lee oswalds mom is literally writing the book

 Quick post. Why not. Let's skip the formalities.

 I know in class we talked about how a lot of the information of this novel is sourced from the something (Warren???) files which investigated Lee's life before y'know, being presumed to have shot the president and then shot dead. A lot of this information, as we covered in class, had come from his mom. Who just sort of rambled at the interviewer until eventually she had to stop talking. His mom kinda comes off as a little crazy, with long tangents and sprees about random things. We get that sense in the book too, when she speaks to her son. Solid. DeLilo is getting her character from her interview, then putting that into the book. But I don't think that's where the parallels stop. 

You see, a lot of what we know about Lee comes from his mom's interview. His life is retold by her. He never got a chance to elaborate on his life, because, he is dead. That's sort of what happens when you die. It would be a little weird if a dead guy could then complete an interview about why he supposedly shot the president. Y'know. Anyways. In the book we see a lot of parallels in the writing style to the way his mom speaks. DeLilo takes a lot of time to go over weird, random details. For instance, when we first meet him, there's all sorts of weird interludes where he randomly will talk about how Lee is investigating the people he sees on the train, or he sees things at the zoo. He brings up Lee's bringing a penknife and waving it at his brother's bride like it's nothing. A random tangent. I get a lot of parallels between the style the story is written in and the manner to which Lee's mom talks. 

So why is this important? Well, because it brings heavy reference to how the information is sourced. Lee is dead, so they find the "next best source". His mom. His mom, in essence, is sitting there relaying information she has gathered about her son. Word of mouth. She doesn't know why he does things, she doesn't know the inner workings of his brain, she just observes. And therefore makes conclusions about some stuff about his character. Why does he smile randomly? He's just a mildly obnoxious dude who's constantly smug. The reader is forced to make observations about Lee's character from the eyes of his mother. From the eyes of the observer. His mom was an important character in his life, so naturally, she'd have the most voice in "what he was like." 

With that being said, that's all I really have to point out in this blog post. It would be kinda cool if it was revealed his mom was actually the one writing the book, well, not exactly the book- just Lee's perspective's chapters. There's just so much of a "rambling, random tangents" style to the narrative of events in this story that directly follows a similar line to his Mom's random flow of subject when it comes to her conversations with her son in the story. I think it would make sense, her writing "his perspective", though it is a little bit of a more far out theory than other alternatives. 

Until next time.