear it in Liam Neeson's lovely Irish accent in the slightly-better-than-average 2010 action movie
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ReplyDeletesometimes plans go wrong
ReplyDeleteWho are you to applaud this???
ReplyDeleteI thought that the huge length of time DeLillo spent on describing the few seconds in which the assassination was extremely effective. The constant quick switches of the point of view really served to illustrate the theme of chaos, both in the moment and in the novel as a whole. As has been shown before, the plans that people like Everett make can take on a life of their own, and in this section the months of planning that make up the entire novel are all undone by the action of a couple seconds; Everett's plan to have Lee fake an attempt to kill Kennedy has transformed into a completely different person actually carrying out the act.
ReplyDeleteI do wonder how the event would have gone down in history if Everett's original plot had gone the way he'd wanted it to. As we'd discussed thoroughly in class, it was much more carefully thought out and decidedly less blunt than Mackey's plan. It's amazing just how screwy the plot went even with so few people working on it, with not a single person coming out of this event happy. I suppose this is an appropriate time to invoke the old saying 'if you want something done right, go do it yourself.'
ReplyDeleteI agree with Andy. Everett's plot originally seemed rather reasonable, with no casualties and even no prisoners while also instilling a preparedness for the country to fight a war in Cuba. Although I won't argue about his motives, the planning phase was thorough and well planned, just rather poorly executed. He can't have done everything himself because he needed people doing different things in different places but all at the same time, but it might have all gone down completely differently had less things been left to chance (such as having such a volatile character as Lee involved in the plot, unknowingly or not.) The complexity of the plot reflects accurately the complexity of organizing anything so secret without support from the government, but also shows just how easy it was to mess everything up. In the end, without a Cuban sniper attacking the President, there were just lone-gunman theories that didn't change much about America as Everett had originally been planning.
ReplyDelete