Max Holland: Profiled in the WaPo as a writer obsessed with JFK assassination
Max Holland, who appears to be coherent, is in his book-lined study, just off the kitchen in his house in Silver Spring. He's going over the Zapruder film. Again. And again. And . . .
Birds are chirping outside. The sun is out. Inside, it's dark, quiet among the filing cabinets.
He's been at work on his book about the Warner Commission investigation into President Kennedy's assassination for 12 years.
For. Twelve. Years.
And right here -- in just the fifth paragraph! -- you already have the overwhelming desire to take him by the collar and shout: Max!!! Buddy!!! SNAP OUT OF IT!!! Abort, abort! Entire human beings have disappeared in Dealey Plaza!! It's the Bermuda Triangle of pop culture! But he's saying, "Now, you see right here . . . "
He's pointing to Secret Service agents on the screen.
"I don't want to overwhelm you . . ."
This is a short story about American paranoia. It is slightly scary. It is about how even good writers and responsible people can fall into the rabbit hole of Washington research -- a tumble that leads you down, down, down to the Elm Street of the mind, below the Texas School Book Depository and in front of the grassy knoll, a few minutes past noon, in a world where it is always Dallas, Nov. 22, 1963.
And Holland, 57, isn't even a conspiracy theorist babbling about the CIA and Castro! He says Lee Harvey Oswald did it and did it alone! His goal, he says, is to heal our national paranoia about Kennedy's murder, to lay to rest the lingering belief that there was some sort of conspiracy (which most Americans believe), and to have this traumatic event finally settled in the national id. He wants people to understand that Oliver Stone's "JFK" actively misstated events, that Don DeLillo's "Libra," which has shooters on the grassy knoll, was a good novel but only that....
Read entire article at WaPo
Birds are chirping outside. The sun is out. Inside, it's dark, quiet among the filing cabinets.
He's been at work on his book about the Warner Commission investigation into President Kennedy's assassination for 12 years.
For. Twelve. Years.
And right here -- in just the fifth paragraph! -- you already have the overwhelming desire to take him by the collar and shout: Max!!! Buddy!!! SNAP OUT OF IT!!! Abort, abort! Entire human beings have disappeared in Dealey Plaza!! It's the Bermuda Triangle of pop culture! But he's saying, "Now, you see right here . . . "
He's pointing to Secret Service agents on the screen.
"I don't want to overwhelm you . . ."
This is a short story about American paranoia. It is slightly scary. It is about how even good writers and responsible people can fall into the rabbit hole of Washington research -- a tumble that leads you down, down, down to the Elm Street of the mind, below the Texas School Book Depository and in front of the grassy knoll, a few minutes past noon, in a world where it is always Dallas, Nov. 22, 1963.
And Holland, 57, isn't even a conspiracy theorist babbling about the CIA and Castro! He says Lee Harvey Oswald did it and did it alone! His goal, he says, is to heal our national paranoia about Kennedy's murder, to lay to rest the lingering belief that there was some sort of conspiracy (which most Americans believe), and to have this traumatic event finally settled in the national id. He wants people to understand that Oliver Stone's "JFK" actively misstated events, that Don DeLillo's "Libra," which has shooters on the grassy knoll, was a good novel but only that....