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    Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery
    Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery
    Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery
    Audiobook29 hours

    Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery

    Written by Norman Mailer

    Narrated by Christopher Lane

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In perhaps his most important literary feat, Norman Mailer fashions an unprecedented portrait of one of the great villains—and enigmas—in United States history. Here is Lee Harvey Oswald—his family background, troubled marriage, controversial journey to Russia, and return to an “America [waiting] for him like an angry relative whose eyes glare in the heat.” Based on KGB and FBI transcripts, government reports, letters and diaries, and Mailer’s own international research, this is an epic account of a man whose cunning, duplicity, and self-invention were both at home in and at odds with the country he forever altered.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateOct 25, 2016
    ISBN9781522637028
    Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery
    Author

    Norman Mailer

    Norman Mailer was born in 1923 in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. In 1955, he was one of the co-founders of The Village Voice. He is the author of more than thirty books, including The Naked and the Dead; The Armies of the Night, for which he won a National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize; The Executioner's Song, for which he won his second Pulitzer Prize; Harlot's Ghost; Oswald's Tale; and The Gospel According to the Son. He lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with his wife, the novelist Norris Church Mailer.

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    Reviews for Oswald's Tale

    4/5

    108 ratings11 reviews

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    • 4/5
      does not solve anything but then it's a mystery just as declared in the title
    • 2/5
      Brilliant Illuminating Disappointing
      Beautifully written. Well performed. For all the attention to details and its considerable length, I expected a more even-handed and well-rounded portrait of Oswald. Complete whitewash of LBJ's behavior. No mention of him constantly ducking and eventually not even being seen as his limousine turns onto Elm Street. No mention of his terrible treatment of the first lady on Air Force One or his hiding in the bathroom for 45 minutes. No mention of the 10 Secret Service agents partying in Fort Worth the night before till the wee hours. Mailer's convenient excuses for the Dallas Police Department not taking better notes or having a tape recorder for the most important interview of their whole careers. Fitz took notes on a yellow pad, according to this author, where is the yellow pad?
      A truly comprehensive book would have dealt with the fact that there were so many witnesses that saw people on the grassy knoll and numerous accounts of a Mauser being the original rifle found on the sixth floor. And the countless witnesses now that have said that they had to change their testimony because the Warren Commission interrogators would not allow them to tell the truth.
      Unfortunately this book is a very neat well-performed, brilliant whitewash-- no rough edges, disturbingly too tidy. I wish Mailer would have had the guts to dive into the deeper story. Officer Craig's story of running up to the Texas Book Depository his finding the .657 Mauser with the two other officers that was originally reported and printed. The terrible condition of Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano and the fact that it couldn't even be shot without being fixed and the fact that most Italians believe that rifle "was the reason that they lost the war." The numerous people that saw Oswald on the first and second floor and him casually drinking a Coke. Not to mention the others that we're coming down the stairs right after the shots were fired; the only stairs that were available for Oswald to come down, if he had been the shooter on the 6th floor. I thought the transcripts of the KGB tapes of Oswald and Marina in Minsk were excellent and well worth listening to. It was insanely long book and I listen to all 220 chapters.
    • 4/5
      The mystery surrounding the JFK assassination made this a must-read for me. It feels like largely the same technique that Mailer used for The Executor's Song. Yet the subject is far more elusive despite the author and the research team's best efforts. It is still a very interesting personality and character study of Oswald (particularly concerning the Minsk years), but with so few facts and so much misinformation, very little is ultimately established. At nearly nine-hundred pages, Oswald's Tale is probably only good value to those interested in the event or those that want more of the author's distinctive style.
    • 3/5
      #unreadshelfproject2019 There were many parts of this tome that I had to skim over. There were so many Russian characters in the first part, I found myself overwhelmed and I really didn't care. The second half of the book is much more interesting. The New Orleans and Texas parts really held my attention. This book is really well written and researched. If you are looking for a super, in depth, looooooonnnnngggg book about Oswald, by all means, this is it. Many other books on Oswald are referenced in this one that may be more concise but still informative.
    • 4/5
      Long, rambling biography of Lee Harvey Oswald, divided half into his time in Russia, and half in America in the runup to the JFK assassination. The Russian material is more interesting, in the American section Mailer seems less sharp, except for in New Orleans, when Oswald's involvement with the local gay community raises the potential for intrigue. I think his project ran out of steam a bit: he wanted (and admits as much) to uncover a conspiracy but in the end comes to the conclusion there isn't one there. A great turn of phrase when he puts his mind to it, though.
    • 4/5
      A really good book. I've never really read any of the conspiracy stuff, but this book gave me a good anti-paranoid basis on Oswald's involvement. Nobody knows what happened, of course, but whatever his role, Oswald was no innocent. He loved to play games, to play one person or group against another. He also had a highly inflated sense of self -- he knew he would make his mark on history and wasn't going to give up until he did so.
    • 4/5
      This was unlike anything I've ever read. Half a dozen times I nearly abandoned it. It's tedious, plodding, dreary, and I knew from the start how the story would end.But it was also fascinating. Mailer attempts to dig into the mind of the man who most of the world is still convinced killed the 35th President of the United States. I was a high school freshman at the time, and I still have vivid memories how the world seemed to stop in its tracks.Mailer's research for the book was very extensive. Besides heavy reliance on the findings of the Warren Commission, Mailer's associates conducted personal interviews with dozens of persons still alive in the late 1980's who knew Oswald. They even tracked down individuals who knew him during his expatriate years in Russia.The resulting portrait is oddly gripping.But the book is a log slog.
    • 4/5
      Very well researched and written account of Oswald's life, such as it was. A must read for anyone interested in Kennedy's assasination. Some questions about this whole episode will never be known.
    • 4/5
      In [11/22/63] [[Stephen King]] cites Mailer's Oswald's Tale as a source, and since that book has been on my shelf for many, many years, I picked it up next.Mailer's study is extremely well-documented--sources range from all the testimony before the Warren Commission to interviews with the Oswalds' neighbors in Russia, as well as interviews with Marina and her family. The book is not considered true nonfiction, however, because there's a fair amount of supposition and projection. What is incontrovertible, and what particularly struck me, was how erractic Oswald's actions were through-out his life.I could see how greatly King's book drew from Mailer's book. To that extent, having just read the King book, I felt I was reading some of the same things over again. Mailer concludes, as does King that Oswald acted alone. I'm not convinced though.
    • 3/5
      An strong narrative of the life and obsessions of Lee Harvey Oswald. Like many people I find something screwy about the whole Kennedy Assassination and associated investigations. But Mailer makes a strong case for a long gunman, and a terribly troubled (crazy) one at that. That being said, you needn't be a believer int eh lone gunman theory to find Oswald's bizarre life interesting.
    • 5/5
      Forget Crossfire and read this instead!