Headline July 23rd, 2012 / The 'Sad -Tragic' Sum Of History!

"The 'Sad -Tragic' Sum Of History!"

Nothing is more despised in America than the twenty six volume report of the Warren Commission, ''a dead whale decomposing on a beach.'' Mailer takes hundreds and hundreds to present the fact, a twice - hundred - times told tale: Oswald's wildly resentful mother, Marguerite; his time in New York City, at the Bronx Zoo and with truant officer; his mouthy years in the marines, learning Russian and spouting a lending Library Marxism. 

Then - after the Russian years -his return to America with Marina; the grubby jobs he felt were beneath him; the even grubbier apartments; the purchase of the rifle and the bragging photos with it; the attempt to kill the right wing General Walker, the summer months of 1963, at the edges of New Orlean's scummy ''Bermuda Triangle'' of mobsters, anti Castro Cuban exiles and poetic freaks like the eyebrow less David Ferrie. 

Finally, the failed attempt to get to Cuba by way of Mexico city; a return to Dallas, where Marina had taken shelter with the kindly Quaker Ruth Paine; one last job at the Texas School Book Depository, and one last alias O.H. Lee. Despite the herculean effort, the bad news is that Mailer, fails. 

The Russian lenses, when he even wears them, disappoint like the first pair fitted to the Hubble telescope. For whole chapters, he displays the KGB's faith in endless accretion. The whale, albeit white, remains beached, and onto the huge blubbery slices of Warren Commission transcript that the author serves up, along with great cuts from books by Priscilla Johnson and Edward Epstein. 

Mailer dabs only smidgens of his own tangy mustard. He abandons Oswald at the most crucial moment in his tale to give us some pointless paragraphs of recollection from Lady Bird Johnson, one car behind the Kennedy's in the motorcade.

A reader wants to take a bellows to the sparks and hints of the old, impossible Mailer that are scattered around: the big ideas. So, when the frontier was finally closed the imagination inevitably turned to paranoia. But still the whale won't breathe. Even now, decades after this tragedy, there now remains more than 200 undocumented hours of Oswald's life between 1962 and April 63. 

And yet, after 600 pages, Mailer must still admit the possibility that the 'sad-tragic sum' of history of Oswald was never more than ''over-ambitious yet much henpecked husband, with an evil and unbalanced psyche....'' But to be sure Mailer accomplishes much, and it was never unusual for him to achieve. 

Mailer compellingly ponders Oswald's connection with George De Mohrenschildt and the chance that this Dallas adventurer was sent to debrief him for the CIA or even run him as a client!! Mailer's pursuit of Jack Ruby and his killing of Oswald on impulse is dazzling! 

So as I wind up this painful post and reflect here and now, I can only marvel at how an angry little man found himself in the right place and time to change the world and its history because a month before, in applying for a warehouse job, he pleased the boss by calling him ''sir.'' 

Many many thanks to !WOW! Oh, all this is turning into something of exquisite International beauty. The Samdailytimes you see on the screen before you is becoming the most honoured work of the entire World! Your World!

Good night & God bless!

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