DeLillo’s field research from walking around locations mentioned in the novel (New Orleans, Miami, Dallas) and keeping notes for each setting in a separate, small colorful notebook.

A copy of the 26-volume Warren Commission report.

Don DeLillo’s typescript draft for Libra, ca. The book is a fictional interpretation of the motives and events around Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of John F.

One book we recently discussed was Don DeLillo’s Libra, which has a thirtieth anniversary this year. Just because it’s not in the archive doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. What might they wish was there (possibly a diary, a calendar, or a map that proves the author visited a particular setting)? Do those items reside somewhere else, or maybe they never existed? Conceivably, items have been lost over time. I ask members in the discussion to think skeptically about what’s there, but also what’s not there. Using the archives to understand an author’s viewpoint is helpful, but clarity on the author’s every intention cannot be expected. For our member book clubs, materials from a particular book are pulled from the archive and shown preceeding a discussion with small groups who have already read the work. How fortunate then, to have access to the archives here at the Ransom Center where the creative process and choices made by an author can be gleaned from the materials in their archives. Questions (usually unanswerable) often emerge during book discussions about the intentions of an author. Even though it’s a solitary activity, it brings people together and gives us a common language.

The depth of knowledge and range of opinions that can emerge from a good book discussion has always been one of my favorite aspects of reading. Decades after its publication, this fictional account of the assassination of John F. Religion and Literature sponsors and publishes the annual Religion and Literature lecture at the University of Notre Dame, hosts special issues with guest editors, and publishes forum sections dedicated to key topics and issues in religion and literature, broadly construed.įor more information visit our website at. Abrams, Daniel Boyarin, Gerald Bruns, Lawrence Buell, Kenneth Burke, Donald Davie, Robert Detweiler, Denis Donoghue, Terry Eagleton, Caryl Emerson, René Girard, Geoffrey Hartman, Stanley Hauerwas, Peter Hawkins, David Jasper, John Milbank, Walter Ong, S.J., Alicia Ostriker, Barbara Packer, Chaim Potok, Stephen Prickett, Annemarie Schimmel, Regina Schwartz, and Nathan A. Religion and Literature is a scholarly journal that provides a forum for discussion of the relations between two crucial human concerns: the religious impulse and the literary forms of any era, place, or language.įirst published in 1984, the journal has featured articles by distinguished scholars including M.H.

Don delillo's libra