01-01-2012, 04:47 AM
Well, I was right.. it was, indeed, one of the gifts under the tree. I haven't read it yet... not much interest, to be honest... it's a big thing, 1,245 pages -- we got the large print edition to grandma could read it too.. and I browsed briefly enough.
In the afterword to what he describes as a novel of time-travel, the author says:
"Early in the novel, Jake Epping's friend Al puts the probability that Oswald acted alone at 95% percent, After reading a stack of books on the subject almost as tall as I am, I'd put the probability at 98%, maybe even 99. Because all of the accounts, including those written by conspiracy theorists, tell the same simple American story: here was a dangerous little fame-junkie who found himself in just the right place to get lucky. Were the odds of it happening just the way it did long? Yes. So are the odds of winning the lottery, but someone wins one every day.
Probably the most useful source-materials I read in preparation for writing this novel were Case Closed, by Gerald Posner; Legend, by Edward Jay Epstein (nutty Robert Ludlum stuff, but fun); Oswald's Tale, by Norman Mailer; and Mrs. Payne's Garage, by Thomas Mallon. The latter offers a brilliant analysis of the conspiracy theorists and their need to find order in what was almost a random event. The Mailer is also remarkable. He says that he went into the project (which excludes extensive interviews with Russians who knew Lee and Marina in Minsk) believing that Oswald was the victim of a conspiracy, but in the end came to believe -- reluctantly -- that the stodgy ole Warren Commission was right: Oswald acted alone.
It is very, very difficult for a reasonable person to believe otherwise. Occam's Razor -- the simplest explanation is usually the right one.
I was also deeply impressed -- and moved, and shaken -- by my rereading of William Manchester's Death of a President. He's dead-wrong about some things, he's given to flights of purple prose (calling Marina Oswald "lynx-eyed", for instance), his analysis of Oswald's motives is both superficial and hostile, but this massive work, published only four years after that terrible lunch hour in Dallas, is closest in time of the assassination, written when most of the participants were still alive and their recollections were still vivid.... his narrative of 11/22's events is chilling and vivid, a Zapruder film in words.....
I hate to bore you with my Academy Awards speech -- I get very annoyed with writers who do that -- but I need to tip my cap to some other people, all the same. Big Number One is Gary Mack, curator of The Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas. ... Thanks are also due to Nicola Longford, the Executive Director of the Sixth Floor Museum, and Megan Bryant, Director of Collections and Intellectual Property...."
Next time I'm up in Orono, I think I have a delivery to make.
In the afterword to what he describes as a novel of time-travel, the author says:
"Early in the novel, Jake Epping's friend Al puts the probability that Oswald acted alone at 95% percent, After reading a stack of books on the subject almost as tall as I am, I'd put the probability at 98%, maybe even 99. Because all of the accounts, including those written by conspiracy theorists, tell the same simple American story: here was a dangerous little fame-junkie who found himself in just the right place to get lucky. Were the odds of it happening just the way it did long? Yes. So are the odds of winning the lottery, but someone wins one every day.
Probably the most useful source-materials I read in preparation for writing this novel were Case Closed, by Gerald Posner; Legend, by Edward Jay Epstein (nutty Robert Ludlum stuff, but fun); Oswald's Tale, by Norman Mailer; and Mrs. Payne's Garage, by Thomas Mallon. The latter offers a brilliant analysis of the conspiracy theorists and their need to find order in what was almost a random event. The Mailer is also remarkable. He says that he went into the project (which excludes extensive interviews with Russians who knew Lee and Marina in Minsk) believing that Oswald was the victim of a conspiracy, but in the end came to believe -- reluctantly -- that the stodgy ole Warren Commission was right: Oswald acted alone.
It is very, very difficult for a reasonable person to believe otherwise. Occam's Razor -- the simplest explanation is usually the right one.
I was also deeply impressed -- and moved, and shaken -- by my rereading of William Manchester's Death of a President. He's dead-wrong about some things, he's given to flights of purple prose (calling Marina Oswald "lynx-eyed", for instance), his analysis of Oswald's motives is both superficial and hostile, but this massive work, published only four years after that terrible lunch hour in Dallas, is closest in time of the assassination, written when most of the participants were still alive and their recollections were still vivid.... his narrative of 11/22's events is chilling and vivid, a Zapruder film in words.....
I hate to bore you with my Academy Awards speech -- I get very annoyed with writers who do that -- but I need to tip my cap to some other people, all the same. Big Number One is Gary Mack, curator of The Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas. ... Thanks are also due to Nicola Longford, the Executive Director of the Sixth Floor Museum, and Megan Bryant, Director of Collections and Intellectual Property...."
Next time I'm up in Orono, I think I have a delivery to make.
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"