"The jolly coverts": DeLillo's Libra as espionage fiction

This essay argues that Don DeLillo's Libra (1988), almost exclusively treated as a piece of historical metafiction, should also be read as a spy novel in dialogue both with popular espionage fiction of the mid-twentieth century and with the mythologies of the Central Intelligence Agency. My analysis revises the typical reading of DeLillo's body of work, arguing that his oeuvre cannot be cleanly delineated into early genre fiction and mature literary novels, and also clarifies DeLillo's critique of American intelligence agencies' manipulation of historical events in the service of American exceptionalist fictions.