Lighter Fare than Libra: Who Killed John F. Kennedy?

            I have a book entitled Who Killed John F. Kennedy?, the first of the two Lose your own adventure books. As you can probably guess, it’s (1) a parody of Choose your own adventure and (2) you always lose. You play as the Dallas police chief’s son, who has a reputation for being a kid detective and has to put those skills to use to solve the JFK assassination. Various paths let you investigate various theories of who did it. You can go along with the police and search for incriminating evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald. You can go undercover and get David Ferrie to confess to having planned it (although you die before telling anyone).

And, as explained in the endnotes, every conspiracy theory in it is believed by someone and every piece of evidence is real. There really was a bullet hole in Kennedy’s limousine’s windshield. There really was a mysterious bullet, shot but totally pristine, on Kennedy’s stretcher. There were two people in Dealy Plaza, two days before the assassination, who were aiming rifles over the fence at silhouettes in a car at the spot Kennedy would be shot.

Everything in the book screams at you to not go along with the Warren Commission’s “Oswald acted alone” story. You first meet Oswald in a lineup where he’s handcuffed to men who look nothing like him, hardly an impartial way of doing it. J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, personally calls you to go along with his story. If you do, the FBI rewards you with a cushy desk job (where you later oversee the cover-up of the Robert F. Kennedy assassination) and YOU LOSE. Dan Rather, CBS journalist, gets to see the Zapruder film, but after a meeting with FBI agents his report bears no resemblance to the actual film. The truth is a vast conspiracy led by the CIA but with help from the Mafia, the Freemasons, and Castro, the exact opposite of the Warren Report.

But no one besides you ever finds out the truth since you immediately die. You can never let the truth be known. My favorite joke in the whole book is a page in the middle that has President Robert Kennedy giving you the Presidential Medal of Freedom for solving the mystery, ending in YOU WIN – but no page tells you to go there, so it's unreachable. That might be the most provocative aspect. It’s possible that there was a vast conspiracy but those who found out about it were eliminated. As Nicholas Branch muses in Libra, it looks a lot like that happened. The spine of Who Killed John F. Kennedy calls itself “Nonfiction,” which is probably a joke but could also refer to the historical research that went into it. But like Libra, a very compelling aspect of it is the possibility that it actually is nonfiction.

1976: Less Whipping, but Pretty Similar to 1819

            Kindred takes place in two wildly different eras: 1976 and the early 1800’s. The early 1800’s is a time of slavery, poor medical care, and manual labor. 1976 is a time of no slavery, good medical care, and not much manual labor. But the more time Dana spends in each place, the clearer it becomes that 1819 and 1976 are not as different as one would expect, and the worst part of 1819 – racism – is still alive and well.

            There are many minor similarities, like how Tom Weylin’s home is repeatedly compared to Dana and Kevin’s. But most of the 1976 sections talk about how racism is still around. It’s certainly less than in the 1800’s (white people can’t legally own, beat, or rape black people), but it’s pervasive. The hottest-button issue is Dana and Kevin’s interracial marriage, which only became legal in California in 1948 and nationwide in 1967 following Loving v. Virginia.

            As a side note, some states passed weird anti-miscegenation laws. Maryland’s law, in addition to prohibiting black-white marriage, specifically made marriage between black people and Filipinos illegal. Arizona’s law prohibited white people from marrying anyone who wasn’t white, which had the side effect of prohibiting someone who was only part white from marrying anybody. In Massachusetts, where interracial marriage was legal since 1843, there was a law that prevented couples from getting married in Massachusetts and moving back to their home states (to circumvent those states’ laws) that wasn’t repealed until 2008, 41 years after there were any other states with such laws. Sorry, I got carried away reading the Wikipedia article.

            Anyway, Kevin and Dana’s marriage is met with disapproval from both Kevin and Dana’s relatives. This is especially shocking to Kevin, since he thought his sister would be totally in favor. Dana’s aunt is mildly supportive (she wants lighter-skinned grand-nieces and nephews), but her uncle is opposed. Opposition to interracial marriage probably lasts to this day; in 2000, 40% of voters in Alabama wanted to keep a clause in the state’s constitution prohibiting it (the clause couldn’t be legally enforced anyway). When Kevin and Dana go to Maryland, they find people who “looked at Kevin and me, then looked again” (262). But they also see “black kids and white kids together”, which leaves some hope that future generations won’t be so much like they were in 1819.

Will Rufus become a redheaded Tom?

            Author’s note: This blog post is based on readings up to the end of The Storm. If more evidence shows up later, I’ll probably update it.

            In what I’ve read of Kindred, Rufus has grown up from being a toddler to a twenty-something who owns a plantation. Dana’s visits, which happen about every five years, give glimpses into his development. At her first substantive visit, when Rufus is eight or nine, a couple things stand out. He talks well, and seems fairly bright. He is well-attuned with what is going on in his world, especially the dangers of crossing Daddy. And he commits crimes but doesn’t seem to realize (or care) that they’re wrong. He burned down the stable, but when he talks about it (at the bottom of page 25), he dismisses it with “Anyway, I got mad and burned down the stable”. He burned the curtains because Daddy whipped him for stealing a dollar (about $15 in today’s money). He’s a little scamp now, but if he could be guided onto the straight and narrow, he could turn out well.

            Unfortunately, he isn’t. On Dana’s next visit, Rufus is pretty much the same. The one after that, he’s about eighteen and pretty much the same, but he can no longer be referred to as a little scamp because he’s just raped Alice. But from his point of view, raping a black woman isn’t any worse than the other things he’s done. The biggest change in his personality is that he is now very manipulative. He’s also gotten attached to Dana, and will do anything to stop her from leaving, including shooting her. At this point, Dana compares him unfavorably to Tom Weylin, who used to be the evil whipping Daddy who was a common enemy to both her and Rufus.

            Dana’s most recent visit, when Tom Weylin dies, provides a bit of hope. While recovering from dengue fever, Rufus is like he was before. But after he inherits the plantation, he settles down. He still regularly rapes Alice (as Tom did with Tess), but he seems to think of the resulting children as more than slaves. He doesn’t seem to lie or manipulate. Now Dana’s main objection is that he is doing what Tom used to do: treat the slaves as property, buying and selling them without regard for who they are. It’s the revulsion at this behavior that causes Dana to try forcing herself to go home for the first time. He’ll certainly keep doing that; it’s what slaveholders at the time do. That’s how the economy works. He’s on track to be just like his father, which makes sense.

But will he not think like his father? Will his relationship with Alice extend at least a little to the other slaves? I’d say no. When his personality changed, it was to become more like Tom Weylin when he took over the plantation. Tom Weylin commit petty crimes, lie, or have slaves as friends, so Rufus won’t either.
Update: In the last chapter, Rufus does free his kids, but then Dana kills him. He probably wouldn't have survived much longer anyway, since Alice's death seems to have taken a lot off from his sanity.

Robert Pilgrim: The Only John Wayne?

            Every soldier portrayed in Slaughterhouse-Five is either incompetent or dead or both. That reinforces the messages that war is a pointless exercise where children are sent off to get randomly killed, and makes sure there’s no part for John Wayne. Or it would, if there weren’t a weird exception: Billy’s son Robert.

            The first time Robert is mentioned is in the initial telling of Billy’s life, which says that he was a bad kid in high school, but then he joined the Green Berets, fought in Vietnam, and became “a fine young man” (31). The next time is when Robert is conceived, and the narration reveals that he will be a bad kid in high school, but then join the Green Berets and “straighten out” (151). Over the next few pages, he isn’t even referred to as Robert but as “the Green Beret.” The most detailed profile comes when Robert visits Billy at the hospital, when he is wearing the Green Beret uniform and is decorated with “a Purple Heart and a Silver Star and a Bronze Star with two clusters” (242). It also dutifully mentions that he was a bad kid in high school, but he straightened out when he joined the Green Berets.

            Every time his name comes up, he is identified as a Green Beret who was a bad kid in high school but now he’s shaped up. He is the epitome of a military success story, as shown by his large collection of medals. He is a John Wayne character. What happened to there not being any of those?

            The only thing about Robert that makes him not as John Wayne is how shallow his character is. We know three things about him: He dropped out of high school, he joined the Green Berets, and that he turned out to be a great person. There are a couple of extra details, but they all fall into one of those categories. And that’s it. We don’t know what kinds of books he reads, what hobbies he has, how tall he is (although he does have short, blond hair), or anything else that would make him a person. More words go to describing what he wears than who he is.

            The most important thing about Robert is that he’s a Green Beret. That, presumably, is not how he would like to be thought of. But that’s how Americans view military veterans as a whole. Maybe that’s Vonnegut’s point: Join the military if you want, but then the only thing people will know about you is that your job is to kill other people.

Has Harold Bloom Missed the Point?

            Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo describes a fight between proponents of Jes Grew and the Atonists. The book itself is a rebellion against Atonist conventions of what novels should be, violating conventions left and right. The title page comes after chapter one. After finishing chapter 52, the reader finds another chapter 52. Typos litter the text. In some places, the placement of the letters on the page looks like it was printed badly (e.g. the word “astrologer” midway through page 16). In any traditional book, these things would be considered errors and be corrected before publication.

            It’s also a recurring theme that Jes Grew cannot be controlled by Atonism. The Talking Android plan assumes that the Atonists can find some person who can speak for Jes Grew, but that’s not how it works. Jes Grew cannot be pinned down as a single idea, preventing it from being exploited by the narrow-minded Atonists. When Safecracker Gould tries to distill Jes Grew into his poem “Harlem Tom-Toms”, he just writes bad poetry. Even more damning is that the Atonists listening in the room don’t realize it’s just bad poetry until PaPa LaBas bursts in and exposes Gould. Actual Jes Grew is incompatible with Atonist ways of thinking.

            But that whole message is undermined by a dependent clause on the back cover: “Cited by literary critic Harold Bloom as one of the five hundred most significant books in the Western canon…” The list, available online, does indeed contain five hundred works of literature and Mumbo Jumbo is one of them. But so are six works by John Milton, who is explicitly cited in Mumbo Jumbo as an Atonist apologist. Despite his best efforts, Reed’s novel has been absorbed into Atonist literary criticism. 

The End of the Era of Ragtime

            Chapter 40 of E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime wraps up every bit of the plot and concludes with the end of World War I. What sort of world is left after “the era of Ragtime [has] run out” (Doctorow 319)? On the whole, not one that gives much hope for the change that characters like Coalhouse, Emma Goldman, and Younger Brother were seeking.

            The most obvious problem is that Coalhouse and Younger Brother both die. They are both lost to history, as evidenced by the fact that no historian has found evidence for either of them. Although Goldman has fallen into obscurity, she was somewhat well-known when Doctorow wrote Ragtime because the feminist movement celebrated her.

            All of them fail to effect lasting change because of the government. Coalhouse gets gunned down by police having only gotten his car back. Younger Brother is killed by troops from the Mexican government while his revolution is destroyed by American Marines. Goldman gets deported, probably for being an anarchist.

            Only a few characters end up being happy. Mother and Tateh get married and live a happy life. Mother loves Tateh even though he is a Jewish socialist, which could indicate that future generations could be more tolerant. But the success of anti-Semites like Henry Ford puts a damper on that. The only other happy ending is Harry K. Thaw, who gets himself released from the insane asylum and who marches in the Armistice Day parades. If one were to list the characters based on how much they deserved to be happy, Harry K. Thaw would be at the bottom. But the system that lets him be in the upper crust of society clearly is still going strong.

Why are (almost) all the historical figures douchebags?

            Throughout Ragtime, many historical figures make appear as characters, though mostly as cameos. A few of them interact with the fictional characters, namely Evelyn Nesbitt, Harry Houdini, and Emma Goldman. The others are all cast in a negative light. J. P. Morgan is a conspiracy theorist so arrogant that he thinks he is the Illuminati. Henry Ford developed the assembly line in part so that his so-called fools of workers could manage it. Theodore Roosevelt is introduced as a great conservationist, but the rest of that sentence lists the several hundred animals he killed on a recent safari (112).

            They are all awful in different ways, but they all agree on one thing: bigotry. Robert Peary is hard on his Eskimo helpers because “They’re children and they have to be treated like children” (73). When Morgan presents his theory about how all people are, deep down, the same, Ford responds “Exceptin’ the Jews…They ain’t like anyone else I know” (147). When Sarah tries to talk to Vice President Jim Sherman, he recoils from her “black hand” and his bodyguards inflict lethal injuries that nobody seems to think are important (191).

Portraying the famous people of the era as bigoted fits with Doctorow’s portrayal of white culture as outlined in the first paragraph (“There were no Negroes. There were no immigrants.”) (4). Bigotry was the norm, and the historical figures probably were, by and large, racist.

            But surely these people had some redeeming qualities. Doctorow chooses not to mention them if he can help it. For short descriptions, only the negative qualities come through. Is this to make it easy for the reader to side against the historical figures? The only ones that are easy to sympathize with, Houdini and Goldman, are void of negative qualities and are from repressed groups themselves. Maybe it is to make sure we are on Doctorow’s side.