Product Description

'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

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #466977 in Books
• Published on: 1996-10-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 848 pages

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

About the Author
After graduating from Harvard Norman Mailer served in the South Pacific during World War II. He published his first book in 1948 and won the Pulitzer Price twice for THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT and THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG.

Customer Reviews

Oswald's "long and determined dream of high destiny."
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

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 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 later, taking advantage of the accident of history that has brought the President John Kennedy's motorcade past the window of the Depository where he works, Oswald 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 George De Mohrenschildt, a Russian émigré with some CIA ties, he draws no conclusions on lack of evidence, leaving those to the reader. This fine novelization organizes mountains of raw material, some of it new, to provide glimpses of who Oswald was and what may have motivated him. Mary Whipple

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. Oswald was initially confronted while he was calmly drinking a coke on the second floor of the Dallas book depository. Oswald next left the building, unhurriedly and unimpeded.

However, by far the biggest hurdle to Mailer's scenario lies in the actual particulars of the assassination itself. Oswald had not even fired a rifle that day, as evidenced by the test using parrafin to detect nitrates on Oswald's cheek. None were found. (The FBI took these test results and exhaustively examined them. This included the use of 7 control subjects who were tasked to fire the same rifle that Oswald allegedly used that fateful day. EVERY CONTROL SUBJECT EVIDENCED SUBSTANTIAL DEPOSITS OF NITRATES ON THEIR CHEEKS. Understandably, the FBI only reluectantly released these data after a successful ten-year suit by Harold Weisberg under the Freedom of Information Act. This is not a wild theory; this is fact.)

Kennedy's fatal head wound was from the front. This FACT is buttressed by the unanimous testimony of the doctors at Parkland Hospital (notwithstanding later attempts to distort or minimize this testimony)and by the FACT that the motorcycle policemen BEHIND Kennedy's limousine were hit by his brain matter. The force of the bullet, therefore, had to come from Kennedy's front.

Who actually killed Kennedy is another matter. It was not Oswald. The poor man was murdered before he could defend himself and stands condemned by history for a crime he could not have possibly committed. He would have been cleared by any court in the land.

It is now nearly 45 years after Kennedy's assassination; the overwhelming majority of the people do not belive the Warren Commission's findings. However, this is not reflected in the media coverage. The voice of the people, as well as the voices of respected Kennedy assassination experts such as Weisberg, Wecht, Wrone, Lane, and many others, are ignored. The phenomenon is ascribed to mass paranoia by a dwindling band of writers such as Mailer, who ignore the evidence and construct scenarios much more implausible than the so-called conspiracy theorists whom they condemn.