An interesting passage from the reading a couple nights ago:
"It occurred to Oswald that everyone called the prisoner by his first name. The Soviet press, local TV, the BBC, the Voices of America, the interrogators, etc. Once you did something notorious, they tagged you with an extra name, a middle name that was ordinarily never used. You were officially marked, a chapter in the history of the state. Francis Gary Powers. In just these few days the name had taken on a resonance, a sense of fateful event. It already sounded historic." (page 198, my edition).
It's pretty clear that Delillo is emphasizing the media's title for this man due to its similarity to the name Lee takes on after the assassination: Lee Harvey Oswald. First, middle, and last, very official.
The passage makes it seem like maybe Lee would be kind of pleased with how his image has been treated by the American public. People despise him, and in the story, it's not even his own actions or character which earn him his infamy, but we use all three names, and everyone knows them. It goes along with the smiling while he's being punched thing: it's unpleasant, but it's attention--a way to have some place in a society which has otherwise rejected him at every opportunity.
We briefly covered Delillo's names for Lee in class: how using the first name makes us sympathize and see him as a character, rather than a crazy assassin or political pawn. Mr. Mitchell pointed out that historical texts generally use last names, and novels tend to use first names. This passage makes it seem like, on top of familiarizing Lee, using his first name kind of denies him his historical significance. He's just Lee; not even really behind the assassination, just a lonely dude. Which is sad. I feel like Lee deserves the grandiose name at least... not that he got it in an acceptable way at all (and not that anything he's doing at this point in the book is acceptable).
I just found a Slate article on the three-name assassin phenomenon. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2011/01/why_do_so_many_assassins_have_three_names.html
It's a little lengthy so I'll summarize. Basically it points out all the famous American assassins who go by their middle names (James Earl Ray, John Wilkes Booth, Lee, and apparently six others in the top twenty famous assassins). It proposes that maybe we use the middle name to avoid besmirching the other Lee Oswalds out there, but then goes on to point out that some of them went by their middle names before they became famous. Apparently Lee Harvey Oswald was introduced with his middle name on a talkshow before Kennedy's assassination. So the author proposes something that fits with Delillo's point very well:
"Would-be assassins might embellish their own names to sound more grandiose. (Middle names were a point of pride when they first became popular in the United States in the 19thcentury.)"
Can I just point out that the author of this article and I (inspired by Delillo's observation) both independently chose the word 'grandiose' to describe the three-name style. I love it when people are on the same page with weird little theories like this.
Any thoughts on names and-the-like? Also, does anyone know how to switch back to normal font without undoing all of your formatting when you copy-paste something? I feel like Blogger is lacking in some fundamental word-processing abilities like this. I've seen other blog posts struggle with it too.
