Knowledge and Ignorance
DeLillo’s book is not the literary equivalent of Oliver Stone’s film. This is not a fact-challenged forwarding of wild conspiracy theories relying on tenuous connections between easily disproven “facts.” Nevertheless, a certain amount of paranoia cannot help but slip in. A case in point is the following metaphorical consideration of what constitutes the difference between a danger and an asset.
“Knowledge was a danger, ignorance a cherished asset. In many cases the DCI, the Director of Central Intelligence, was not to know important things. The less he knew, the more decisively he could function. It would impair his ability to tell the truth at an inquiry or a hearing.”
David Ferrie
David Ferrie is at once one of those real life characters who are essential to creating the JFK assassination conspiracy and absolute poison to believing it. He notably wore a bad wig and fake eyebrows and his connection to Oswald gives the word “tenuous” new meaning. Nevertheless, Jim Garrison considered important enough to make a prime player in the only lawsuit yet brought involving a conspiracy. In DeLillo’s novel, Ferrie, sporting a panama hat and a turtleneck, is described in more metaphorically questionable terms:
“he had a look of sad apology, like a man who’d betrayed a public trust.”
Cuba
One significant section of the JFK assassination conspiracies revolves around Cuba. In fact, it is impossible for some to extricate the assassination of John Kennedy from the takeover of Cuba by Fidel Castro and all subsequent events. One may question why Cuba would be of such supreme importance that conspirators would risk everything to kill a not-terribly-popular President over it. This metaphor helps to explain it. Literally. In the sense that it the whole concept of killing JFK over Cuba makes absolutely no sense.
“Cuba is a fixed idea…this is our job, to remove the psychic threat, to learn so much about Castro, decipher his intentions, undermine his institutions to such a degree that he loses the power to shape the way we think, to shape the way we sleep at night.”
The Zapruder Film
The only existing—or publicly released, if you subscribe to conspiracy theories—of the entirety of the JFK assassination is silent home movie footage shot by Abraham Zapruder. It has been referred to as the most important 26 seconds of film ever recorded. In DeLillo’s novel, it is described in more artistically satisfying terms as
“the basic timing device of the assassination and a major emblem of uncertainty and chaos.”
The Assassination as Spectacle
DeLillo’s controlling conceit is so brilliant that it eclipses in believability every single conspiracy theory ever forwarded that the assassination of the President begins as a fake attempt designed not for the purpose of actually killing Kennedy, but as spectacle. The carefully calculated near-miss will be enough to accomplish the goals of the strategists; murder is not just pointlessly dangerous, but completely unnecessary. The architect of the fake assassination turns to an easily digestible simile to make plain just how infinitely more sensible this would be than going the full distance:
“I’ve felt it unfolding for weeks, like a dream whose meaning slowly becomes apparent.”
