AMERICAN CONFIDENTIAL

How a pathological maternal influence shaped a famous killer.

On the brink of the 60th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Stillman, author of Blood Brothers, Mustang, and other books, explores Lee Harvey Oswald’s relationship with his mother as a means of understanding the killer’s deepest motivations. This work joins an enormous body of scholarship that investigates the perpetrator and his relationships with key figures. While avoiding the wildest conspiracy theories, the author posits that Oswald was, in effect, aided in his crime by his mother, Marguerite, who passed on to him an obsessive interest in achieving personal notoriety. Drawing on some of the most prominent treatments of the subject as well as original archival research, Stillman focuses on Oswald’s chaotic childhood and Marguerite’s alternation between neglect and indulgence. In particular, the author examines his disruptive transitions between schools as the family changed residences, as well as an ominous potential for violence that grew steadily through his adolescence. Stillman offers a plausible explanation for the development of a dangerous loner bent on making his mark in the world. Like other commentators, the author sees both Marguerite and Oswald as emblematic of the dark side of national ideals. In her, we find “the promise and failure of the American dream.” Regarding Oswald, “while he certainly linked himself with various causes, and he may have convinced himself that one or the other of these was an identity for him at one time or another, the only cause he really had was himself—a distinctly American condition that in his case, and in the case of many who have followed the killing path, could have revealed itself in only one way.” Stillman synthesizes the conclusions of other scholars, but she offers little fresh insight. Moreover, a somewhat turgid style, marked by frequent and distracting allusions to cinematic and literary parallels, weakens the overall narrative.

A suggestive overview of the making of an infamous murderer’s warped character.