Libra has been a difficult book to read, to say the least. Partially because I'm not a big fan of its protagonist, and probably also because I'm not a big fan of the style it's written in. DeLillo has a very distinctive style. It's very vague, but at the same time exacting. He includes so many details, SO many details it's hard for the reader to discern what's actually important to the main flow of the story, at least in the beginning.
The beginning of Libra was pretty slow, in my opinion. I was struggling to keep up on multiple occasions. I was continually confused by the number of characters we were introduced to in the parts with Lee, and I found the chapters about the CIA plot to be much more interesting. As the plot thickened, and as DeLillo began weaving the chapters together, I found the book to be much easier to follow. The prose was still thick and difficult to sift through, but there was enough momentum from the plot to keep me interested, whereas in the beginning it was like trying to walk through glue with no end in sight.
His style was very different from that of Doctorow, who said things very matter-of-factly. Somehow, Doctorow managed to include details without overloading me with them, and I found his prose significantly easier to read and understand.
On that note, I have to say I liked DeLillo's use of historical characters much better than Doctorow's. I read Libra as something that could be taken as completely factual. Everything DeLillo wrote seemed completely plausible, and now that I've finished Libra, any other assumptions I had about the Kennedy assassination have been erased and replaced with DeLillo's account. I felt like DeLillo was very respectful of his characters somehow, whereas at some points it felt like Doctorow was just thinking up the most random situations he possibly could.
Overall, I think I wish Libra was written in Doctorow's style with DeLillo's regard for his characters. But I guess that's just my personal taste.
No comments:
Post a Comment