Libra - Episode One

For the 100th title to be explored in Opening Lines, John Yorke picks up the 1998 novel Libra by the heavyweight American writer, Don DeLillo. The book centres around the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the event DeLillo says marked ‘a turning point in consciousness’ for Americans. He presents a fragmented portrait of the country at the height of the Cold War, following the misfortunes of disaffected loner Lee Harvey Oswald - as well as the large cast of rogue operators planning to use him to bring the President down.

In the first of two-parts, John looks to find what makes this widely acclaimed novel stand out from the hundreds of other books and films spawned by the world-shaking events in Dealey Plaza back in November 1963. He speaks with, among others, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Jennifer Egan, a self-proclaimed DeLillo acolyte, who says of Libra that the “sense of the chaos and the noise of contemporary life invading the narrative I was very drawn to, and, you know, have tried to emulate, frankly.”

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for over 30 years and shares his experience as he unpacks the themes of the books, plays and stories dramatised in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC Drama Production he has worked on some of the most popular shows in Britain - from EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless. He created the BBC Writers Academy and trained a generation of screenwriters - now with thousands of hours of television to their names. His acclaimed books Into the Woods and Trip to the Moon explore the structure and power of narrative, and he writes, teaches and consults on all forms of storytelling, including many podcasts for R4.

Libra by Don de Lillo is the 100th title covered by Opening Lines. The series began in January 2023 with Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Since then John Yorke has explored novels from Anna Karenina to Gone with the Wind, plays from Shakespeare to Eugene O’Neill and ground-breaking non-fiction like John Hersey’s Hiroshima. Each episode provides background, context and some expert discussion in advance of Radio 4’s Sunday afternoon drama, and all 100 titles can be heard on BBC Sounds.

Contributors: Pullitzer Prize winning author Jennifer Egan & Professor Jesse Kavadlo.
Sound:
Researcher: Henry Tydeman
Production Hub Coordinator: Dawn Williams
Producer: Geoff Bird
Executive Producer: Sara Davies

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4