DeLillo’s Libra and the Subjunctive Mood as Fictionalization

Abstract

Don DeLillo’s Libra is often considered a postmodernist rendition of history, but there exist temporal distortions in his fiction that must be parsed into the subjunctive mood instead of the simple past tense. The fictive transformation from the temporal tense to the mood of potentiality underlies DeLillo’s fictionalization of history that attempts to problematize the ironclad facts. This would to power manifests the point that fiction is a poetic and emotive alternative to actualized reality. What is Real to fiction lies in its virtual reality.