Errol Morris Interviews Stephen King on his new book "11/22/63"

[groovedaddy]

In the Nov. 13 issue of the Book Review, the documentarian Errol Morris reviews Stephen King’s new novel, “11/22/63.” The book, like the film Morris is currently completing, is about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Because of their overlapping interests, and because Mr. Morris’s technique as a filmmaker is to chase down every clue, he requested an interview with Mr. King after finishing his review. The resulting Q. and A. is below, with Mr. Morris’s introduction. — The Editors

Stephen King’s new novel inhabits a gray area between fact and fiction. It tells the story of Lee and Marina Oswald in the years leading up to the Kennedy assassination. But this isn‘t just historical fiction; it’s a fictional vision of a historical event that has never been satisfactorily explained. To write the true history of the Kennedy assassination, we need to know it. But how much do we know of what really happened?

King believes that Oswald is guilty, and argues in terms of the stories we tell about that day: “Early in the novel,” he writes in an afterword, “Jake Epping’s friend Al puts the probability that Oswald was the lone gunman at 95 percent. After reading a stack of books and articles on the subject almost as tall as I am, I’d put the probability at 98 percent, maybe even 99. Because all of the accounts, including those written by conspiracy theorists, tell the same simple American story: here was a dangerous little fame-junkie who found himself in the right place to get lucky.”

Q.Errol Morris: Aren’t you going to have to deal with that whole lone gunman vs. conspiracy thing? The endless debates about what really happened?
A.Stephen King: Well, I’ll tell you what. I’m prepared for trouble when the book comes out. Conspiracy people guard themselves pretty jealously. They have their theories and some of them are pretty complex, and some of them are pretty simple. Some of them have been disproved. But one of the things that sticks in my mind is that none of them has been proved. None of them. So it’s like U.F.O.s… If they’re really U.F.O.s, how come one has never landed, or we’ve never been given definitive proof?

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/errol-morris-interviews-stephen-king/?hp

[Peace Patriot]

1. Read James Douglass' "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters."

He totally nails the CIA (as high as Richard Helms, Dir. of Operations). And in addition to solving the case, he puts the assassination in context: what motivated the CIA to do it. He also solves many puzzles about the players in the coverup, for instance, Hoover telling LBJ about the CIA's Mexico/Russian embassy misdirection, which prompted LBJ--whom Douglass does not believe was involved in the assassination itself--to take part in the coverup. The Russia misdirection was aimed at forcing LBJ to nuke Russia in retaliation. The main dispute between JFK and the CIA/MIC was that JFK refused to nuke Russia during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The MIC believed that they had missile superiority over Russia at that time and should take advantage of it to wipe communism off the face of the earth, even at the cost of hundreds of thousands of American casualties on the east coast. They thought the U.S. could recover from that and capitalism would emerge victorious. JFK thought they were insane. And they thought he was a traitor for creating backchannels to Krushchev to get around the CIA and directly negotiate to prevent Armageddon.

LBJ felt that the Russia misdirection could force his hand--if people found out the superficial story (that Oswald was in league with Russia to kill JFK). One of the goals of the coverup was to fuzzy that trail to prevent public opinion joining MIC's desire to nuke Russia. Thus, the "lone gunman" theory (no country responsible).

This case is solved, as far as I'm concerned. The remaining question is "Why It Matters." Douglass explores this question but leaves a lot of the exploring to the rest of us. As for my part, I see the sickness of our country--massive government secrecy, massive military spending and the need to create wars to feed that monster, corporate hijacking of the military, and much more, as direct and active legacies of this crime and of the coverup.

What do YOU think about "Why It Matters"? Before you try to answer that (or dismiss it and say it doesn't matter), read Douglass' book.

[pitohui]

2. we've never been given definitive proof? hello, some of us saw oswald murdered on tv

i dunno, i think if the brain of the assassinated american president is disappeared that's proof enough for me

we have lots and lots of proof, audio tapes, film...at the end of the day, the proof that oswald didn't act alone was that someone had to let jack ruby into the dallas police station to shoot him dead on american television

you don't shoot a lone gunman dead on teevee to put an end to the questions, there wouldn't be any reason to do that

sorry, mr king, but will i believe the evidence of my own lyin eyes (oswald shot in a police station, the first murder in history on live teevee) or will i believe the warren commission and a fiction writer coming along 50 years later

it really isn't hard to decide who is more credible

a lone assassin could have gone to a fair public trial, a conspirator loose cannon who had all kinds of crazy tales and adventures to tell had to be silenced

oswald was allowed to defect to russia AND return and in those days, maybe mr. king doesn't remember this, but in those days, THAT SHIT SIMPLY WASN'T ALLOWED TO HAPPEN

you can't judge 1963 by the standards of 2011, in 1963, to defect to russia as a highly trained sniper and a marine and then be allowed to return...please...there's more to the oswald story than lone nut and everyone knows it

there's a don delillo book, "libra" on this topic, that has a great take on this same story -- in this story oswald is fairly clueless but at the end of the day he does figure out that, hey man, i've been USED -- hard to see how this novel would be topped by a simplistic "oh it's just one lone nut crazy guy" story

but if i understand king's proposed plot aright, having oswald as the lone nut makes it an easier story, because the time traveling nobody can't really expect to stop the mafia, the marines, the CIA, and all the rest of the colorful cast of characters of the day...sounds like the real story was just too "big" and too various even for stephen king

[groovedaddy]

3. JFK stepped on a lot of toes. Plenty of motivation to get him out of the way. n.t

[Spider Jerusalem]

4. Jack Ruby was known to the police and regularly hung around the station.

He was in a Western Union office wiring money to a stripper that day. Went over to the police station. Happened to be just in time for them to be moving Oswald. The rest is history. There's nothing to suggest it was anything more than coincidence and impulse; certainly not that Ruby was acting on orders from Carlos Marcello to whack Oswald so he couldn't talk.

[pitohui]

5. nothing to see here, move along

yeppers, sure, in texas in those days, it was business as usual to let a strip club owner carrying a loaded weapon in through the door of the police station just in time to say "boo" to the guy who supposedly just shot the american president and have it nicely posed for the cameras while you're at it

if you don't see what's goofy about that story, travel around texas awhile, i think even today if you met and talked to a few police officers, esp. in the rather bad-tempered towns like dallas or east texas, you'd have your eyes opened to the likelihood of this happening

but i do like "he was wiring money to a stripper and that's why he was in the police station," m-kay, at least make it believable and say, "he tipped a few officers a little spending money so he could see the assassin for himself"

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. Four minutes went by between him being in the Western Union office and Oswald being shot.

Four minutes. Cutting it a bit fine. And Texas didn't require a permit for concealed carry; Ruby was well-known to the cops (gave them free drinks at his club, etc). And security procedures were decidedly more...lax at the time.

[zappaman]

8. Also, unbeknownst to anyone except the officers with Oswald

The transfer to the garage was delayed.
When it was supposed to happen, Ruby was just getting to the Western Union Office.
Conspiracy theorists tend to leave that part out.

[raccoon]

7. I'll check into the book "Libra." thanks for the heads up. nt