Oswald (redone version)

He's a bit of a poser, isn't he? Maybe that's an understatement. Regardless, I really don't like reading about him. He's one of those guys who thinks they're really cool and smart, but actually... aren't.... Everyone just lets him live in his own little warped world while at the same time getting him to do stuff for them. I can't tell what bothers me more, the fact that people take advantage of him, or the fact that he basically wants to be taken advantage of.

He's so self possessed, he thinks he's the greatest thing in the world, writing in his "historical diary" and thinking that he's able to play the US and Russian governments with his false defector in a false defector program, and I just hate it. He's an attention seeking little worm, but the way DeLillo writes about him confuses me so much. I don't know if I'm supposed to feel sympathy for him or not! That's tough for me. When I read a book, I like to be able to invest feelings in a character I like. But I don't really like Lee. He unnerves me. When he fires the shots from the window in "November 22," I inwardly groan something along the lines of, "Not this again...," because he does it all the time! He wants to get played, so he can make a big deal to the authorities of how he did get played so they'll sympathize with him and make him famous or something. He's like an old dog that's kind of cute but really dirty so you don't want to pet, and it's mean, too, so you don't really feel sorry for it.

If he actually felt bad about taking shots at the President, he probably would have done a better job of trying to hide himself. But he half assed-ly hides the gun and the clipboard, he leaves his jacket at work and runs around town doing "evasive maneuvering," and the whole time you're just thinking, "Goddamn it, go back inside," because you want him to succeed because he's the main character in the book but you hate him because he's just so annoying and arrogant and so many other things. The fact that I can't pin a "like" or a "dislike" on him is really frustrating. He creeps me out.

In short, reading about Lee makes me very uncomfortable.

(On another side note, this new layout for Blogger is really inconvenient and I keep getting lost, which is how I ended up back on this page to type this side note.)