Libra's Value as a Historical Text

Reading Libra I've noticed that Delillo seems to take historical facts that are known and fabricate the unknown. He puts people in the places they were, at the times they were known to be there. But fills in the blank. We don't know how Lee grew up or his family life. But we still get a clear picture in Libra. Everything Dellillo inserts seems like it belongs.And there's, to my limited knowledge, no way to disprove anything he says throughout the novel.

This got me thinking. Once a historian knows every fact recorded about an event, isn't a novel such as Libra the next natural step? Delillo seems to know everything there is to know. He's literally only filling in the blanks which is motivation.

We know Lee shot the president, we know that in the end as it was said It's a bullet killing another man. But we don't know what makes these men. What to led to the cosmic coincidence that these two people were in the same city on the same day? Why did one want to kill the other? Understanding things such as this give us a better picture of humanity, and wast make us do what we do. In the end its what we really learn from history, it doesn't matter that Kennedy got shot, it matters why he got shot, and what the event will lead to in terms of motivation for the next piece of history.

In fact I've done a similar thing in my short story. I've been trying to explore the insignificant. What goes unrecorded and unnoticed can often be as big a part of history as anything else. This concept continues to fascinate me throughout Libra. I look forward to seeing what people think of this idea in class.