Curate, connect, and discover
Found out my university library has the book for Sondheim’s Assassins (1990), and checked it out immediately. There’s a bit in the depository scene where, after Lee Harvey Oswald shoots JFK, Booth takes his suicide note and burns it. This directly parallels the Ballad of Booth, where the Balladeer burns Booth’s suicide note after he shoots himself.
And I’m fucking LOSING it over the implication that Booth has replaced the Balladeer and Oswald is now in Booth’s previous position as “our pioneer.”
It’s a new American Dream, where any kid can grow up to be president, and any kid can grow up to kill one.