Episode 27: Libra (3)

About this episode

The episode concludes a series on DeLillo's 'Libra', exploring themes of conspiracy, media, and humor.

So who killed JFK? We still don’t know, but we’re concluding our series on DeLillo’s conspiratorial history with Episode 27: Libra (3). This episode begins by focusing on the unexpected injection of humor and depth that comes with Jack Ruby, another reluctant shooter, in the novel’s second part. We draw into this episode some comparisons of Libra to other artists’ paranoid visions of conspiracy, including Oliver Stone, Norman Mailer, and Thomas Pynchon. We spend ample time on the newspaper-clipping and TV-watching of CIA wife Beryl Parmenter, one of several figures here who make Libra a canny narrative of media and information history. And we close with detailed debate and speculation about why DeLillo’s concluding “Author’s Note” – with its powerful notion that “readers may find refuge here” – has changed over the years. Like Nicholas Branch, we're overwhelmed by all that still could be said about Libra (and we may still say it in a future episode!), but we conclude our three-part analysis here.

People in this episode

Hosts: Jeffrey Severs, Michael Streit

Topics covered

• JFK assassination
• conspiracy theories
• media history
• literary analysis
• humor in literature
• DeLillo's works

Keywords

• JFK
• conspiracy
• DeLillo
• Libra
• media
• humor
• literature

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: CIA

Books & works: Libra

More episodes of Don DeLillo Should Win the Nobel Prize

• Episode 36: Ratnerama · June 7, 2026 · 2h 15m
• Episode 35: "Creation" · April 26, 2026 · 1h 24m
• Episode 34: An Interview with Tom LeClair · March 11, 2026 · 1h 48m
• Episode 33: Mao II · February 2, 2026 · 2h 60m
• Episode 32: Thomas Pynchon's Shadow Ticket · December 12, 2025 · 2h 42m
• Episode 31: An Interview with Gerald Howard · November 20, 2025 · 1h 13m