- Paperback: 848 pages
- Publisher: Random House Trade; Reprint edition (2 Jan 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0345404378
- ISBN-13: 978-0345404374
- Product Dimensions: 13.1 x 3.5 x 20.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,996,694 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'An epic tale' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Fascinating' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Anyone with curiosity will find a reason to read Origins Reconsidered: it is a superb account of the state of knowledge concerning the evolution of our species . . .Richard Leakey sees the wood and not just the trees' NEW SCIENTIST 'The most powerfully mysterious book to have emerged from America for many years.' THE TIMES 'The point of this book, though, is not who did it, but how Mailer has done it... sage and kingly, elegant and energetic, and perfectly getting the number of OLH-2938.' GUARDIAN 'OSWALD'S TALE is terrific: bristling with vitality and intelligence and wit, and organised with an inventive cunning that makes the reading utterly compelling.' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'The meat of the book is the remarkable feat of imaginative sympathy which enables Mailer to engage with Oswald...' INDEPENDENT '... an insight that made the usual conspiracy theories look like so much cerebral Meccano.' Hugo Barnacle, BOOKS OF THE YEAR '... an extraordinary faction, a huge, sprawline, deeply intelligent epic that takes us nearer to the heart of the mystery surrounding the Kennedy assassination.' OBSERVER '... it is the performance of an author relishing the force and reach of his own acuity.' THE SUNDAY TIMES '... his best piece of non-fiction since the first half of THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG.' Martin Amis, BOOKS OF THE YEAR 'Mailer's profound understanding of his country and its people generally... lifts the story of Lee Harvey Oswalk clear of the conspiracy crap mills and places it finally into American literature alongside William Manchester's classic DEATH OF A PRESIDENT.' EVENING STANDARD
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
"MARVELOUS . . . BREATHTAKING."
--The New York Times Book Review
"MAILER SHINES . . . Explaining Kennedy's assassination through the flaws in Oswald's character has been attempted before, notably by Gerald Posner in Case Closed and Don Delillo in Libra. But neither handled Oswald with the kind of dexterity and literary imagination that Mailer here supplies in great force. . . . Oswald's Tale weaves a story not only about Oswald or Kennedy's death but about the culture surrounding the assassination, one that remains replete with miscomprehensions, unraveled threads and lack of resolution: All of which makes Oswald's Tale more true-to-life than any fact-driven treatise could hope to be. . . . Vintage Mailer."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer
"FASCINATING . . . A MASTER STORYTELLER . . . Mailer gives us our clearest, deepest view of Oswald yet. . . . Inside three pages you are utterly absorbed."
--Detroit Free Press
"MAILER AT HIS BEST . . . LIVELY AND CONVINCING . . . EXTREMELY
LUCID . . . Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance. . . . [He] has found a way to make the dry bones of KGB tapes and his own interviews stand up and perform. . . . From the American master conjurer of dark and swirling purpose, a moving reflection."
--Robert Stone
The New York Review of Books
"THIS IS A NARRATIVE OF TREMENDOUS ENERGY AND PANACHE; THE AUTHOR AT THE TOP OF HIS FORM."
--Christopher Hitchens
Financial Times
"Mailer has written some pretty crazy books in his time, but this isn't one of them. Like its predecessor, Harlot's Ghost, it is the performance of an author relishing the force and reach of his own acuity."
--Martin Amis
The London Sunday Times
--The New York Times Book Review
"MAILER SHINES . . . Explaining Kennedy's assassination through the flaws in Oswald's character has been attempted before, notably by Gerald Posner in Case Closed and Don Delillo in Libra. But neither handled Oswald with the kind of dexterity and literary imagination that Mailer here supplies in great force. . . . Oswald's Tale weaves a story not only about Oswald or Kennedy's death but about the culture surrounding the assassination, one that remains replete with miscomprehensions, unraveled threads and lack of resolution: All of which makes Oswald's Tale more true-to-life than any fact-driven treatise could hope to be. . . . Vintage Mailer."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer
"FASCINATING . . . A MASTER STORYTELLER . . . Mailer gives us our clearest, deepest view of Oswald yet. . . . Inside three pages you are utterly absorbed."
--Detroit Free Press
"MAILER AT HIS BEST . . . LIVELY AND CONVINCING . . . EXTREMELY
LUCID . . . Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance. . . . [He] has found a way to make the dry bones of KGB tapes and his own interviews stand up and perform. . . . From the American master conjurer of dark and swirling purpose, a moving reflection."
--Robert Stone
The New York Review of Books
"THIS IS A NARRATIVE OF TREMENDOUS ENERGY AND PANACHE; THE AUTHOR AT THE TOP OF HIS FORM."
--Christopher Hitchens
Financial Times
"Mailer has written some pretty crazy books in his time, but this isn't one of them. Like its predecessor, Harlot's Ghost, it is the performance of an author relishing the force and reach of his own acuity."
--Martin Amis
The London Sunday Times
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Mailer's "non-fiction novel" of Lee Harvey Oswald is stunning, not just for the new information he has uncovered about Oswald's life in Russia between 1959 and 1961, but because Mailer has ordered this information to provide true insight into Oswald's psyche. At nineteen and just out of the Marines when he flew to Moscow, Oswald intended to apply for Soviet citizenship, believing that Marxism was "purer" than capitalism. Remaining in the USSR for two and a half years, he married Marina and fathered a child before becoming disillusioned with his poverty and deciding to return to the US.
In the USSR, Oswald was under constant KGB surveillance, and Mailer's first-ever access to the KGB files and his effective use of them give the reader a sense of who Oswald was between the ages of twenty and twenty-two. All the everyday aspects of his life, his constant fights with Marina (and his eventual physical abuse of her), his belief that he is meant for "high destiny," and his inability to find success and purpose in his Russian life, despite his high ideals, show a young man frustrated in every aspect of life.
Using files from the KGB, Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and books written about Oswald by Gerald Posner, Priscilla McMillan, Jim Marr, and Carl Oglesby, Mailer presents an astounding amount of historical data. Keeping his prose style journalistic and factual, Mailer uses his talents as a Hollywood script-writer to create dramatic dialogues appropriate to the facts, bringing events to life and making this long novel move quickly. Making frequent use of flashbacks, he fills in background detail, recreating Oswald's life as a young boy in New York--his truancy, his assignment to a youth center (where he was picked on), his relationship with his overbearing mother, and his constant loneliness.
When Oswald returns to Dallas in 1963 with his wife and daughter, he still has dreams, still sees himself as "an instrument of history," and is still frustrated and unhappy. His claim of responsibility for the April, 1963, assassination attempt on Gen. Edwin Walker, a John Birch Society supporter, whether or not it is true, shows him acting out his belief that he is an instrument of history in the months leading up to Nov. 22, 1963. Six months after the assassination attempt on Walker, Oswald takes advantage of the accident of history that has brought the JFK motorcade past the window of the Depository where he works, and he acts out his self-declared destiny.
Presenting all the information available to him, Mailer maintains a balanced point of view. Though he mentions contacts Oswald made with the FBI, his attempt to go to Cuba, Mafia attempts to kill Castro, and Oswald's strange connection with Baron George De Mohrenschildt, a Russian émigré with some CIA ties, he draws no conclusions due to lack of evidence, leaving those to the reader. This fine novel organizes mountains of raw material, some of it new, to provide glimpses of who Oswald was and what may have motivated him. Mary Whipple
Format:Paperback
Mailer's research and analysis are faultless. As a result, this book is a 'must have' for those who would truly seek to understand Lee Harvey Oswald and his ultimate destiny.
The first part of this book deals extensively with Oswald's time and acquaintances in Russia. In this reviewer's opinion, only Priscilla McMillan's 'Marina And Lee' can compare to Mailer when it comes to chronicling this phase of Oswald's life.
Part Two picks up the story of Oswald and his new wife and child as they come to America.
We all know what happens, of course, but Mailer will take you every step of the way on the road that led to Dallas. There is much to see on the journey and it is always better to travel than to arrive.
Mailer never oversteps his mark to venture into the myriad `technical matters' surrounding the murders of President Kennedy and Officer Tippit, he does what he is best at: examining people against the backdrop of their lives and times.
It's a real heavyweight book by a real heavyweight writer.
Barry
The first part of this book deals extensively with Oswald's time and acquaintances in Russia. In this reviewer's opinion, only Priscilla McMillan's 'Marina And Lee' can compare to Mailer when it comes to chronicling this phase of Oswald's life.
Part Two picks up the story of Oswald and his new wife and child as they come to America.
We all know what happens, of course, but Mailer will take you every step of the way on the road that led to Dallas. There is much to see on the journey and it is always better to travel than to arrive.
Mailer never oversteps his mark to venture into the myriad `technical matters' surrounding the murders of President Kennedy and Officer Tippit, he does what he is best at: examining people against the backdrop of their lives and times.
It's a real heavyweight book by a real heavyweight writer.
Barry
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Take no notice of the review below. Mailer has written a top book on the man who was more than likely behind the assassination of JFK. If you look in all the right places and disregard all the crackpot theories of multiple Oswalds, Oswald was replaced by a lookalike, he was just a patsy, blah, blah, (I'm sick to death of everyone other than Oswald doing it, Cubans, Mafia, CIA, FBI, Industrial Military Complex, the list goes on ad nauseum),you will see the logic behind the reasoning. Some people need to get a grip and look at the obvious rather than the ridiculous. "I'm just a patsy" Oswald cried, so would I if my arse would eventually fry in the electric chair, something that would not have escaped Oswald's attention when caught, never mind blowing Kennedys brains out he killed a copper too or should Officer Tippit be forgotten in the rush to exonerate Oswald? Read Mailers book and be enlightened a little.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Mailer's thesis is out of whack with what actually happened.
Oswald's behavior after Kennedy was shot simply does not square with Mailer's psychological portrait of him. Read more
Published on 29 Jan 2008 by Dennis Gosier
Be Warned
Whilst I have respect for Norman Mailer, this offering left me bemused.
Oswald's sense of "High Destiny" leads him to assassinate JFK? Read more
Oswald's sense of "High Destiny" leads him to assassinate JFK? Read more
Published on 18 July 2007 by M. CALLAGHAN
Oswald's "long and determined dream of high destiny."
Mailer's stunning "non-fiction novel" of Lee Harvey Oswald is fascinating, not just for the new information he has uncovered about Oswald's life in Russia between 1959... Read more
Published on 15 Jan 2006 by Mary Whipple
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