Project Mailer - User contributions [en]

Norman Mailer: Important Dates

2026-04-22T22:55:08Z

Grlucas: Correction.

[[File:Norman Mailer, 2006.jpg|thumb|Norman Mailer, 2006]]

'''[[Norman Mailer|Norman Kingsley Mailer]]''' (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007) was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film-maker, political activist, and public intellectual. Mailer came to prominence with the publication of his 1948 novel ''[[The Naked and the Dead]]''. His career spans the latter half of the twentieth-century, and his outspoken opinions and ideas were heard on almost every major television talk show and in every major magazine worldwide. He published over forty books in his lifetime, and even helped to pioneer [[w:New Journalism|New Journalism]] in the sixties: a new way to perceive the unique events of the era, weaving conventional reporting with fictional techniques. While he published in almost every literary genre, he was also a well-known public intellectual and a would-be politician who held controversial opinions about women, sex, violence, power, technology, and writing. Mailer tried his hand at journalism, film-making, biography, playwriting, sports reporting, and he participated in hundreds of rallies, interviews, protests, and debates that helped shape American culture of the twentieth century.

Born in Long Branch, New Jersey in 1923 to Jewish immigrant parents, Mailer grew up in Brooklyn. He graduated from Harvard in 1943, where he studied engineering, and entered the U.S. Army soon after. He served as a rifleman and cook in the Pacific theater from 1944–46, and attended the Sorbonne in Paris following the war. A co-founder of ''[[w:The Village Voice|The Village Voice]]'' in 1955, Mailer also wrote for ''[[w: Life |Life]]'', ''[[w:Esquire|Esquire]]'', ''[[w:The New Yorker|The New Yorker]]'', ''[[w:Harper's|Harper's]]'', ''[[w:Partisan Review|Partisan Review]]'', ''[[w:Paris Review|Paris Review]]'', and ''[[w:Vanity Fair (magazine)|Vanity Fair]]'', as well as many counterculture and underground publications.

Mailer is the only major American author to have bestsellers in six consecutive decades. Some of his major novels are: ''[[The Deer Park]]'' (1955), ''[[An American Dream]]'' (1965), ''[[Why Are We in Vietnam?]]'' (1967), ''[[Ancient Evenings]]'' (1983), and ''[[Harlot's Ghost]]'' (1991). In 1969, his nonfiction narrative ''[[The Armies of the Night]]'' won the [[w:Pulitzer Prize|Pulitzer Prize]] and the [[w:National Book Award|National Book Award]], and Mailer ran for the mayor of New York City. Mailer won his second Pulitzer in 1979 for ''[[The Executioner's Song]]''.

For the last 33 years of his life, Mailer lived in [[w:Brooklyn, NY|Brooklyn, NY]], and [[w:Provincetown, MA|Provincetown, MA]], with his wife [[Norris Church Mailer]]. He was married six times and fathered nine children.

The following is an overview of important events in Mailer's life.<ref>Based on a handout by [[J. Michael Lennon]]; additional entries added by [[Gerald R. Lucas]].</ref>

{| class="wikitable" style="height: 20em;"
|-
! style="width: 6em; vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1923
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Born January 31, [[w:Long Branch, New Jersey|Long Branch, New Jersey]], son of Isaac Barnett Mailer (who emigrated from South Africa via London after World War I) and Fanny (Schneider) Mailer.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1937
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Family moves to the Eastern Parkway section of Brooklyn.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1939
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Enters Harvard to study aeronautical engineering, after schooling at P.S. 161 and Boys' High School, Brooklyn; becomes interested in writing. ("All through December 1939 and January 1940 I was discovering modern American literature."{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=27}})
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1941
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Wins ''[[w:Story (magazine)|Story]]'' magazine’s annual college contest with “[[The Greatest Thing in the World]]”; on ''Harvard Advocate'', the undergraduate literary magazine; writing stories influenced by Hemingway; writes his first novel (''No Percentage'', about Jewish life in Brooklyn) during the summer (unpublished — Mailer stated: “It was just terrible”{{sfn|Marcus|1988|p=79}}).
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1943
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Graduates from Harvard, writes ''A Transit to Narcissus'' based on experiences working at a state hospital in Boston during the summer of 1942 (''Transit'' published in an edition of 1,000 copies by Howard Fertig, N.Y., 1978).
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1944
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Novella, "A Calculus at Heaven," printed in Edwin Seaver's ''Cross-Section''; marrles Beatrice Silverman; inducted into the U.S. Army, serves with the 112th Calvary out of San Antonio, Texas.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1944-1946
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Overseas for eighteen months in Leyte, Luzon, and with occupation forces in Japan; field artillery surveyor, clerk, interpreter of aerial photographs, rifleman, and cook.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1946
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Discharged (May); begins ''The Naked and the Dead'' in the summer, finishing it fifteen months later.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1948
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''The Naked and the Dead'' published on May 8; travels in Europe, studies at the Sorbonne under the GI Bill; meets [[Jean Malaquais]] in Paris; returns to United States in time to campaign for the election of [[w:Henry Wallace|Henry Wallace]]; writes articles for the ''[[w:New York Post|New York Post]]'' and delivers speeches on the subject of academic freedom for the National Council of the Arts, Sciences and Professions; ''NAD'' on bestseller list through most of 1948.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1949
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Speaks at the Waldorf Peace Conference; soon after, breaks with Progressive Party; begins, researches, and drops a novel about labor unions; in Hollywood during the summer, working on an original screenplay for [[w:Samuel Goldwyn|Samuel Goldwyn]] (who rejects it but offers $15,000 for the "idea", which Nailer refuses to sell); also at work on ''[[Barbary Shore]]'' ("I think it reflected the impact of Hollywood on me in some subterranean fashion"{{sfn|Marcus|1988|p=81}}); first child, Susan, born.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1950
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Continues work on ''Barbary Shore'' in N.Y., Provincetown, Mass. and Putney, Vt.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1951
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''Barbary Shore'' published spring; reviews are unfavorable.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1952
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Divorced from Beatrice Silverman.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1953
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Becomes a contributing editor on ''[[Dissent]]'' (remains until 1961).
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1954
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Marries [[Adele Morales]], [[Rinehart]] breaks contract on ''[[The Deer Park]]'' over "six not very explicit lines about the sex of an old producer and a call girl";{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=229}} after being rejected by six publishers, the manuscript is accepted by [[G. P. Putnam]].
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1955
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Founds and names ''[[The Village Voice]]'' (with [[Daniel Wolf]] and Edwin Fancher); ''The Deer Park'' is published in the fall and sells fairly well.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1956
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Writes a column for the ''Voice'' (January–May); "[[The Man Who Studied Yoga]]" published in ''New Short Novels II'' by [[Ballantine]].
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1957
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Birth of his second daughter, Danielle; "[[The White Negro]]" appears in ''Dissent''.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1959
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''[[Advertisements for Myself]]'' published in November; third daughter born, Elizabeth Anne (Betsy).
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1960
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Receives a grant from the [[National Institute of Arts and Letters]]; attends the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles; "Superman Comes to the Supermarket" appears in ''[[Esquire]]'' three weeks before the election; on November 19, after a party celebrating his intention to run for Mayor of New York on the Existentialist ticket, [[Stabbing of Adele Morales by Norman Mailer|Mailer stabs his wife, Adele Morales, with a penknife]]; receives a suspended sentence for third degree assault and placed on probation when she refuses to press charges; under observation in Bellevue hospital for seventeen days.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1962
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''Deaths for Ladies (and Other Disasters)'' published; writing a column for ''Esquire'', "The Big Bite," November 1962–December 1963; and another, "Responses and Reactions," for ''Commentary'', semi-monthly from December 1962–October 1963; divorced from Adele Morales; marries Lady [[Jeanne Campbell]], daughter of the Duke of Argyll, granddaughter of Lord Beaverbrook; Lady Campbell gives birth to his fourth daughter, [[Kate Mailer|Kate]].
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1963
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''The Presidential Papers'' published in November (originally titled ''The Devil Revisited''); divorced from Lady Jeanne Campbell; marries an actress, Beverly Bentley.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1964
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''[[An American Dream]]'' appears serially in ''Esquire'' January–August; birth of his first son, Michael Burks. Interview with Steven Marcus, "The Art of Fiction XXII: Norman Mailer," published in ''[[The Paris Review]]'' (Winter–Spring, 1964).
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1965
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''An American Dream'' published (revised) as a book in March; reviews are mixed, sales good; Vietnam Day speech at [[Berkeley]] (May 25).
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1966
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''Cannibals and Christians'' published in August; birth of his second son, Stephen McLeod.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1967
| style="vertical-align: top;" | His dramatic adaptation of ''The Deer Park'' opens at the [[Theatre de Lys]], New York, January 31, closes May 21; ''[[Why Are We in Vietnam?]]'' published in September; produces and performs a film, ''[[Wild 90]]'', participates [[National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam|March on the Pentagon]] (October 21); arrested and released (October 22) on his own recognizance after being sentenced to thirty days (twenty-five suspended); elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Also published in 1967: ''The Deer Park: A Play'', ''[[The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer]]'' and ''The Bullfight''.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1968
| style="vertical-align: top;" | "The Steps of the Pentagon" appears in ''[[Harper's]]'' (March) and "The Battle of the Pentagon" in ''[[Commentary]]'' (April); covers both political conventions for ''Harper's''; release of his film ''Beyond the Law'' (filmed 1967) about detectives and suspects; ''[[Armies of the Night]]'' published on May 8, exactly 20 years after ''Naked''; ''[[Miami and the Siege of Chicago]]'' published in the late fall. Films third movie, ''[[Maidstone (film)|Maidstone]]'', and publishes ''The Idol and the Octopus'' (on [[John F. Kennedy|Kennedy]] and [[Lyndon B. Johnson|Johnson]] administrations).
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1969
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Receives the [[National Book Award]] (Arts and Letters division) and shares the [[Pulitzer Prize]] in nonfiction for ''The Armies of Night''; campaigns unsuccessfully in New York mayoral primaries on a secessionist ticket proposing that [[New York City: the 51st State|New York City be made the fifty-first state]]; covers the moon shot for ''Life''; ''Running Against the Machine'', ed. Peter Manso, and ''Managing Mailer'' by Joe Flaherty (both on N.Y. mayoralty) published.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1970
| style="vertical-align: top;" | After appealing the disorderly conduct conviction (for his part in the 1967 Pentagon demonstration) to the Supreme Court, Mailer serves out the two remaining days of his sentence; publication of ''[[Of a Fire on the Moon]]'' in early 1970. ''King of the Hill'' (on [[Muhammed Ali]] published in ''Life'', paperback and later in ''Existential Errands''; [[Little Brown]] becomes his publisher.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1971
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''[[The Prisoner of Sex]]'' published; ''Maidstone'' opens in New York and is later published in a paperback edition, with an introductory essay by the author; birth of his fifth daughter, Maggie Alexandra, to Carol Stevens; reading performance on December 6 of ''D. J.'', play based on ''Why Are We in Vietnam?''
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1972
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''Existential Errands'' published in Aprll; covers political conventions and publishes ''St. George and the Godfather'' in early fall; Mailer's father dies.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1973
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Holds 50th birthday celebration and introduces "[[Fifth Estate]]" concept; Mailer envisioned an organization that would be led by the people to track the activities of government organizations.{{sfn|Lennon|2013|p=460}} Receives Macdowell Colony Award; ''[[Marilyn: A Biography]]'' published in the summer.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1974
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''The Faith of Graffiti'' published in early spring.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1975
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Expanded version of ''Marilyn'' published in March; ''[[The Fight]]'' published in July.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1976
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Work continues on "Little Egypt" novel; 150,000 words completed by October, 1976. ''Genius and Lust'' published in the fall.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1977
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Begins work on book about [[Gary Gilmore]].
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1978
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''A Transit to Narcissus'' published in early spring; work continues on Gary Gilmore book; eighth child, [[John Buffalo Mailer|John Buffalo]], born to [[Norris Church Mailer|Barbara Norris-Church]].
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1979
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''[[The Executioner's Song]]'' published in the fall.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1980
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Receives Pulitzer Prize for ''The Executioner's Song'' in fiction category, divorced from Beverly Bently; 400,000 words of "Little Egypt" novel completed; book on elegance, as told by [[Marilyn Monroe]], planned for late fall publication; "Little Egypt" novel tentatively planned for publication the following year.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1981
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Impressed with his writing, Mailer writes the introduction to [[Jack Henry Abbott]]'s ''[[In the Belly of the Beast]]'' and helps earn him parole. Abbott stabs Richard Adan to death; Mailer is attacked by the media for his role in the ordeal.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1982
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''Pieces and Pontifications'', his fifth miscellany, published in June; ''[[The Executioner's Song (film)|The Executioner's Song]]'', a TV movie directed by [[Lawrence Schiller|Larry Schiller]], written by Mailer, and starring [[Tommy Lee Jones]], airs in November.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1983
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''[[Ancient Evenings]]'' published in April to mixed reviews; moves from Little, Brown to [[Random House]] where he remains for the rest of his writing career; purchases 627 Commercial Street, Provincetown, a home where he spends equal time with his one on Brooklyn.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1984
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''[[Tough Guys Don't Dance]]'' published in August and sells over a million paperback copies; elected president of the [[PEN American Center]] in July; inducted into the [[American Academy of Arts and Letters]] in December; begins work on ''[[Harlot's Ghost]]''.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1985
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Mailer's mother dies in August.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1986
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Presides over the PEN International Congress in January, attended by over a thousand international writers; stages "Strawhead," a play adapted from ''Of Women and Their Elegance'', at the [[Actors Studio]] with [[Kate Mailer]] playing Marilyn Monroe; directs his own film script based on ''Tough Guys Don't Dance'' in Provincetown.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1987
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''Tough Guys'' screened at [[Cannes Film Festival|Cannes]] and released in September to mixed reviews.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1989
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Receives the [[Emerson-Thoreau Medal]] for distinguished achievement in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in October.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1991
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''Harlot's Ghost'' published in October.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1992
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Publishes account of the Republican Convention in ''[[New Republic]]''; begins six months of research with Larry Schiller in the [[KGB]] archives in Minsk on [[Lee Harvey Oswald]], providing the basis of ''[[Oswald's Tale|Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery]]''.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1995
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''Oswald's Tale'' published in May; ''Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man: An Interpretive Biography'' published in October, receiving poor reviews, mostly from art critics.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1996
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Covers political conventions in the summer for ''[[George (magazine)|George]]'', followed by [[Bob Dole|Dole]]'s and [[Bill Clinton|Clinton]]'s in the fall.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1997
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''[[The Gospel According to the Son]]'' published in September to mixed reviews.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1998
| style="vertical-align: top;" | ''[[The Time of Our Time]]'' published fifty years to the day after ''The Naked and the Dead''; the publication party also celebrated Mailer's 75th birthday.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 1999
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Publishes memories of Paris, 1947-48, in ''[[The Paris Review]]''; begins research on a novel about Hitler.
|-
! style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" | 2000
| style="vertical-align: top;" | Begins writing Hitler novel, ''[[The Castle in the Forest]]''; Norris diagnosed with intestinal cancer and begins treatment; Mailer also begins suffering from various ailments.
|}

== References ==
'''Citations'''
{{Reflist|20em}}

'''Sources'''
{{Refbegin|30em}}
* {{cite book |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |date=2013 |title=Norman Mailer: A Double Life |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MlftBAAAQBAJ |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=1439150214 |author-link=J. Michael Lennon |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |year=1959 |title=Advertisements for Myself |location=Cambridge |publisher=Harvard UP |isbn=9780674005907 |author-link=Norman Mailer |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Marcus |first=Steven |chapter=Norman Mailer: An Interview |editor-last=Lennon |editor-first=J. Michael |date=1988 |orig-year=1964|title=Conversations with Norman Mailer |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4cNFg8Wghy4C |location=Jackson and London |publisher=U of Mississippi P |ref=harv}}
{{Refend}}

[[Category:Days]]
[[Category:Timeline]]
[[Category:Written by Gerald R. Lucas]]

Norman Mailer: Works and Days/Bibliography/First Editions

2026-02-02T13:58:58Z

Grlucas: Tweak.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Bib|This=2}}
Most of these first editions also include bibliographies of reviews and essays. Many of the following contain a bibliography of reviews and/or critical articles.
{{WDside|expanded=bibliographies}}
The reviews were chosen because of:
# representative quality;
# intrinsic interest;
# reviewer's reputation and/or relationship with [[Norman Mailer|Mailer]]; or
# subsequent comment by Mailer.

Obviously, some reviews meet more than one criteria. The essays, which focus almost exclusively on one book and were written years or decades later, were chosen for their cogency and contextual merits. Each are divided according to work. Abbreviations that were not included in {{harvtxt|Lennon|2008a|}} or {{harvtxt|Adams|1974|}} are new to this project; these abbreviations will be used throughout.

Note: Best sellers are indicated with an asterisk after the title; ‡ indicates entries that contain bibliographies; ∞ indicates expanded entries.

<div style="clear:both;"></div>

{| class="wikitable sortable" border="1"
|-
! Title{{efn|* indicates a best seller. See {{harvtxt|Lennon|2008|}}.}}
! Abbr.{{efn|From {{harvtxt|Lennon|2008a|pp=518–519}} unless otherwise noted.}}
! Publication Info
! Year
! Type
! Entry{{efn|‡ indicates the entry contains a bibliography of reviews and/or critical articles; ∞ indicates expanded entries.}}
|-
| ''[[The Naked and the Dead]]'' *
| ''NAD''
| New York: Rinehart
| 1948
| novel
| [[48.2]] ‡
|-
| ''[[Barbary Shore]]'' *
| ''BS''
| New York: Rinehart
| 1951
| novel
| [[51.1]] ‡
|-
| ''[[The Deer Park]]'' *
| ''DP''
| New York: Putnam
| 1955
| novel
| [[55.4]] ‡
|-
| ''[[The White Negro|The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster]]''
| ''WN''
| San Francisco: City Lights Books
| 1959{{efn|This date is often listed as 1957 or 1958 (e.g. {{harvtxt|Adams|1974|p=1}} and {{harvtxt|Lennon|1986|p=219}} list 1957), but as {{harvtxt|Lennon|Lennon|2018|p=29}} explain, the City Lights publication is followed by the 1958 "Reflections on Hipsterism", so earlier than 1959 is unlikely.}}
| essay
| [[59.8a]] ‡ ∞
|-
| ''[[Advertisements for Myself]]''
| ''AFM''
| New York: Putnam
| 1959
| miscellany
| [[59.13]] ‡
|-
| ''[[Deaths for the Ladies (and Other Disasters)]]''
| ''DFL''
| New York: Putnam
| 1962
| poetry
| [[62.3]] ‡
|-
| ''[[The Presidential Papers]]''
| ''PP''
| New York: Putnam
| 1963
| miscellany
| [[63.37]] ‡
|-
| ''[[An American Dream]]'' *
| ''AAD''
| New York: Dial
| 1965
| novel
| [[65.7]] ‡ ∞
|-
| ''[[Cannibals and Christians]]''
| ''CAC''
| New York: Dial
| 1966
| miscellany
| [[66.11]] ‡
|-
| ''[[The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer]]''
| ''SFNM''{{efn|Abbreviated ''SF'' in {{harvtxt|Adams|1974|p=4, passim}}.}}
| New York: Dell
| 1967
| collection
| [[67.11]]
|-
| ''[[The Deer Park: A Play]]''
|
| New York: Dial
| 1967
| play
| [[67.13]]
|-
| ''[[Why Are We in Vietnam?]]''
| ''WWVN''{{efn|According to {{harvtxt|Lennon|2008a}}, sometimes abbreviated as ''WVN''.}}
| New York: Putnam
| 1967
| novel
| [[67.15]] ‡
|-
| ''[[The Bullfight|The Bullfight: A Photographic Narrative with Text by Norman Mailer]]''
| ''BF''
| New York: Macmillan
| 1967
| essay
| [[67.20]]
|-
| ''[[The Armies of the Night|The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History]]''
| ''AON''
| New York: New American Library
| 1968
| nonfiction narrative
| [[68.8]] ‡
|-
| ''[[The Idol and the Octopus|The Idol and the Octopus: Political Writings on the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations]]''
| ''IO''
| New York: Dell
| 1968
| miscellany
| [[68.11]]
|-
| ''[[Miami and the Siege of Chicago|Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968]]''
| ''MSC''
| New York: New American Library
| 1968
| nonfiction narrative
| [[68.25]] ‡
|-
| ''[[Of a Fire on the Moon]]''
| ''OFM''
| Boston: Little, Brown
| 1971
| nonfiction narrative
| [[71.1]] ‡
|-
| ''[[King of the Hill|King of the Hill: Norman Mailer on the Fight of the Century]]''
| ''KH''
| New York: New American Library
| 1971
| nonfiction narrative
| [[71.15]]
|-
| ''[[The Prisoner of Sex]]''
| ''POS''
| Boston: Little, Brown
| 1971
| essay
| [[71.20]] ‡
|-
| ''[[Maidstone: A Mystery]]''
| ''MM''
| New York: New American Library
| 1971
| screenplay
| [[71.28]]
|-
| ''[[The Long Patrol|The Long Patrol: 25 Years of Writing from the Work of Norman Mailer]]''
| ''LP''
| New York: World
| 1971
| collection
| [[71.29]]
|-
| ''[[Existential Errands]]''
| ''EE''
| Boston: Little, Brown
| 1972
| miscellany
| [[72.7]] ‡
|-
| ''[[St. George and the Godfather]]''
| ''SGG''
| New York: New American Library
| 1972
| nonfiction narrative
| [[72.17]] ‡
|-
| ''[[Marilyn: A Biography|Marilyn: A Biography; Pictures by the World's Foremost Photographers]]'' *
| ''MAR''
| New York: Grosset & Dunlap
| 1973
| biography
| [[73.30]] ‡
|-
| ''[[The Faith of Graffiti]]''
| ''FOG''
| New York: Praeger
| 1974
| essay
| [[74.9]]
|-
| ''[[The Fight]]''
| ''FIG''
| Boston: Little, Brown
| 1975
| nonfiction narrative
| [[75.12]] ‡
|-
| ''[[Some Honorable Men|Some Honorable Men: Political Conventions, 1960-1972]]''
| ''SHM''
| Boston: Little, Brown
| 1976
| anthology
| [[76.5]]
|-
| ''[[Genius and Lust|Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller]]''
| ''GAL''
| New York: Grove
| 1976
| essay
| [[76.12]] ‡
|-
| ''[[A Transit to Narcissus]]''
| ''TTN''
| New York: Howard Fertig
| 1978
| novel
| [[78.2]]
|-
| ''[[The Executioner's Song]]'' *
| ''ES''
| Boston: Little, Brown
| 1979
| nonfiction narrative
| [[79.14]] ‡
|-
| ''[[Of Women and Their Elegance]]''
| ''OWE''
| New York: Simon & Schuster
| 1980
| novel
| [[80.15]]
|-
| ''[[Pieces and Pontifications]]''
| ''PAP''
| Boston: Little, Brown
| 1982
| miscellany
| [[82.16]] ‡
|-
| ''[[Ancient Evenings]]'' *
| ''AE''
| Boston: Little, Brown
| 1983
| novel
| [[83.18]]
|-
| ''[[Tough Guys Don't Dance]]'' *
| ''TGD''
| New York: Random House
| 1984
| novel
| [[84.17]] ‡
|-
| ''[[Conversations with Norman Mailer]]''
| ''CNM''
| Jackson: University Press of Mississippi
| 1988
| collection
| [[88.6]]
|-
| ''[[Harlot's Ghost]]'' *
| ''HG''
| New York: Random House
| 1991
| novel
| [[91.26]] ‡
|-
| ''[[Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery]]''
| ''OT''
| New York: Random House
| 1995
| nonfiction narrative
| [[95.16]] ‡
|-
| ''[[Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man|Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man: An Interpretive Biography]]''
| ''POP''
| New York: Atlantic Monthly Press
| 1995
| biography
| [[95.38]] ‡
|-
| ''[[The Gospel According to the Son]]'' *
| ''GAS''
| New York: Random House
| 1997
| novel
| [[97.13]] ‡
|-
| ''[[The Time of Our Time]]''
| ''TOOT''{{efn|According to {{harvtxt|Lennon|2008a}}, sometimes abbreviated as ''TOT''.}}
| New York: Random House
| 1998
| anthology
| [[98.7]] ‡
|-
| ''[[The Spooky Art|The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing]]''
| ''SA''
| New York: Random House
| 2003
| miscellany
| [[03.7]] ‡
|-
| ''[[Modest Gifts|Modest Gifts: Poems and Drawings]]''
| ''MG''
| New York: Random House
| 2003
| poetry
| [[03.17]]
|-
| ''[[Why Are We at War?]]''
| ''WWW''
| New York: Random House
| 2003
| essay
| [[03.18]]
|-
| [[Norman Mailer’s Letters on An American Dream, 1963–1969|''Norman Mailer's Letters on'' An American Dream, ''1963-1969'']]
| ''LAD''
| Shavertown, PA: Sligo Press
| 2004
| letters
| [[04.7]]
|-
| ''[[The Big Empty|The Big Empty: Dialogues on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker and Bad Conscience in America]]''
| ''BE''
| New York: Nation Books
| 2006
| conversations
| [[06.2]]
|-
| ''[[The Castle in the Forest]]'' *
| ''CIF''
| New York: Random House
| 2007
| novel
| [[07.10]] ‡
|-
| ''[[On God|On God: An Uncommon Conversation]]''
| ''OG''
| New York: Random House
| 2007
| conversations
| [[07.39]] ‡
|-
| ''[[Mind of an Outlaw|Mind of an Outlaw: Selected Essays of Norman Mailer]]''
| ''MO''
| New York: Random House
| 2013
| collection
| [[13.1]]
|-
| ''[[The Selected Letters of Norman Mailer]]''
| ''SLNM''
| New York: Random House
| 2014
| letters
| [[14.3]]
|-
| ''Norman Mailer: Four Books of the 1960s''
|
| New York: Library of America
| 2018
| collection
|
|-
| ''Norman Mailer: Collected Essays of the 1960s''
|
| New York: Library of America
| 2018
| collection
|
|-
| ''Lipton's, A Marijuana Journal: 1954-1955''
|
| New York: Arcade
| 2024
| journal
|
|}

== Bibliography ==
{{shortcut|NM:FE}}
===Notes===
{{notelist|2}}

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|2|indent=yes}}
* {{cite book |last=Adams |first=Laura |date=1974 |title=Norman Mailer: A Comprehensive Bibliography |url= |location=Metuchen, NJ |publisher=Scarecrow |author-link= }}
* {{cite news |last=Barringer |first=Felicity |date=March 1, 1999 |title=Journalism's Greatest Hits: Two Lists of a Century's Top Stories |url=http://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/01/business/media-journalism-s-greatest-hits-two-lists-of-a-century-s-top-stories.html |work=New York Times |location=Media |access-date=2018-10-05 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Lennon |first1=J. Michael |date=2016 |title=A Note on 'The Collision,' Norman Mailer's First Short Story |url= |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=10 |issue=1 |pages=10–11 |access-date= |author-link=J. Michael Lennon |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Lennon |first1=J. Michael |authormask=1 |date=2008a |title=Abbreviations of Books By and About Norman Mailer |url= |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=2 |issue=1 |pages=518–519 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |editor-last=Lennon |editor-first=J. Michael |editor-mask=1 |date=1988 |title=Conversations with Norman Mailer |url= |location=Jackson and London |publisher=University Press of Mississippi |series=Literary Conversations |author-link= }}
* {{cite book |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |authormask=1 |editor-last=Martine |editor-first=James J. |date=1986 |chapter=Norman Mailer |title=Contemporary Authors: American Novelists |series=Bibliographical Series |volume=1 |url= |location=Detroit, MI |publisher=Bruccoli Clark |pages=219–260 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |authormask=1 |date=2013 |title=Norman Mailer: A Double Life |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Schuster |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Lennon |first1=J. Michael |authormask=1 |date=2008 |title=[[Norman Mailer’s Best Sellers]] |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=2 |issue=1 |pages=270–271 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Lennon |first1=J. Michael |authormask=1 |date=2008b |title=Norman Mailer, First Editions |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=2 |issue=1 |pages=515–517 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last1=Lennon |first1=J. Michael |authormask=1 |last2=Lennon| first2=Donna Pedro |editor-last=Lucas |editor-first=Gerald R. |date=2018 |title=Norman Mailer: Works and Days |edition=Revised, Expanded |url=https://prmlr.us/nmwd |location=Atlanta, GA |publisher=The Norman Mailer Society |isbn=978-1-7326519-0-6 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |contributor-last=Lucid |contributor-first=Robert |date=1974 |contribution=Introduction |last=Adams |first=Laura |title=Norman Mailer: A Comprehensive Bibliography |url= |location=Metuchen, NJ |publisher=The Scarecrow Press |pages=xi–xv |author-link= }}
* {{cite book |last=Rollyson |first=Carl |date=1991 |title=The Lives of Norman Mailer |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1xlbAAAAMAAJ |location=New York |publisher=Paragon House |isbn=1557781931 |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

{{WDnav}}

[[Category:First Editions]]

68.8

2026-01-14T16:43:59Z

Grlucas: /* Other Works */ Fixed typo.

{{WDside}}

{{Big|''The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History''. New York: New American Library, 6 May; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, October. Nonfiction narrative on the anti-war March on the Pentagon, 317 pp., $5.95.}}

Dedication and acknowledgment: “To [[w:Beverly Bentley|Beverly]]; An acknowledgment to Sandy Charlebois for work beyond the call of duty.”

Published 20 years to the day after ''The Naked and the Dead'' ([[48.2]]).

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the National Book Award for arts and letters. In 1999, it was ranked nineteenth on a list of the top 100 works of journalism of the twentieth century by 36 judges under the aegis of New York University’s journalism department. See “[https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/01/business/media-journalism-s-greatest-hits-two-lists-of-a-century-s-top-stories.html Journalism’s Greatest Hits: Two Lists of a Century’s Top Stories],” ''New York Times'', 1 March 1999, Business Section, pp. 1, 13.

Discarded titles: “Bust at the Pentagon”; “The Armies of the Dead.” For an account of the work’s genesis and reception written by the editor of ''Harper’s'', see ''New York Days'' by Willie Morris (New York: Little, Brown, 1993), 213–222.

Rpt: Entire narrative appeared earlier in two parts, in ''Harper’s'' ([[68.2]]), and ''Commentary'' ([[68.6]]), respectively and was then revised for book publication; [[98.7]] (partial). See [[68.26]], [[69.3]], [[69.4]], [[69.25]], [[69.26]], [[70.8]]–[[70.11]], [[72.7]], [[74.20]], [[79.14]], [[96.5]], [[13.2]], 381-94.

{{cquote|There is no sex [in ''The Armies of the Night'']. In that sense, it’s a nineteenth-century novel. It’s courtly, it’s deliberate, it’s amused with its time and place. It’s taken for granted that its characters are all very fine and substantial people. We know it’s going to turn out well in the end. I suppose it has the restrained merriment of the early nineteenth-century picaresque novel.|author=Norman Mailer |source=[[82.16]]}}

{{Gallery
|width=200
|height=200
|align=left
| File:68-8.jpg|
| File:68-8a.jpg|Snippet from ''Time'', October 27, 1967, that Mailer quotes at the beginning of ''AON''.
| File:68-8b.jpg|Review in ''NYT''.
}}
<div style="clear:both;"></div>

== Bibliography ==
{{Refbegin|40em}}
===Reviews===
* {{cite news |last=Alvarez |first=A. |date=September 20, 1968 |title=Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye |url= |work=New Statesman |pages=351–352 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Gilman |first=Richard |date=June 8, 1968 |title=What Mailer Has Done |url= |work=New Republic |pages=27–31 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Kazin |first=Alfred |date=May 5, 1968 |title=The Trouble He's Seen |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/04/reviews/mailer-armies.html |work=The New York Times |location=Books |pages=1—2, 26 |access-date=2017-08-27 |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Lipton |first=Lawrence |date=May 31, 1968 |title=Norman Mailer: Genius, Novelist, Critic, Playwright, Politico, Journalist, and General All-Around Shit |url= |work=Los Angeles Free Press |pages=27–28 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Mixed.
* {{cite book |last=Macdonald |first=Dwight |date=1974 |title=Discriminations: Essays and Afterthoughts |chapter=''Armies of the Night'', or Bad Man Makes Good |url=https://archive.org/details/discriminationse00macd |location=New York |publisher=Grossman |page=210–216 }} Positive.
* {{cite magazine |last=Maddocks |first=Melvin |date=May 10, 1968 |title=Norm's Ego is Working Overtime for YOU |url= |magazine=Life |page=8 |publisher= |access-date= }} Mixed.
* {{cite magazine |last=Morris |first=Willie |date=July 1968 |title=Norman Mailer's ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |magazine=Literary Guild Magazine |page=15 |publisher= |access-date= |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite magazine |last=O'Brien |first=Connor Cruise |date=June 20, 1968 |title=Confessions of the Last American |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/06/20/confessions-of-the-last-american/ |magazine=New York Review of Books |pages=16–18 |ref=harv |access-date=2018-11-07 }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Puzo |first=Mario |date=April 28, 1968 |title=Generalissimo Mailer: Hero of His Own Dispatches |url= |work=Chicago Tribune |location=Book World |pages=1, 3 |author-link=w:Mario Puzo |ref=harv }} Negative.
* {{cite magazine |last=Simon |first=John |date=1968 |title=Mailer on the March |url= |magazine=Hudson Review |volume=21 |location= |publisher= |pages=541–545 |ref=harv }} Negative.

===Other Works===
* {{cite book |last=Adams |first=Laura |date=1976 |chapter=Existential Battles: The Growth of Norman Mailer |title=Existential Battles: The Growth of Norman Mailer |location=Athens, OH |publisher=Ohio University Press |pages=121–137 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Anderson |first=Chris |date=1987 |chapter=Style as Argument |title=Style as Argument: Contemporary American Nonfiction |location=Carbondale |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |pages=98–118 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Baudy |first=Leo |date=May 12, 1968 |title=Advertisements for a Dwarf Alter Ego |journal=The New Journal |volume=5 |pages=14 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Begiebing |first=Robert J. |date=1980 |chapter=The Armies of the Night |title=Acts of Regeneration: Allegory and Archetype in the Work of Norman Mailer |location=Columbia |publisher=University of Missouri Press |pages=141–165 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Berman |first=Paul |date=August 24, 2008 |title=Mailer’s Great American Breakdown |work=The New York Times |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Berthoff |first=Warner |chapter=Witness and Testament: Two Contemporary Classics |date=1971 |title=Fictions and Events |url=https://archive.org/details/fictionseventses00bert |location=New York |publisher=Dutton |pages=288–308 |isbn=0525104704 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Breslin |first=James E. |date=1978 |title=Style in Norman Mailer’s ''The Armies of the Night'' |journal=The Yearbook of English Studies |volume=8 |pages=157–170 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Bufithis |first=Philip H. |date=1978 |title=Norman Mailer |series=Modern Literature Monographs |location=New York |publisher=Ungar |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Burgess |first=Anthony |date=September 23, 1968 |title=Norman Mailer on the March |work=London Sunday Times |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Caute |first=David |date=1974 |chapter=Censored: Who’s Afraid of Norman Mailer |title=Collisions: Essays and Reviews |location=London |publisher=Quartet Books |pages=46–67 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite conference |last=Corrigan |first=Maureen |date=April 2023 |title=Keynote Address |conference=Norman Mailer Society Conference |location=University of Texas at Austin |ref=harv }} Unpublished.
* {{cite magazine |last=Denby |first=David |date=January 2018 |title=Mr. Mailer Goes to Washington |magazine=Harper’s |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |date=2007 |title=How Mailer Became “Mailer”: The Writer as Private and Public Character |journal=The Mailer Review |pages=118–131 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |authormask=1 |date=1976 |title=The Working Press, the Literary Culture, and the New Journalism |journal=The Georgia Review |volume=30 |issue=4 |pages=855–877 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Ehrlich |first=Robert |date=1978 |title=Norman Mailer: The Radical as Hipster |location=Metuchen |publisher=Scarecrow Press |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Epstein |first=Edward J. |date=1975 |title=Between Fact and Fiction: The Problem of Journalism |location=New York |publisher=Vintage |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Fields |first=Suzanne |date=November 14, 2007 |title=Recalling My Mailer Crush |work=Jewish World Review |ref=harv }}
* Full-page advertisement containing plaudits for ''The Armies of the Night''. June 23, 1968. ''New York Times Book Review''. 20 excerpts.
* {{cite book |last=Gaitskill |first=Mary |date=2017 |chapter=This Doughty Nose: On Norman Mailer's ''An American Dream'' and ''The Armies of the Night'' |title=Somebody with a Little Hammer: Essays |url= |location=New York |publisher=Pantheon |pages=120–130 |isbn=9780307378224 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Gopnik |first=Adam |date=July 11, 2018 |title=The Strange Prophecies in Norman Mailer’s ''The Armies of the Night'' |magazine=The New Yorker |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Gutman |first=Stanley T. |date=1975 |title=Mankind in Barbary: The Individual and Society in the Novels of Norman Mailer |location=Hanover |publisher=University Press of New England |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hellmann |first=John |date=1981 |title=Fables of Fact: The New Journalism as New Fiction |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois Press |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hollowell |first=John |date=1977 |chapter= |title=Fact & Fiction: The New Journalism and the Nonfiction Novel |location=Chapel Hill |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |pages=87–101 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Karl |first=Frederick R. |date=1983 |title=American Fictions, 1940–1980 |url=https://archive.org/details/americanfictions00karl |location=New York |publisher=Harper & Row |pages=178–182 |isbn=0060149396 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |date=2013 |chapter= |title=Norman Mailer: A Double Life |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |pages=381–394 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Levine |first=David |date=1968 |title=Cartoon of Mailer, Lowell, and Macdonald |title=New York Review of Books |ref=harv }} Illustration.
* {{cite book |last=Lodge |first=David |date=1971 |chapter=The Novelist at the Crossroads |title=The Novelist at the Crossroads and Other Essays on Fiction and Criticism |url=https://archive.org/details/novelistatcross00davi |location=Ithaca |publisher=Cornell UP |pages=3–34 |isbn=0801406749 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lounsberry |first=Barbara |date=1990 |chapter= |title=The Art of Fact: Contemporary Artists of Nonfiction |location=New York |publisher=Greenwood Press |pages=152–168 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Lowell |first1=Robert |date=September–October 1978 |title=A Conversation with Ian Hamilton |url= |journal=American Poetry Review |volume= |issue= |pages=23–27 |doi= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Lowell |first=Robert |authormask=1 |date=November 23, 1967 |title=The March |magazine=New York Review of Books |ref=harv }} Poem.
* {{cite book |last=Menand |first=Louis |date=2002 |chapter=Norman Mailer in His Time |title=American Studies |location=New York |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |pages=146–161 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Meredith |first1=Robert |date=Autumn 1971 |title=The 45-Second Piss: A Left Critique of Norman Mailer and ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |journal=Modern Fiction Studies |volume=17 |issue= |pages=433–438 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Merrill |first=Robert |date=1986 |chapter=The Armies of the Night |editor-last=Bloom |editor-first=Harold |title=Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House |pages=127–137 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Middlebrook |first1=Jonathan |date=Winter 1970 |title=Can a Middle-aged Man with Four Wives and Six Children Be a Revolutionary? |url= |journal=Journal of Popular Culture |volume=3 |issue= |pages=565–574 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Mosser |first1=Jason |date=2009 |title=Genre-Bending in ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |journal=Mailer Review |volume=3 |issue= |pages=307–321 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mosser |first=Jason |authormask=1 |date={{date|2012}} |title=The Participatory New Journalism of Michael Herr, Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson and Joan Didion: Creating New Reporting Styles |url= |location=Lewiston, NY |publisher=The Edwin Mellen Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Olster |first=Stacy |date=1989 |chapter= |title=Reminiscence and Re-Creation in Contemporary American Fiction |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |pages=55–64 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Piazza |first=Tom |date=2011 |chapter=Citizen Mailer |title=Devil Sent the Rain: Music and Writing in Desperate America |url=https://archive.org/details/devilsentrainmus00piaz |location=New York |publisher=Harper Perennial |pages=213–221 |isbn=9780062008220 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Poirier |first=Richard |date=1972 |title=Norman Mailer |location=New York |publisher=Viking Press |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Raymont |first=Henry |date=March 28, 1969 |title=Harper’s Editor Hails Polk Prize for Mailer |work=The New York Times |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Seib |first1=Kenneth A. |date=Spring 1974 |title=Mailer's March: The Epic Structure of ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |journal=Essays in Literature |volume=1 |issue= |pages=89–95 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Smith |first=Kathy |date=2003 |chapter=Norman Mailer and the Radical Text |editor-last=Bloom |editor-first=Harold |title=Norman Mailer: Bloom’s Modern Critical Views |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House |pages=181–196 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Taylor |first1=Gordon O. |date=March 1974 |title=Of Adams and Aquarius |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2924124 |journal=American Literature |volume=46 |issue= |pages=68–82 |access-date=2018-11-07 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Trachtenberg |first=Alan |date=May 28, 1968 |title=Mailer on the Steps of the Pentagon |magazine=The Nation |pages=701–702 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Vizinczey |first=Stephen |date=1986 |title=Condemned World, Literary Kingdom |location=Toronto |publisher=McClelland and Stewart |pages=197–199 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Weber |first=Ronald |date=1980 |chapter= |title=The Literature of Fact: Literary Nonfiction in American Writing |location=Athens, OH |publisher=Ohio University Press |pages=81–88 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Wenke |first=Joseph |date=1987 |chapter= |title=Mailer’s America |location=Hanover |publisher=University Press of New England |pages=139–163 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |editor-last=Wolfe |editor-first=Tom |editor2-last=Johnson |editor2-first=E. W. |date=1973 |title=The New Journalism |location=New York |publisher=Harper & Row |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Zavarzadeh |first=Masud |date=1976 |title=The Mythopoeic Reality: The Postwar American Nonfiction Novel |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois Press |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}
{{1950s|state=collapsed}}
{{1960s|state=expanded}}
{{1970s|state=collapsed}}

[[Category:Works]]
[[Category:Works in the 1960s]]
[[Category:Works in 1965]]
[[Category:Nonfiction Narratives]]
[[Category:First Editions]]

68.8

2026-01-14T12:44:21Z

Grlucas: /* Other Works */ Addition.

{{WDside}}

{{Big|''The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History''. New York: New American Library, 6 May; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, October. Nonfiction narrative on the anti-war March on the Pentagon, 317 pp., $5.95.}}

Dedication and acknowledgment: “To [[w:Beverly Bentley|Beverly]]; An acknowledgment to Sandy Charlebois for work beyond the call of duty.”

Published 20 years to the day after ''The Naked and the Dead'' ([[48.2]]).

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the National Book Award for arts and letters. In 1999, it was ranked nineteenth on a list of the top 100 works of journalism of the twentieth century by 36 judges under the aegis of New York University’s journalism department. See “[https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/01/business/media-journalism-s-greatest-hits-two-lists-of-a-century-s-top-stories.html Journalism’s Greatest Hits: Two Lists of a Century’s Top Stories],” ''New York Times'', 1 March 1999, Business Section, pp. 1, 13.

Discarded titles: “Bust at the Pentagon”; “The Armies of the Dead.” For an account of the work’s genesis and reception written by the editor of ''Harper’s'', see ''New York Days'' by Willie Morris (New York: Little, Brown, 1993), 213–222.

Rpt: Entire narrative appeared earlier in two parts, in ''Harper’s'' ([[68.2]]), and ''Commentary'' ([[68.6]]), respectively and was then revised for book publication; [[98.7]] (partial). See [[68.26]], [[69.3]], [[69.4]], [[69.25]], [[69.26]], [[70.8]]–[[70.11]], [[72.7]], [[74.20]], [[79.14]], [[96.5]], [[13.2]], 381-94.

{{cquote|There is no sex [in ''The Armies of the Night'']. In that sense, it’s a nineteenth-century novel. It’s courtly, it’s deliberate, it’s amused with its time and place. It’s taken for granted that its characters are all very fine and substantial people. We know it’s going to turn out well in the end. I suppose it has the restrained merriment of the early nineteenth-century picaresque novel.|author=Norman Mailer |source=[[82.16]]}}

{{Gallery
|width=200
|height=200
|align=left
| File:68-8.jpg|
| File:68-8a.jpg|Snippet from ''Time'', October 27, 1967, that Mailer quotes at the beginning of ''AON''.
| File:68-8b.jpg|Review in ''NYT''.
}}
<div style="clear:both;"></div>

== Bibliography ==
{{Refbegin|40em}}
===Reviews===
* {{cite news |last=Alvarez |first=A. |date=September 20, 1968 |title=Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye |url= |work=New Statesman |pages=351–352 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Gilman |first=Richard |date=June 8, 1968 |title=What Mailer Has Done |url= |work=New Republic |pages=27–31 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Kazin |first=Alfred |date=May 5, 1968 |title=The Trouble He's Seen |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/04/reviews/mailer-armies.html |work=The New York Times |location=Books |pages=1—2, 26 |access-date=2017-08-27 |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Lipton |first=Lawrence |date=May 31, 1968 |title=Norman Mailer: Genius, Novelist, Critic, Playwright, Politico, Journalist, and General All-Around Shit |url= |work=Los Angeles Free Press |pages=27–28 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Mixed.
* {{cite book |last=Macdonald |first=Dwight |date=1974 |title=Discriminations: Essays and Afterthoughts |chapter=''Armies of the Night'', or Bad Man Makes Good |url=https://archive.org/details/discriminationse00macd |location=New York |publisher=Grossman |page=210–216 }} Positive.
* {{cite magazine |last=Maddocks |first=Melvin |date=May 10, 1968 |title=Norm's Ego is Working Overtime for YOU |url= |magazine=Life |page=8 |publisher= |access-date= }} Mixed.
* {{cite magazine |last=Morris |first=Willie |date=July 1968 |title=Norman Mailer's ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |magazine=Literary Guild Magazine |page=15 |publisher= |access-date= |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite magazine |last=O'Brien |first=Connor Cruise |date=June 20, 1968 |title=Confessions of the Last American |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/06/20/confessions-of-the-last-american/ |magazine=New York Review of Books |pages=16–18 |ref=harv |access-date=2018-11-07 }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Puzo |first=Mario |date=April 28, 1968 |title=Generalissimo Mailer: Hero of His Own Dispatches |url= |work=Chicago Tribune |location=Book World |pages=1, 3 |author-link=w:Mario Puzo |ref=harv }} Negative.
* {{cite magazine |last=Simon |first=John |date=1968 |title=Mailer on the March |url= |magazine=Hudson Review |volume=21 |location= |publisher= |pages=541–545 |ref=harv }} Negative.

===Other Works===
* {{cite book |last=Adams |first=Laura |date=1976 |chapter=Existential Battles: The Growth of Norman Mailer |title=Existential Battles: The Growth of Norman Mailer |location=Athens, OH |publisher=Ohio University Press |pages=121–137 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Anderson |first=Chris |date=1987 |chapter=Style as Argument |title=Style as Argument: Contemporary American Nonfiction |location=Carbondale |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |pages=98–118 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Baudy |first=Leo |date=May 12, 1968 |title=Advertisements for a Dwarf Alter Ego |journal=The New Journal |volume=5 |pages=14 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Begiebing |first=Robert J. |date=1980 |chapter=The Armies of the Night |title=Acts of Regeneration: Allegory and Archetype in the Work of Norman Mailer |location=Columbia |publisher=University of Missouri Press |pages=141–165 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Berman |first=Paul |date=August 24, 2008 |title=Mailer’s Great American Breakdown |work=The New York Times |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Berthoff |first=Warner |chapter=Witness and Testament: Two Contemporary Classics |date=1971 |title=Fictions and Events |url=https://archive.org/details/fictionseventses00bert |location=New York |publisher=Dutton |pages=288–308 |isbn=0525104704 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Breslin |first=James E. |date=1978 |title=Style in Norman Mailer’s ''The Armies of the Night'' |journal=The Yearbook of English Studies |volume=8 |pages=157–170 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Bufithis |first=Philip H. |date=1978 |title=Norman Mailer |series=Modern Literature Monographs |location=New York |publisher=Ungar |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Burgess |first=Anthony |date=September 23, 1968 |title=Norman Mailer on the March |work=London Sunday Times |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Caute |first=David |date=1974 |chapter=Censored: Who’s Afraid of Norman Mailer |title=Collisions: Essays and Reviews |location=London |publisher=Quartet Books |pages=46–67 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite conference |last=Corrigan |first=Maureen |date=April 2023 |title=Keynote Address |conference=Norman Mailer Society Conference |location=University of Texas at Austin |ref=harv }} Unpublished.
* {{cite magazine |last=Denby |first=David |date=January 2018 |title=Mr. Mailer Goes to Washington |magazine=Harper’s |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |date=2007 |title=How Mailer Became “Mailer”: The Writer as Private and Public Character |journal=The Mailer Review |pages=118–131 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |authormask=1 |date=1976 |title=The Working Press, the Literary Culture, and the New Journalism |journal=The Georgia Review |volume=30 |issue=4 |pages=855–877 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Ehrlich |first=Robert |date=1978 |title=Norman Mailer: The Radical as Hipster |location=Metuchen |publisher=Scarecrow Press |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Epstein |first=Edward J. |date=1975 |title=Between Fact and Fiction: The Problem of Journalism |location=New York |publisher=Vintage |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Fields |first=Suzanne |date=November 14, 2007 |title=Recalling My Mailer Crush |work=Jewish World Review |ref=harv }}
* Full-page advertisement containing plaudits for ''The Armies of the Night''. June 23, 1968. ''New York Times Book Review''. 20 excerpts.
* {{cite book |last=Gaitskill |first=Mary |date=1983 |chapter=This Doughty Nose: On Norman Mailer's ''An American Dream'' and ''The Armies of the Night'' |title=Somebody with a Little Hammer: Essays |url= |location=New York |publisher=Pantheon |pages=120–130 |isbn=9780307378224 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Gopnik |first=Adam |date=July 11, 2018 |title=The Strange Prophecies in Norman Mailer’s ''The Armies of the Night'' |magazine=The New Yorker |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Gutman |first=Stanley T. |date=1975 |title=Mankind in Barbary: The Individual and Society in the Novels of Norman Mailer |location=Hanover |publisher=University Press of New England |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hellmann |first=John |date=1981 |title=Fables of Fact: The New Journalism as New Fiction |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois Press |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hollowell |first=John |date=1977 |chapter= |title=Fact & Fiction: The New Journalism and the Nonfiction Novel |location=Chapel Hill |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |pages=87–101 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Karl |first=Frederick R. |date=1983 |title=American Fictions, 1940–1980 |url=https://archive.org/details/americanfictions00karl |location=New York |publisher=Harper & Row |pages=178–182 |isbn=0060149396 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |date=2013 |chapter= |title=Norman Mailer: A Double Life |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |pages=381–394 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Levine |first=David |date=1968 |title=Cartoon of Mailer, Lowell, and Macdonald |title=New York Review of Books |ref=harv }} Illustration.
* {{cite book |last=Lodge |first=David |date=1971 |chapter=The Novelist at the Crossroads |title=The Novelist at the Crossroads and Other Essays on Fiction and Criticism |url=https://archive.org/details/novelistatcross00davi |location=Ithaca |publisher=Cornell UP |pages=3–34 |isbn=0801406749 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lounsberry |first=Barbara |date=1990 |chapter= |title=The Art of Fact: Contemporary Artists of Nonfiction |location=New York |publisher=Greenwood Press |pages=152–168 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Lowell |first1=Robert |date=September–October 1978 |title=A Conversation with Ian Hamilton |url= |journal=American Poetry Review |volume= |issue= |pages=23–27 |doi= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Lowell |first=Robert |authormask=1 |date=November 23, 1967 |title=The March |magazine=New York Review of Books |ref=harv }} Poem.
* {{cite book |last=Menand |first=Louis |date=2002 |chapter=Norman Mailer in His Time |title=American Studies |location=New York |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |pages=146–161 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Meredith |first1=Robert |date=Autumn 1971 |title=The 45-Second Piss: A Left Critique of Norman Mailer and ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |journal=Modern Fiction Studies |volume=17 |issue= |pages=433–438 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Merrill |first=Robert |date=1986 |chapter=The Armies of the Night |editor-last=Bloom |editor-first=Harold |title=Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House |pages=127–137 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Middlebrook |first1=Jonathan |date=Winter 1970 |title=Can a Middle-aged Man with Four Wives and Six Children Be a Revolutionary? |url= |journal=Journal of Popular Culture |volume=3 |issue= |pages=565–574 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Mosser |first1=Jason |date=2009 |title=Genre-Bending in ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |journal=Mailer Review |volume=3 |issue= |pages=307–321 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mosser |first=Jason |authormask=1 |date={{date|2012}} |title=The Participatory New Journalism of Michael Herr, Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson and Joan Didion: Creating New Reporting Styles |url= |location=Lewiston, NY |publisher=The Edwin Mellen Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Olster |first=Stacy |date=1989 |chapter= |title=Reminiscence and Re-Creation in Contemporary American Fiction |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |pages=55–64 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Piazza |first=Tom |date=2011 |chapter=Citizen Mailer |title=Devil Sent the Rain: Music and Writing in Desperate America |url=https://archive.org/details/devilsentrainmus00piaz |location=New York |publisher=Harper Perennial |pages=213–221 |isbn=9780062008220 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Poirier |first=Richard |date=1972 |title=Norman Mailer |location=New York |publisher=Viking Press |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Raymont |first=Henry |date=March 28, 1969 |title=Harper’s Editor Hails Polk Prize for Mailer |work=The New York Times |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Seib |first1=Kenneth A. |date=Spring 1974 |title=Mailer's March: The Epic Structure of ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |journal=Essays in Literature |volume=1 |issue= |pages=89–95 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Smith |first=Kathy |date=2003 |chapter=Norman Mailer and the Radical Text |editor-last=Bloom |editor-first=Harold |title=Norman Mailer: Bloom’s Modern Critical Views |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House |pages=181–196 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Taylor |first1=Gordon O. |date=March 1974 |title=Of Adams and Aquarius |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2924124 |journal=American Literature |volume=46 |issue= |pages=68–82 |access-date=2018-11-07 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Trachtenberg |first=Alan |date=May 28, 1968 |title=Mailer on the Steps of the Pentagon |magazine=The Nation |pages=701–702 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Vizinczey |first=Stephen |date=1986 |title=Condemned World, Literary Kingdom |location=Toronto |publisher=McClelland and Stewart |pages=197–199 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Weber |first=Ronald |date=1980 |chapter= |title=The Literature of Fact: Literary Nonfiction in American Writing |location=Athens, OH |publisher=Ohio University Press |pages=81–88 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Wenke |first=Joseph |date=1987 |chapter= |title=Mailer’s America |location=Hanover |publisher=University Press of New England |pages=139–163 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |editor-last=Wolfe |editor-first=Tom |editor2-last=Johnson |editor2-first=E. W. |date=1973 |title=The New Journalism |location=New York |publisher=Harper & Row |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Zavarzadeh |first=Masud |date=1976 |title=The Mythopoeic Reality: The Postwar American Nonfiction Novel |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois Press |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}
{{1950s|state=collapsed}}
{{1960s|state=expanded}}
{{1970s|state=collapsed}}

[[Category:Works]]
[[Category:Works in the 1960s]]
[[Category:Works in 1965]]
[[Category:Nonfiction Narratives]]
[[Category:First Editions]]

68.8

2025-12-22T18:04:18Z

Grlucas: /* Other Works */ Minor fixes.

{{WDside}}

{{Big|''The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History''. New York: New American Library, 6 May; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, October. Nonfiction narrative on the anti-war March on the Pentagon, 317 pp., $5.95.}}

Dedication and acknowledgment: “To [[w:Beverly Bentley|Beverly]]; An acknowledgment to Sandy Charlebois for work beyond the call of duty.”

Published 20 years to the day after ''The Naked and the Dead'' ([[48.2]]).

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the National Book Award for arts and letters. In 1999, it was ranked nineteenth on a list of the top 100 works of journalism of the twentieth century by 36 judges under the aegis of New York University’s journalism department. See “[https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/01/business/media-journalism-s-greatest-hits-two-lists-of-a-century-s-top-stories.html Journalism’s Greatest Hits: Two Lists of a Century’s Top Stories],” ''New York Times'', 1 March 1999, Business Section, pp. 1, 13.

Discarded titles: “Bust at the Pentagon”; “The Armies of the Dead.” For an account of the work’s genesis and reception written by the editor of ''Harper’s'', see ''New York Days'' by Willie Morris (New York: Little, Brown, 1993), 213–222.

Rpt: Entire narrative appeared earlier in two parts, in ''Harper’s'' ([[68.2]]), and ''Commentary'' ([[68.6]]), respectively and was then revised for book publication; [[98.7]] (partial). See [[68.26]], [[69.3]], [[69.4]], [[69.25]], [[69.26]], [[70.8]]–[[70.11]], [[72.7]], [[74.20]], [[79.14]], [[96.5]], [[13.2]], 381-94.

{{cquote|There is no sex [in ''The Armies of the Night'']. In that sense, it’s a nineteenth-century novel. It’s courtly, it’s deliberate, it’s amused with its time and place. It’s taken for granted that its characters are all very fine and substantial people. We know it’s going to turn out well in the end. I suppose it has the restrained merriment of the early nineteenth-century picaresque novel.|author=Norman Mailer |source=[[82.16]]}}

{{Gallery
|width=200
|height=200
|align=left
| File:68-8.jpg|
| File:68-8a.jpg|Snippet from ''Time'', October 27, 1967, that Mailer quotes at the beginning of ''AON''.
| File:68-8b.jpg|Review in ''NYT''.
}}
<div style="clear:both;"></div>

== Bibliography ==
{{Refbegin|40em}}
===Reviews===
* {{cite news |last=Alvarez |first=A. |date=September 20, 1968 |title=Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye |url= |work=New Statesman |pages=351–352 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Gilman |first=Richard |date=June 8, 1968 |title=What Mailer Has Done |url= |work=New Republic |pages=27–31 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Kazin |first=Alfred |date=May 5, 1968 |title=The Trouble He's Seen |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/04/reviews/mailer-armies.html |work=The New York Times |location=Books |pages=1—2, 26 |access-date=2017-08-27 |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Lipton |first=Lawrence |date=May 31, 1968 |title=Norman Mailer: Genius, Novelist, Critic, Playwright, Politico, Journalist, and General All-Around Shit |url= |work=Los Angeles Free Press |pages=27–28 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Mixed.
* {{cite book |last=Macdonald |first=Dwight |date=1974 |title=Discriminations: Essays and Afterthoughts |chapter=''Armies of the Night'', or Bad Man Makes Good |url=https://archive.org/details/discriminationse00macd |location=New York |publisher=Grossman |page=210–216 }} Positive.
* {{cite magazine |last=Maddocks |first=Melvin |date=May 10, 1968 |title=Norm's Ego is Working Overtime for YOU |url= |magazine=Life |page=8 |publisher= |access-date= }} Mixed.
* {{cite magazine |last=Morris |first=Willie |date=July 1968 |title=Norman Mailer's ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |magazine=Literary Guild Magazine |page=15 |publisher= |access-date= |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite magazine |last=O'Brien |first=Connor Cruise |date=June 20, 1968 |title=Confessions of the Last American |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/06/20/confessions-of-the-last-american/ |magazine=New York Review of Books |pages=16–18 |ref=harv |access-date=2018-11-07 }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Puzo |first=Mario |date=April 28, 1968 |title=Generalissimo Mailer: Hero of His Own Dispatches |url= |work=Chicago Tribune |location=Book World |pages=1, 3 |author-link=w:Mario Puzo |ref=harv }} Negative.
* {{cite magazine |last=Simon |first=John |date=1968 |title=Mailer on the March |url= |magazine=Hudson Review |volume=21 |location= |publisher= |pages=541–545 |ref=harv }} Negative.

===Other Works===
* {{cite book |last=Adams |first=Laura |date=1976 |chapter=Existential Battles: The Growth of Norman Mailer |title=Existential Battles: The Growth of Norman Mailer |location=Athens, OH |publisher=Ohio University Press |pages=121–137 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Anderson |first=Chris |date=1987 |chapter=Style as Argument |title=Style as Argument: Contemporary American Nonfiction |location=Carbondale |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |pages=98–118 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Baudy |first=Leo |date=May 12, 1968 |title=Advertisements for a Dwarf Alter Ego |journal=The New Journal |volume=5 |pages=14 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Begiebing |first=Robert J. |date=1980 |chapter=The Armies of the Night |title=Acts of Regeneration: Allegory and Archetype in the Work of Norman Mailer |location=Columbia |publisher=University of Missouri Press |pages=141–165 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Berman |first=Paul |date=August 24, 2008 |title=Mailer’s Great American Breakdown |work=The New York Times |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Berthoff |first=Warner |chapter=Witness and Testament: Two Contemporary Classics |date=1971 |title=Fictions and Events |url=https://archive.org/details/fictionseventses00bert |location=New York |publisher=Dutton |pages=288–308 |isbn=0525104704 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Breslin |first=James E. |date=1978 |title=Style in Norman Mailer’s ''The Armies of the Night'' |journal=The Yearbook of English Studies |volume=8 |pages=157–170 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Bufithis |first=Philip H. |date=1978 |title=Norman Mailer |series=Modern Literature Monographs |location=New York |publisher=Ungar |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Burgess |first=Anthony |date=September 23, 1968 |title=Norman Mailer on the March |work=London Sunday Times |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Caute |first=David |date=1974 |chapter=Censored: Who’s Afraid of Norman Mailer |title=Collisions: Essays and Reviews |location=London |publisher=Quartet Books |pages=46–67 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite conference |last=Corrigan |first=Maureen |date=April 2023 |title=Keynote Address |conference=Norman Mailer Society Conference |location=University of Texas at Austin |ref=harv }} Unpublished.
* {{cite magazine |last=Denby |first=David |date=January 2018 |title=Mr. Mailer Goes to Washington |magazine=Harper’s |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |date=2007 |title=How Mailer Became “Mailer”: The Writer as Private and Public Character |journal=The Mailer Review |pages=118–131 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |authormask=1 |date=1976 |title=The Working Press, the Literary Culture, and the New Journalism |journal=The Georgia Review |volume=30 |issue=4 |pages=855–877 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Ehrlich |first=Robert |date=1978 |title=Norman Mailer: The Radical as Hipster |location=Metuchen |publisher=Scarecrow Press |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Epstein |first=Edward J. |date=1975 |title=Between Fact and Fiction: The Problem of Journalism |location=New York |publisher=Vintage |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Fields |first=Suzanne |date=November 14, 2007 |title=Recalling My Mailer Crush |work=Jewish World Review |ref=harv }}
* Full-page advertisement containing plaudits for ''The Armies of the Night''. June 23, 1968. ''New York Times Book Review''. 20 excerpts.
* {{cite book |last=Gaitskill |first=Mary |date=1983 |chapter=This Doughty Nose: On Norman Mailer's ''An American Dream'' and ''The Armies of the Night'' |title=Somebody with a Little Hammer: Essays |url= |location=New York |publisher=Pantheon |pages=120–130 |isbn=9780307378224 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Gopnik |first=Adam |date=July 11, 2018 |title=The Strange Prophecies in Norman Mailer’s ''The Armies of the Night'' |magazine=The New Yorker |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Gutman |first=Stanley T. |date=1975 |title=Mankind in Barbary: The Individual and Society in the Novels of Norman Mailer |location=Hanover |publisher=University Press of New England |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hellmann |first=John |date=1981 |title=Fables of Fact: The New Journalism as New Fiction |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois Press |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hollowell |first=John |date=1977 |chapter= |title=Fact & Fiction: The New Journalism and the Nonfiction Novel |location=Chapel Hill |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |pages=87–101 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Karl |first=Frederick R. |date=1983 |title=American Fictions, 1940–1980 |url=https://archive.org/details/americanfictions00karl |location=New York |publisher=Harper & Row |pages=178–182 |isbn=0060149396 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |date=2013 |chapter= |title=Norman Mailer: A Double Life |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |pages=381–394 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Levine |first=David |date=1968 |title=Cartoon of Mailer, Lowell, and Macdonald |title=New York Review of Books |ref=harv }} Illustration.
* {{cite book |last=Lodge |first=David |date=1971 |chapter=The Novelist at the Crossroads |title=The Novelist at the Crossroads and Other Essays on Fiction and Criticism |url=https://archive.org/details/novelistatcross00davi |location=Ithaca |publisher=Cornell UP |pages=3–34 |isbn=0801406749 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lounsberry |first=Barbara |date=1990 |chapter= |title=The Art of Fact: Contemporary Artists of Nonfiction |location=New York |publisher=Greenwood Press |pages=152–168 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Lowell |first1=Robert |date=September–October 1978 |title=A Conversation with Ian Hamilton |url= |journal=American Poetry Review |volume= |issue= |pages=23–27 |doi= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Lowell |first=Robert |authormask=1 |date=November 23, 1967 |title=The March |magazine=New York Review of Books |ref=harv }} Poem.
* {{cite book |last=Menand |first=Louis |date=2002 |chapter=Norman Mailer in His Time |title=American Studies |location=New York |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |pages=146–161 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Meredith |first1=Robert |date=Autumn 1971 |title=The 45-Second Piss: A Left Critique of Norman Mailer and ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |journal=Modern Fiction Studies |volume=17 |issue= |pages=433–438 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Merrill |first=Robert |date=1986 |chapter=The Armies of the Night |editor-last=Bloom |editor-first=Harold |title=Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House |pages=127–137 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Middlebrook |first1=Jonathan |date=Winter 1970 |title=Can a Middle-aged Man with Four Wives and Six Children Be a Revolutionary? |url= |journal=Journal of Popular Culture |volume=3 |issue= |pages=565–574 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Mosser |first1=Jason |date=2009 |title=Genre-Bending in ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |journal=Mailer Review |volume=3 |issue= |pages=307–321 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Olster |first=Stacy |date=1989 |chapter= |title=Reminiscence and Re-Creation in Contemporary American Fiction |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |pages=55–64 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Piazza |first=Tom |date=2011 |chapter=Citizen Mailer |title=Devil Sent the Rain: Music and Writing in Desperate America |url=https://archive.org/details/devilsentrainmus00piaz |location=New York |publisher=Harper Perennial |pages=213–221 |isbn=9780062008220 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Poirier |first=Richard |date=1972 |title=Norman Mailer |location=New York |publisher=Viking Press |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Raymont |first=Henry |date=March 28, 1969 |title=Harper’s Editor Hails Polk Prize for Mailer |work=The New York Times |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Seib |first1=Kenneth A. |date=Spring 1974 |title=Mailer's March: The Epic Structure of ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |journal=Essays in Literature |volume=1 |issue= |pages=89–95 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Smith |first=Kathy |date=2003 |chapter=Norman Mailer and the Radical Text |editor-last=Bloom |editor-first=Harold |title=Norman Mailer: Bloom’s Modern Critical Views |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House |pages=181–196 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Taylor |first1=Gordon O. |date=March 1974 |title=Of Adams and Aquarius |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2924124 |journal=American Literature |volume=46 |issue= |pages=68–82 |access-date=2018-11-07 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Trachtenberg |first=Alan |date=May 28, 1968 |title=Mailer on the Steps of the Pentagon |magazine=The Nation |pages=701–702 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Vizinczey |first=Stephen |date=1986 |title=Condemned World, Literary Kingdom |location=Toronto |publisher=McClelland and Stewart |pages=197–199 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Weber |first=Ronald |date=1980 |chapter= |title=The Literature of Fact: Literary Nonfiction in American Writing |location=Athens, OH |publisher=Ohio University Press |pages=81–88 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Wenke |first=Joseph |date=1987 |chapter= |title=Mailer’s America |location=Hanover |publisher=University Press of New England |pages=139–163 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |editor-last=Wolfe |editor-first=Tom |editor2-last=Johnson |editor2-first=E. W. |date=1973 |title=The New Journalism |location=New York |publisher=Harper & Row |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Zavarzadeh |first=Masud |date=1976 |title=The Mythopoeic Reality: The Postwar American Nonfiction Novel |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois Press |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}
{{1950s|state=collapsed}}
{{1960s|state=expanded}}
{{1970s|state=collapsed}}

[[Category:Works]]
[[Category:Works in the 1960s]]
[[Category:Works in 1965]]
[[Category:Nonfiction Narratives]]
[[Category:First Editions]]

68.8

2025-12-22T17:56:55Z

Grlucas: /* Other Works */ Additions from J. Mosser.

{{WDside}}

{{Big|''The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History''. New York: New American Library, 6 May; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, October. Nonfiction narrative on the anti-war March on the Pentagon, 317 pp., $5.95.}}

Dedication and acknowledgment: “To [[w:Beverly Bentley|Beverly]]; An acknowledgment to Sandy Charlebois for work beyond the call of duty.”

Published 20 years to the day after ''The Naked and the Dead'' ([[48.2]]).

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the National Book Award for arts and letters. In 1999, it was ranked nineteenth on a list of the top 100 works of journalism of the twentieth century by 36 judges under the aegis of New York University’s journalism department. See “[https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/01/business/media-journalism-s-greatest-hits-two-lists-of-a-century-s-top-stories.html Journalism’s Greatest Hits: Two Lists of a Century’s Top Stories],” ''New York Times'', 1 March 1999, Business Section, pp. 1, 13.

Discarded titles: “Bust at the Pentagon”; “The Armies of the Dead.” For an account of the work’s genesis and reception written by the editor of ''Harper’s'', see ''New York Days'' by Willie Morris (New York: Little, Brown, 1993), 213–222.

Rpt: Entire narrative appeared earlier in two parts, in ''Harper’s'' ([[68.2]]), and ''Commentary'' ([[68.6]]), respectively and was then revised for book publication; [[98.7]] (partial). See [[68.26]], [[69.3]], [[69.4]], [[69.25]], [[69.26]], [[70.8]]–[[70.11]], [[72.7]], [[74.20]], [[79.14]], [[96.5]], [[13.2]], 381-94.

{{cquote|There is no sex [in ''The Armies of the Night'']. In that sense, it’s a nineteenth-century novel. It’s courtly, it’s deliberate, it’s amused with its time and place. It’s taken for granted that its characters are all very fine and substantial people. We know it’s going to turn out well in the end. I suppose it has the restrained merriment of the early nineteenth-century picaresque novel.|author=Norman Mailer |source=[[82.16]]}}

{{Gallery
|width=200
|height=200
|align=left
| File:68-8.jpg|
| File:68-8a.jpg|Snippet from ''Time'', October 27, 1967, that Mailer quotes at the beginning of ''AON''.
| File:68-8b.jpg|Review in ''NYT''.
}}
<div style="clear:both;"></div>

== Bibliography ==
{{Refbegin|40em}}
===Reviews===
* {{cite news |last=Alvarez |first=A. |date=September 20, 1968 |title=Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye |url= |work=New Statesman |pages=351–352 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Gilman |first=Richard |date=June 8, 1968 |title=What Mailer Has Done |url= |work=New Republic |pages=27–31 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Kazin |first=Alfred |date=May 5, 1968 |title=The Trouble He's Seen |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/04/reviews/mailer-armies.html |work=The New York Times |location=Books |pages=1—2, 26 |access-date=2017-08-27 |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Lipton |first=Lawrence |date=May 31, 1968 |title=Norman Mailer: Genius, Novelist, Critic, Playwright, Politico, Journalist, and General All-Around Shit |url= |work=Los Angeles Free Press |pages=27–28 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Mixed.
* {{cite book |last=Macdonald |first=Dwight |date=1974 |title=Discriminations: Essays and Afterthoughts |chapter=''Armies of the Night'', or Bad Man Makes Good |url=https://archive.org/details/discriminationse00macd |location=New York |publisher=Grossman |page=210–216 }} Positive.
* {{cite magazine |last=Maddocks |first=Melvin |date=May 10, 1968 |title=Norm's Ego is Working Overtime for YOU |url= |magazine=Life |page=8 |publisher= |access-date= }} Mixed.
* {{cite magazine |last=Morris |first=Willie |date=July 1968 |title=Norman Mailer's ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |magazine=Literary Guild Magazine |page=15 |publisher= |access-date= |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite magazine |last=O'Brien |first=Connor Cruise |date=June 20, 1968 |title=Confessions of the Last American |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/06/20/confessions-of-the-last-american/ |magazine=New York Review of Books |pages=16–18 |ref=harv |access-date=2018-11-07 }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Puzo |first=Mario |date=April 28, 1968 |title=Generalissimo Mailer: Hero of His Own Dispatches |url= |work=Chicago Tribune |location=Book World |pages=1, 3 |author-link=w:Mario Puzo |ref=harv }} Negative.
* {{cite magazine |last=Simon |first=John |date=1968 |title=Mailer on the March |url= |magazine=Hudson Review |volume=21 |location= |publisher= |pages=541–545 |ref=harv }} Negative.

===Other Works===
* {{cite book |last=Adams |first=Laura |date=1976 |chapter=Existential Battles: The Growth of Norman Mailer |title=Existential Battles: The Growth of Norman Mailer |location=Athens, OH |publisher=Ohio University Press |pages=121–137 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Anderson |first=Chris |date=1987 |chapter=Style as Argument |title=Style as Argument: Contemporary American Nonfiction |location=Carbondale |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |pages=98–118 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Baudy |first=Leo |date=May 12, 1968 |title=Advertisements for a Dwarf Alter Ego |journal=The New Journal |volume=5 |pages=14 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Begiebing |first=Robert J. |date=1980 |chapter=The Armies of the Night |title=Acts of Regeneration: Allegory and Archetype in the Work of Norman Mailer |location=Columbia |publisher=University of Missouri Press |pages=141–165 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Berman |first=Paul |date=August 24, 2008 |title=Mailer’s Great American Breakdown |work=The New York Times |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Berthoff |first=Warner |chapter=Witness and Testament: Two Contemporary Classics |date=1971 |title=Fictions and Events |url=https://archive.org/details/fictionseventses00bert |location=New York |publisher=Dutton |pages=288–308 |isbn=0525104704 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Breslin |first=James E. |date=1978 |title=Style in Norman Mailer’s ''The Armies of the Night'' |journal=The Yearbook of English Studies |volume=8 |pages=157–170 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Bufithis |first=Philip H. |date=1978 |title=Norman Mailer |series=Modern Literature Monographs |location=New York |publisher=Ungar |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Burgess |first=Anthony |date=September 23, 1968 |title=Norman Mailer on the March |work=London Sunday Times |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Caute |first=David |date=1974 |chapter=Censored: Who’s Afraid of Norman Mailer |title=Collisions: Essays and Reviews |location=London |publisher=Quartet Books |pages=46–67 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite conference |last=Corrigan |first=Maureen |date=April 2023 |title=Keynote Address |conference=Norman Mailer Society Conference |location=University of Texas at Austin |ref=harv }} Unpublished.
* {{cite magazine |last=Denby |first=David |date=January 2018 |title=Mr. Mailer Goes to Washington |magazine=Harper’s |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |date=2007 |title=How Mailer Became “Mailer”: The Writer as Private and Public Character |journal=The Mailer Review |pages=118–131 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Fields |first=Suzanne |date=November 14, 2007 |title=Recalling My Mailer Crush |work=Jewish World Review |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |authormask=1 |date=1976 |title=The Working Press, the Literary Culture, and the New Journalism |journal=The Georgia Review |volume=30 |issue=4 |pages=855–877 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Ehrlich |first=Robert |date=1978 |title=Norman Mailer: The Radical as Hipster |location=Metuchen |publisher=Scarecrow Press |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Epstein |first=Edward J. |date=1975 |title=Between Fact and Fiction: The Problem of Journalism |location=New York |publisher=Vintage |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Gaitskill |first=Mary |date=1983 |chapter=This Doughty Nose: On Norman Mailer's ''An American Dream'' and ''The Armies of the Night'' |title=Somebody with a Little Hammer: Essays |url= |location=New York |publisher=Pantheon |pages=120–130 |isbn=9780307378224 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Gopnik |first=Adam |date=July 11, 2018 |title=The Strange Prophecies in Norman Mailer’s ''The Armies of the Night'' |magazine=The New Yorker |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Gutman |first=Stanley T. |date=1975 |title=Mankind in Barbary: The Individual and Society in the Novels of Norman Mailer |location=Hanover |publisher=University Press of New England |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hellmann |first=John |date=1981 |title=Fables of Fact: The New Journalism as New Fiction |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois Press |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hollowell |first=John |date=1977 |chapter= |title=Fact & Fiction: The New Journalism and the Nonfiction Novel |location=Chapel Hill |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |pages=87–101 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Karl |first=Frederick R. |date=1983 |title=American Fictions, 1940–1980 |url=https://archive.org/details/americanfictions00karl |location=New York |publisher=Harper & Row |pages=178–182 |isbn=0060149396 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |date=2013 |chapter= |title=Norman Mailer: A Double Life |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |pages=381–394 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Levine |first=David |date=1968 |title=Cartoon of Mailer, Lowell, and Macdonald |title=New York Review of Books |ref=harv }} Illustration.
* {{cite book |last=Lodge |first=David |date=1971 |chapter=The Novelist at the Crossroads |title=The Novelist at the Crossroads and Other Essays on Fiction and Criticism |url=https://archive.org/details/novelistatcross00davi |location=Ithaca |publisher=Cornell UP |pages=3–34 |isbn=0801406749 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lounsberry |first=Barbara |date=1990 |chapter= |title=The Art of Fact: Contemporary Artists of Nonfiction |location=New York |publisher=Greenwood Press |pages=152–168 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Lowell |first1=Robert |date=September–October 1978 |title=A Conversation with Ian Hamilton |url= |journal=American Poetry Review |volume= |issue= |pages=23–27 |doi= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Lowell |first=Robert |authormask=1 |date=November 23, 1967 |title=The March |magazine=New York Review of Books |ref=harv }} Poem.
* {{cite book |last=Menand |first=Louis |date=2002 |chapter=Norman Mailer in His Time |title=American Studies |location=New York |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |pages=146–161 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Meredith |first1=Robert |date=Autumn 1971 |title=The 45-Second Piss: A Left Critique of Norman Mailer and ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |journal=Modern Fiction Studies |volume=17 |issue= |pages=433–438 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Merrill |first=Robert |date=1986 |chapter=The Armies of the Night |editor-last=Bloom |editor-first=Harold |title=Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House |pages=127–137 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Middlebrook |first1=Jonathan |date=Winter 1970 |title=Can a Middle-aged Man with Four Wives and Six Children Be a Revolutionary? |url= |journal=Journal of Popular Culture |volume=3 |issue= |pages=565–574 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Mosser |first1=Jason |date=2009 |title=Genre-Bending in ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |journal=Mailer Review |volume=3 |issue= |pages=307–321 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* Full-page advertisement containing plaudits for ''The Armies of the Night''. June 23, 1968. ''New York Times Book Review''. 20 excerpts.
* {{cite book |last=Olster |first=Stacy |date=1989 |chapter= |title=Reminiscence and Re-Creation in Contemporary American Fiction |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |pages=55–64 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Piazza |first=Tom |date=2011 |chapter=Citizen Mailer |title=Devil Sent the Rain: Music and Writing in Desperate America |url=https://archive.org/details/devilsentrainmus00piaz |location=New York |publisher=Harper Perennial |pages=213–221 |isbn=9780062008220 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Poirier |first=Richard |date=1972 |title=Norman Mailer |location=New York |publisher=Viking Press |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Raymont |first=Henry |date=March 28, 1969 |title=Harper’s Editor Hails Polk Prize for Mailer |work=The New York Times |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Seib |first1=Kenneth A. |date=Spring 1974 |title=Mailer's March: The Epic Structure of ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |journal=Essays in Literature |volume=1 |issue= |pages=89–95 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Smith |first=Kathy |date=2003 |chapter=Norman Mailer and the Radical Text |editor-last=Bloom |editor-first=Harold |title=Norman Mailer: Bloom’s Modern Critical Views |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House |pages=181–196 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Taylor |first1=Gordon O. |date=March 1974 |title=Of Adams and Aquarius |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2924124 |journal=American Literature |volume=46 |issue= |pages=68–82 |access-date=2018-11-07 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Trachtenberg |first=Alan |date=May 28, 1968 |title=Mailer on the Steps of the Pentagon |magazine=The Nation |pages=701–702 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Vizinczey |first=Stephen |date=1986 |title=Condemned World, Literary Kingdom |location=Toronto |publisher=McClelland and Stewart |pages=197–199 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Weber |first=Ronald |date=1980 |chapter= |title=The Literature of Fact: Literary Nonfiction in American Writing |location=Athens, OH |publisher=Ohio University Press |pages=81–88 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Wenke |first=Joseph |date=1987 |chapter= |title=Mailer’s America |location=Hanover |publisher=University Press of New England |pages=139–163 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |editor-last=Wolfe |editor-first=Tom |editor2-last=Johnson |editor2-first=E. W. |date=1973 |title=The New Journalism |location=New York |publisher=Harper & Row |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Zavarzadeh |first=Masud |date=1976 |title=The Mythopoeic Reality: The Postwar American Nonfiction Novel |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois Press |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}
{{1950s|state=collapsed}}
{{1960s|state=expanded}}
{{1970s|state=collapsed}}

[[Category:Works]]
[[Category:Works in the 1960s]]
[[Category:Works in 1965]]
[[Category:Nonfiction Narratives]]
[[Category:First Editions]]

68.8

2025-12-17T14:18:43Z

Grlucas: /* Bibliography */ Added more from JML.

{{WDside}}

{{Big|''The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History''. New York: New American Library, 6 May; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, October. Nonfiction narrative on the anti-war March on the Pentagon, 317 pp., $5.95.}}

Dedication and acknowledgment: “To [[w:Beverly Bentley|Beverly]]; An acknowledgment to Sandy Charlebois for work beyond the call of duty.”

Published 20 years to the day after ''The Naked and the Dead'' ([[48.2]]).

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the National Book Award for arts and letters. In 1999, it was ranked nineteenth on a list of the top 100 works of journalism of the twentieth century by 36 judges under the aegis of New York University’s journalism department. See “[https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/01/business/media-journalism-s-greatest-hits-two-lists-of-a-century-s-top-stories.html Journalism’s Greatest Hits: Two Lists of a Century’s Top Stories],” ''New York Times'', 1 March 1999, Business Section, pp. 1, 13.

Discarded titles: “Bust at the Pentagon”; “The Armies of the Dead.” For an account of the work’s genesis and reception written by the editor of ''Harper’s'', see ''New York Days'' by Willie Morris (New York: Little, Brown, 1993), 213–222.

Rpt: Entire narrative appeared earlier in two parts, in ''Harper’s'' ([[68.2]]), and ''Commentary'' ([[68.6]]), respectively and was then revised for book publication; [[98.7]] (partial). See [[68.26]], [[69.3]], [[69.4]], [[69.25]], [[69.26]], [[70.8]]–[[70.11]], [[72.7]], [[74.20]], [[79.14]], [[96.5]], [[13.2]], 381-94.

{{cquote|There is no sex [in ''The Armies of the Night'']. In that sense, it’s a nineteenth-century novel. It’s courtly, it’s deliberate, it’s amused with its time and place. It’s taken for granted that its characters are all very fine and substantial people. We know it’s going to turn out well in the end. I suppose it has the restrained merriment of the early nineteenth-century picaresque novel.|author=Norman Mailer |source=[[82.16]]}}

{{Gallery
|width=200
|height=200
|align=left
| File:68-8.jpg|
| File:68-8a.jpg|Snippet from ''Time'', October 27, 1967, that Mailer quotes at the beginning of ''AON''.
| File:68-8b.jpg|Review in ''NYT''.
}}
<div style="clear:both;"></div>

== Bibliography ==
{{Refbegin|40em}}
===Reviews===
* {{cite news |last=Alvarez |first=A. |date=September 20, 1968 |title=Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye |url= |work=New Statesman |pages=351–352 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Gilman |first=Richard |date=June 8, 1968 |title=What Mailer Has Done |url= |work=New Republic |pages=27–31 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Kazin |first=Alfred |date=May 5, 1968 |title=The Trouble He's Seen |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/04/reviews/mailer-armies.html |work=The New York Times |location=Books |pages=1—2, 26 |access-date=2017-08-27 |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Lipton |first=Lawrence |date=May 31, 1968 |title=Norman Mailer: Genius, Novelist, Critic, Playwright, Politico, Journalist, and General All-Around Shit |url= |work=Los Angeles Free Press |pages=27–28 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Mixed.
* {{cite book |last=Macdonald |first=Dwight |date=1974 |title=Discriminations: Essays and Afterthoughts |chapter=''Armies of the Night'', or Bad Man Makes Good |url=https://archive.org/details/discriminationse00macd |location=New York |publisher=Grossman |page=210–216 }} Positive.
* {{cite magazine |last=Maddocks |first=Melvin |date=May 10, 1968 |title=Norm's Ego is Working Overtime for YOU |url= |magazine=Life |page=8 |publisher= |access-date= }} Mixed.
* {{cite magazine |last=Morris |first=Willie |date=July 1968 |title=Norman Mailer's ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |magazine=Literary Guild Magazine |page=15 |publisher= |access-date= |ref=harv }} Positive.
* {{cite magazine |last=O'Brien |first=Connor Cruise |date=June 20, 1968 |title=Confessions of the Last American |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/06/20/confessions-of-the-last-american/ |magazine=New York Review of Books |pages=16–18 |ref=harv |access-date=2018-11-07 }} Positive.
* {{cite news |last=Puzo |first=Mario |date=April 28, 1968 |title=Generalissimo Mailer: Hero of His Own Dispatches |url= |work=Chicago Tribune |location=Book World |pages=1, 3 |author-link=w:Mario Puzo |ref=harv }} Negative.
* {{cite magazine |last=Simon |first=John |date=1968 |title=Mailer on the March |url= |magazine=Hudson Review |volume=21 |location= |publisher= |pages=541–545 |ref=harv }} Negative.

===Other Works===
* {{cite book |last=Adams |first=Laura |date=1976 |chapter=Existential Battles: The Growth of Norman Mailer |title=Existential Battles: The Growth of Norman Mailer |location=Athens, OH |publisher=Ohio University Press |pages=121–137 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Anderson |first=Chris |date=1987 |chapter=Style as Argument |title=Style as Argument: Contemporary American Nonfiction |location=Carbondale |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |pages=98–118 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Baudy |first=Leo |date=May 12, 1968 |title=Advertisements for a Dwarf Alter Ego |journal=The New Journal |volume=5 |pages=14 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Begiebing |first=Robert J. |date=1980 |chapter=The Armies of the Night |title=Acts of Regeneration: Allegory and Archetype in the Work of Norman Mailer |location=Columbia |publisher=University of Missouri Press |pages=141–165 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Berman |first=Paul |date=August 24, 2008 |title=Mailer’s Great American Breakdown |work=The New York Times |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Berthoff |first=Warner |chapter=Witness and Testament: Two Contemporary Classics |date=1971 |title=Fictions and Events |url=https://archive.org/details/fictionseventses00bert |location=New York |publisher=Dutton |pages=288–308 |isbn=0525104704 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Burgess |first=Anthony |date=September 23, 1968 |title=Norman Mailer on the March |work=London Sunday Times |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Caute |first=David |date=1974 |chapter=Censored: Who’s Afraid of Norman Mailer |title=Collisions: Essays and Reviews |location=London |publisher=Quartet Books |pages=46–67 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite conference |last=Corrigan |first=Maureen |date=April 2023 |title=Keynote Address |conference=Norman Mailer Society Conference |location=University of Texas at Austin |ref=harv }} Unpublished.
* {{cite magazine |last=Denby |first=David |date=January 2018 |title=Mr. Mailer Goes to Washington |magazine=Harper’s |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Fields |first=Suzanne |date=November 14, 2007 |title=Recalling My Mailer Crush |work=Jewish World Review |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Gaitskill |first=Mary |date=1983 |chapter=This Doughty Nose: On Norman Mailer's ''An American Dream'' and ''The Armies of the Night'' |title=Somebody with a Little Hammer: Essays |url= |location=New York |publisher=Pantheon |pages=120–130 |isbn=9780307378224 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Gopnik |first=Adam |date=July 11, 2018 |title=The Strange Prophecies in Norman Mailer’s ''The Armies of the Night'' |magazine=The New Yorker |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hollowell |first=John |date=1977 |chapter= |title=Fact & Fiction: The New Journalism and the Nonfiction Novel |location=Chapel Hill |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |pages=87–101 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Karl |first=Frederick R. |date=1983 |title=American Fictions, 1940–1980 |url=https://archive.org/details/americanfictions00karl |location=New York |publisher=Harper & Row |pages=178–182 |isbn=0060149396 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |date=2013 |chapter= |title=Norman Mailer: A Double Life |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |pages=381–394 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Levine |first=David |date=1968 |title=Cartoon of Mailer, Lowell, and Macdonald |title=New York Review of Books |ref=harv }} Illustration.
* {{cite book |last=Lodge |first=David |date=1971 |chapter=The Novelist at the Crossroads |title=The Novelist at the Crossroads and Other Essays on Fiction and Criticism |url=https://archive.org/details/novelistatcross00davi |location=Ithaca |publisher=Cornell UP |pages=3–34 |isbn=0801406749 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lounsberry |first=Barbara |date=1990 |chapter= |title=The Art of Fact: Contemporary Artists of Nonfiction |location=New York |publisher=Greenwood Press |pages=152–168 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Lowell |first1=Robert |date=September–October 1978 |title=A Conversation with Ian Hamilton |url= |journal=American Poetry Review |volume= |issue= |pages=23–27 |doi= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Lowell |first=Robert |authormask=1 |date=November 23, 1967 |title=The March |magazine=New York Review of Books |ref=harv }} Poem.
* {{cite book |last=Menand |first=Louis |date=2002 |chapter=Norman Mailer in His Time |title=American Studies |location=New York |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |pages=146–161 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Meredith |first1=Robert |date=Autumn 1971 |title=The 45-Second Piss: A Left Critique of Norman Mailer and ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |journal=Modern Fiction Studies |volume=17 |issue= |pages=433–438 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Merrill |first=Robert |date=1986 |chapter=The Armies of the Night |editor-last=Bloom |editor-first=Harold |title=Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House |pages=127–137 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Middlebrook |first1=Jonathan |date=Winter 1970 |title=Can a Middle-aged Man with Four Wives and Six Children Be a Revolutionary? |url= |journal=Journal of Popular Culture |volume=3 |issue= |pages=565–574 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Mosser |first1=Jason |date=2009 |title=Genre-Bending in ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |journal=Mailer Review |volume=3 |issue= |pages=307–321 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* Full-page advertisement containing plaudits for ''The Armies of the Night''. June 23, 1968. ''New York Times Book Review''. 20 excerpts.
* {{cite book |last=Olster |first=Stacy |date=1989 |chapter= |title=Reminiscence and Re-Creation in Contemporary American Fiction |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |pages=55–64 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Piazza |first=Tom |date=2011 |chapter=Citizen Mailer |title=Devil Sent the Rain: Music and Writing in Desperate America |url=https://archive.org/details/devilsentrainmus00piaz |location=New York |publisher=Harper Perennial |pages=213–221 |isbn=9780062008220 |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Raymont |first=Henry |date=March 28, 1969 |title=Harper’s Editor Hails Polk Prize for Mailer |work=The New York Times |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Seib |first1=Kenneth A. |date=Spring 1974 |title=Mailer's March: The Epic Structure of ''The Armies of the Night'' |url= |journal=Essays in Literature |volume=1 |issue= |pages=89–95 |doi= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Smith |first=Kathy |date=2003 |chapter=Norman Mailer and the Radical Text |editor-last=Bloom |editor-first=Harold |title=Norman Mailer: Bloom’s Modern Critical Views |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House |pages=181–196 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Taylor |first1=Gordon O. |date=March 1974 |title=Of Adams and Aquarius |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2924124 |journal=American Literature |volume=46 |issue= |pages=68–82 |access-date=2018-11-07 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Trachtenberg |first=Alan |date=May 28, 1968 |title=Mailer on the Steps of the Pentagon |magazine=The Nation |pages=701–702 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Vizinczey |first=Stephen |date=1986 |title=Condemned World, Literary Kingdom |location=Toronto |publisher=McClelland and Stewart |pages=197–199 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Weber |first=Ronald |date=1980 |chapter= |title=The Literature of Fact: Literary Nonfiction in American Writing |location=Athens, OH |publisher=Ohio University Press |pages=81–88 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Wenke |first=Joseph |date=1987 |chapter= |title=Mailer’s America |location=Hanover |publisher=University Press of New England |pages=139–163 |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}
{{1950s|state=collapsed}}
{{1960s|state=expanded}}
{{1970s|state=collapsed}}

[[Category:Works]]
[[Category:Works in the 1960s]]
[[Category:Works in 1965]]
[[Category:Nonfiction Narratives]]
[[Category:First Editions]]

Norman Mailer Society/Conference

2025-12-16T15:15:55Z

Grlucas:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Nms-top}}

Archive of conference materials. For the most current information, see our [https://normanmailersociety.org/conference/ official web site].

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="width: 100%;"
|-
! No. !! Year !! Location !! Dates !! Theme !! Information
|-
| 20 || 2023 || Austin, TX || {{date|April 20–22}} || Mailer’s Centenary Celebration || [[Norman Mailer Society/Conference/2023|Conference Page]]
|-
| 19 || 2022 || Long Branch, NJ || {{date|June 8–10}} || “The Prisoner of Sex” Turns 50: Mailer on Gender and Sexuality || [[Norman Mailer Society/Conference/2022|Conference Page]]; [[Norman Mailer Society/Conference/2022/Program|Program]]
|-
| 18 || 2020 || Virtual || Oct 15–17 || Mailer and the Spirit of Democracy || [[Norman Mailer Society/Conference/2020|Conference Page]]; [[Norman Mailer Society/Conference/2020/Program|Program]]
|-
| 17 || 2019 || Wilkes-Barre, PA || Oct 10–12 || Mailer on Politics, Public Life, and Pop Culture || [[Norman Mailer Society/Conference/2019 Wilkes-Barre, PA|Conference Page]]; [[Norman Mailer Society/Conference/2019 Wilkes-Barre, PA/Program|Program]]
|-
| 16 || 2018 || Macon, GA || Oct 25–27 || 50th Anniversary of ''The Armies of the Night'';<br />70th Anniversary of ''The Naked and the Dead'' || [[Norman Mailer Society/Conference/2018 Macon, GA|Conference Page]]; [https://projectmailer.net/images/1/11/NMS-Program-18.pdf Program]
|-
| 15 || 2017 || Sarasota, FL || Oct 26–28 || {{CNone|-}} || [[Norman Mailer Society/Conference/2017 Sarasota, FL|Conference Page]]; [https://projectmailer.net/images/0/09/2017_Conference_Program.pdf Program]
|-
| 14 || 2016 || Long Branch, NJ || Sept 28–Oct 1 || Return to Long Branch || [[Norman Mailer Society/Conference/2016 Long Branch, NJ|Conference Page]]; [https://projectmailer.net/images/1/1c/2016_Conference_Program.pdf Program]
|-
| 13 || 2015 || Provincetown, MA || Sept 30–Oct 3 || {{CNone|-}} || [https://projectmailer.net/images/3/3a/2015_Conference-Program.pdf Program]
|-
| 12 || 2014 || Wilkes-Barre, PA || Oct 26–28 || Norman Mailer: Continuing His Legacy || [[Norman Mailer Society/Conference/2014 Wilkes-Barre, PA|Conference Page]]; [https://projectmailer.net/images/6/6f/2014_Conference_of_the_Norman_Mailer_Society_Program.pdf Program]
|-
| 11 || 2013 || Sarasota, FL || Oct 23–27 || Norman Mailer at 90: Novelist, Journalist, Essayist, Filmmaker, and much more || [https://projectmailer.net/images/f/f7/2013_Conference_Program.pdf Program]
|-
| 10 || 2012 || Provincetown, MA || Oct 10–13 || Norman Mailer: Achievements and Paradoxes || [https://projectmailer.net/images/6/62/2012_Program_v1.pdf Program]
|-
| 9 || 2011 || Austin, TX || Nov 9–12 || Mailer and Jones || Program coming soon
|-
| 8 || 2010 || Sarasota, FL || Nov 4–6 || Mailer and Hemingway || [https://projectmailer.net/images/8/82/2010_NMS_Program.pdf Program]
|-
| 7 || 2009 || Washington, DC || Oct 23–24 || Washington Intersections: Ideology, Culture, and Biography || [https://projectmailer.net/images/a/a5/2009_Conference_Program.pdf Program]
|-
| 6 || 2008 || Provincetown, MA || Oct 16–19 || Norman Mailer: Memory and the Afterlife || [https://projectmailer.net/images/f/fe/2008-Conference-Program.pdf Program]
|-
| 5 || 2007 || Provincetown, MA || Oct 11–14 || Mailer the Novelist || [https://projectmailer.net/images/a/ad/2007-Program.pdf Program]
|-
| 4 || 2006 || Provincetown, MA || Oct 12–14 || The Political Norman Mailer || [https://projectmailer.net/images/f/f1/2006-Program.pdf Program]
|-
| 3 || 2005 || Provincetown, MA || Nov 5–6 || {{CNone|-}} || Program coming soon
|-
| 2 || 2004 || Provincetown, MA || Nov 12–13 || {{CNone|-}} || [[Norman Mailer Society/Conference/2004|Program]]
|-
| 1 || 2003 || Brooklyn, NY || Nov 1 || Inaugural Conference || [https://projectmailer.net/images/3/3e/2003_NMS_Program.pdf Program]
|-
| ½ || 2002 || Cambridge, MA || May 22 || ALA Meeting || {{CNone|-}}
|}

{{Nms-bottom}}

Template:NMS Main

2025-12-16T15:13:06Z

Grlucas:

{{Sidebar
| name = NMS Main
| pretitle = Norman Mailer Society
| title = Documents
| headingstyle = background: #ccc;
| width = 300px
| wraplinks = true

| heading2 = [[Norman Mailer Society/About#Executive Board|Executive Board]]
| content2 = [[Norman Mailer Society/Minutes of the 2019 Meeting of the Executive Board|2019 Minutes]] • [[Norman Mailer Society/Minutes of the 2018 Meeting of the Executive Board|2018 Minutes]] • [[Norman Mailer Society/Minutes of the 2017 Meeting of the Executive Board|2017 Minutes]] • [[Norman Mailer Society/Minutes of the 2016 Meeting of the Executive Board|2016 Minutes]]

| heading3 = Business
| content3 = [[Norman Mailer Society/Minutes of the 2019 Business Meeting|2019 Minutes]] • [[Norman Mailer Society/Minutes of the 2018 Business Meeting|2018 Minutes]] • [[Norman Mailer Society/Minutes of the 2017 Business Meeting|2017 Minutes]] • [[Norman Mailer Society/Minutes of the 2016 Business Meeting|2016 Minutes]] • [[Norman Mailer Society/Minutes of the First Meeting (2003)|2003 Minutes]]

| heading4 = Membership
| content4 = [[Norman Mailer Society/Join/2019 Membership Drive|2019 Membership Drive]] • [[Norman Mailer Society/Join/2017 Letter from David Light|2017 Membership Drive]] • [[Norman Mailer Society/Join/2016 Membership Drive|2016 Membership Drive]]
}}

Norman Mailer Society

2025-12-16T14:59:02Z

Grlucas: Added link.

{{Nms-top}}
{{NMS Main|expanded=foundational}}

Please see our [https://normanmailersociety.org/ official web site].

{{Nms-bottom}}

Norman Mailer Society/By-Laws

2025-12-16T14:57:43Z

Grlucas: Replaced content with "{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}}}} {{NMS Main|expanded=foundational}} See our [https://normanmailersociety.org/about/by-laws/ official web site]. {{NMS}}"

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{NMS Main|expanded=foundational}}

See our [https://normanmailersociety.org/about/by-laws/ official web site].

{{NMS}}

Norman Mailer Society/Join

2025-12-16T14:54:50Z

Grlucas: Updated.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Nms-top}}

Please see [https://normanmailersociety.org/join/ our official web site].
{{Nms-bottom}}

Gerald R. Lucas

2025-12-10T12:05:08Z

Grlucas: Updated links.

[[File:Gerald R. Lucas.jpg|thumb|Gerald R. Lucas]]

{{start|Gerald R. Lucas}} is Professor of English at Middle Georgia State University and the editor of Project Mailer. He serves as Vice-President of the [[Norman Mailer Society]], the Digital Editor of ''[[The Mailer Review]]'', and the Society’s webmaster. In 2014, he was a Norman Mailer Fellow where he first [[Project Mailer:About|theorized and proposed]] the creation of Project Mailer. Recently, Lucas acted as the editor for [[J. Michael Lennon]] and [[Donna Pedro Lennon]]’s expanded and updated ''[[Norman Mailer: Works and Days]]'', and he created and maintains the digital Humanities project based on the same.

===Selected Publications===
* {{cite book |last1=Lennon |first1=J. Michael |last2=Lennon |first2=Donna Pedro |editor-last=Lucas |editor-first=Gerald R. |date=2018 |title=Norman Mailer: Works and Days |edition=Revised and Expanded |url=https://projectmailer.net/ |location=Atlanta |publisher=Norman Mailer Society |page= |isbn=9781732651906 |author-link= }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Lucas |first1=Gerald R. |date=Fall 2016 |title=Every You, Every Me |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=10 |issue=1 |pages=482–505 |url= |access-date= }} Fiction.
* {{cite journal |last1=Lucas |first1=Gerald R. |authormask=1 |date=Fall 2011 |title=Norman Mailer and the Novel 2.0 |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=248–263 |url=https://prmlr.us/mr11luca |access-date=2019-01-06 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Lucas |first1=Gerald R. |authormask=1 |date=Fall 2013 |title=Teaching Norman Mailer in the Cloud |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=150–174 |url= |access-date= }}

===Additional Links===
* [https://audionotes.net/ Audio Notes]
* [https://grlucas.com/ Professional Web Site]
* [[Wikipedia:User:Grlucas|Wikipedia Profile]]
* [[:Category:Written by {{BASEPAGENAME}}|Contributions]]
* [[:Category:Edited by {{BASEPAGENAME}}|Edited]]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lucas, Gerald R.}}
[[Category:Contributors]]
[[Category:Editors]]
[[Category:2021 Vol. 15 (MR)]]
[[Category:2022 Conference]]
[[Category:2020 Conference]]
[[Category:2019 Conference]]
[[Category:2018 Conference]]
[[Category:2017 Conference]]

User:Grlucas

2025-12-09T21:35:55Z

Grlucas: Added link.

Any Mailer dude will tell you. . . He's the guy that makes this digital stuff happen.

See my [[Gerald R. Lucas|contributor page]], or read my latest audiophile musings at [https://audionotes.net/ Audio Notes].

Main Page

2025-10-14T13:30:28Z

Grlucas: /* About Us */ Tweak.

__NOTOC__
[[File:Projectmailer.png|700px|center]]

<div class="pm-site-intro">
== The Digital Humanities initiative of the Norman Mailer Society ==
{{Big|This website serves as a hub for the digital endeavors of the [[Norman Mailer Society]]. It features an overview of projects — both analog and digital — undertaken by the Society’s members that help to support and maintain the legacy of [[Norman Mailer]].

Project Mailer, created and maintained by [[Gerald R. Lucas]] houses {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} articles and {{NUMBEROFUSERS}} editors.}}
</div>

{{Liptons Ad}}

==Featured==
<div class="pm-box-grid">
<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Archive</div>
[https://archivepublic.wilkes.edu/repositories/2/resources/16 Wilkes University Norman Mailer Collection]: A significant digital archive of Mailer’s personal materials, mostly from the 1980s onward. See also [https://archivepublic.wilkes.edu/repositories/2/resources/110 J. Michael Lennon’s collection of Norman Mailer’s Publication Research, 1948-2024].</div>

<div class="pm-box-grid">
<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Project</div>
''[[Lipton’s Journal]]'': Mailer’s journal of self-analysis and personal growth he kept from December 1954 to March of 1955, edited by [[J. Michael Lennon]], [[Susan Mailer]], and [[Gerald R. Lucas]].</div>

<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Project</div>
''[[Norman Mailer: Works and Days]]'' by [[J. Michael Lennon]] and [[Donna Pedro Lennon]] and edited by [[Gerald R. Lucas]] contains almost 1400 cross-referenced entries, images, and many full-text articles.</div>

<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Journal</div>
''[[The Mailer Review]]'', the official journal of the Norman Mailer Society, publishes articles, notes, creative works, interviews, commentary, images, and book reviews relevant to the life and work of [[Norman Mailer]].</div>

<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Digital Book</div>
''[[The Structured Vision of Norman Mailer]]'' by [[Barry H. Leeds]] was published in 1969 and explores Norman Mailer’s major writing through the sixties. We present the full text of Leeds’ study in a new digital form.</div>

<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Project</div>
[[An American Dream Expanded|''An American Dream'' Expanded]] features [[Norman Mailer’s Letters on An American Dream, 1963–1969|letters]], full-text criticism, essays, a gallery, and more that contextualizes and expands study of ''[[An American Dream|AAD]]''.</div>

<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Collection</div>
This collection, assembled by [[J. Michael Lennon]], features full-text [[:Category:Full Text Introductory|introductions, prefaces, and forewords]] by [[Norman Mailer]], including those to the works of Jean Malaquais, Abbie Hoffman, Jack Henry Abbott, and others.</div>

<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Podcast</div>
Hosted by [[Justin Bozung]] and published twice monthly, [[Norman Mailer Society/Podcast|The Norman Mailer Society Podcast]] highlights the people and projects that promote the legacy of Norman Mailer.</div>

<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">WWW</div>
Visit the official web site of the [[Norman Mailer Society]] to [[Norman Mailer Society/Join|join]] the Society, read [[Norman Mailer Society/News|news]], and get all the current information about our annual conference.</div>
</div>

==About Us==
<div class="pm-box-grid pm-wide-grid"><div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Contributors</div>
Maintained by scholars and students alike, Project Mailer offers a living space for open-access research, experimentation, and conversation. We welcome contributions from all those interested in Mailer, 20th-century American literature, and the digital humanities.
<span style="text-align:right;">→ {{c|Contributors}} • {{c|Student Editors}}</span></div>

<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Get in Touch</div>
Want to contribute, ask a question, or suggest a new project? We’re always open to collaboration and feedback. Join the conversation and help us grow Project Mailer.
<span style="text-align:right;">→ {{nospam|editor|projectmailer.net}}</span></div>

<div class="pm-box pm-highlight"><div class="pm-box-label">About Project Mailer</div>
'''Project Mailer''' is a digital humanities initiative devoted to the life, works, and legacy of [[Norman Mailer]]. Sponsored by the [[The Norman Mailer Society]], this collaborative archive curates scholarly essays, bibliographies, rare documents, digital editions, and media related to Mailer’s career.
<span style="text-align:right;">→ [[Project Mailer:About|Read More]]</span></div>
</div>

==News==
{{PM Updates}}

{{SupportUs}}

Main Page

2025-10-10T00:59:29Z

Grlucas: Added Wilkes U archive link.

__NOTOC__
[[File:Projectmailer.png|700px|center]]

<div class="pm-site-intro">
== The Digital Humanities initiative of the Norman Mailer Society ==
{{Big|This website serves as a hub for the digital endeavors of the [[Norman Mailer Society]]. It features an overview of projects — both analog and digital — undertaken by the Society’s members that help to support and maintain the legacy of [[Norman Mailer]].

Project Mailer, created and maintained by [[Gerald R. Lucas]] houses {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} articles and {{NUMBEROFUSERS}} editors.}}
</div>

{{Liptons Ad}}

==Featured==
<div class="pm-box-grid">
<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Archive</div>
[https://archivepublic.wilkes.edu/repositories/2/resources/16 Wilkes University Norman Mailer Collection]: A significant digital archive of Mailer’s personal materials, mostly from the 1980s onward. See also [https://archivepublic.wilkes.edu/repositories/2/resources/110 J. Michael Lennon’s collection of Norman Mailer’s Publication Research, 1948-2024].</div>

<div class="pm-box-grid">
<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Project</div>
''[[Lipton’s Journal]]'': Mailer’s journal of self-analysis and personal growth he kept from December 1954 to March of 1955, edited by [[J. Michael Lennon]], [[Susan Mailer]], and [[Gerald R. Lucas]].</div>

<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Project</div>
''[[Norman Mailer: Works and Days]]'' by [[J. Michael Lennon]] and [[Donna Pedro Lennon]] and edited by [[Gerald R. Lucas]] contains almost 1400 cross-referenced entries, images, and many full-text articles.</div>

<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Journal</div>
''[[The Mailer Review]]'', the official journal of the Norman Mailer Society, publishes articles, notes, creative works, interviews, commentary, images, and book reviews relevant to the life and work of [[Norman Mailer]].</div>

<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Digital Book</div>
''[[The Structured Vision of Norman Mailer]]'' by [[Barry H. Leeds]] was published in 1969 and explores Norman Mailer’s major writing through the sixties. We present the full text of Leeds’ study in a new digital form.</div>

<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Project</div>
[[An American Dream Expanded|''An American Dream'' Expanded]] features [[Norman Mailer’s Letters on An American Dream, 1963–1969|letters]], full-text criticism, essays, a gallery, and more that contextualizes and expands study of ''[[An American Dream|AAD]]''.</div>

<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Collection</div>
This collection, assembled by [[J. Michael Lennon]], features full-text [[:Category:Full Text Introductory|introductions, prefaces, and forewords]] by [[Norman Mailer]], including those to the works of Jean Malaquais, Abbie Hoffman, Jack Henry Abbott, and others.</div>

<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Podcast</div>
Hosted by [[Justin Bozung]] and published twice monthly, [[Norman Mailer Society/Podcast|The Norman Mailer Society Podcast]] highlights the people and projects that promote the legacy of Norman Mailer.</div>

<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">WWW</div>
Visit the official web site of the [[Norman Mailer Society]] to [[Norman Mailer Society/Join|join]] the Society, read [[Norman Mailer Society/News|news]], and get all the current information about our annual conference.</div>
</div>

==About Us==
<div class="pm-box-grid pm-wide-grid">
<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Contributors</div>
Maintained by scholars and students alike, Project Mailer offers a living space for open-access research, experimentation, and conversation. We welcome contributions from all those interested in Mailer, 20th-century American literature, and the digital humanities.
<span style="text-align:right;">→ {{c|Contributors}} • {{c|Student Editors}}</span></div>

<div class="pm-box"><div class="pm-box-label">Get in Touch</div>
Want to contribute, ask a question, or suggest a new project? We’re always open to collaboration and feedback. Join the conversation and help us grow Project Mailer.
<span style="text-align:right;">→ {{nospam|editor|projectmailer.net}}</span></div>

<div class="pm-box pm-highlight"><div class="pm-box-label">About Project Mailer</div>
'''Project Mailer''' is a digital humanities initiative devoted to the life, works, and legacy of [[Norman Mailer]]. Sponsored by the [[The Norman Mailer Society]], this collaborative archive curates scholarly essays, bibliographies, rare documents, digital editions, and media related to Mailer’s career.
<span style="text-align:right;">→ [[Project Mailer:About|Read More]]</span></div>
</div>

==News==
{{PM Updates}}

{{SupportUs}}

Twelfth Round: An Interview with Norman Mailer

2025-09-27T14:55:00Z

Grlucas: Fix.

{{hatnote|This interview with Norman Mailer just before the publication of ''Ancient Evenings'' (his “big novel” ten years in the making and widely anticipated) was the cover story for the March-April, 1983, issue of ''Harvard Magazine''. I had published my first book entitled ''Acts of Regeneration'' in 1981 about Mailer’s work; based on that book, editor John Bethell (a kind and generous gentleman) gave me the assignment for his magazine. ~Robert Begiebing<ref>From {{cite book |last=Begiebing |first=Robert |date=2015 |title=The Territory Around Us: Collected Literary and Political Journalism, 1982-2015 |url= |location= |publisher=The Troy Book Makers |page= |isbn= |author-link= }} Reprinted by Project Mailer with permission of Robert Begiebing. ([[83.10]])</ref>}}
[[File:1983 Mailer and Begiebing.jpg|thumb|Robert Begiebing and Norman Mailer in the latter’s Brooklyn apartment, September 1982. Photo by Christopher Johnson.]]

{{byline|last=Begiebing|first=Robert J.}}

Ten years in the writing, ''Ancient Evenings'' will be published in May. For [[Norman Mailer]], who turned sixty in January, this new book marks an important transitional point. After more than a decade of nonfiction, a big novel — the first of a planned trilogy — brings Mailer back to the literary genre in which he made his name.

Pulitzer Prizes in 1969 and 1980 for ''Armies of the Night'' and ''The Executioner’s Song'' (not to mention additional awards for these and other books) have affirmed Mailer’s standing in contemporary American letters. His public posturing and activist politics have colored his reputation, but two dozen books, three films, a play, and countless articles bear witness to his energy and resourcefulness.

Born in Long Branch, New Jersey, in 1923, Mailer grew up in Brooklyn, graduated from Boys High School, and entered Harvard at sixteen. Although he took his degree with honors in engineering sciences, he was already bent on becoming a writer. In college his output had included more than thirty short stories and two unpublished novels and plays; “The Greatest Thing in the World,” written under Professor Robert Gorham Davis, had won ''Story Magazine''’s annual award.

Mailer was drafted in 1944. He ultimately served in the Philippines as a headquarters clerk and infantryman. Based on his war experience and published in 1948, his novel ''The Naked and the Dead'' made him suddenly famous at twenty-five. So began one of the most important, notorious, and mercurial careers in postwar American literature.

Mailer appears to date himself from that 1948 success. (Of an unpublished novel — set in an insane asylum — which he began at Harvard, he later said: “I do not know the young man who wrote this book. I do not like him very much.”) Indeed, it would be hard to imagine a more extreme personality shift. The amiable, bright Jewish boy from Brooklyn was to become the ranting, hallucinating, brawling “General Marijuana” of the ''Village Voice'' in the Fifties. The next decades would bring Mailer’s televised invective against the Vietnam War and General Westmoreland, his skirmishes with radical feminists, his wrangles with fellow authors Gore Vidal and William Styron. Thus embattled, the self-appointed Jeremiah got himself in trouble with his literary audience as well as the general public. But it was trouble Mailer wanted. He is nothing if not a disturber of bland uniformity, convention, and complacency — of what he sees as the “cancer,” the totalitarianism, the spiritual death of our times.

Yet Mailer today is a gray and courteous eminence. Meeting him — a stoutish, five-foot-eight man who looks at first glance as if he might be vacationing in safari suit from regular stints on “Wall Street Week” — one is taken aback. Can this be the bold excursionist who has struggled with the nature of existentialism, the unconscious, God, and the devil?

The conversation that follows suggests that the appearance does indeed deceive, perhaps as much as Mailer’s “media image.” It also offers fresh background on the first twenty-five years of Mailer’s life, and clues to his current work — about which Mailer has been reticent since the mid-Seventies, when he made his much-publicized million-dollar contract with Little, Brown to complete “a certain big novel.”

Talking with Mailer, one sees that the journalist, revolutionary, and holy fool are still alive in the man — but that other, and older, personae have returned. For his capacious personality now seems to accommodate the disciplined worker, the self-effacing novelist, and the scholar. There is even a wink from that earnest young man from Brooklyn who got good grades and went to Harvard to study engineering.

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'''You once said that you started writing at about seven — a long, 300-page story about a trip to Mars. Then you quit. You began again about the time you were at Harvard. If your high-school interests weren’t particularly literary, what were they?'''

I built model airplanes all through high school. I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer — that was my prevailing interest. The books I read in high school were certainly not literary. I wasn’t a literary man in any way. My idea of good writers was Jeffrey Farnol, Rafael Sabatini. My favorite book was probably ''Captain Blood''.

I’d assumed I’d go to MIT. The only reason I applied to Harvard was that my cousin had gone there. I thought, well, it might be nice. And then, I lived in a very simple part of Brooklyn. It wasn’t ethnic on the grand scale. You didn’t have to fight your way to the candy store — we didn’t have gangs. We were just quiet, middle-class kids. In those days there was so little traffic we used to play touch football and roller hockey in the streets. Just a quiet street with small, what the British call “semi-attached villas,” which meant ''real'' small, two-family homes. And small lawns in front, so small that when you were playing roller hockey, if you body-checked somebody hard they’d go flying across the sidewalk, and you had to go scrambling up a lawn that was banked. If that ever happened to you you’d come out with fire in your eyes and your skates full of dirt.

'''So street sports and engineering were your early interests?'''

Right. . . . very conventional. And in my senior year the girls would ask, “Where did you apply to college?” I’d say M.I.T. and it wouldn’t register at all. Then I’d say Harvard and they’d look at me, “Whew!” So I thought, well, there must be something wonderful about Harvard.

'''You’ve mentioned that rather than the summit of your experience, high school was not a good time. And you felt deprived for thirty years thereafter. Why?'''

I went to Boys High School in Brooklyn, which is very much a boys’ school. I was a year and a half younger than the average student. High school went by in a blur of work and doing one’s homework as quickly as possible and getting out in the street to play. And there was no high-school life as such. Later I began to realize that for many people high school was the prime experience of their lives. It was during the dating period and all that. In Brooklyn one went out with dates however one could. I felt straddled between my friends who were my age at home and were two years behind me at school. So I didn’t feel I belonged particularly in one life or another. I’d say high school was really the equivalent of college for somebody who was working at a job and going to night school, and was bitter afterwards because he felt he never had any college life.

'''You’ve never written about that stage of your life. Is it something you can’t deal with in writing?'''

I’ve always had the feeling that it doesn’t make much sense to write about something when you know that others can write about it at least as well as you can or maybe better. I never felt I had that much to say about my childhood that was so special it was worth recording. It may mean that writers do play games with themselves — it may mean there is something I’m concealing from myself. I find over and over again that I hide what I can write about because it’s risky to know that you can write about something. You can plunge into it before you’re ready to give it proper commitment. This sounds very odd to people who never write, to see the unconscious as a vast area where military campaigns go on. I think it’s the only metaphor that works because I discover over and over again that the unconscious will disclose to me what it chooses and when it chooses to. When I am working on a long book, for instance, I almost never have a thought about it when I’m not working. And I’ve come to recognize every year that it’s highly impractical to think about it because you can lose it. I happen to have one of those memories that’s virtually psychopathic in its half-life. I forget half of everything I think unless, in about four seconds, I write it down. It’s overspecialization for about thirty or forty years.

'''You were close to your parents? You felt no sense of needing to break away?'''
I didn’t have a problem trying to break away in the manner that so many writers do. I didn’t have to convince my parents that I should be a writer. It often takes up half a young writer’s energy. They were soon pleased that I wanted to be a writer. They loved reading my work, as only parents can.

'''How did you find being at Harvard? Did you feel like an outsider?'''

Harvard, I think at least in those days, had solved more delicate social situations than any institution that could call itself truly part of the establishment. For instance, my freshman year, I’d say that eighty percent of the people that I was close to were from the same background I was from — they were Jewish, middle class, from small towns, some were from the city. But we all grouped together very much as young black students would today. The difference being that it never occurred to us that we were in an incredibly subtle ghetto. Over the four years at Harvard I don’t think I ever felt it once.

Part of this was my innocence. But Myron Kaufmann was a classmate of mine; he wrote a marvelous novel called ''Remember Me to God'', and in it the young man is Jewish and he is acutely aware of every social discrimination. That passed blissfully over me. I had no idea at all that I really was very much a part of an out-group; in fact the word didn’t exist to me. I had the experience of sitting next to a young man who was dressed in a particular way. I might have sat next to him a whole year. We might have exchanged as much as three lines of conversation such as, “My God isn’t old so-and-so stuffy today?” There was that sense that there was this other world, but I think that part of the brilliance of the way Harvard solved that problem was not having fraternities. Fraternities really burn it into you just which little group you belong to because the fraternities all have their status. Everyone in college is aware of it. The Dekes are better than the Upsilons. You are acutely aware of where you belong in that scheme. If you don’t get into any fraternity, you’re down at the bottom — it breeds such misery.

At Harvard the opposite was done. A few people got into the clubs. Somehow after your first week at Harvard it was clear to you that certain people never get into clubs, and that you were one of them didn’t matter. There was a certain scorn for the clubs. Who’d be so sleazy as to get into a club and get three C’s and a D and all that? But we never thought of ourselves as being out of it. That was marvelous. That’s the way the establishment should work. Never got a chance socially speaking, and never ached once. That takes three centuries of careful elaboration of the study of people’s feelings.

'''Were you aware of anti-Semitism at Harvard?'''

No. I never felt it directly. The nearest example I could find — I couldn’t even say it was anti-Semitism. I remember I went up to Harvard wearing this jacket and pants I bought of my own assistance. My mother didn’t know a great deal about all this. . . . I bought a gold and brown jacket and had green and blue vertical striped pants and saddle shoes. I saw my faculty advisor in the engineering department. He was a crusty old man. He didn’t think too much of a lot of things, and he immediately told me that I should take a speech course. I said something about wanting to take German and he said, no, you don’t need it. And I remember getting just salty enough to say to him, “Well, sir, if I can pick up German in the course of a year or two, I don’t see why I can’t learn to speak English.” He was very aware that I came from Brooklyn. I’d say that was the strongest single example I can think of. If people were anti-Semitic at Harvard in those days, and I’m sure some were, they were incredibly well bred about it. I didn’t feel it was something that impinged on me. The way I felt it was only by comparing that comfortable, middle-class world I had been in — somehow I hadn’t taken enough things in, it just wasn’t a wide enough horizon. There was a tremendous amount to learn.

'''But it came to you at Harvard that there was an “establishment”? That’s a theme that comes up again and again in your work.'''

In the part of Brooklyn I came from . . . in the public school I went to, even at Boy’s High, there was no feeling at all of an establishment. But by the time I got to Harvard I had to realize that an establishment was immense, was subtle, did not have a face, you couldn’t even feel it particularly. The only way you were aware of it was that people were terribly serious about their education. And in Brooklyn I was always ashamed of being smart — somehow you weren’t manly if you were smart. At Harvard it was the other way around. You were ashamed because you were maybe not smart enough. There were always people who were more brilliant than you, and that was admired, vastly admired.

I have to separate the Harvard establishment from other establishments. I’m not sure that you shouldn’t have an establishment, that establishment isn’t necessary. The question is one of my obsessions, if we define obsession as a matter to which one always returns. And each time one returns to it with a different point of view about it. When we speak about something being obsessive it’s because we don’t end up with a fixed opinion. We could argue that certain obsessions are filled with hatred, but they are the exact opposite of what I’m saying — in such obsessions one always goes back to hate in the same way. I’m talking about the other kind of obsession, where one can’t make up one’s mind. I’ve pondered the question of an establishment all the time. Is it good? Is it bad? Should we have an establishment as such? After all, what you are talking about is the manipulation of people by other people. That’s the side which you have to question, the manipulation. Is it finally an absolute evil or a partial evil or a human necessity?

If we accept the idea of an establishment, then no question Harvard has the best establishment I’ve ever encountered, certainly better than the military establishment, better than the Washington establishment, better than the New York publishing establishment.

'''What teachers influenced you? You’ve mentioned Robert Gorham Davis in English A — you became a friend of sorts.'''

Yes, we’re friendly to this day. Theodore Morrison was another who had a certain influence. I remember Dr. [Henry A.] Murray in abnormal psychology. . . . for his geniality, for the charm he brought to a subject normally considered charmless. Robert Hillyer was kind of marvelous. I’m one of the few people who ever took four years of writing courses at Harvard. . . . Hillyer I remember for his exquisite manners. That was probably a crucial part of my education at that point. If you’re talking about shockers, the shock was simple. One grew up with rough and ready manners, and you just never measured people by their manners. You measured them by their athletic ability, their loyalties. You considered your parents and their evaluation of people by how much money they made, how good they were as providers. These measures were strong, crude, and serviceable.

At Harvard you ran into a spectrum of manners, and it was as if the manners were the morphology that revealed to you the social pattern behind. In other words, the degree to which one had social imagination, one could begin to conceive whole areas of society by the manners. That’s a lifework. After all, it takes a life to know how a third or a half or even a fraction of the country works, socially speaking. But through others’ manners you can imagine projections into what these people’s lives are really like. It enlivens literature. I think the rich appreciation of literature is difficult without having some sense of the style of the people who go through the books. In that sense the professors I tend to remember are not necessarily the ones I studied with, but the ones who had manners that were memorable. I never took a course with F.O. Matthiessen, but I heard him give a few lectures, and they were memorable because there was something in his manner that was tragic. He had one of the most grave and dignified manners.

'''How about students? Any friends that particularly influenced you?'''

Thirty or forty or fifty, but I think just to name them would distort the reality of it. We influenced each other a lot.

As I think of it, meeting Bowden Broadwater was an extraordinary experience. Because Bowden had more style than anyone I’d ever met. He dominated the Advocate, his personality. When I came on as a sophomore, I think he was then a junior or senior — he was Pegasus and he had high style. I remember when I read ''Brideshead Revisited'', I kept chuckling as I read it. It wasn’t that Bowden looked in any way like Sebastian Flyte or that we were close friends. On the contrary, we were on opposite sides. There were two factions.

'''Would you say that was the high point of your Harvard years?'''

Oh, yes. The ''Advocate'' was probably what I enjoyed most about Harvard. I think it comes through in the article I wrote for Esquire.

'''What was your worst experience at Harvard?'''

There wasn’t anything terribly onerous, nothing that makes me writhe with anger. There were a few silly experiences. Mostly my first year. Going up to Harvard, I managed to go over all the literature that was sent to us. Phillips Brooks House sent something that said when you get here, please drop in and visit us. Somehow I had the idea that the first thing you did when you got to Harvard, before you even went looking for your dorm, was to go to Phillips Brooks House. As I was driving up with my future roommate, Martin Lubin, and his father, I said when we get there, we’ve got to find Phillips Brooks House. We were looking at the map of the Yard, and I directed the car through traffic, and I went in with Marty. It was deserted, of course. It was Freshman Week, and a few juniors and seniors had come up to work, and there was one fellow there. He was a very tall senior and handsome — handsome as a Princeton man — literally smoking a pipe behind a desk, and he hadn’t seen anyone in two hours. I realized I had made an error. I remember looking at him and saying, “Well, we’re here.” It just changed his day. He had to come up out of whatever he was thinking about . . . probably something pleasant. The moment I said it, all I wanted to do was get out of there. Of course he was feeling he wasn’t doing his duty, so he was pulling us in and we were pulling away. Finally, we got out and I was perspiring behind my ears. So that was an embarrassment.

Once we were trying to get into the Old Howard. And they asked us how old we were. The others all said eighteen, and I, without thinking, said seventeen, and I was sixteen then. I thought I had to lie, so I said seventeen, and the guy said you can’t get in, you have to be eighteen. I said I’m eighteen, I’m eighteen! I’m a freshman at Harvard; you’ve got to be eighteen to be a freshman at Harvard. The guy looked at me at the door and said: “All right, kid, go in.” And so all through freshman year whenever I would be winning an argument with my roommates, they’d jump up and start waving their identity cards yelling: “I’m eighteen! You’ve got to be eighteen to go to Harvard!”
And probably the bitterest blow freshman year was going out for crew, and working and working at it and realizing at a certain point that far from not making the team, the coach never even looked at me. And I realized why. Someone took me aside and told me, look, you could be good but it wouldn’t matter, your arms are too short. You throw off the entire rest of the crew. That experience of working one’s manful best each day at those oars and never being looked at by the coach. . . .

As you see, I just don’t have memories of real unpleasantness. I doubt if there have been four less painful years of my life.

'''What happened that you went to Harvard an aspiring aeronautical engineer and came out heading for the Pacific and wanting to write the great American war novel?'''

I think really the main influence was English A, because we were given ''Studs Lonigan'' to read. And that turned me on my head because Studs Lonigan grew up in a much tougher environment than I did, but there was still a similarity. He talked the way my friends and I talked in Brooklyn. And I realized you could write about those kinds of experiences and that was almost endlessly exciting. Dos Passos, Hemingway, Fitzgerald I also read in my freshman year. By the time that year was over I wanted to be a writer. It just took another year before I was so certain I wanted to be a writer that I knew I’d never be an engineer.

There wasn’t anything in particular that was acting on you from outside, influencing you, changing you? It was a process of self-discovery?
Yes. That is not at all an unnatural development for writers. Certain books stimulate them and make them know that they want to become writers. I did take a course, now that I think of it, with Howard Mumford Jones in American literature that meant a lot. In fact, I still remember one of his phrases. He was talking about Dreiser. Howard Mumford Jones used to talk with great bombast, and I’m not deriding it. People use bombast, and it’s dreadful, but he made it great. He said, “You know Dreiser was a great writer, but when it came to style, he was abominable. His style reads like a streetcar wheel with one flat side. It goes KA-BLUNK, KA-BLUNK, KA-BLUNK.” He’d walk up and down the classroom doing that and we’d roar. But we’d be interested in Dreiser.

When I think of Harvard I don’t think of it really in terms of influences. I think of it more as a matter of nuances and moods and modes, as if everything were connected to everything else. There was a fine filigree to one’s stimulation. The art of it was you couldn’t trace it out afterwards. Harvard changed me profoundly, but I couldn’t say this was the reason or that was the reason. It was all of it.
And after you got out of Harvard?

I went into the Army nine months after I graduated. I think my draft card fell to the back of a file. There is no explanation for it because I should have been drafted after two months. And I didn’t go to the draft board to ask because I was working on a novel and kept hoping that I’d have that much more time to finish it.

'''You mean ''Transit to Narcissus''?'''

Yes. That got written in the nine months before I went into the Army. But then there were two years in the Army and that was a great change. And so was the success of ''The Naked and the Dead''. In effect I encountered three sizable shocks during the period from 1939 to 1949. In those ten years of my life I was transplanted three times. It was really not a shock of brutality or tragedy. There was nothing designedly cruel about it. It was the kind of shock that a plant would feel if lifted from one bed and put into another.

'''Are there things that you are aware of that happened to you that would help explain the dramatic change from your studious, disciplined boyhood self to what, starting in the early and mid-Fifties, is your infamous self, the “General Marijuana,” the renegade, the ranting critic of American institutions — that self?'''

We’re getting into questions now that I can’t answer short of writing a novel. To talk about it in an interview wouldn’t work. It would just be confessional. I think the change that took place around ’53, ’54, ’55 was so drastic and so thoroughgoing that we’d really have to pursue it to all the roots I have. Not only the biographical roots, but even, if you will, the karmic roots. I’m a great believer in karma. I do believe that we’re not here just one time, and I don’t have any highly organized theology behind that — it’s just a passing conviction that keeps returning. Karma tends to make more sense than a world conceived without it, because when you think of the incredible elaborations that go into any one human being, it does seem wasteful of the cosmos to send us out just once to learn all those things, and then molder forever in the weeds. It doesn’t make as much sense as the idea that we are part of some continual process that uses us over and over again, and indeed uses the universe over and over again. There is some sort of divine collaboration going on. So in that sense, since I believe in it and for me it’s psychologically true, it’s hard to give an explanation. But if I were to give one, the roots are also karmic. There are arguments that can’t be accounted for by one life.

'''Did the 1949–1950 screenwriter period produce shocks that caused change also?'''

We’re giving a picture here of someone who is not terribly adaptable. My father was a terribly fussy, punctilious man. A marvelous man. A lot more of a gentleman than his son turned out to be. I remember one point when he was unemployed during the Depression and looking for work. He went out every day wearing spats in the heart of the Depression. He had marvelous manners — he came from South Africa, was very English as only a South African can be. I think that probably some of his rigidity is in me. That’s why each of these occasions came as a great shock.

'''Hollywood must have made a pretty big impact, because you were writing ''Barbary Shore'' there and later ''The Deer Park'', and in those books your political vision seems to change. What was it about Hollywood?'''

Well, it wasn’t Hollywood as such. I’m not one of the champions of Los Angeles. It’s not a place I’d enjoy living that much. I suppose there are two recurring subjects in my life that just fascinate me over and over again. One of them is what we’ve already discussed, the establishment. The other is identity. And movies fascinate me inordinately because the question of identity is so vivid in them. Movie stars fascinate me. Their lives are so unlike anyone else’s. You could almost postulate they come from another planet. The way of life of the movie star speaks of another order of existence. The lack of connection between a movie star’s life and our lives is greater than the points of view we have in common.

'''Does that work into ''The Deer Park'' at all?'''

In ''The Deer Park'' I’m just beginning to contemplate the problem. Think of the character Lulu Meyers, the movie star. She’s my first attempt to deal with that question. Of course I go at it hammer and tongs with Marilyn Monroe. But my Egyptian novel is also a study of identity. You see, I think there have been periods in history when no one has contemplated the problem of identity. Because we weren’t necessarily far enough removed from the animals. We reacted to things that impinged upon us in the way a beast does. We fled, we attacked, we ate, we went to sleep. I think generations went by of that sort — and then there were periods where no question was more critical to anyone alive. Certainly in my early years at Harvard the question of my identity was paramount. The most interesting question to many of us in those days was, what do you really think of me. I remember once having a long talk with my roommate Marty Lubin, and I primed him — I wanted to come back with some fish. So I talked for about half an hour, analyzed his character in great detail. He listened, and when I got all done I said, “Marty, what do you think of me?” He paused and then he said, “Ah gee, Norm, you’re just a good guy.” At which point I was ready to throw him out the window from the fifth floor of Dunster.

'''Speaking of identity — do you think the notorious publicity, the ''People'' side, the ''Enquirer'' side of your identity has hurt the public and critical acceptance of your work?'''

Well, it certainly hasn’t done it any good. . . . I do believe that when people buy a hardcover book these days, to a slight extent it’s a sacramental act. Very often the price of the book is such that people are making a choice between that or getting something else. To be crude about it, between the book or getting the baby a pair of new shoes. So you have to respect the author. If the author is somehow unsavory — and I don’t see how anyone could run through People five times and not be wholly unsavory — then they may not buy your book. And there’s a crude notion that if you get a lot of publicity, you sell books. Nothing could be more untrue. The authors who sell well, that is the good authors who sell well, get very little personal publicity. We don’t read much about Saul Bellow, John Updike. We didn’t used to read much about John Cheever. . . . But my image can’t be changed. So I’ve just said the hell with it. I’ll go ahead and do what I want to do. I don’t think there is any way I could change that media point of view about me because of the mechanics of the media. When they run a story about somebody, they go to the clips. There’s no way I’m going to get those clips out of all the media organs.

'''Let’s talk about artistic identity. I see an apparent change toward more self-effacement in your writing, in narrative technique, in the last five years. Do you see a new maturity in your writing?'''

Maturity comes of its own accord. You don’t ever say to yourself, well, now I’m going to be more mature. You get older, so your point of view shifts and compromise takes on a bit more luster. A fixed point of view begins to seem harsh. The result is greater maturity in the writing. But I may well go back to writing in the first person. I don’t have any feeling about it as such. I just don’t like to be bored when I’m writing. I often think by now I have much in common with a dentist who’s been working for forty years. I’m sure he looks for a new way to make a hole in a tooth. Because otherwise he’d go mad.

'''It’s interesting that the two books that you got the Pulitzer Prize for, ''Armies'' and ''Executioner’s Song'', are two extremes — the presentation of the self on the one hand, and the reduction of self on the other. So the reaction has been positive to either side of your artistic identity.'''

Well, I think they are also two of the best books I’ve written. If I had five favorite books those would be two of them. I don’t think there was any larger point of view in the choice of those two. I think it just happened that ''Armies of the Night'' was a pretty good book, and it came along in a year when let’s say the Pulitzer Committee was sympathetic to that sort of book. ''The Executioner’s Song'', in its period, probably, well . . . that sentence finishes itself.

'''In Joseph Elroy’s writing class at Columbia, you were talking about ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' And you said that if there are any forces in the cosmos that “step in and give a writer a helping hand, I got it right there.” Do you find there are such moments of inspiration?'''

I can lay out a speculation for you.

'''All right, lay out a speculation.'''

If a god or a devil or some demiurge is looking for a writer or has need of one . . . or an angel or an ogre or whatever . . . if there’s anything up there or out there or down there that is looking for an agent to express its notion of things, then, of course, why wouldn’t they visit us in our sleep? Why wouldn’t we serve as a transmission belt? Just in the same sense, although this is gross, that a coach might look for a wide receiver who really has great speed of foot because he has designed some very long passes via a quarterback with a particularly powerful arm. So it might be that your own abilities would be one of the factors behind the ogre’s choice of you. That’s a ''possibility''. The only book I truly felt that on was ''Why Are We in Vietnam?''

'''Did it play any role in the Egyptian novel?'''

No, that was just hard work, every step of the way.

'''Do you have any desire at this point in your life to nurture another side of yourself?'''

If my eyes hold up, I think I would like to start reading seriously again. There have been years when I’ve had a great deal of eyestrain and I couldn’t read as much as I wanted to. And then there were years when I didn’t feel like reading. I was too unsettled to read. I think twenty years went by where I haven’t been reading as much as I’ve wanted to read.

'''Do you see any young writers coming up that you admire? Any who might take the place you’ve talked about so many times, and maybe at one time tried to fill yourself, as “the champ”?'''

I have a confession to make. In the course of not reading enough in the last twenty years, I’ve not read the young writers. I’ve read them hardly at all. I remember when I came along, I thought, oh boy, now I’ll be able to talk to Hemingway and Dos Passos, Farrell, all the writers I care about. They’ll read my book and we’ll be able to talk about it. My dreams will be realized. But I never met Dos Passos or Hemingway. I met Farrell once for lunch. I never met J. P. Marquand or Steinbeck. I sent Hemingway ''The Deer Park'' but it came back marked “Addressee unknown.” I always felt he gave it to somebody at the post office to stamp it that way and send it back. It seemed to me that would be his sense of humor. At any rate I corresponded with Hemingway ten years after ''The Naked and the Dead'' came out.

At the time I was shocked that older authors didn’t read younger authors. And I didn’t understand it. I was furious. And I’m sure young authors feel that way now. You know: Why doesn’t Mailer read me? I grew up reading him and he influenced me in part and he owes it to me to read me. Why doesn’t he? The reason is simple. I know now why they weren’t reading me, and I know that because I don’t read the young authors. One gets locked into one’s own continuing concerns. I haven’t used any prize-fighting images up till now, so I guess I had better use one. Whether you’re fighting for a championship or not, you’re fighting a fifteen-round fight. And by the time you reach your sixties, you feel as if you’re in the twelfth round and you’re battered. I don’t say this self-pityingly — you’re just not as good as you used to be in an awful lot of ways. . . . And your powers to protect yourself from distraction are much smaller. You really have to concentrate on those last few rounds. And so there’s much less loose generosity in you. . . . You tend to isolate yourself because the odds that a young writer would come along and write something that can teach you something is not likely, although it might delight you, and you might say, gee, what talent. . . .

I’ve seen young writers that I think are good, some are damn good, and there seems to be more and more felicity all the time. And technique gets more and more elaborated. But I can’t think offhand of any young writers who are philosophically disturbing at this point.

'''Czeslaw Milosz, in ''Bells in Winter'', writes about poetic inspiration as if the poet were a living room with its doors wide open, visitors come and go — all he can hope for is that the visitors are forces of good rather than evil.'''

I think to the degree that you dare the prevailing winds you set yourself up for some incredible gusts.

It may be that part of remaining a writer is to learn how to expose yourself less and less over the years and ring yourself around more and more with various protections. The price of that, of course, is that inspiration enters the door much less often. But at the same time you can carry out your projects. It seems to me that if there is any lesson I can draw from my working, it is that it has taken me close to forty years to learn to write long books. ''The Naked and the Dead'' came early and that was to a certain extent a gift. I was a simple young man and I didn’t understand the difficulties. If I had known the difficulties, I wouldn’t have gotten into it. It would have taken me ten years.

'''You said in 1981 that things are sinister but not in the way you used to think they were sinister. What did you mean by that?'''

In the Sixties I used to see it as the FBI, the CIA being sinister. I had a sort of paranoid vision of the invisible government. Now I suppose it has moved over to the idea that such things as television and plastics are probably doing us much more harm, and getting us much closer to totalitarianism than the FBI or the CIA ever would.

'''What’s the force behind that?'''

Well, there you get into dreamland, don’t you? I sometimes think that there is a malign force loose in the universe that is the social equivalent of cancer, and it’s plastic. It infiltrates everything. It’s metastasis. It gets into every single pore of productive life. I mean there won’t be anything that isn’t made of plastic before long. They’ll be paving the roads with plastic before they’re done. Our bodies, our skeletons, will be replaced with plastic. It’s some absolute vanity. It’s human vanity that I might assume is devil inspired, but it doesn’t have to be. It could come right out of man. . . .

On the one hand we, all of us, consciously or unconsciously, contain an adoration of the universe. We also have this great animus toward the universe. It’s larger than we are and that’s intolerable to us. The ego, or the twentieth-century manifestation of it, flames up in us. We have to do something to that universe. We have to ''score'' it. We have to literally score on it, and plastic is a wonderful way to do that because we create something that the universe can’t digest. We literally make those carbon chains, these protein chains, that are put together in a way that they just won’t break down — “non-biodegradable” — that marvelous little new word.

'''The artifacts of this civilization will go on forever.'''

They’ll go on forever, some of us hope and some of us don’t hope. But those who do are capturing the world. You say, well, where does it all come from? What’s the origin of it? And then, of course, one’s past philosophy runs out in outer speculation. . . .

But I do think that plastic tends to deaden people. It deadens their nerve ends. And when the nerve ends are dead, the mind is much more susceptible to manipulation. Because, finally, the senses are always our objective correction against having our minds manipulated too far in a direction that’s not natural.

'''So plastic becomes an effect as well as a cause?'''

Well, put it this way. If you wanted to convince someone of something that would be very hard for him to swallow, wouldn’t it be a good idea to half anesthetize him first? And plastic does that. It just deadens us. Now we get it from infancy on. I think one of the reasons cocaine is so widespread now is that people’s nerve endings are so deadened they need something to absolutely jack up those nerve ends. So that’s one thing. And of course television is another. It’s as if a great dragon called entropy has come into aesthetics. And television is the final reduction of all art into fifteen-minute slugs of pap. The natural tendency of television is to reduce all entertainment to the level of a commercial. When the commercial is as interesting as the television, then you’ve got perfect television. . . .

'''Robert Frost once said there was something immodest in a man who believes that he is about to go down — or that we are about to go down — before the worst forces ever marshalled against us in the universe. In your work the point seems to be that we may very well be going down before just such forces.'''

Well, I never said Robert Frost was going to approve of me.

'''But do you think we may be at such a crisis?'''

I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks that. An awful lot of people are worried. . . . The world is now going through an apocalyptic time — I think the Eighties are going to be an incredible decade, with more surrealistic, fantastic, incredible change even than in the Sixties. . . . There are certain signs that we are in a period that’s not like other periods. One of them, and I think this is incredible, is that in the last twenty years or certainly in the last ten years, we’ve come to a point in this country where people no longer believe the president knows the answers. I think part of Regan’s vast popularity in the media is because he’s probably the most relaxed president we’ve had since Lord knows when. Maybe there was never a president as relaxed as Ronald Regan. So people feel, well, he seems secure. Maybe he does know the answers. You know there’s nothing more disconcerting to the average American than the thought that the president doesn’t know the answers, doesn’t really know where we’re going.

'''Maybe that’s why he is so relaxed, because he knows he doesn’t know.'''

That could well be. Maybe you’ve come up with the first explanation of Ronald Regan. That makes sense. It makes him rather a nice man. There is this humility before the imponderables that is a mark of grace.

'''Let’s turn to the work you’ve been doing recently — your Egyptian novel, ''Ancient Evenings''. Do you feel good about the completed work at this point? You announced the book as early as 1972, in ''Existential Errands'', so it’s been a long, probably difficult road.'''

If I say I feel good about it, it’s like saying my child is wonderful. It’s not seemly. I will say it’s the most ambitious book I’ve ever worked on. It’s by far the most unusual work I’ve done, and it’s out of category. I can’t think of any other novel that’s remotely like it. . . . My hope is that it’s very good indeed. But how good I don’t have a clue. I think when it comes out it will be the usual story. I hope it will get some wonderful reviews, and I’m sure it will get some terrible reviews.

If I were an unknown author, the book could be read a little more easily. But the trouble is everybody is going to be reading it and saying, “How the devil does Norman Mailer get himself up to start writing about Egyptian pharaohs? I mean that’s really going too far.” But it has nothing to do with the fact that that’s my name. I’m an author. I have a right to imagine a work, and to write a work of the imagination. If I had any name but my own, people could read the book without too much suffering.

'''If it is indeed good in the artistic sense, maybe it would not have been published. It’s not a blockbuster, a bestseller sort of book.'''

I certainly think it’s good enough that no matter who had written it, it would have been published. And I think it’s good enough that no matter who had written it, it would have received attention. Because if you spend ten years writing a book it should be good. Spending ten years on a book is like being married to someone for ten years. You wouldn’t want to say at the end of those ten years that half of the time was worthless.

'''There were a lot of expectations, and at times earlier on you seemed to feed those expectations — that this would be your masterpiece. If that was ever the goal, did the process of writing the book change the goal?'''

Well, it deepened. It started as an excursion into Egypt. I was going to dip into Egypt for a chapter or two, then get out, move on to Greece and Rome, then the Middle Ages. I was thinking a sort of picaresque novel. That was in the first half year of working on it. But I began to realize at the end of that half year that I was in Egypt for the long haul. So I started studying, and I’ve learned about ancient Egypt these ten years.

'''Was there any fear of the risk? You’ve used the word risk yourself several times.'''

Well, there is always fear in writing a book. If I had tried to write the book in a year, the fear would have been so great it couldn’t have been written. But over ten years, you can carry the fear. ''Writing'' a book is the fear. That’s why there are many more people who can write well than who do.

And there are other reasons for it. Some people can’t take the meanness of the occupation. There’s nothing very attractive about going into a room by yourself every day and looking at a piece of paper and making scratch marks on it. Doing that day after day, year after year, decade after decade, is punishing through the very monotony of the physical process. . . . Just the act of writing as a physical act is less interesting than painting. I never feel sorry for painters. I feel sorry for writers.

Obviously the emoluments of a profession and the spiritual satisfactions are quite different from the mean daily details of the work. In that mean sense, writing is not a comfortable or attractive profession day to day. Then you add to it the fear. There is always fear in writing. Most people take pride in the fears they can endure. It’s obvious that you can’t be a professional writer for as many years as I have been without taking a certain pride that I can endure those fears. I would say that writing is like all occupations that have some real element of risk. You really don’t want to write a book in which you’re not taking on some risk . . . especially a long book. You can write a book quickly in two months, six months, or a year in which the risks are minimal. But to do a long book, you would want to take risks. Why not? How dignify it if large risks aren’t being taken? And I will say that I’ve taken more risks with the Egyptian novel than any book I’ve ever written. It’s the most, dare I say it, audacious of the books I’ve done.

'''You’ve said all we can ever know is whether we have worked as hard as we can. Do you believe you’ve done that on this book?'''

Yes. I think I’ve used up every bit of inspiration I’ve had on this book. If the book is not good enough, then I’m not good enough. I feel that kind of peace about it.

'''Did it take you places you have never been before. Creating new ideas?'''

Yes. It also gave me an understanding of certain things. I think people are going to be immensely confused by the book. They are going to say, why did Mailer write it? What is he saying that means something to him? The man we know. What is in this?

Well, I think I’ve come to an understanding of the wealthy I’ve never had before, dealing with Egypt, its gold, and its pharaohs. . . . There’s that marvelous remark of Fitzgerald’s that the rich are not like you and me, and Hemingway’s answer, which was much applauded, but which I’ve always thought churlish, you know, yeah, they have more money, and everybody roars like crazy. The fact of the matter is that Fitzgerald was trying to say something, and Hemingway was trying to keep him from saying it. The very rich are not like you and me. Just as movie stars are not like you and me. In fact the very rich and movie stars have much in common. They no longer have a trustworthy relation to the society around them. In the most umbilical sense, they can’t trust anyone.

'''That’s a good partial answer to my next question. Why Egypt? You’ve mentioned elsewhere that the beginning of scientific technique is a perversion of primitive magic, and you’ve also said that we went astray when we separated ourselves from “the dire discipline of magic,” which might enable us to communicate with the cosmos. Is Egypt your subject because it represents a turning point from primitive dread, from magic, toward technology and the abuses of technology?'''

I don’t know enough about history to be able to answer that, and I don’t know if that’s the point. I don’t have a clue. Egypt was one of the places — I think it was definitely one of the places where magic was being converted into social equivalence, in effect used as an exchange.

'''That’s what interested you, at least in part?'''

What interested me was that I made one assumption that certain people will argue with and others will find natural. The assumption is that the Egyptians had minds that are easily as complex and interesting as our minds. They had an intellectual discipline that was highly unscientific from our point of view. But I suspect no farther off the mark than ours. Now these are assumptions. So the book has an immense preoccupation with magic as such. I tend to end up writing the best novel on subjects no other good writer has ever written about. I can name a number of subjects that I’ve written the best work on, where there’s no competition, a subject no other writer would tackle. For instance, I’d say I’ve written the best biography of a movie star that’s ever been written — ''Marilyn''. Again there’s no competition. I’ve written the best book about a heavyweight prize fighter that’s ever been written, ''The Fight''. Again, no competition. Now I think I’ve written the best novel about magic that’s ever been written. But where are the others who have been writing about it? I don’t know of a serious writer who’s devoted himself to writing about magic. I mean, Aleister Crowley has written a novel about magic. Dion Fortune has written about magic. Other people have written magical novels, but they are not writers who are highly regarded. But I will say once again, that I’ve taken a field — I’m a bully — where there’s no competition.

'''Are you writing about the rich? What we know of Egypt is mostly the testament of the rich, isn’t it?'''

Yes. Of course, that’s always your problem. There are very few characters in the novel who are not well born. Most of them are nobles of the highest rank.

'''Do you think that these people whom you are writing about, that in some way God’s will was not kept from them? That they had a sense of what God’s will was? Unlike as you’ve said, we may have lost touch with whatever God’s will might be?'''

One has to keep reminding oneself that this is before the Judeo-Christian era. We’re dealing with pagans. The pagan mind is fascinating, but I found while I was writing the book that when I went through it I had to keep making certain that there wasn’t a single Judeo-Christian idea in it. Actually I think the Egyptians had a tremendous influence over the Hebrews. Much of the Old Testament you find in Egyptian prayers. Some of it’s startling. The early pages of Genesis, the first page of Genesis could be taken from certain prayers to Ammon and the ways in which he created the universe.

'''Is it safe to look at Hebrew culture as a competing minor culture at the time?'''
It wasn’t even quite a minor culture at the time. They were still a race of tribes and barbarians. They weren’t taken seriously. Not at this period. Later they were. This is 1100 B.C. In fact, Moses appears in my book for about a page. He’s seen as some sort of guerrilla who kills some Egyptian guards, and takes the Hebrews to a certain town with him across the desert to escape. The idea is to immerse yourself in another point of view when you are writing. Because when you do a lot of things come to you.

'''You said you wished nothing in the book to be contemporary. In what sense is there a connection between ancient Egypt and today? In other words, what’s in it for modern readers?'''

Well, I’ve failed if we start reading the book that way. And I think that’s going to be one of the difficulties for people, because most historical novels perform a service or pretend to teach us something about today. And I will have failed if that’s the way people react to my book.

'''The attraction then is not that there is a connection — the attraction is the lack of connection?'''

The lack of connection. I want people to realize, my God, there are wholly different points of view that can be as interesting as our own. In other words, probably a social evening in Egypt — and this is one of the reasons I ended up calling the book ''Ancient Evenings'' — in that period three thousand years ago was as interesting as an evening in New York today. Not more interesting, necessarily, but as interesting . . . for altogether different reasons.

'''Not much happens in the sense of action, I believe you’ve said, in the sense of a typical wide-canvas, panoramic, historical novel.'''

Well, no, a lot does happen, but it doesn’t happen immediately. The book certainly has the most complete architecture of any book I’ve written. It’s in seven parts. Each of its parts, I would say, has a separate existence. The book continues from part to part, most definitely. But the nature of the book discloses itself part by part. When you’ve read part one and part two, you won’t have any clue at all what part six and seven are going to be like. It’s as if the book moves in a spiral.

'''You’ve said you’re planning a trilogy. Will the other books be ten year projects?'''

My hope is to do the next two books in three or four years each. If they each take ten years, I’d be celebrating my eightieth birthday.

'''My last question — people criticize you for presenting your existence, your life, your work, in a way that seems you want other people to believe as you do or be like you or live like you. How do you respond to that criticism?'''

I think I’m truly misunderstood there. I’m right and I’m wrong so often, so many times of the day, that I have no interest in having people think the way I think. What I’m interested in is that however people think they get better at it. That’s what’s important about one’s work. In the work of good authors, if a book is good enough, you cannot predict how people are going to react to it. You shouldn’t be able to. If it’s good enough, it means it’s not manipulative. If it’s not manipulative, everybody sort of goes off in a different direction. One of my favorite remarks is that it’s not that I’m for the cops and not that I’m for the crooks, but that I’m for the cops getting better and the crooks getting better. I have a notion of society as an oven where some fabulous dishes are being cooked, and in order for the banquet to take place, every ingredient has to be in it.

I don’t think it’s an accident that I’m a novelist. Novelists have a wicked point of view — wicked as opposed to evil. They are interested in upping the ante. They’re interested in more happening, not less. One of the reasons that I detest television is that it reduces our possibilities. Television was welcomed as something that would help us understand the world. But I think, quite the contrary, it takes away from us any possibility of ever comprehending the world because it deadens our senses and because it gives us false notions, periodically, systematically, and intensively.

'''So presenting your ideas with force is a way of saying these are my beliefs and this is my life and they are meant to stimulate you into whatever it is that will be your ideas and your life.'''

Yes. Once Ralph Ellison and I were out in Iowa together many years ago, back in 1959, and we worked like crazy. We had a lively audience, and the symposium went on for three or four days, for Esquire. At the end of it, it suddenly seemed a little absurd to me that we really worked that hard, got in so many arguments with students, talked back and forth, and even argued with each other as lively as hell. But when it was over, there was a little bit of sadness that something that had been truly exceptional was over. So I said to him, “Why the hell did we do it?” He said, “Ah, shit, man, we’re expendable.” I’ve always loved that remark. Because in a certain sense one’s ideas are expendable. If the best of my ideas succeed in changing the mind of someone who’s more intelligent than myself, then that’s fine. I’m a great believer in the idea that if you advance an idea as far as you can and it’s overtaken by someone who argues the opposite of you, in effect you’ve improved your enemy’s mind. Then someone will come along on your side who will take your enemy’s improvement of your idea and convert it back again. I’m nothing if not a believer in the dialectic. And to that extent one does the best one can. And that’s the end of it. The thought of everyone thinking the way I do is as bad as any other form of totalitarianism.

==Citation==
{{Reflist}}

[[Category:Archive]]
[[Category:Full Text Interviews]]

Template:PM Updates

2025-09-19T13:32:53Z

Grlucas: Update.

* '''{{date|2025-09-19|ISO}}''': ''Project Mailer'' has a new server, so loading times should be greatly shortened. If you encounter issues, please reach out to {{nospam|editor|projectmailer.net}}.
* '''{{date|2025-04|ISO}}''': {{c|Spring_2025|Graduate students}} of [[Gerald R. Lucas]] are remediating volumes 4 and 5 of ''[[The Mailer Review]]''.
* '''{{date|2022-12-16|ISO}}''': Wikimedia 1.39.0 update.
* '''{{date|2022-12-01|ISO}}''': The Society now has its own dedicated web site: <code>[https://normanmailersociety.org/ normanmailersociety.org]</code>. Check it out and consider subscribing for exclusive content.
* '''{{date|2021-05-25|ISO}}''': ''[[Lipton’s Journal]]'' has been posted in its entirety. Check out our newest Digital Humanities project: fully searchable, browsable, and annotated.
* '''{{date|2021-02-15|ISO}}''': New entry posted: [[79.35a]].
* '''{{date|2021-01-18|ISO}}''': New entries posted: [[92.11a]], [[92.11b]], and [[92.11c]].
* '''{{date|2020-10-20|ISO}}''': The entirety of ''{{MR}}'' [[The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008|volume two]] has been posted.
* '''{{date|2020-08-20|ISO}}''': The table of contents has been posted for ''{{MR}}'', [[The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019|Volume 13, 2019]].
* '''{{date|2020-08-23|ISO}}''': New entries: [[71.30a]] and [[04.17]].
* '''{{date|2020-06-02|ISO}}''': New entries: [[00.12a]], [[03.16a]], [[04.3a]], [[04.4a]], [[04.4b]], [[04.7a]], [[05.1b]], [[05.1c]], [[05.11a]], [[06.8a]], and [[07.34a]].
* '''{{date|2020-05-31|ISO}}''': New entries: [[91.47b]], [[92.2a]], [[95.30a]], [[96.5a]], [[97.23d]], [[98.14b]], [[98.15a]], and [[99.2b]].
* '''{{date|2020-05-30|ISO}}''': New entries posted: [[72.3a]], [[72.3b]], [[78.2a]], [[78.3a]], [[79.3a]], [[79.4a]], [[79.33a]], [[80.4a]], [[83.6a]], [[83.10a]], [[84.3a]], [[84.27b]], [[87.10a]], [[88.9a]], [[89.0]], and [[89.1a]].
* '''{{date|2020-05-25|ISO}}''': New entries posted: [[58.4a]], [[61.21b]], [[61.21c]], [[63.27a]], [[67.9a]], [[68.3c]], [[71.30b]], [[00.4a]], and [[00.7a]].
* '''11/09/19''': Reposted Mike Lennon’s essay “[[Why Mailer Matters]].”
* '''11/07/19''': Help us with our work on Wikipedia. Now posted: [[w:User:Grlucas/WikiProject Mailer|WikiProject Mailer]].
* '''09/01/19''': Posted the prologue, “[[The Riptides of Fame: June 1948]],” from Mike Lennon’s ''[[Norman Mailer: A Double Life]].”
* '''08/01/19''': The table of contents for [[The Mailer Review, Volume 11, 2017|''The Mailer Review'' volume 11]] has been posted. Volume 11 should be shipping in a matter of days.
* '''07/28/19''': Added the [[Norman Mailer Society/Podcast|Norman Mailer Society Podcast]] page and created archive. New episodes coming soon.
* '''05/29/19''': Posted [[Andrew M. Gordon]]’s “[[Mailer’s Use of Wilhelm Reich]]” from ''MR'', volume 10. Also began the rudimentary designs of [[Lipton’s Journal]].
* '''05/27/19''': Posted [[Victor Peppard]]’s article: “[[The Curious Story of Norman Mailer’s Engagement with Short Fiction]]”; and [[Enid Stubin]]’s {{"-}}[[“Don’t Go Away Feeling Unequal”: “The Time of Her Time” and Mailer’s Conciliatory Impulse|‘Don’t Go Away Feeling Unequal’: ‘The Time of Her Time’ and Mailer’s Conciliatory Impulse]].” Both from ''MR'', volume 10.
* '''05/26/19''': Posted [[Kate Mailer]]’s keynote from 2015: “[[People Who Look Alike Are Alike]].”
* '''05/25/19''': Posted “[[Family Colloquium]]”; “[[An American Tragedy and The Executioner’s Song: Receptions and Controversies|''An American Tragedy'' and ''The Executioner’s Song'': Receptions and Controversies]]”; and “[[Teaching Controversy: Mailer in the College Classroom]]” all from ''MR'', vol. 8.
* '''05/24/19''': New {{tl|byline}} template.
* '''05/23/19''': New addition to ''{{MR}}'': {{NM}}’s “[[The Hazards and Sources of Writing]]” from [[The Mailer Review, Volume 3, 2009|volume 3]].
* '''05/22/19''': ''[[The Mailer Review]]'' has finally been moved to PM, to its new home, and additional posts are being added all the time, like [[Gerald R. Lucas]]’ “[[Norman Mailer and the Novel 2.0]]” from [[The Mailer Review, Volume 5, 2011|volume 5]].
* '''05/04/19''': The final part of the ''[[NM:WD|Works and Days]]'' [[Cultural Backgrounds|Cultural Backgrounds bibliography]] has been posted.
* '''04/29/19''': Moving the web site for the [[Norman Mailer Society]]. [https://twitter.com/normanmailersoc Let us know what you think].
* '''04/27/19''': Middle Georgia State University recognizes the efforts of graduate student editors in their work on [[An American Dream Expanded|''AAD'' Expanded]]. See “[https://inside.mga.edu/mga-graduate-students-publish-digital-humanities-project-about-norman-mailer/ MGA Graduate Students Publish Digital Humanities Project About Norman Mailer].”
* '''04/26/19''': Major steps have been taken toward the completion of [[An American Dream Expanded|''AAD'' Expanded]]. The complete text of J. Michael Lennon’s [[Norman Mailer’s Letters on An American Dream, 1963–1969|''Norman Mailer’s Letters on ''An American Dream'', 1963–1969'']] has been posted as well as some articles, gallery, and full-text essays. See the [[An American Dream Expanded/Credits|project credits]] for more.
* '''04/20/19''': [[The Time of His Time: A Celebration of the Life of Norman Mailer|Carnegie Hall Memorial]] tributes are now posted.
* '''04/14/19''': Added four new full-text introductions from Mailer, see [[70.7]], [[81.10]], [[04.4]], and [[08.2]].
* '''04/11/19''': Development of [[An American Dream Expanded|''An American Dream'' Expanded]] continues.
* '''03/20/19''': Added [[Index of Names]] to ''[[NMWD|Works]]''.
* '''03/16/19''': All entries of ''[[NMWD|Works]]'' have been posted. Beginning on the [[Index of Names]].
* '''03/12/19''': ''[[NMWD|Works]]'' has been posted through the 1990s, including some full-text additions, like [[Christopher Busa]]’s [[Interview with Norman Mailer|1999 interview]].
* '''03/09/19''': ''[[Norman Mailer: Works and Days|Works]]'' has been posted through the 1980s, including some full-text additions.
* '''03/08/19''': [[Frank D. McConnell]]’s chapter “[[Norman Mailer and the Cutting Edge of Style]]” from his 1977 study ''Four Postwar American Novelists: Bellow, Mailer, Barth, and Pynchon'' has been posted.

71.12

2025-05-02T10:40:45Z

Grlucas: Fixed typo.

{{WDside}}
“Mailer Tells Harper’s—Me, Too.” Article by Barbara Trecker. ''New York Post'', 6 March, 3. In the wake of Willie Morris’s resignation triggered by the publication of “The Prisoner of Sex” ([[71.10]]), [[Norman Mailer|Mailer]] says he won’t write for ''Harper’s'' in the future (which he hasn’t). He praises Morris’s “extraordinary courage.” See [[71.11]], [[71.13]], [[71.21]].

{{1960s|state=collapsed}}
{{1970s|state=expanded}}
{{1980s|state=collapsed}}

[[Category:Works]]
[[Category:Works in the 1970s]]
[[Category:Works in 1971]]
[[Category:Articles]]

Talk:The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010

2025-04-29T21:26:07Z

Grlucas: Updated.

===Article Assignments, Vol. 4===
You will need to request an article and user name for {{PM}}. You may click the link to your article below to begin your edits. Status indicators: {{tick}} = complete (ready for final edits and banner removal); {{yellow tick}} = in process; {{cross}} = not started.

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="width: 100%;"
|-
! Author !! Article !! Editor !! Status
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| Mailer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Postscript to the Fourth Advertisement for Myself|Postscript to the Fourth Advertisement for Myself]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Mailer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway Revisited|Hemingway Revisited]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Lennon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway to Mailer — A Delayed Response to The Deer Park|Hemingway to Mailer]] || [[User:Hobbitonya]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hemingway || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman, Ernest, and Greg|Norman, Ernest, and Greg]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Begiebing || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Ernest and Norman: A Dialogue in Two Acts|Ernest and Norman]] || [[User:DSánchez]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Bufithis & Curnutt || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway|A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway]] || [[User:Grlucas]] [[User:DBond007]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Meredith || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/The American Civil War in The Naked and the Dead and Across the River and Into the Trees|The American Civil War]] || [[User:KaraCroissant]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Shuman || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman vs. Ernest: Influence and Identity|Norman vs. Ernest]] || [[User:APKnight25]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Lowenburg || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hooking Off the Jab: Norman Mailer, Ernest Hemingway and Boxing|Hooking Off the Jab]] || [[User:ASpeed]] [[User:DBond007]]|| {{tick}}
|-
| Cirino || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer's The Fight: Hemingway, Bullfighting, and the Lovely Metaphysics of Boxing|Norman Mailer's ''The Fight'']] || [[User:TWietstruk]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Boddy || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing|Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing]] || [[User:JBrown]] || {{yellow tick}}
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The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer's The Fight: Hemingway, Bullfighting, and the Lovely Metaphysics of Boxing

2025-04-29T20:52:21Z

Grlucas: Fixed title.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>Norman Mailer's ''The Fight'': Hemingway, Bullfighting, and the Lovely Metaphysics of Boxing }}
{{MR04}} 
{{byline|last=Cirino|first=Mark|abstract=Although Norman Mailer’s ''[[The Fight]]'' is ostensibly reportage about the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman championship heavyweight boxing match, we learn more about Mailer and his aesthetic and artistic values than we do about either fighter. One of Mailer’s methods for capturing his Zaire experience is to employ Ernest Hemingway as a ghostly father figure, a ''doppelgänger'', both an inspiration and a nagging reminder of his own inadequacies. An intertextual analysis of these two writers demonstrates the way Mailer uses boxing to offer his inflection of Hemingway’s twentieth-century themes. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr04cir }}
{{dc|dc=A|lthough Norman Mailer’s ''The Fight'' is ostensibly reportage}} about the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman championship heavyweight boxing match in Zaire on 30 October 1974, we learn more about Mailer and his aesthetic and artistic values than we do about either fighter. We also learn far more than Mailer’s thoughts on boxing; we glean a broader metaphysical and philosophic notion of action and danger, and the writer’s own role in recording it in prose. One of Mailer’s methods for capturing his Zaire experience is to employ Ernest Hemingway as a ghostly father figure, a ''doppelgänger'', both an inspiration and a nagging reminder of his own inadequacies. Hemingway, whose suicide was thirteen years before the fight, is still active in Mailer’s text, who was enjoying a consciously Hemingwayesque project in Africa.

In Chuck Klosterman’s recent assessment of Norman Mailer as a boxing writer, he writes that “there is nothing metaphysical about getting punched in the face.”{{sfn|Klosterman|2008|p=56}} This assertion suggests that Klosterman either has never been punched in the face or was concentrating on the wrong sensation when he was. Mailer and Hemingway represent the boxing ring and the bullfighting arena as possessing such metaphysical possibilities that they invite us to appreciate each of their values in human behavior and the qualities they demand their artists to possess. In ''The Fight'', Mailer’s conspicuous comparisons of boxing to bullfighting, Hemingway, and to art further invite{{pg|123|124}} comparison to Hemingway’s earlier texts. In all instances, we see Mailer and Hemingway with their incisive, intellectual evocations of men of thought (that is, Ali, and any quintessential Hemingway Hero, such as Robert Jordan in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' or his short story alter ego Nick Adams) in moments of peak activity. So, if Klosterman limits the transcendence of boxing simply to “primordial reality” and the “base qualities of being alive,”{{sfn|Klosterman|2008|p=56}} he sharply diverges from Mailer and Hemingway, who find in the maelstrom of a boxing match or the murderous possibilities of a bullring, life’s truest, most elevated and aesthetic moments. “Every wound,” Mailer observes in ''The Fight'', “has its own revelation,”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=214}} both promising the importance of chronicling the defeated and the damaged and signaling his own fascination and debt to the warriors and athletes and even artists of the Hemingway canon. While Mailer may be overly epigrammatic, this aphorism accurately synopsizes the “wound theory” of criticism that defined (and later encumbered) Hemingway Studies for decades.

To Hemingway, boxing might have been important for more complex reasons than many readers ever understood. A celebrated example of this tension offers a useful illustration. The sordid history behind F. Scott Fitzgerald’s revisions to Hemingway’s short story “Fifty Grand” is relevant not as a salacious biographical anecdote or to provide retrospective textual minutiae. Instead, this conflict’s enduring controversy is itself the issue, one that reveals a major facet of Hemingway’s approach to character, and the larger importance of boxing to Hemingway and writers that would follow, primarily Mailer.

“Fifty Grand,” included in Hemingway’s second volume of short stories, ''Men Without Women'' (1927), was inspired by the anecdote with which the typescript draft begins:
{{quote|Up at the gym over the Garden one time somebody says to Jack, “Say Jack how did you happen to beat Leonard anyway?” And Jack says, “Well, you see Benny’s an awful smart boxer. All the time he’s in there he’s thinking and all the time he’s thinking I was hitting him.”{{sfn|Beegel|1988|p=15}} }}

Lillian Ross reports Hemingway re-telling the story in 1950, about a quarter-century later: {{" '}}One time I asked Jack, speaking of a fight with Benny Leonard,’ ‘How did you handle Benny so easy, Jack?’ ‘Ernie,’ he said, ‘Benny {{pg|124|125}} is an awfully smart boxer. All the time he’s boxing, he’s thinking. All the time he was thinking, I was hitting him.’ Hemingway gave a hoarse laugh, as though he had heard the story for the first time. . . . He laughed again. ‘All the time he was thinking, I was hitting him.{{' "}}{{sfn|Ross|1961|p=64}} Ross implies surprise that this stale anecdote is so alive for Hemingway, standing in for the readers who may not have appreciated its importance. In his obnoxious essay “The Art of the Short Story,” written in 1959 and unpublished in his lifetime, Hemingway recollects of “Fifty Grand”: “This story originally started like this: {{" '}}How did you handle Benny so easy, Jack?’ Soldier asked him. ‘Benny’s an awful smart boxer,’ Jack said. ‘All the time he’s in there, he’s thinking. All the time he’s thinking, I was hitting him.{{' "}}{{sfn|Ross|1961|p=88}} These examples demonstrate that his acquiescence to Fitzgerald’s editorial judgment in 1927 haunted him for three-and-a-half decades, literally until his death.{{efn|Elsewhere, Hemingway remarks on the intelligence of fighters just as he evaluates their physical skill: in 1922, Hemingway describes Battling Siki, the challenger to Georges Carpentier, “siki tough slowthinker but mauling style may puzzle carp” {{harvnb|Reynolds|1989|p=73}}). In his early journalism, Hemingway reports that, “Jack Dempsey has an imposing list of knockouts over bums and tramps, who were nothing but big slow-moving, slow-thinking set ups for him” ({{harvnb|Reynolds|1998|p=192}}). Indeed, the payoff of “Fifty Grand”—when Jack Brennan double crosses the double crossers—comes when Jack says, “It’s funny how fast you can think when it means that much money” ({{harvnb|Hemingway|2003|p=249}}). }}

Fitzgerald’s objection to Hemingway opening the short story with the boxing anecdote was like his misgivings about the original beginning of ''The Sun Also Rises'', what he perceived to be Hemingway’s “tendency to envelope or...to ''embalm'' in mere wordiness an anecdote or joke.”{{sfn|Fitzgerald|1995|p=142}} As Susan Beegel notes in her discussion of Hemingway’s impulse to include the anecdote, “Thinking takes time, and boxing is a sport in which speed is of the essence.”{{sfn|Beegel|1988|p=15}} Beegel’s point must be extended: life, at times, is a sport in which speed is of the essence, particularly if it is to be lived to its fullest. As we see in Mailer—think of ''The Naked and the Dead'' and certainly ''The Fight''—Hemingway placed all his characters in situations in which a quick, strategic, pragmatic response is more appropriate than contemplation and conceptualization, despite the characters’ natural inclinations to indulge their memories, imaginative speculation, and ruminations. Muhammad Ali, after all, is no mindless slugger; he is portrayed as a genius, a scientist, an artist, or a “brain fighter,” in the champ’s own words. More than a boxer, Mailer considers Ali “the first psychologist of the body,”{{sfn|Mailer|1971|p=23}} suggesting that his power is in his mind, as opposed to the brute force, the rage, and the animalistic approach of Foreman and Joe Frazier.

But why did Hemingway’s remorse over deferring to Fitzgerald’s suggestions for “Fifty Grand” fester for the rest of his life? After all, what does one paragraph matter? In “The Art of the Short Story,” Hemingway recounts his version of the circumstances behind the editorial change, and his regret over excising “that lovely revelation of the metaphysics of boxing.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1981a|p=89}} {{pg|125|126}}
Hemingway’s essay taunts Fitzgerald for not appreciating that Hemingway was “trying to explain to him how a truly great boxer like Jack Britton functioned.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1981a|p=89}} The manuscript of “Fifty Grand” betrays Hemingway’s bitterness: on it, he scrawled, “1st 3 pages mutilated by Scott Fitzgerald.”{{sfn|Burwell|1996|p=148}} How can one writer—particularly an established one, which by 1927 Hemingway was—blame a colleague for ruining his own text? This irrational grudge must have endured so persistently because Hemingway disobeyed his instincts as a writer, ironically behaving with the same lack of intuitive trust as the excerpt negatively portrays Benny Leonard. Hemingway obeyed Fitzgerald to great success with ''The Sun Also Rises'', did so again the following year with “Fifty Grand,” and, by 1929, responded to Fitzgerald’s criticisms of A Farewell to Arms with “Kiss my ass.”{{sfn|Reynolds|1976|p=78}}

Fitzgerald and others have misconstrued aspects of Hemingway’s objectives, which Mailer grasped intuitively and intellectually. The central thrust to Hemingway’s literary project was to dramatize the compromised functioning of thought as the modern consciousness is incorporated into the violent activities of the twentieth-century man of action. Hemingway’s portrayal of thinking during war takes this idea to the extreme. In Hemingway’s introduction to ''Men at War'', the anthology of war writing he edited, he writes, “Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination. Learning to suspend your imagination and live completely in the very second of the present minute with no before and no after is the greatest gift a soldier can acquire. It, naturally, is the opposite of all those gifts a writer should have.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1942|p=xxiv}} Hemingway’s articulation of this conflict is a revelation: he is disclosing the tension that defines his work, the internal struggle between a man of action and a man of thought. Hemingway is distinguishing between the curse of Ishmael and the curse of Stubb in ''Moby-Dick'': Ishmael cannot turn the thinking off; for him, the sea and meditation are inextricable, even when he is on the night watch; Ahab’s eleventh commandment, on the other hand, is: do not think.

This dichotomy is always in play in the Hemingway text, and sometimes baldly explicit. Early in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', for example, Robert Jordan coaxes himself, “Turn off the thinking now...You’re a bridge-blower now. Not a thinker,”{{sfn|Hemingway|1940|p=17}} just as he later disingenuously asserts, “My mind is in suspension until we win the war.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1940|p=245}} In a 1938 letter to Maxwell Perkins,{{pg|126|127}} Hemingway blames his depressed mood on the rigors of living in a Spanish war zone while simultaneously trying to write his stories of the Spanish Civil War: “If I sound bitter or gloomy throw it out. It’s that it takes one kind of training and frame of mind to do what I’ve been doing and another to write prose.”{{sfn|Bruccoli|1996|p=253}} Ultimately, Hemingway’s contribution to the psychological novel, and to literary Modernism’s conception of mind, is his depiction of how a human being thinks during episodes of great stress, including matadors, boxers, and soldiers, as well as those haunted by their memories of those experiences.

For the purposes of Mailer’s and Hemingway’s intertextuality, boxing and bullfighting are virtually synonymous. Each sport affords the spectator an opportunity to witness violence in a largely—but not completely—sanitized outlet. ''In The Sun Also Rises'', a novel that essentially introduced the bullfight to mainstream American consciousness, boxing and bullfighting are explicitly compared. In addition to the scapegoat Robert Cohn’s dubious (but eventually demonstrable) boxing background, Jake Barnes and his friend Bill Gorton attend the Ledoux-Kid Francis fight in Paris less than a week before their excursion to the Pamplona bullfights. Later, during the ''desencajonada'', or unloading of the bulls, however, Jake constructs the simile of bullfighting to boxing. He tells Brett Ashley, “Look how he knows how to use his horns...He’s got a left and right just like a boxer.” As Brett confirms, “I saw him shift from his left to his right horn.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926|p=144}} The two activities are clearly appealing to Hemingway: one man, by himself, confronting his own limits as he encounters an attacker with his skill, knowledge, courage, and mind control. Both activities are ritual performances, yet both flirt with the possibility of death, danger, crippling injury, as well as murder.

In Mailer, similarly, the allure of boxing seems to be the formalized structure of a violent situation as an attenuated restatement of war experience. Mailer has suggested as much, saying that boxing presents “a way for a violent man to begin to comprehend that living in a classic situation—in other words, living within certain limitations rather than expressing oneself uncontrollably is a way to live that he didn’t have before.”{{sfn|Mailer|Mailer|2006|p=185}} Mailer’s articulation is anticipated by Jake Barnes himself, who explains the process to Brett so that the bullfight “became more something that was going on with a definite end, and less of a spectacle with unexplained horrors”;{{sfn|Mailer|Mailer|2006|p=171}} in other words, the difference between bullfighting/boxing and war. Just as Mailer differentiates between a championship boxing match between {{pg|127|128}} professionals and a street fight, Hemingway distinguishes between a properly sanctioned bullfight and an amateur bullfight: “The amateur bullfight is as unorganized as a riot and all results are uncertain, bulls or men may be killed; it is all chance and the temper of the populace. The formal bullfight is a commercial spectacle built on the planned and ordered death of the bull and that is its end,”{{sfn|Hemingway|1932|p=372}} If the Marquis of Queensbury rules codify violence in boxing and allow it to transcend a back-alley brawl, Hemingway and Mailer are always conscious of this spectrum of violence and its relative level of chaos.

To Mailer and Hemingway, the men who prevail within this organized violence transcend athletic excellence and attain the status of aesthetic and artistic exemplars. Mailer begins ''The Fight'' by describing Ali as “our most beautiful man,”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=3}} just as Jake says that bullfighting prodigy Pedro Romero is the “best-looking boy I have ever seen.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=167}} {{efn|After Ali’s victory, {{harvtxt|Mailer|1975|p=212}} suggests that “Maybe he never appeared more handsome.”}} Ali was thirty-two when the Rumble in the Jungle took place; Romero is no more than twenty. Mailer was fifty-one in Zaire; Hemingway turned twenty-six in the summer of 1925, when ''The Sun Also Rises'' was composed. If Ali and Romero serve as embodiments of male beauty, Hemingway also uses Romero as a counterbalance to the malaise that had infected the “lost” members of the post-war generation. When Robert Cohn laments, “my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it,” Jake responds, “Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1932|p=18}} Fitzgerald texts like ''The Great Gatsby'' impute an additional intensity of experience to the wealthy; Hemingway ascribes this same quality to the courageous activity of bullfighters. Boxing is precisely the same. In the extended set-piece of the Ledoux-Francis fight that Hemingway sketched in the first draft of SAR, the characters remark on the fight and Ledoux in a way that previews their same awe of bullfighters. Bill Gorton tells Jake, “By God Ledoux is great.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1972|p=233}} and asks, “Why don’t they have guys like that in my business (that is, writing)?”{{sfn|Hemingway|1972|p=233}} Bill later deflects a compliment by telling Jake, “I’m not such a good man as Ledoux.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1972|p=234}} In the same way, the bullfighter Maera, whom Hemingway kills off in Chapter XIV of ''In Our Time'', is declared by Nick Adams to be “the greatest man he’d ever known,”{{sfn|Hemingway|1972|p=237}} Between Maera and James Joyce, Hemingway wrote Ezra Pound in 1924, there is “absolutely no comparison in art...Maera by a mile.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1981b|p=119}} Boxing and bullfighters emerge in these texts as ideals, both masculine and artistic.

The artistic component of the allure of these sports is Mailer’s explicit{{pg|128|129}} reason for attending the Rumble in the Jungle. When Mailer attributes Foreman’s reference to himself in the third person as equivalent to the “schizophrenia” that “great artists” possess,{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=56}} it echoes Hemingway’s Romero who “talked about his work as something altogether apart from himself.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926|p=178}} For Mailer, though, the real artist is of course not Foreman, but Ali. “If ever a fighter,” Mailer writes, “had been able to demonstrate that boxing was a twentieth century art, it must be Ali.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=162}} Hemingway writes in ''Death in the Afternoon'' that the only trait separating bull-fighting from its inclusion as one of the major arts is its impermanence. In ''The Dangerous Summer'', Hemingway pointedly compares bullfighting to art: “A bullfighter can never see the work of art that he is making. He has no chance to correct it as a painter or writer has. He cannot hear it as a musician can All the time, he is making his work of art he knows that he must keep within the limits of his skill and the knowledge of the animal.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1985|p=198}}{{efn|Earlier in The Dangerous Summer, Luis Miguel Dominguín is also compared to an artist: “He had the complete and respectful concentration on his work which marks all great artists” ({{harvnb|Hemingway|1985|p=106}}). }} Whether Hemingway is posturing in an intentionally provocative way or not—he surely enjoyed presenting himself as the only novelist who would prefer to be Maera killing a bull than Joyce writing ''Ulysses''—it is sufficient to note that in his career-long characterizations of bullfighters, he saw artistry and exemplary conduct when they excelled during their performances, and displayed high and noble aims in their approaches to their work. The crucial way that bullfighting is instructive to a reading of ''The Fight'' emerges when Mailer captures Ali’s demeanor in the ring and the strategy he uses to dismantle and ultimately defeat Foreman. This exalted strategy is two-fold: in the first round, Ali relies on the enormously dangerous right-hand leads to score against Foreman. The audacity of this means of attack is captured in italicized awe in ''The Fight''. It is not a right, but a ''right''. “Right-hand leads!” Mailer exults, “My God!”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=180}} He explains the technicality that leading with the right “is the most difficult and dangerous punch. Difficult to deliver and dangerous to oneself.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=179}} Hemingway makes the same observation in Romero’s code of performance, which is that he has “the old thing, the holding of his purity of line through the maximum of exposure.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926|p=172}} Ali might have danced his way to victory against Foreman, but he did not. He deftly took on the punishment of a much stronger man, and attacked in a way that would leave himself vulnerable, all in the hopes of sapping Foreman’s power. These are the qualities which Hemingway and Mailer extol.

In rounds two through five, Ali uses the infamous rope-a-dope, which absorbs punishment as Foreman punches himself out, using the great{{pg|129|130}} champion’s strength against himself. The parallel between Ali’s strategy and the matador’s gambit is evident. Hemingway quotes the bullfighter El Gallo as shunning exercises that would increase his strength: “What do I want with strength, man? The bull weighs half a ton. Should I take exercises for strength to match him? Let the bull have the strength.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1932|p=21}} As this remark suggests, rather than the simple-minded machismo that Hemingway is too frequently reputed to value, the virtue of the effective matador comes in mastering the fear that will inevitably arise when a man encounters a beast that dwarfs him. The successful matador must control his thoughts and emotions and rely on his skill and knowledge to subdue his opponent. Ali faces something precisely equivalent in Zaire. During a training sequence in ''When We Were Kings'', Ali yells out, “He’s the bull. I’m the matador,” clearly deferring to Foreman the trait of power and aggressiveness, and assuming for himself the wit, the knowledge, and the artistry needed to prevail.

Mailer’s hagiography of Ali, then, becomes the more vital when we go beyond his admiration for the fighter to recognize why this admiration was so profound. Ali’s preparation for the Foreman fight (in the 234-page Vintage edition of ''The Fight'', the opening bell to the knockout is confined to pages 177–210; thus, in a book called ''The Fight'', only fourteen percent of the book chronicles the fight{{efn|Mailer’s pacing might have been a model for '' When We Were Kings'', an 89-minute film of which the fight itself spans 7:14, or about 8%.}} follows El Gallo’s logical yet somewhat counter-intuitive training procedure. Mailer reports that Ali confesses, “Foreman can hit harder than me.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=16}} During the uninspired sparring session that opens ''The Fight'', Ali’s strategy is presaged. Since he knows he cannot compete with Foreman’s strength, Ali contrives to use Foreman’s strength against him. Mailer chronicles this strategy meticulously, writing of Ali that “part of his art was to reduce the force of each blow he received to the head and then fraction it further.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=4}} Art? An art to getting hit in the face? If so, it is coupled by fractioning, a melding of the art of war and the sweet science of boxing. Ali consciously courts the same dichotomy that Mailer proposes. Skipping rope in his training quarters, he barks out, “I’m a brain fighter. I’m scientific. I’m artistic.”{{sfn|Gast|1996}} The marriage of art and science continues when Mailer describes “the second half of the art of getting hit was to learn the trajectories with which punches glanced off your glove and still hit you.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=5}} If the study of trajectories is associated with physics, Ali the artist is associated with dance and writing and theatre. This almost suicidal strategy—unappreciated, Mailer suggests, by lesser minds like sportswriters and fight critics—recalls the “calculus” with which {{pg|130|131}} Hemingway claimed he wrote ''Across the River and Into the Trees'', destined for dismissal by ignorant critics. Mailer is unapologetic about twinning art and boxing: he references Joyce’s ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'', Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch,” ''Moby-Dick'', and even Hemingway’s ''A Farewell to Arms'', reaching to masterpieces of art and literature to evoke athletic performance.

Mailer extends this articulation to propose that Ali has a physiological understanding of receiving violence that is almost hair-trigger in its fineness. “It was a study,” he writes, “to watch Ali take punches.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=5}} Mailer sees Ali “teaching his nervous system to transmit shock faster than other men could”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=4}} and possessing the ability to “assimilate punches faster than other fighters,” as Ali “could literally transmit the shock through more parts of his body or direct it to its best path.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=5}} After watching a Foreman training session, Mailer concluded, “it seemed certain that if Ali wished to win, he would have to take more punishment than ever before in his career.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=53}} As Mailer mentions during his commentary in ''When We Were Kings'', “It was as if he wanted to train his body to receive these messages of punishment.”

Just as Ali is positioned as an artist, a craftsman, and a scientist, Mailer describes him in the same way that Hemingway describes matadors. During the first round of the fight, after Ali has tagged Foreman with a scoring punch, Foreman “charged in rage,”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=178}} a raging bull whose strength must be absorbed, reallocated, frustrated, and then eliminated by the more intelligent foe. After another exchange, in fact, “Foreman responded like a bull. He roared forward. A dangerous bull. His gloves were out like horns.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|pp=178–79}} Even the collection of declarative sentences, uncluttered by punctuation marks, recalls the way Hemingway captures Romero’s style in the ring. After Ali’s strategy of absorbing punches against the ropes emerges, Mailer writes that Foreman “had the pensive expression of a steer being dogged to the ground by a cowboy,”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=184}} continuing the juxtaposition of Ali’s savvy with Foreman’s depiction as an animal, a beast of the same variety that charges mindlessly and dies inevitably in Pamplona. A brilliant depiction of Ali using his facial expression to deceive Foreman furthers the comparison: Ali, against the ropes, is
{{quote|now banishing Foreman’s head with the turn of a matador sending away a bull after five fine passes were made, and once when he seemed to hesitate just a little too long, something stirred in}} {{pg|131|132}} {{quote|George-like that across-the-arena knowledge of a bull when it is ready at last to gore the matador rather than the cloth, and like a member of a cuadrilla, somebody in Ali’s corner screamed, “Careful! Careful! Careful”!{{sfn|Mailer|1975|pp=196–97}} }}
Is this comparison self-indulgent? How many American readers would find a description of Ali’s defensive strategy in any way clarified by an esoteric gesture towards a bullfight? This link only makes sense in the context of Mailer’s incessant negotiation with the specter of Ernest Hemingway, shadowing him during his journey through Zaire.

Hemingway is introduced into the narrative when Mailer arrives in an unappealing Kinshasa with a stomach ailment, and immediately name drops Joseph Conrad and Ernest Hemingway: Conrad for his iconic depiction of the Congo, and Hemingway, about whom Mailer wonders, “Was it part of Hemingway’s genius that he could travel with healthy insides?”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=22}} ignoring the overwhelming catalogue of incidents and accidents that Hemingway suffered during his lifetime of travels. When Mailer hears the mighty roar of a lion, he begins a reverie: “To be eaten by a lion on the banks of the Congo— who could fail to notice that it was Hemingway’s own lion waiting down these years for the flesh of Ernest until an appropriate substitute had at last arrived?”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=92}} If the sound of the lion causes Mailer to fancy a lofty reenactment of Francis Macomber’s paranoia, or Mary’s quest for the lion in ''Under Kilimanjaro'', he does well to confess that the joke is on him: Zaire has a zoo. In Mailer’s description of a drunken balancing act on a balcony outside his hotel room, he speculates on the possibility of dying in this way. “What could be worse than accidental suicide?” he asks rhetorically. “A reverberation of Hemingway’s end shivered its echo.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=123}} These three examples indeed position Mailer as an “appropriate substitute” for Hemingway, both in his ambitious writing project in Africa, his encounters with the beasts of the jungle, and the courting of his own death, with Hemingway’s 1961 suicide still hovering over Mailer’s behavior, his thoughts, and his writing.

But Mailer is not through. When he puts forth Ali’s quandary once the fight is under his control, that he must choose between a victory by either a lethargic decision or the flourish of a spectacular knockout, he is compared to “a torero after a great faena who must still face the drear potential of a protracted inept and disappointing kill,” while Foreman remains “a bull.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=200}} In the sixth round, by which time the bout’s fate is foretold, Ali sizes {{pg|132|133}} up Foreman “the way a bullfighter lines up a bull before going in over the horns for the kill...a fair conclusion was that the bull still had an access of strength too great for the kill.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=202}} In a sequence where Mailer would make dozens of comparisons, frantically seeking metaphorical images to convey the magnitude of the scene, his clinging to bullfighting imagery is striking thematically and strategically, even if the image might only resonate with a specialist, with himself, or with a fellow aficionado of ''Death in the Afternoon''.{{efn|Cf. {{harvtxt|Mailer|1975|p=495}}: “I used to compare the bed to the bullfight, sometimes seeing myself as the matador and sometimes as the bull.”}} When Mailer compares Foreman’s clumsiness to “a street fighter at the end of a long rumble,”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=204}} the reader does not require any special base of knowledge to access the comparison.

The dynamic set up between Foreman and Ali leads to the rope-a-dope strategy that is ultimately Foreman’s undoing and proof of Ali’s ingenuity. Parodying his own proclivity towards “Germanic formulation,” Mailer teases that he might characterize this approach as “the modal transposition from Active to Passive.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=221}} The serious point about Ali’s strategy, though, is that he did not overpower Foreman (because he could not), and did not even use superior skill. He outsmarted him, outclassed him. Ali kills ''recibiendo''. His technique is the boxing equivalent of the bullfighter’s choice to kill by receiving the bull, to allow the bull’s aggression to work against itself by charging into the sword, rather than attacking the animal. Just as Ali’s technique is legendary, both Mailer and Hemingway have extolled the ''recibiendo'' style as, on several levels, the most sublime way to kill a bull.

Not many Americans understood the importance of ''recibiendo'' before 1926, when Hemingway turned the technique into an objective correlative for courage, the grace-under-pressure ideal that has become threadbare in recent discussions of Hemingway’s texts. In the final bullfight before the end of the festival of San Fermin, Romero’s performance is captured: {{quote|The bull watched him. Romero spoke to the bull and tapped one of his feet. The bull charged and Romero waited for the charge, the muleta held low, sighting along the blade, his feet firm. Then without taking a step forward, he became one with the bull...{{sfn|Hemingway|1926|p=224}} }}

In ''Death in the Afternoon'', Hemingway defines ''Recibir'', “to kill the bull from in front awaiting his charge without moving the feet once the charge has started.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1932|p=442}} This definition is nearly a precise restatement of Romero’s{{pg|133|134}} triumph in ''The Sun Also Rises'', his feet firm, waiting for the charge. Hemingway refers to ''recibiendo'' as the most “difficult, dangerous and emotional way to kill bulls.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1985|p=442}} In ''The Dangerous Summer'', Hemingway refers to the technique as “the oldest and the most dangerous and the most beautiful” manner of killing.{{sfn|Hemingway|1985|p=202}} By employing the ''recibiendo'' technique, Antonio Ordóñez in ''The Dangerous Summer'' and Pedro Romero in ''The Sun Also Rises'' impress their observers and impress the writers recording their accomplishments.

Mailer shares Hemingway’s fascination with a matador killing ''recibiendo''. His miniaturized version of ''Death in the Afternoon'', published in 1967, called simply ''The Bullfight'',{{efn|Mailer’s introductory remarks in that text are titled: “Footnote to ''Death in the Afternoon''.”}} describes this classic style of killing with a sense of awe, and is worth quoting at length: {{quote|The bull charged prematurely, and Amado, determined to get the kill, did not skip away but held ground, received the charge, stood there with the sword, turned the bull’s head with the muleta, and the bull impaled himself on the point of the torero’s blade which went right into the proper space between the shoulders, and the bull ran right up on it into his death, took several steps to the side, gave a toss of his head at heaven, and fell. Amado had killed ''recibiendo''. He had killed standing still, receiving the bull while the bull charged. No one had seen that in years.{{sfn|Mailer|1967}} }}

By leaning back against the ropes and inciting Foreman’s charge, Ali displays the same bravado, courage, and panache in dominating his opponent as these matadors who Mailer and Hemingway laud with such emotion.{{efn|One of the ways Mailer praises Ali in ''When We Were Kings'' is by saying, “What a classic performance,” suggesting the classic style of defeating an opponent that parallels a heroic matador.}}

Mailer and Hemingway mimic the matadors they lionize in two significant ways. For Hemingway, the ''corto y derecho'' style of bullfighting that he describes in “The Undefeated,” another story from ''Men Without Women'', is so closely associated with his own “short and straight” writing style that the reference is almost transparently self-referential and was so already by its publication in 1927. In the same way that Jake’s attention to Romero is revelatory of what he values in a man, Hemingway’s own characterization of Romero is crucial for what Hemingway values in art. When Romero’s performance is summarized as “not brilliant bull-fighting...only perfect bull-fighting,”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926|p=221}} and that Romero’s style contained “no tricks and no {{pg|134|135}} mystifications,”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926|p=223}} Hemingway is separating his own novel from modern masterpieces of the previous few years like ''Ulysses'' or ''The Great Gatsby'' or ''Mrs. Dalloway'' and even anticipating the experimentation of ''The Sound and the Fury'', which would come a few years later.

Just as Hemingway mimics Romero’s clarity, classicism, and linearity in prose,{{efn|The first draft of ''The Sun Also Rises'' originally began in medias res, beginning in Spain, then flashing back to Paris. The change to linearity transcends a narratological decision to achieve thematic importance. For the essential study of ''The Sun Also Rises''’s composition and its implications, see {{harvtxt|Svoboda|1983}}.}} Mailer links the passes of his narrative, endeavoring to reach a narrative climax just as the fight reaches its dramatic climax in the eighth round. Unlike Hemingway, who did not cling to figurative language in a conspicuous quest to have the reader understand perfectly a situation which he might not have ever seen before, Mailer’s sequence of comparisons rises to the task as the most memorable writerly performance in his account of the “Rumble in the Jungle.”

A few years earlier, Mailer warned his readers that “Sooner or later, fight metaphors, like fight managers, go sentimental. They go military.”{{sfn|Mailer|1971|p=66}} True to his word, the first similes of the eighth round follow such a trope: Ali chooses his shots “as if he had a reserve of good punches... like a soldier in a siege who counts his bullets.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=206}} Some of the exchanges at the beginning of round eight recall the “great bombardment” of the fifth,{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=207}} which Mailer calls one of the greatest in the history of boxing, with a “shelling reminiscent of artillery battles in World War I.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=195}} While Mailer may caution us of the glibness of comparing boxing to warfare, he gleefully perpetuates the absurdity; he well knows that three minutes of getting punched by a man—even by George Foreman—is nothing like a world war, but he willingly adopts the parlance and conventions of boxing writing.

Towards the end of the seventh round, Mailer uses scenery-chewing similes to control the pace of the narrative, the better to convey Foreman’s mighty fatigue: {{quote|Foreman was fighting as slowly as a worn-out fighter in the Golden Gloves, slow as a man walking up a hill of pillows, slow as he would have looked if their first round had been rerun in slow motion, that was no slower than Foreman was fighting now...he was reminiscent...of a linebacker coiling around a runner with his hands and arms in the slow-motion replay...{{sfn|Mailer|1975|pp=204–05}} }} {{pg|135|136}}
And no slower than Mailer is narrating now. In this sequence of three similes, the first and third compare a slow fighter to a slow fighter. To say that Foreman, a tired professional fighter, looks as tired as a tired amateur fighter, is patently ridiculous. Furthermore, to state that he is as slow as a slow-motion version of himself, or a slow-motion version of someone else is not a helpful comparison; it is not vivid and inventive writing. The second simile is brilliant, and would be the only one needed, if the first and third did not aid in establishing the pacing of the moment in the fight.

Directly before the eighth round, Ali’s eyes, by contrast to Foreman’s torpor, are “quick as the eyes, indeed, of a squirrel,”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=206}} demonstrating the energy, vivacity and speed that has been sapped from Foreman. During the round, Mailer’s similes are telling; they evoke the spectator’s enthusiasm, the witness’s thrill of the final sequence of the fight. Foreman’s legs become “like a horse high-stepping along a road full of rocks”;{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=206}} he bounces off the ropes and pursues Ali “like a man chasing a cat”;{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=206}} he waves his gloves at Ali “like an infant six feet tall waving its uncoordinated battle arm.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=207}} When Ali delivers the ''coup de grâce'', “Foreman’s arms flew out to the side like a man with a parachute jumping out of a plane.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=208}} How does he fall? “He went over like a six-foot, sixty-year-old butler who has just heard tragic news.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=208}} Foreman transforms from a six-foot infant to a six-foot sexagenarian manservant in two minutes. And, finally, Mailer compares a knocked-out fighter to “a drunk hoping to get out of bed to go to work,”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=208}} an unfortunately predictable association.

All of these similes are Mailer’s own flourishes, the passes that he links together, striving to express his enthusiasm and awe, seeking to get the reader more intimately involved with the experience, culminating with one final comparison, not of Ali or of Foreman, but of his own reaction: our narrator was “like a dim parent who realizes suddenly his child is indeed and indubitably married.”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=209}} The figurative rope-a-dope that Mailer employs is unlike Hemingway’s description of the bullfight, but identical in that the scene he is attempting to capture must be described according to the terms of the action being rendered.

Where does ''The Fight'' ultimately belong in Norman Mailer’s life’s work? Is it a self-aggrandizing study of a sport, the nuances of which only a select few appreciate or care about? Is ''The Fight'' Mailer’s ''Death in the Afternoon''— the disquisition on bullfighting Hemingway wrote as a young man—or more precisely his ''The Dangerous Summer'', Hemingway’s revisitation of the{{pg|136|137}} bullfights at the end of his career? Is it Mailer’s ''A Moveable Feast'', a version of his memoirs? Does it equate to the two books Hemingway devoted to African safaris? A combination of all of these? ''The Fight'', ultimately, illuminates the reader of the way Mailer views violence, writing, and Hemingway himself, which positions it as a supplementary text to virtually every other major Mailer effort. With Hemingway and bullfighting as constant presences in ''The Fight'', these intertextual questions yield results that allow Mailer’s project to transcend journalism, or sports writing, to become a key text to determining his restatement of Hemingway’s classic twentieth-century themes.

===Notes===
{{Notelist}}

===Citations===
{{Reflist|15em}}

===Works Cited===
{{refbegin|indent=1|20em}}
*{{Cite book| author-last=Beegel | author-first=Susan F. |title=Hemingway’s Craft of Omission: Four Manuscript Examples |location=Ann Arbor, MI |publisher=UMI Research Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |date=1988 |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book| author-last= Bruccoli |author-first= Matthew J. |date= 1996 |title=The Only Thing That Counts: Ernest Hemingway-Maxwell Perkins Correspondence |location=New York |publisher=Scribner |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book |author-last=Burwell |author-first=Rose Marie |title=Hemingway: The Postwar Years and the Posthumous Novels |location=Cambridge, UK |publisher=Cambridge UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |date=1996 |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book |last=Fitzgerald |first=F. Scott |title=A Life in Letters |editor-first=Matthew J. |editor-last=Bruccoli |location=New York |publisher=Touchstone |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |date=1995 |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite AV media |last=Gast |first=Leon |title=When We Were Kings |date=1996 |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Film |url=https://youtu.be/svhnasgxpqs?si=SF1viC9Lbcs401BG |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite magazine |last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |title=The Art of the Short Story |magazine=Paris Review |date=Spring 1981a|pages=85-102 |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |authormask=1 |title=The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigía Edition |location=New York |publisher=Scribner’s |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |date=2003 |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book|last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |authormask=1 |title=The Dangerous Summer |date=1985 |location=New York |publisher=Scribner’s |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book|last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |authormask=1 |title=Death in the Afternoon |location=New York |publisher=Scribner’s |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |date=1932 |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book|last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |authormask=1 |title=Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917–1961 |location=New York |publisher=Scribner's |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |editor-first=Carlos |editor-last=Baker |date=1981b |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book|last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |authormask=1 |title=For Whom the Bell Tolls |date=1940 |location=New York |publisher=Scribner’s |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book|editor-last=Hemingway |editor-first=Ernest |editormask=1 |title=Men at War: The Best War Stories of All Time |date=1942 |location=New York |publisher=Crown Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book|last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |authormask=1 |title=The Nick Adams Stories |date=1972 |location=New York |publisher=Scribner's |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book|last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |authormask=1 |title=The Sun Also Rises |date=1926 |location=New York |publisher=Scribner’s |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book|last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |authormask=1 |title=The Sun Also Rises: A Facsimile Edition Volume One |editor-last=Bruccoli |editor-first=Matthew J. |date=1990 |location=Detroit |publisher=Omnigraphics |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite magazine|last=Klosterman |first=Chuck |title=Nothing to Worry About |magazine=Esquire |pages=56-57|isbn= |author-link= |date=Feb 2008 |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book|last=Mailer |first=Norman |title=Advertisements for Myself |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |date=1959 |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book|last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |title=The Bullfight: A Photographic Narrative |location=New York |publisher=Mcmillan |date=1967 |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book|last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |title=The Fight |location=Boston |publisher=Little, Brown |date=1975 |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book|last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |title=King of the Hill: Norman Mailer on the fight of the Century |location=New York |publisher=New American Library |date=1971 |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book|last1=Mailer |first1=Norman |author-mask=1 |first2=John Buffalo |last2=Mailer |title=The Big Empty: Dialogues on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker, and Bad Conscience in America |location=New York |publisher=Nation Books |date=2006 |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book|last=Reynolds |first=Michael S. |title=Hemingway’s First War: The Making of A Farewell to Arms |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton UP |date=1976 |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book|last=Reynolds |first=Michael S. |authormask=1 |title=Hemingway: The Paris Years |location=Cambridge, MA |publisher=Basil Blackwell |date=1989 |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book|last=Reynolds |first=Michael S. |authormask=1 |title=The Young Hemingway |location=New York |publisher=Norton |date=1998 |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book|last=Ross |first=Lillian |title=Portrait of Hemingway |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |date=1961 |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
*{{Cite book |last=Svoboda |first=Frederic Joseph |title=Ernest Hemingway & The Sun Also Rises: The crafting of a Style |location=Lawrence, KS |publisher=UP of Kansas |date=1983 |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |medium=Print |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norman Mailer's The Fight: Hemingway, Bullfighting, and the Lovely Metaphysics of Boxing}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/“A Noble Pursuit”: The Armies of the Night as Outside Agitator

2025-04-29T20:38:39Z

Grlucas: Corrections.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>“A Noble Pursuit”: ''The Armies of the Night'' as Outside Agitator}}
{{MR04}} 
{{Byline |last=Westaway |first=Katharine |url=http://prmlr.us/mr04wes |abstract=One of the achievements of ''The Armies of the Night'' is that Norman Mailer is able to designate the marchers as patriots, a far cry from the criticism that labeled them “draft dodgers,” “communists,” and “rabble rousers.” Mailer aligns the march itself with America’s long tradition of ostensibly just and triumphant empire-building conflict. He describes the March on the Pentagon as a rite of passage and connects this to a collection of American moments that could be understood as similar rites of passage.}}
{{dc|dc=O|n a weekend in October of 1967,}} tens of thousands of demonstrators amassed in Washington DC to protest the war in Vietnam. Intending ''The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History'' (1968) to record and commemorate this eventful weekend, Norman Mailer enlarged the march on the Pentagon’s meaning, working as a novelist to make it more than a four-day set of tremors in the nation’s capital. Some consider the march a watershed moment, “the first in a chain of events that led to Lyndon Johnson’s decision . . . to deescalate in Vietnam."{{sfn|Small|1994|p=70}} Mailer’s nonfiction novel carefully examines this defining event of American history. Through Mailer’s dual role as a demonstrator and narrator, readers are provided a rich witness to the many obstacles that were set before marchers in the form of a biased media and government officials opposed to the peace movement, including the military and police whose physical abuse is featured in the novel.

''Armies'' is also concerned with a sweeping view of American culture ''vis-à-vis'' the march, for this is a “literary project . . . radically committed to a rendering of the American reality,”{{sfn|Scott|1973|p=18}} and ''Armies'' becomes Mailer’s attempt to expand upon the march’s implications for the national character. When ''Armies'' was published, the country was divided over the war in Vietnam; according to a 1967 Gallup poll, when asked whether “the U.S. made a mistake sending troops to Vietnam” forty-six percent said yes while almost an equal amount, forty-four percent, answered no.{{sfn|Gallup|1972|p=2087}} Mailer addresses the division over the war and also the disparaging of anti-war {{pg|483|484}} protestors in the mainstream press which created a gulf between mainstream America and the anti-war movement: “from late 1967 into 1968 when Mailer wrote this book, open season on the ‘hippie’ had been tacitly declared.”{{sfn|MacFarlane|2007|p=131}} Mailer works to familiarize the populace with these voices of dissent and to humanize them. The cultural clashes Mailer depicts epitomize the volatility of the U.S. at that moment, the rips in the social fabric that were becoming obvious during the escalation of the Vietnam War.

I will also consider how this novel might have acted as a catalyst for activism for some contemporary readers and how it worked to coalesce support for the anti-war movement, addressing those Americans who were either unsympathetic towards or even appalled by the anti-war protesters
and challenging readers to see the efficacy and patriotism of the marchers’ cause. It is difficult to gauge the novel’s effectiveness on this front, but I will
consider media coverage and popular reaction to the marchers and to the
book itself. It is in the novelistic form that Mailer shares this moment in history,
and he has said that the reading of novels “is a noble pursuit, that ideally
it profoundly changes the ways in which people perceive their
experience."{{sfn|Mailer|1982|p=133}} Mailer understood the great possibility of his
novel to effect change and the opportunity he had to shape readers’ understanding
of what it meant to protest the war in Vietnam.

The political divide was so great in America in the late 1960s that Mailer may have felt obliged to explain one faction to another, to use as a didactic tool; he was teaching about a counterculture, from which many Americans were insulated. Scott MacFarlane measures the social turmoil of the times “at a level unseen since the Civil War. The book reading public was clamoring for insight into what was happening on the streets of America."{{sfn|MacFarlane|2007|p=133}} ''Armies'' was a new window into the anti-war movement. The mainstream media kept Americans in the dark about the anti-war movement. Readers were witness to Mailer’s own perspective of the counterculture which was not always exhortative: “It was the children in whom Mailer had some hope, a gloomy hope. These mad middle-class children with their lobotomies from sin, their nihilistic embezzlement of all middle-class moral funds, their innocence, their lust for apocalypse, their unbelievable indifference to waste.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=44}} Mailer does not form saints out of the anti-war camp, and
one could not accuse Mailer of being an outright defender of the counterculture.
But through his intimate sketches of the activists and his own experience
as a fellow marcher, we do see images of greatness, of self-sacrifice and {{pg|484|485}} patriotism. Most important, Mailer, as narrator/protagonist, gives Americans outside the march a sense of what it was to be a demonstrator.

One of Mailer’s main tasks as an author is to acquaint his readers with the character of the marchers themselves, so a primary concern of ''Armies'' is media bias as it affected the American public’s sentiments about the acts of resistance happening all around them. But the mainstream press was hawkish: before the Tet Offensive in January of 1968, “not a single major newspaper
or television network call[ed] for the end to the war.”{{sfn|Streitmatter|2001|p=197}} In fact, the mainstream media plainly opposed the anti-war effort “in the heady days early in the war when American correspondents doubled as government handmaidens, they openly condemned anti-war protesters as traitors.”{{sfn|Streitmatter|1997|p=201}} This was the atmosphere in which Mailer attempted to tell a moving tale of the anti-war movement.

Mailer renounces conventional journalism; he doesn’t trust the media to analyze the anti-war movement fairly. Media studies of the time show that “throughout [the] various stages of escalating involvement, mainstream American journalists supported the effort, serving as exuberant cheerleaders for the military.”{{sfn|Streitmatter|2001|p=184}} Mailer frequently points out the unfair coverage that the press gave to the actions of the demonstrators and how “[e]mphasis was put on every rock thrown, and a count was made of the windows broken. (There were, however, only a few.) But there was no specific mention of The Wedge [a brutal crowd control technique, which resulted in beating of the marchers]. Indeed, stories [of police brutality] quickly disappeared.”{{sfn|Mailer|1988|pp=313-14}} This becomes evident as Mailer distinguishes
the reporting of mainstream press from that of the alternative press. The alternative press (such as the ''Catholic Worker'', ''I.F. Stone’s Weekly, ''National Guardian'', and ''Ramparts'') was critical of the war going back in some cases to the 1950s when troops were first deployed to Vietnam.{{sfn|Streitmatter|2001|p=184}}

One of the most damning charges in the book is the brutality perpetrated against the marchers, who were for the most part peacefully protesting; some protestors were “clubbed until they were broken and bloody.”{{sfn|Zaroulis|Sullivan|1984|p=138}} The abuse was amplified by the fact that it often went unreported. For the reports of police violence, Mailer relies upon outside sources
because he had been arrested early in the demonstration before most of the
violence occurred. Yet he gains credibility when integrating outside witnesses
and reportage into a book that was mostly reported from his standpoint,{{pg|485|486}} and these external sources may have lent more authority to the charge that
protesters were abused. For any journalist there was difficulty in covering
something as large as the march on the Pentagon “because of the extensive
terrain in question and the rapid movements of the protestors and soldiers.”{{sfn|Small|1994|p=72}} Acting as a novelist-journalist, Mailer collects varied media accounts
of the march and weaves them into the narrative; here he features
one Leftist perspective of the march, identifying the witness as “Harvey
Mayes of the English Department at Hunter”: <blockquote>One soldier spilled the water from his canteen on the ground in order to add to the discomfort of the female demonstrator at his feet. She cursed him—understandably, I think—and shifted her body. She lost her balance and her shoulder hit the rifle at the soldier’s side. He raised the rifle, and with its butt, came down hard on the girl’s leg. The girl tried to move back but was not fast enough to avoid the billy-club of a soldier in the second row of the troops. At least four times that soldier hit her with all his force.{{sfn|Mailer|1988|p=303}}</blockquote>
Mailer was obliged to portray the graphic scenes from the march which were missing in many media reports. Perhaps the stories of abuse were reported on more by the Left media because the Left journalists were among the protestors, down in the tussle, while mainstream reporters observed from a safe distance, avoiding a potential encounter with violent police.

Mailer also gave accounts of “the [mainstream] press [who were], in the aftermath, antagonistic to the March” and so included passages of an article from the ''New York Times'' which stated that “[i]t is difficult to report publicly the ugly and vulgar provocation of many of the militants. They spat on some of the soldiers in the front line at the Pentagon and goaded them with the most vicious personal slander. . . . [M]any officials here are surprised that there was not much more violence.”{{sfn|Mailer|1988|p=313}} Notice that the ''Times'' does not mention any specific violence of the MPs. Numerous commentators condemned ''not'' the beatings meted out to the demonstrators, but the protest
itself; David Brinkley called it a “coarse, vulgar episode."{{sfn|Wells|1994|pp=202–3}} However, Maurice Isserman, one marcher, remembers the marchers for the most part as peaceful, remaining “pretty true to Gandhian principles.”{{sfn|Isserman|2007|p=B15}}

In looking beyond Mailer’s collection of media accounts of the march, it {{pg|486|487}} is clear that he wasn’t exaggerating the bias against anti-war activists. The ''New York Times'' reported that Robert McNamara felt his soldiers showed “restraint . . . under provocation,”{{sfn|Reston|1967|p=1}} and in one article the protesters were referred to as “scum of the universe”;{{sfn|Roberts|1967|p=45}} another report called the demonstration “mass paranoia . . . elicit[ing] a great deal of foolishness."{{sfn|Baker|1967|p=45}} What the press wrote about the protestors was not always so disparaging, but rarely was the message of the marchers given much time, and this sort of mainstream coverage was the only information readily available to the general public about the anti-war movement. Some of the first reports of the march on and the siege of the Pentagon were missing reports of police violence because the reporters went home late Saturday night before the police began employing more militant tactics. But on Monday in another story of the march the ''New York Times'' still ignored “the bloody military sweep of early Sunday morning;” the ''Washington Post''’s Monday coverage was similar in that it “continued to emphasize the violence
of the protestors, not the defenders of the Pentagon.”{{sfn|Small|1994|pp=76, 78}} ''Time'' came out with its story a few days after the march on October 27 in which they marginalized the protestors as “left-wing radicals, hippies, acid heads, and people with painted faces in bizarre costumes” while at the same time “applaud[ing] the government for its restraint.”{{sfn|Small|1994|pp=79–80}}

Mailer is unwilling to let the picture that the mainstream press drew of demonstrators become the only permanent record, and“he scolded the press for their lies, and their misrepresentation, for their guilt in creating a psychology over the last twenty years in the average American which made wars like Vietnam possible."{{sfn|Mailer|1988|p=93}} Mailer understands that the press is pivotal in a nation’s critique of its culture and policies, and he takes the press to task for their failure to cultivate an informed public. Eventually, Mailer’s ''Armies'' would stand with media accounts as a record of the event. Before ''Armies'' was published as a book in 1968, it appeared in periodicals (almost the entire issues of ''Harper’s'' and ''Commentary'' were given to this story). So Mailer responded to the mass media’s “forest of inaccuracy” first in popular periodicals and then in book form. According to Dick Fontaine, a British filmmaker who was filming a documentary of Mailer over the weekend of
the march, “Norman remembered, with frightening accuracy, minutes and minutes, pages and pages, of the dialogues he was having with the others, let alone, of course, the brilliant descriptions of time, place and mood. . . . His
memory and interpretations of . . . [these events] are truly breathtaking.”{ {pg|487|488}}
This speaks well of Mailer’s journalistic sensibilities and his hope to avoid a forest of inaccuracies himself. To this end, it is important to recall that ''Armies'' won a Polk Award for excellence in journalism.

One of the achievements of ''Armies'' is that in it Mailer is able to designate the marchers as patriots, a far cry from the criticism that labeled them “draft dodgers,” “communists,” and “rabble rousers.” In contrast, Mailer describes draft resisters as moral and courageous: “by handing in draft cards, these young men were committing their future either to prison, emigration, frustration,
or at best, years where everything must be unknown, and that spoke of a readiness to take moral leaps . . . [and a] faith in one’s ability to react with grace.”{{sfn|Mailer|1988|p=88}} Mailer recasts draft dodgers as draft resisters, those willing to risk their lives for peace rather than war. Furthermore, Mailer aligns the march itself with America’s long tradition of ostensibly just and triumphant empire-building conflict. He describes the March on the Pentagon as a rite of passage and connects this to a collection of American moments that could be understood as similar rites of passage, for “each generation
of Americans had forged their own rite, in the forest of the Alleghenies and the Adirondacks, at Valley Forge, at New Orleans in 1812, with Rogers and Clark or at Sutter’s Mill, at Gettysburg, the Alamo, the Klondike, the Argonne, Normandy, Pusan.”{{sfn|Mailer|1988|p=308}} Such a comparison implies that without undergoing such crises the U.S. would not have become a sovereign republic, and so the March on the Pentagon is figured as another historic challenge for the country. This lofty rhetoric is meant to stir a reader’s patriotic sympathies, and Mailer is determined that his audience will see the marchers not as subversives but as patriots within the traditions of American democracy.

Mailer understood that “to affect consciousness is thus to shape power” and that his words were shaping people’s perception of the anti-war movement. Even if his readers were persuaded to believe in a peaceful resolution to the Vietnam War, what would these readers do with this new consciousness, a consciousness which was “itself a central ingredient in power”?{{sfn|Miller|1990|p=394}} It is difficult to measure how readers enact their power, but we can watch how Mailer enacts his own. He undertakes his own civil disobedience, getting arrested in hopes of gaining publicity and offering credence to the cause of the march, and he understands that his symbolic action must be captured by the press to multiply its effect. When writing the story of ''Armies'', Mailer tracks his own movement from critic to supporter to war protester to {{pg|488|489}} prisoner of conscience, and we see that he “feels the claims of imagination as urgently as the claims of action,”{{sfn|Behar|1970|p=262}} and so he must both examine and act.

''Armies'' represents, for Mailer, a test of his moral strength, an examination of whether Mailer could stand behind his highest moral principles. The story of ''Armies'' offers a way for Mailer to put his philosophy into action and to answer the question, Are you willing to put your life on the line? David Wyatt calls Mailer “a man so obsessed by courage,” which is a persistent theme in Mailer’s famous essay “The White Negro” (1957).{{sfn|Wyatt|2008|p=318}} In many ways ''Armies'' is tied to all of Mailer’s preceding writing. The most obvious connection is to ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' (1967), but the themes and challenges of ''Armies'' are also indebted to ''Cannibals and Christians'' (1966) and ''The Presidential Papers'' (1963). These books variously tested the warrior in Mailer. Even his first book, ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948), plays a role in the conception of ''Armies''. Mary Dearborn claims that ''Armies'' is a recapitulation of his first novel bringing up questions of “confrontation with and the reaction to authority.”{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|p=244}} In ''Armies'', Mailer’s critique of structures of power and his own civil disobedience stands in clear defiance of authoritarian establishments, the same authoritarian establishments which thwarted characters in his previous texts. Mailer’s working out of his own demons in this journey from author to activist was also meant to engage the hearts and minds of his readers in the important business of opening their eyes to the truth about the war in Vietnam. But it is not just a story about Mailer or the many Mailer characters; Mailer serves as an entry to the predicament of the war in Vietnam and a people’s various ways to protest it.

Mailer admits early in the story his growing belief that his own writing about the Vietnam War is not enough, that “no project had seemed to cost him enough,” for his writing was one thing, but action was another. And by simply writing about the Vietnam War “he had been suffering more and more in the past few years from the private conviction that he was getting a little soft, a hint curdled.”{{sfn|Mailer|1988|pp=70–1}} This may have served as a barb at his audience of readers, among whom surely numbered many armchair revolutionaries. To keep from getting soft and to resist being contented with a writer’s perspective, he had to move into action himself. He had to actually
take part in the demonstrations, to be physically, not just ideologically in opposition to the war, but we are not meant to concentrate solely on Mailer’s own struggle. Rather, from his own story of activism he may bring about in {{pg|489|490}} his readers a new understanding that through the act of reading one becomes
aware, but not yet ''involved'' in a cause. Readers might appreciate that having their consciousness raised was not the same as protesting the war in
their own communities, not at all the same as stepping out into the streets
to form a human protest. One had to move from words to action, from page to protest.

Mailer asks serious questions of his readers, as Alfred Kazin points out, describing him as the first “leading American peacenik and resister addressing urgent questions to his ‘army’—Are we good enough? How can we overcome
the ‘mediocrity of the middle-class middle-aged masses of the Left?’
The general shoddiness of American standards just now? The tendency of authorities to lie?”{{sfn|Kazin|1968|loc=BR 1}} Mailer artfully places such questions within the
framework of a narrative, addressed not only to fellow peaceniks but also to
a popular readership. It was important that this novel travel beyond the Left community, and it did. Indeed, ''Armies'' “reestablished Mailer with a wide audience”{{sfn|Whalen-Bridge|2003|p=217}} and won both the Pulitzer Prize for General
Nonfiction and the National Book Award. And it was gaining a popular audience
(a readership made up of more than those on the Left) for this topic
that was a challenge for Mailer: “walking the parapet between the intellectual
and the popular, and Mailer with his dream of making ‘a revolution in
the consciousness of our time’ is too ambitious to settle for a minority ‘art’ audience.”{{sfn|Radford|1983|p=230}} Mailer was ambitious enough to take on the challenge of telling a story that those within the anti-war movement would rally
around and those outside would give a fair hearing.

The novel, first in serial and then in book form, was meant to prod readers to action. In fact, it is specifically the expansiveness of the novel genre that Mailer finds useful toward a moral end. Mailer understood the great potential of the genre. In one interview he contends that “art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people. In particular, I think the novel is at its best the most moral of the art forms because
it’s the most immediate, the most overbearing . . . It is the most
inescapable.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=384}} Did Mailer’s readers find his story inescapable, and if so, were they catalyzed to protest the war themselves? The answer cannot easily be quantified. We can, however, study the way in which Norman Mailer tried to activate readers. Critics picked up on this hunger of Mailer’s to make change, his “extra-literary hunger for things to change
and change now, in palpable ways rather than in the imaginary, alternative {{pg|490|491}} ways in which most artist-novelists deal.”{{sfn|Gilman|1968|p=27}} This book is not only a testimony of civil disobedience but also a story which aims to engender civil disobedience in the reader.

Wherever readers stood on the political continuum, ''Armies'' invites readers
to justify events in the book with their real lives; it allows for “[r]eading
history over the edge of text,” which is a combination of “close reading and
analysis that allow us to get ‘inside’ the narrative, while at the same time we
understand that the narrators and subjects of nonfiction . . . live ‘outside’ the
narrative as well.”{{sfn|Lehman|1997|p=3}} This makes for an intense reading experience,
especially if the novelist like Mailer uses his skills to capture an already fascinating
or contentious event. One other factor that might have turned contemporary
readers into implicated readers was the timeliness of the book’s
release: the march was more than mere history it was a recent event when the book was published just seven months after the event—and the controversy over Vietnam still raged on.

In a nonfiction novel such as ''Armies''the story can take on very real manifestations,
which could lead to political action on the part of readers. A
reader could take measure of his or her own (in)action regarding the war
and choose to act out against the war. Such action is difficult to trace, but in
the case of ''Armies'', Rubin claims the novel “became the Bible of the movement”;{{sfn|Manso|1985|p=461}} Dearborn suggests that “young leftists found it an astute analysis and were impressed by the passion Mailer brought to the work.”{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|p=246}} However, Michael Albert and Noam Chomsky, both major figures in
the anti-war movement, didn’t feel that it made much of an impact within
the movement. Albert recalls “honestly, I doubt if anyone I knew or virtually
anyone in the movement read it, even I didn’t. My guess would be it had [a]
very very modest impact . . . and virtually none inside the movement per
se.” While it is unclear whether it affected those within the movement, it is also difficult to tell how it affected readers just becoming acquainted with the
peace movement. Dearborn indicates that those outside the movement were
touched by the novel: “across the political spectrum, readers who watched
the student movement with varying degrees of approval or censure were
made to understand that what was going on in the streets . . . was a real phenomenon
that had to be taken extremely seriously.”{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|p=246}} Furthermore, the
Pulitzer and National Book Award, which were because of the novel, are a
sort of establishment seals of approval—proof that it had reached middle
America. Contemporary reviewers were generous with their praise. The {{pg|491|492}} ''London Magazine'' named him “the best living writer of English prose."{{sfn|Bergonzi|1968|p=100}} Others saw ''Armies'' saw as a monumental book, “a literary act
whose significance is certain to grow.”{{sfn|Gilman|1968|p=27}} One way the book could live on was through the reactions of its readers.

Not only was ''Armies'' about politics, but the novel stood as a statement of
the relationship between literature and politics. To ignore politics, for the novelist, is an error. Mailer must speak politically, for “the separation of the
literary and political horizons is a mute acceptance of the structures through
which power is exercised.”{{sfn|Schueller|1992|p=127}} Whether his novel convinced one single person to join the anti-war cause or not, it was a necessary testimony. Simply by representing the happenings of the anti-war movement in narrative form, Mailer made a new current in American politics. Perhaps Mailer understood the inescapability of politics, for as an activist author he could not “dissociate himself from the social contexts through which he speaks.”{{sfn|Schueller|1992|p=125}} His story would be null without its complex entanglement with real political struggle.

A contemporary review of ''Armies'' in ''The Nation'' called it “a permanent contribution to our literature—a unique testimony to literary responsiveness and responsibility”;{{sfn|Trachtenberg|1968|p=702}} certainly, Mailer was responding to
important political phenomena that had not received sustained literary attention.
His writing about the rifts within the tumultuous New Left, the division
between Americans for and against the war, and the response of
government and the press to the anti-war movement did delineate important
political issues that needed to be aired. Mailer did not shy away from critique of the government or the media or of himself in order to tell the story of those in the anti-war movement.

Mailer’s novel represents a catalyst for social change through its introduction
of an anti-war subculture to a popular audience. Mailer speaks candidly
about his intentions: “I was trying to bring a consciousness to America
about the war in Vietnam. . . . I think the effect of the book was to make resistance to the war in Vietnam a little more human to people who were still supporting the war. So, yes, I think the book did have a political effect. Maybe it tended to strengthen the side opposed to the war in Vietnam.”{{sfn|Mailer|1982|p=220}} Jason Epstein recalls ''Armies'' as a book “meant to rally or produce a political reaction”;{{sfn|Manso|1985|p=470}} a strong argument can be made for the fact that Mailer meant to catalyze his readers. He attested to the disorganization and dissension within the anti-war camp, but more vigorously {{pg|492|493}} showed the misrepresentation, defamation, and even the physical denigration of the activists. His argument for peace in Vietnam gained stature because he was a bona fide activist for the cause, facing arrest to further the significance of his protest. He was there, present at the march, and authenticated his action by telling the story of the march. ''The Armies of the Night'' exists as a testament to the anti-war movement and to the efficacy of civil disobedience.

===Citations===
{{reflist|15em}}

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=1|20em}}
* {{citation
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| first = Michael
| title = A Referral from Noam Chomsky
| date = 10 November 2009
| publisher = Message to Katharine Westaway. E-mail.
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite news
| last = Baker
| first = Russell
| title = Observer: Dove Antics
| newspaper = The New York Times
| date = 24 October 1967
| page = 45
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite journal
| last = Behar
| first = Jack
| title = History and Fiction
| journal = NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction
| volume = 3
| issue = 3
| year = 1970
| pages = 260–265
| ref = harv
}}
*{{cite magazine
| last = Bergonzi
| first = Bernard
| title = Selected Books
| magazine = London Magazine
| date = November 1968
| pages = 98–100
| quote = Rev. of ''Cannibals and Christians'' and ''Armies of the Night,'' by Norman Mailer.
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite book
| last = Dearborn
| first = Mary V.
| title = Mailer: A Biography
| publisher = Houghton Mifflin
| location = Boston
| year = 1999
| ref = harv
}}
* {{citation
| last = Fontaine
| first = Dick
| title = Question for Dick Fontaine
| date = 1 April 2009
| publisher = Message to Katharine Westaway. E-mail.
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite book
| editor-last = Gallup
| editor-first = George Horace
| title = Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971
| volume = 3
| publisher = Random House
| location = New York
| year = 1972
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite magazine
| last = Gilman
| first = Richard
| title = What Mailer Has Done
| magazine = The New Republic
| date = 8 June 1968
| pages = 27–31
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite magazine
| last = Isserman
| first = Maurice
| title = The Flower and the Gun
| magazine = The Chronicle of Higher Education
| date = 19 October 2007
| pages = B14–B15
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite news
| last = Kazin
| first = Alfred
| title = The Trouble He’s Seen
| newspaper = The New York Times
| date = 5 May 1968
| page = BR1
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite book
| last = Lehman
| first = Daniel W.
| title = Matters of Fact: Reading Nonfiction over the Edge
| publisher = Ohio State UP
| location = Columbus
| year = 1997
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite book
| last = MacFarlane
| first = Scott
| title = The Hippie Narrative: A Literary Perspective on the Counterculture
| publisher = McFarland
| location = Jefferson
| year = 2007
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite book
| last = Mailer
| first = Norman
| title = Advertisements for Myself
| publisher = G. P. Putnam’s Sons
| location = New York
| year = 1959
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite book
| last = Mailer
| first = Norman
| author-mask=1
| title = Existential Aesthetics: An Interview with Norman Mailer
| others = Interview by Laura Adams
| editor-last = Lennon
| editor-first = J. Michael
| book-title = Conversations with Norman Mailer
| publisher = UP of Mississippi
| location = Jackson
| year = 1988
| pages = 207–227
| quote = Rpt. of "Existential Aesthetics: An Interview with Norman Mailer." ''Partisan Review'' 42.2 (1975): 197–214.
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite book
| last = Mailer
| first = Norman
| author-mask=1
| chapter = Prisoner of Success: An Interview with Paul Attanasio
| editor-last = Lennon
| editor-first = J. Michael
| title = Pieces and Pontifications
| publisher = Little, Brown & Company
| location = Boston
| year = 1982
| pages = 129–136
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite book
| last = Manso
| first = Peter
| title = Norman Mailer: His Life and Times
| publisher = Simon and Schuster
| location = New York
| year = 1985
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite journal
| last = Miller
| first = Joshua
| title = No Success Like Failure: Existential Politics in Norman Mailer’s ''The Armies of the Night''
| journal = Polity
| volume = 22
| issue = 3
| year = 1990
| pages = 379–396
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite book
| last = Radford
| first = Jean
| chapter = Norman Mailer: The True Story of an American Writer
| editor-last = Gray
| editor-first = Richard
| title = American Fiction: New Readings
| publisher = Vision Press
| location = London
| year = 1983
| pages = 222–237
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite news
| last = Reston
| first = James
| title = Everyone is a Loser
| newspaper = The New York Times
| date = 23 October 1967
| page = 1
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite news
| last = Roberts
| first = Gene
| title = Wallace Derides War Protesters
| newspaper = The New York Times
| date = 29 October 1967
| page = 45
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite book
| last = Schueller
| first = Malini Johar
| title = The Politics of Voice: Liberalism and Social Criticism from Franklin to Kingston
| publisher = State University of New York Press
| location = Albany
| year = 1992
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite book
| last = Scott
| first = Nathan A.
| title = Three American Moralists: Mailer, Bellow, Trilling
| publisher = U of Notre Dame P
| location = Notre Dame
| year = 1973
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite book
| last = Small
| first = Melvin
| title = Covering Dissent: The Media and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement
| publisher = Rutgers UP
| location = New Brunswick
| year = 1994
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite book
| last = Streitmatter
| first = Rodger
| author-mask=1
| title = Mightier Than the Sword: How the News Media Have Shaped American History
| publisher = Westview
| location = Boulder
| year = 1997
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite book
| last = Streitmatter
| first = Rodger
| title = Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America
| publisher = Columbia UP
| location = New York
| year = 2001
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite magazine
| last = Trachtenberg
| first = Alan
| title = Mailer on the Steps of the Pentagon
| magazine = The Nation
| date = 27 May 1968
| pages = 701–702
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite book
| last = Wells
| first = Tom
| title = The War Within: America’s Battle Over Vietnam
| publisher = U of California P
| location = Berkeley
| year = 1994
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite book
| last = Whalen-Bridge
| first = John
| chapter = Norman Mailer
| editor-first = James R.
| editor-last = Giles
| editor2-first = Wanda H.
| editor2-last = Giles
| title = American Novelists Since World War II. Seventh Series
| series = Dictionary of Literary Biography
| volume = 278
| publisher = Gale Group
| location = New York
| year = 2003
| pages = 217–232
| quote = Vol. 278 of ''Dictionary of Literary Biography''. 357 vols. to date. 1978–.
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite journal
| last = Wyatt
| first = David
| title = Living Out the Sixties
| journal = The Hopkins Review
| volume = 1
| issue = 2
| year = 2008
| pages = 315–332
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite book
| last1 = Zaroulis
| first1 = Nancy
| last2 = Sullivan
| first2 = Gerald
| title = Who Spoke Up? American Protest Against the War in Vietnam 1963–1975
| publisher = Doubleday
| location = Garden City
| year = 1984
| ref = harv
}}
{{Refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:“A Noble Pursuit”: The Armies of the Night as Outside Agitator: }}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Encounters with Mailer

2025-04-29T20:21:08Z

Grlucas: Fixes.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>Encounters with Mailer}}
{{MR04}} 
{{byline |last=Gordon |first=Andrew M. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr04gor |abstract=Norman Mailer spoke to a crowd at the University of California, Berkeley in the fall of 1972, toward the end of the Nixon-McGovern campaign. It was a memorable evening, raucous and rowdy, as his speech was heckled and disrupted frequently. In 1986, Mailer came to the University of Florida in Gainesville in February 1986 to give a talk entitled “The Art of Writing.” In 1972, it was one of the tempestuous Nixon years: the Vietnam War was still raging, the country was facing an election, and Mailer confronted vociferous protesters. In contrast to that wild evening, by 1986 it was the quiescent Reagan era, the tranquilized Eighties. The times were tamer, and Mailer too had aged and mellowed.}}

==I. 1972: Uncle Norman at Berkley ==
{{start|“Norman Mailer! How can you waste your time on him?}} He’s just a Male Chauvinist Pig, an asshole.” So said some of my friends, consigning him to the trash heap of the totally irrelevant. But Mailer was not your run-of-the-mill MCP; he had elaborated a private metaphysics and arrived at his conclusions by reasoning as tortured and complex as that of a Talmudic scholar.

It was the fall of 1972, toward the end of the Nixon-McGovern campaign. I was a graduate student at the University of California, finishing a doctoral dissertation about Mailer’s fiction, a project that had engaged me in a close scrutiny of his work and his volatile public personality. Writing a long study of someone is marriage of a sort; you do not commit yourself to it lightly. At times during those years, Mailer looked to me like an existential hero. At other times, he was an arrogant boor, a first-rate genius or a second-rate clown, a modest gentleman or an egomaniacal tyrant, a weird mixture of incompatible extremes, as various and schizoid as Mailer’s own portrait of his beloved America. So, my feelings toward him alternated between attraction and repulsion, hero worship and total disillusionment. I had never met the man, and I couldn’t make up my mind.

So, when I heard that the great man was coming to town, Uncle Norman giving a lecture at Berkeley, all the mixed feelings leaped to the surface, like Dexedrine warring with seconal in the head. After grappling so long with his shadow, to confront the legend in the flesh—I felt as much apprehension as anticipation.

“There’s gonna be trouble,” I heard some prophesy gleefully. “Woman’s Lib ain’t gonna let him get away with it.” {{pg|396|397}}

The scene as I approached Zellerbach Auditorium seemed to bear out their warnings. In front of the ticket line, a handful of demonstrators were holding up their placards: “A little bit of rape is good for a man’s soul, says Norman Mailer.” Surprisingly, the militants were primarily gays, not women. Super macho meets the army of gays. It seemed to promise a classic contest: ''Classic Comics'', perhaps.

I was surprised to find my instinct was to defend the champ. Couldn’t they picket grosser offenders than Mailer? Or was it only that he had the boldness to announce unpopular views and the foolishness to take on all comers?

“Aren’t you being silly?” I asked them.

“Oh, really?” they sniffed at me.

I was afraid the evening would be spoiled.

The audience settled in their seats. The gays positioned themselves for the battle to come, and the speaker was announced. He strutted up to the lectern, short and swaggering, dressed in black boots, blue jeans, black turtleneck and black blazer, tough but elegant, looking like a hip longshoreman or a punk professor. A schizoid balance, but on him it worked. The blue Levis seemed to say to the Berkeley audience, “I’m with you baby,” but the blazer was a touch of sartorial splendor; it put him a notch or two above us. He was looking good under the lights, ready to go fifteen rounds, a presence, close to fifty but could pass for a prematurely white-haired forty. He stood there, a celebrity, star of stage, screen, and the printed page, enveloped in a wave of cheers and boos.

He paused a second after the noise died down, sniffing the air, trying to gauge the mood. “What’s the score?” he asked the crowd, like the gangland boss from the East Side ready to parley with the mob from the West. “Are we going to have a good time tonight?” A flurry of cheers.

“We’re going to have the greatest miserable time tonight! I have the fond hope that my dear friends from the liberation are here?”

One lone female shout: “Oh, yeah!”

“You sound kind of friendly,” Mailer told them. “Hasn’t the word reached you?” He is the sort of man who actively seeks out confrontations rather than avoiding them.

The audience was ready to pick up the gauntlet. “Norman, you shmuck!” yelled a woman’s voice.

“Sweet heckler, all I heard was ''schmuck''. I’m sure you don’t know the {{pg|397|398}} meaning of the word. The meaning of ''shmuck'' is ''cunt''. And if I’m a Male Chauvinist Pig, I could not possibly be a cunt. God would not so honor me. So ‘''shmuck you''.{{' "}}

Cheers.

“Now I would like those dear ladies in the audience who are in the liberation and have hostile feelings toward me to hiss.”

Loud hisses, as of a nest of rattlers, or Medusa with her hackles rising. Mailer hunched toward the microphone, and through tightly compressed lips, bit out: “Obedient little bitches.”

Much laughter and prolonged applause.

I could see his strategy: he was warming up the audience, playing them and drawing them out. His mood was genial. Maybe the crowd was his.

After a series of one-line gags, he announced two topics for the evening, and it would be his task to put them together: “Woman’s Liberation and Richard Nixon.” The conjunction of these wildly disparate topics provoked more laughter. Just like Mailer to try to yoke together incompatible extremes.

But he didn’t get far before a man in the balcony moaned aloud with mock weariness, “I’m bored.”

“Oh, fuck you,” snapped Mailer, annoyed at the interruption. “You aren’t even beginning to be bored.”

“Fuck you with a telephone pole!” the guy shouted back with verve.

“You’re not man enough to hold the telephone pole,” responded Mailer.

The crowd roared; they were enjoying the repartee. I couldn’t say the same for myself; I had heard better insults in a junior high playground.

Mailer began to talk about the McGovern campaign, but again, they would not let him continue. They baited him, and when he rose to the bait, a voice in the balcony piped out, “Now, now, Norman, that’s a very childish way to reinforce your masculinity.”

As the interruptions continued, Mailer began to lose patience, like the hard-as-nails principal of a slum school, trying to deliver a lecture to an assembly full of punks while the smartasses in the balcony pelt him with spit balls. “I tell you what, gang,” said Mailer, “keep it up and we’re gonna have a showdown.”

The crowd was vastly amused by these sideshows even as I was finding them more and more tiresome. I resented the protestors for their interruptions, and I resented Mailer for encouraging them. Was he only going to play the clown this evening?{{pg|398|399}}
Suddenly, a man enveloped from head to toe in a furry pink costume bunny-hopped onto the stage. He was a Bay Area grotesque, a walking phallus, a local character who called himself “The People’s Prick.” The author strode up to this pink furry outrage—we expected him to start swinging—but he only removed the sign pinned to the ambulatory shmuck. It read, “Mailer than thou.” Mailer placed it in front of the lectern. “One down, 8,700 to go.”

Applause.

People’s Prick was unceremoniously dragged off stage by a bouncer, reverting to the state the media calls “going limp,” but in his case could only be called “going stiff.” This was turning into a bad farce.

Mailer was talking about the women at the Democratic convention and the curse they had put on McGovern, when a curse seemed to descend upon Mailer. A second freak, this one sporting a gigantic blue dildo strapped to the front of his pants—like a demon in a medieval pageant—hurled a burning jockstrap onstage. It sat there and smoldered for a minute, seeming to mirror Mailer’s nervous condition.

But the protestors had exhausted their best ammunition early in the spectacle. The evening went on and subsequent interruptions were shouted down by the audience. When they pleaded for aid for the two phallic impersonators who had been busted, nobody cared. For all the justice of their cause, the gays had ambushed themselves with juvenile inanity.

The crowd was Mailer’s for the rest of the evening and he began to get good. He read from his new book about the 1972 presidential campaign, ''St. George and the Godfather'', he talked about the “totalitarianism” of the woman’s movement and of Richard Nixon, he considered the “monstrous disproportions” of the Vietnam war, with its “moral atrocities that bugger the mind,” and he spoke of the blight that rests upon the twentieth century, which he called “lividity of the will.”

Mailer was warming up now, growing more eloquent and impassioned as he arrived at the core of his ideas, orating in his characteristically rapid, staccato fashion. The extemporaneous words flowed the way his elaborate phrases do in print, in long, elegant sentences that bend and turn and gather momentum. He claimed that the country may be “already afloat on a sea of totalitarianism which is different from any which has ever been visited before on the earth. For this is a species of benign totalitarianism. . . .”

Then he denounced the arrogance and self-righteousness of the New Left {{pg|399|400}} and said that in the years before us we must begin to question all our motives. “Because finally, all evident before us, is the knowledge that ''we are all full of shit''—from top to bottom.”

Now the jester had taken on the guise of the revolutionary theorist. And we believed him; perhaps he had the handle on where the truth was hidden. His strategy had been to establish a communality with all of us—he was full of shit, but then, so were we all. He was one leap ahead because he already knew how full of it he was, and we, perhaps, did not.

The speech was over, and he fielded questions from the audience, handling them with the aplomb of a politician. He could rattle off a quick reply to every questioner and a snappy rejoinder to every heckler. The only difference between Mailer and a candidate was that Mailer’s responses were not memorized. He could take the most prosaic question and weave you an epic poem of an answer.

The protestors went down to defeat a second time. Whereas Mailer was familiar with every argument they could muster, they had never read his books and knew his ideas only as clumsy slogans. {{" '}}It is better to rape than to masterbate’ —Norman Mailer” one of their placards read. They couldn’t even spell “masturbate” right. So, it was no contest. Compared to Mailer, the crowd seemed weak and unfocused. He was a master of words; everything in him had been concentrated toward the shaping of himself, the honing of his razor-sharp wit. It is the kind of weapon you must develop to survive in the jungle of New York higher culture, but Mailer also used this wit as the sharpest instrument in his literary arsenal.

Finally, I could see the difference between the audience and Mailer: they were amateurs, and he was a professional. He’d had his entire life to develop the role of Norman Mailer, and he’d really got his act together. If, at times, the performance verged on the slick, it was always surprising. He gave you more than your money’s worth. I thought of Mark Twain playing the lecture circuit (although Twain never had to cope with “The People’s Prick”).

Mailer moved slowly offstage, passing through the crowd like a politician working a receiving line, pumping hands, giving autographs (the signature was a little shaky), making pleasant small talk.

He clasped the hand of one attractive woman a little longer than usual. I caught the tag end of the conversation. “We must get together when I come back to San Francisco. Where will you be?”

She, smiling enigmatically, said: “Well, I move around a lot.”{{pg|400|401}}
Mailer: “Don’t worry, I’ll find you.”

As he walked past me, I got an overdose of the potent Scotch fumes wafting off him. An old admirer jumped in and they mixed it up for a minute, cheerfully mauling each other like two bear cubs at play, while the campus patrol freaked out on the sidelines. Then Jerry Rubin appeared, and the two held an instant reunion, embracing in a hearty bear hug. Mailer was beaming.

We followed the entourage to Solomon Grundy’s on the Berkeley Marina (“Magnificent Morsels and Great Grog”), where Mailer sat and worked his way through a series of Tom Collinses, surrounded by a circle of twenty or thirty rapt young listeners. He spoke more casually now, and I began to sense a private Mailer, quiet, polite, and gracious, who was different from the brash, argumentative, and pugnacious image he put forward in public. Perhaps this lion saved his roar for the limelight.

Some of the questions were simple-minded, but his replies were courteous and attentive, and he looked the questioner right in the eye as he answered.

Still, one woman standing near me was less than satisfied. “He talks a lot,” she said, “but he doesn’t give much of his real self. And he doesn’t really care about these people as individuals. Think of the situation Paul Krassner would have made of this round-table discussion!”

Granted, Mailer was not Krassner, but as I listened to his spiel, I could not help being fascinated. Here was Mailer tossing out idea after idea, rapidly and effortlessly. Here was an expert, a professional, a man who had molded his talent and his personality into that species of human magic we call genius. But was he too much the intellectual machine, feeding off his own substance? His ego seemed hidden inside an intricate fortress of metaphor.

I talked with his traveling secretary, a lovely, soft-spoken young woman named Suzanne, who said she was a writer herself. “I read ''The Prisoner of Sex'' and thought that he must be a terrible man, an awful person. But when I got to know him, I found that he wasn’t like that at all. He’s really very nice. Sometimes, I feel like I ought to protect him.”

Not surprising that Mailer aroused the maternal instinct. By 1972, he had already been married four times (he was to marry twice more). He admitted he could never live without a woman.

I decided to go up and question the great man myself. But my question {{pg|401|402}} was literary, a piece of Ph.D. trivia. Mailer pondered a moment and said, “I can’t answer that for you. You’ll have to do your own homework.” Then he paused and looked me straight in the eye. “There’s an old Mafia saying: ‘''Follow your nose''.{{' "}}

There in the perpetual twilight of the bar, I had a momentary flash, an epiphany: Mailer’s features suddenly melted into the face of the most voluble Jewish uncle who has ever lived, the kind who would take you aside at a party and say, “So, ''nu'', when are you going to wise up, ''putz''?”, the Spinoza of a drunken Bar Mitzvah. The type of uncle who would regale you at a family gathering, drink in hand, with the story of his life. A nice little guy better educated than the other relatives, the family philosopher, gregarious, a quick opinion on every topic of the day, always tossing out a joke or a sharp notion, but he spent his days as a traveling salesman.

The occasion was coming to a close. It was two in the morning. As Mailer rose from the last Tom Collins like Moby Dick surfacing from the deep, he swam over to a bearded chap in the stygian gloom of the bar and wrapped a comradely arm around his shoulder. “Ah, Jerry!” Mailer intoned. He had located a familiar face in this sea of strangers.

But the fellow replied with a smile, like an actor graciously refusing a supporting role, “Thanks very much, Norman, but I’m not Jerry.”

Mailer pulled back, startled, removing his arm as if he had just received a small electric shock. “O, pardon me, you’re not Jerry Rubin.”

“That’s OK, Norman,” said the man who was not Jerry Rubin. “I’ve been mistaken for him before. It’s really dark in here.”

Mailer grinned, super-polite and chagrined, the apologetic, chastened grimace of a man who has a little too much booze under his belt and has committed a strategic blunder. If the light had been better, I could have said if he was blushing.

“Well, now you know how near-sighted I am.” Mailer is a past master at the art of self-deprecation as a saving gesture.

The blunder was resolved with tact; each had saved face for the other. And that was how the evening ended, Uncle Norman proving himself human after all, neither genius nor fool nor boor, just a mild-mannered gentleman who had the small vanity not to wear his glasses. Had some bullies in a long-distant Brooklyn schoolyard taunted him once too often with the humiliating cry “Four-eyes”? A sensitive, friendly, slightly vain middle-aged {{pg|402|403}} man who had committed a ''faux pas'' at a party and, courteous to a fault, made his amends and returned to grace.

== II. 1986: Uncle Norman at the University of Florida==
Norman Mailer came to the University of Florida in Gainesville on February 25, 1986, sponsored by a student organization called Accent. He was paid $14,000 to give a talk entitled “The Art of Writing.” I was asked to introduce him. As he took the stage in the O’Connell Center, a huge, multi-purpose hall built for major speeches and sporting events, both Mailer and the mostly student crowd of several hundred seemed dwarfed by this cavernous arena built to seat thousands.

I reflected on how much had changed in the fourteen years since I had last seen him. It had been 1972; I was a bearded graduate student in ragged jeans at the University of California, Berkeley when Mailer spoke there. Now I was a bearded Associate Professor of English in a jacket and tie, courtesy of Mailer; I had turned my dissertation about his fiction into a book. I never sent Mailer the book, afraid he would punch me in the nose. After all, would you want your works psychoanalyzed in public?

In 1972, it was the tempestuous Nixon years: the Vietnam War was still raging, the country was facing an election, and Mailer faced vociferous protest at Berkeley from both women’s liberation and gay liberation. In 1986, it was the quiescent Reagan era. It was as if the Gipper had force-fed America a massive dose of valium, and everybody was living in Fantasyland, trying to pretend the 1960s never happened. Robert Lowell once wrote, “These are the tranquilized ''Fifties'', and I am forty” (“Memories of West Street and Lepke”). Well, these were the tranquilized Eighties, and I was forty.

The times were tamer, and Mailer too had aged and mellowed. He was dapper in a double-breasted blue blazer, white, open-collared shirt, and grey slacks. No more blue jeans for his public performances. At sixty-three, he looked stouter and more wrinkled and his hair thinner and whiter then when I had last seen him–but then, I was fourteen years older too. And this bored Florida student crowd was a far cry from the Berkeley rebels who had alternately cheered, booed, and heckled and disrupted Mailer’s speech in 1972. Some of these UF students had actually been required to attend by a journalism professor. The headline in the Florida student newspaper the next day told the tale: “'''Meet Mailer the lamb: Dry audience dampens author’s''' {{pg|403|404}} '''rhetoric'''” (Hagy, Jim, ''The Independent Florida Alligator'', 26 Feb. 1986, p. 1).

Mailer began apologetically, saying his reputation had been exaggerated. They seemed to expect a wild man like Hunter S. Thompson: “I couldn’t carry Hunter Thompson’s water pail,” he said modestly. He referred to the last lecture he had given at the University of Florida, in 1975, when the audience heckled him; he felt he had laid an egg that night and seemed to want to make up for it. But his opening anecdote about the boxer Sonny Liston, intended to warm them up, received no response. “That’s the first time I’ve told that story without getting a laugh,” he said. “I can see we’re going to have a lot of fun tonight.” With that, the audience finally laughed, and Mailer smiled for the first time that evening.

He read a passage about Muhammad Ali from ''The Fight'', speaking with a Southern twang, holding the book in his right hand while making short jabs with his clenched left fist. He also read from ''The Art of Writing'', which had recently been published in ''Michigan Quarterly Review''.

Afterwards there were the inevitable questions about Mailer’s reputation as a male chauvinist. “I’ve been called a sexist. I’ve been called macho. . . . Women don’t know what they’re talking about. . . . Women have been telling men how to live in New York for the last century.” Some in the audience groaned; others laughed.

The evening had been neither triumph nor disaster for Mailer, but there was no way it could compare with the absurdist warfare that had taken place during his speech at Berkeley in 1972.

At the reception, I asked Mailer about his projected trilogy. When his novel ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) appeared, it was announced as the first of a fictional trilogy beginning in ancient Egypt and stretching into the far future. Mailer said the trilogy was now “on ice.” He said that he spent eleven years on the Egyptian novel, that it could stand by itself, and that he felt no great impulse to continue. He also admitted he was hesitant about writing about the future because science fiction was not his genre. He didn’t know enough about computers, for one thing. I said I taught science fiction, and he asked, “Is it really close to magic?” I mentioned Arthur C. Clarke’s remark: “any sufficiently advanced technology is close to magic.” Although Mailer majored in engineering at Harvard and wrote ''Of a Fire on the Moon'' about the Apollo astronauts, he had always deeply distrusted technology and preferred magic.

He said he was working on another novel but didn’t want to talk about it. {{pg|404|405}}
The past year he’d mostly been writing screenplays for money. He had six kids in school and had to pay the bills. Every month he met with his accountant and was “$10,000 down or $10,000 up.” That’s also why he spoke at Florida. He was working on Godard’s adaptation of ''King Lear'' (which was eventually made, but not a good film). Mailer spoke admiringly of Kurosawa’s ''Ran'', an adaptation of ''Macbeth''. He was also researching the life of Jewish racketeer Meyer Lansky for a possible film.

By strange coincidence, Joshua Weinstein, the student assigned to chaperone Mailer at UF, said he was a nephew of Lansky. Mailer prompted him for details about “Uncle Meyer” Lansky as family man. It was interesting to observe Mailer’s journalistic technique: he was looking to confirm observations about Lansky’s character he’d gleaned elsewhere.

After the reception, Mailer and I went to Bennigan’s restaurant and bar with some students and journalists. He had refrained from eating or drinking before his talk, wanting to arrive onstage in peak condition. Now he ordered a hamburger and a drink called a “Rum Presbyterian” a concoction he instructed them how to blend. His mood was genial. The chef was so excited at making a hamburger for Norman Mailer that he asked for his autograph on a napkin. The author complied.

As Mailer drank, he began to unbend and talked freely in response to the students’ questions. I was impressed by his graciousness, his candor, and his curiosity. He was willing to engage with the students, so long as they spoke about subjects that interested him. The conversation ranged from his recent trip to Russia, to his screenplays, boxing, flying, rock climbing, and journalism.

He said he had studied Russian for several months but gave up because he couldn’t speak it and was having trouble with the Cyrillic alphabet: “I couldn’t visualize the sound of the words.” This suggested to me that his imagination is highly visual, or that he has to find a link between the audio and the visual.

Mailer said he liked the Russians: “They are deeper than Americans. I thought they all looked Jewish.” He met and admired the poet Yevtushenko and twice viewed a movie Yevtushenko had made. I said Russian poets were like rock stars or opera singers; Mailer agreed.

He said that the American government had been lying to us about Russia throughout the Cold War to exaggerate the threat. He found Russia in 1985 not to be a great power but a sad place, a Third World country, like the {{pg|405|406}} United States if it had been devastated by war and then run by the Army. He called it more “an Army state” then a police state: “In the Army, everyone gets drunk as a way of saying, ‘I don’t give a shit about your institution.{{' "}} That, he claimed, accounts for the appalling rate of alcoholism in Russia.

Talk shifted to boxing: the fraternities at the University of Florida had recently held a “Slugfest” of amateur boxing. Mailer was fascinated; he wanted to know the details about the weight classes and the time of the rounds. He said, “If these guys are going in the ring for the first time, they must be terrified.” The students said this was generally true. He talked about boxers psyching themselves up for weeks before a fight, and the pressure and terror with which they lived.

Aging and death seemed to be on Mailer’s mind. He discussed upcoming fighters and mentioned the death of trainer Cus D’Amato. Mailer said he gave up boxing in 1985: “My knees gave out. If you can’t jog, you can’t box.” He had last seen Muhammad Ali in 1984 and said that, despite Parkinson’s disease, Ali’s mind was in much better shape than that of many alcoholics. Ali joked with Mailer’s wife: “You still with that old man?”

The topic switched to skydiving. Mailer said he once flew a glider but didn’t like it: too noisy, you had to concentrate on the instruments, and he got nauseated. Some students at a college he visited had once invited him skydiving. He was terrified all night at the prospect and relieved the next morning when it rained and they couldn’t go up. I admired Mailer’s honesty about his fears and incapacities, something he confronts in all his fiction. The terror he said boxers lived with was deeply familiar to Mailer.

I asked him about the scene of climbing the monument in Provincetown in his novel ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' (1984). He said it was based on his experience of rock climbing and on the experience of a guy who actually climbed the monument. We began to mentally cast the film ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'', which Mailer was about to direct. For Timothy Madden, I suggested William Hurt; Mailer said his name had been mentioned (the part was finally played by Ryan O’Neal). The part of Regency was tougher to cast. Mailer said there weren’t many big, tough guys who could act. I mentioned Brian Dennehy (Wings Hauser ended up playing Regency). Then I described in detail to Mailer the plot of the Coen brothers’ film ''Blood Simple'' (1985), a murder thriller I had recently seen. Mailer was momentarily taken aback, saying, “Jesus! That plot is better than mine.” He was dissatisfied with the ending of ''Tough Guys Don't Dance'' but didn’t yet know how to change it. (''Tough Guys Don't Dance'' {{pg|406|407}} [1987] had its moments, but it failed at the box office and became Mailer’s first and last try at directing a Hollywood film. He was right: ''Blood Simple'' was a better thriller.)

Because I’d never boxed or gone skydiving or rock climbing, I talked about running with the bulls in Pamplona, which I had done in 1974. I said the real danger of running was not so much from the bulls but from fellow runners who tripped or stumbled, causing a human pileup or montón. Then many people could be gored or trampled by the bulls or the steers. Mailer said, “What a humiliating way to go: trampled by a steer!” I said, “To the guy getting trampled, it would make no difference which animal killed him.” But Mailer was concerned about dying a noble death.

A student journalist asked him if journalism was good training for a writer. Mailer said, “No, journalism is a whorehouse.” I disagreed, citing Twain, Crane, Dreiser, and Hemingway. But Mailer would not change his mind. The student journalists were disappointed.

Finally, Joshua Weinstein demonstrated a drinking trick with a straw; he claimed Florida Governor Bob Graham had taught it to him. It involved twisting and compressing the drinking straw, then popping it with a fingernail. It went off like a pistol shot. Mailer was game but couldn’t make it work.

On the way back, we drove past Graham Pond on campus where, one evening in 1975, Mailer had given a speech outdoors that had been heckled by the students. I pointed out that right across the street was the campus sewage plant. Mailer said, “The sewers must have been rumbling the night I gave that speech.” So, he had not come to the University of Florida just for the money. He could have gone to many campuses, but he was trying to make up for what he perceived as his failure of eleven years before. And he seemed satisfied, if not with the bland reception to his speech that evening in 1986, then with his conversation with the students at the bar.

I drove him back to the Hilton. Mailer asked the time; it was 11:45 pm. “Omigosh, I’ve got to call my wife!” And he excused himself to use the phone.

I thought to myself: this is wife number six. I figured she would also be his last.

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Encounters with Mailer}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

User talk:Grlucas

2025-04-29T16:03:37Z

Grlucas: /* Finished Remediating A Visionary Hermeneutic Appropriation: Meditations on Hemingway’s Influence on Mailer */ Reply.

{{Talk header}}
[[/Archive 202504/]]

== Final edits ==
Hello, my article is complete: [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Ernest_and_Norman_(Exit_Music)|Ernest and Norman (Exit Music)]]
:{{Reply to|Flowersbloom}} great, thank you. I made some corrections. Please be sure to sign your talk page posts. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:59, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

Good evening, Dr. Lucas. Below is the link to my edited article:
https://projectmailer.net/pm/User:ASpeed/sandbox
:{{Reply to|ASpeed}} great. Let me know when it’s finished and posted, and I’l have a look. It appears as if you still have a bit of work to do. Please be sure to sign your talk page posts. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:59, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

Good evening, @[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]]. I have completed most of my Remediation Articles, but I still show issues for the one named, "[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman,_Papa,_and_the_Autoerotic_Construction_of_Woman|Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman]].

Based on the latest updates, [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Battles_for_Regard,_Writerly_and_Otherwise|Battles for Regard, Writerly and Otherwise]] looks good with exception of including a '''category'''.
:{{Reply to|ALedezma}} this one is good. I made some corrections before removing the banner, mostly in your sources. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:59, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

May you let me know if there is anything I can do on my end to resolve the issues with the first [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman,_Papa,_and_the_Autoerotic_Construction_of_Woman|article]]?

[[User:ALedezma|ALedezma]] ([[User talk:ALedezma|talk]]) 21:47, 8 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|ALedezma}} looking very good, but some sources missing page numbers. Please see to those. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:59, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

:::Thank you @[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] . I will review those and respond when complete. [[User:ALedezma|ALedezma]] ([[User talk:ALedezma|talk]]) 22:47, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
::::@[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]]. Thank you for your feedback. A review of article additions was made for source pages. [[User:ALedezma|ALedezma]] ([[User talk:ALedezma|talk]]) 20:22, 11 April 2025 (EDT)
:::::{{Reply to| ALedezma}} ok, looking good. I made some corrections. There's one final thing to do: no footnotes should appear in the notes section; use {{tl|harvtxt}} instead; I did one to show you how to use the template. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 13:39, 12 April 2025 (EDT)
::::::@[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] Changes were done to footnote sources. Thank you! [[User:ALedezma|ALedezma]] ([[User talk:ALedezma|talk]]) 19:59, 12 April 2025 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas I finished my remediation article https://projectmailer.net/index.php?title=The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman_Mailer%27s_The_Fight:_Hemingway,_Bullfighting,_and_the_Lovely_Metaphysics_of_Boxing&action=edit [[User:TWietstruk|TWietstruk]] ([[User talk:TWietstruk|talk]]) 19:44, 8 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| TWietstruk}} good work so far, but there is more to do: placement of footnotes (eliminate spaces around them and punctuation always goes ''before'' the footnote.); proofread for typos; fix all red errors at the bottom (most of these are from errors in sourcing); works cited entries should be bulleted list and eliminate space between entries. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:05, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
::{{Reply to|Grlucas}} Final edit and no errors with some help from @NRMMGA5108, @JKilchenmann. Please mark me as complete. On to help someone else with the things I've learned
https://projectmailer.net/index.php?title=The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman_Mailer%27s_The_Fight:_Hemingway,_Bullfighting,_and_the_Lovely_Metaphysics_of_Boxing&action=edit [[User:TWietstruk|TWietstruk]] ([[User talk:TWietstruk|talk]]) 17:52, 13 April 2025 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas I have finished my assigned remediation article: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Jive-Ass_Aficionado:_Why_Are_We_in_Vietnam%3F_and_Hemingway%27s_Moral_Code#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHemingway2003-24
Username ADear.
:{{Reply to|ADear}} thank you. I have marked this as complete. Please be sure you sign your talk page posts correctly. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:05, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas, I have finished remediating my assigned article. Please review it at your earliest convenience. The link is here: [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Norman_Mailer's_Mythmaking_in_An_American_Dream_and_“The_White_Negro”|Norman Mailer's Mythmaking in An American Dream and “The White Negro”]]—[[User:Erhernandez|Erhernandez]] ([[User talk:Erhernandez|talk]]) 08:52, 4 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|Erhernandez}} well done! A couple of things: never bury your talk page post. Put it at the bottom, preferably in its own section by clicking "Add topic" on the top-right. I removed your banner after making a few corrections. Please have a look over it and move on to the next thing. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:06, 5 April 2025 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas, I transferred and edited my article. Can you look at it and remove the banner? Here's the link: [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Authorship_and_Alienation_in_Death_in_the_Afternoon_and_Advertisements_for_Myself|Authorship and Alienation in Death in the Afternoon and Advertisements for Myself]] ( [[User:APKnight25|APKnight25]] ([[User talk:APKnight25|talk]]) 13:02, 28 March 2025 (EDT) )
:{{Reply to| APKnight25}} looking good! A couple of things: never bury your talk page post. Put it at the bottom, preferably in its own section by clicking "Add topic" on the top-right. Next, eliminate all "fang" quotes in the article and add “real quotation marks.” Your sources should be a bulleted list. And there should be no space before a citation. You’re almost finished! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 11:21, 30 March 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation of "Reinventing the Wheel" Mailer Article for Review ==

Dr. Lucas,

My [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Reinventing_a_New_Wheel:_The_Films_of_Norman_Mailer|article]] is ready for review.

Thank you!
[[User:TPoole|TPoole]] ([[User talk:TPoole|talk]]) 15:29, 29 March 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|TPoole}} great! Could you include a link to it? Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 11:07, 30 March 2025 (EDT)
::OK, I [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Reinventing a New Wheel: The Films of Norman Mailer|found it]]. Looking really good. Great work. There are some citation issues that need to be seen to. The two red categories at the bottom should not be there; they will go away when the citations errors are corrected. Eliminate any quotation mark "fangs" in the text and replace them with “real quotation marks.” Let me know if you need help. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 11:14, 30 March 2025 (EDT)
:::@Grlucas, what are the citation issues? Which ones need correcting? [[User:TPoole|TPoole]] ([[User talk:TPoole|talk]]) 17:31, 31 March 2025 (EDT)
::::{{Reply to| TPoole}} When you click your citations, they should jump to the works cited entry they correspond to. Several of yours do not, indicated by the red “Harv and Sfn no-target errors” at the bottom. You also have a "CS1 maint: Unrecognized language" error that will likely be cleared up when you fix the citation issues. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:55, 1 April 2025 (EDT)
:::::@Grlucas, I have tried correcting the sfn codes in my citations. I was able to get the 2 web citations to link correctly. But for some reason, I cannot get the Mailer 1967 film Wild 90 citation to link to the reference list. Please advise. [[User:TPoole|TPoole]] ([[User talk:TPoole|talk]]) 20:24, 4 April 2025 (EDT)
::::::{{Reply to| TPoole}} OK, all fixed and published. Thanks. Please move on to another remediation. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:46, 5 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation of: "Contradictory Syntheses: Norman Mailer’s Left Conservatism and the Problematic of 'Totalitarianism'" ==

Dr. Lucas

I finished the remediation of the following article:

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Contradictory_Syntheses:_Norman_Mailer%E2%80%99s_Left_Conservatism_and_the_Problematic_of_%E2%80%9CTotalitarianism%E2%80%9D

It is ready for your review. Thank you.
[[User:JKilchenmann|JKilchenmann]] ([[User talk:JKilchenmann|talk]]) 19:04, 30 March 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JKilchenmann}} looks great. I made some tweaks to the references and some throughout, like changing ' and " to real apostrophes and quotation marks. A bit more clean-up, but you might want to check over it again. I removed the under-construction banner. Well one. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 21:32, 30 March 2025 (EDT)

== Final Edit ==

Thank you for your comments on my remediation of
"[[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Authorship and Alienation in Death in the Afternoon and Advertisements for Myself|Authorship and Alienation in Death in the Afternoon and Advertisements for Myself.]]"

I've eliminated the "fang quotes" and changed them to “real quotation marks.” This was a very fascinating tip that taught me something new. It's something I've never noticed before but now always will.

I also put my sources in a bulleted list and removed the space before the citations. I think I'm all set now.
:{{Reply to|APKnight25}} great work! Please help other editors to complete the volume. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:34, 3 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation for ''Firearms in the Works of Hemingway and Mailer'' ==

[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]]

Hi Dr. Lucas,

I believe I have done everything for the Remediation of my article. Please let me know if there is anything else I need to do.

I will also link the article below:

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Firearms_in_the_Works_of_Hemingway_and_Mailer

Thank you,
Caitlin Vinson
:{{Reply to|CVinson}} great work so far. Your references must use templates, please. Blockquotes must also be done correctly. No spaces or line breaks before or after the {{tl|pg}} template. Footnote placement is also off (punctuation goes before the footnote; no spaces before or after the footnote). I will add the abstract and url. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:30, 3 April 2025 (EDT)

:{{Reply to|Grlucas}} Hi Dr. Lucas, I believe there have been some updates made to the project. I believe I have also updated the works cited section to show correct templates. Please let me know if there is anything further that I need to do. Thank you, Caitlin.
::{{reply to| CVinson}} please sign your talk page posts correctly. Thanks. You still need to do some work on the sources. Use the <code>|author-mask=1</code> in your template for repeated author names. Also, you must eliminate the red “Harv and Sfn no-target errors” message at the bottom. No spaces or returns before or after the {{tl|pg}} call, as I already mentioned above. No parenthetical citations should be left, either; those should all be remediated to footnotes. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:50, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

:::{{Reply to|Grlucas}} I have updated the sources and updated the in-text citations. I am still having trouble with the "Harv and Sfn no-target errors." I have not been successful in fixing this error and have tried multiple ways to fix it. —[[User:CVinson|CVinson]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 8:18, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

::::{{Reply to|Grlucas}} Hi Dr. Lucas, I see that I still have a red X for my remediation assignment. Is there something else I am still missing? —[[User:CVinson|CVinson]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 11:35, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
:::::{{reply to| CVinson}} sorry, I'm just getting back to it. There are quite a few punctuation errors. Some left out and others appear after the {{tl|sfn}}. I'm trying to correct those I see, but you should have a look, too. Page is designated as <code>p=</code> in {{tl|sfn}}, not <code>pg=</code>; and a span of pages needs <code>pp=</code>. Again, I have tried to correct these. I removed the banner, but please have another look through. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 13:01, 12 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation for ''Norman Mailer Today'' ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished up my remediation article [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Norman Mailer Today|Norman Mailer Today]], and it is ready for review. Please let me know if I missed something. Thank you! —[[User:Kamyers|Kamyers]] ([[User talk:Kamyers|talk]]) 18:20, 3 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|Kamyers}} Great work! Please help your fellow editors finish the volume, or pick something to work on in [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010|Volume 4]]. Thanks, and well done. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:00, 4 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation of “The Conception of Irreversibility: Hannah Arendt and Hemingway’s ‘Hills Like White Elephants’” ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished my remediation of Jennifer Yirinec's article: [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/The Conception of Irreversibility: Hannah Arendt and Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”|The Conception of Irreversibility: Hannah Arendt and Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants.”]] Thank you for your assistance with the article. It is ready for its final review! [[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 10:24, 4 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|JHadaway}} a stellar job. Well done. I removed the banner, so you can move on to another article. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:12, 5 April 2025 (EDT)

== Tribute Remediations ==
Dr. Lucas, I have begun work on the tributes for volume 5. [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Grace Notes|Grace Notes]] by Stephen Borkowski is ready for its final review.—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 12:58, 4 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|JHadaway}} Well done! Banner removed, url added. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:18, 5 April 2025 (EDT)

==Oohh Normie Final Edits==
Hi Dr. Lucas, I have finished my article: [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/"Oohh_Normie_—_You're_Sooo_Hemingway":_Mailer_Memories_and_Encounters|Oohh Normie, You're Sooo Hemingway]]. Please let me know if there is anything I need to fix. [[User:Tbara4554|Tbara4554]] ([[User talk:Tbara4554|talk]]) 20:01, 5 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{reply to|Tbara4554}} thank you. I made some corrections and removed the banner. You might want to have another look over it. Please move on to something else. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:53, 6 April 2025 (EDT)

== Harlot's Ghost, Bildungsroman, Masculinity and Hemingway ==

Dr. Lucas,

The following article is ready for your review. Thanks.

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Harlot%27s_Ghost,_Bildungsroman,_Masculinity_and_Hemingway

[[User:JKilchenmann|JKilchenmann]] ([[User talk:JKilchenmann|talk]]) 21:22, 5 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JKilchenmann}} excellent. Thank you. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:39, 6 April 2025 (EDT)

== I am done with this ==

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Situating_Hemingway:_Mailer,_Style,_Ethics
:Received. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:29, 6 April 2025 (EDT)

== Final Review PM Article ==

Hi Dr. Lucas, [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Hemingway_to_Mailer_—_A_Delayed_Response_to_The_Deer_Park|here]] is my remediated article, ready for review![[User:Hobbitonya|Hobbitonya]] ([[User talk:Hobbitonya|talk]]) 12:21, 6 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Hobbitonya}} great work. I have removed the banner, so you are good to move on to something else. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:20, 7 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation Project ==

{{reply to|Grlucas}}
I have finished my remedidation project and I am ready for it to be reviewed. '''Article link''': [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Piling_On:_Norman_Mailer’s_Utilization_of_Marilyn_Monroe#Works_Cited|Piling On: Norman Mailer's Utilization of Marilyn Monroe]

Thanks,

[[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 13:04, 6 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} good work so far. Please remove wikilinks. Change ' and " to typographical apostrophes and quotation marks. And all red errors at the bottom of the page need to be taken care of. These are likely all from coding errors in your sources. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:24, 7 April 2025 (EDT)

{{reply to|Grlucas}}
I have removed the wikilinks, changed to the correct typographic style and updated my sources.
'''Article link''': [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Piling_On:_Norman_Mailer’s_Utilization_of_Marilyn_Monroe#Works_Cited|Piling On: Norman Mailer's Utilization of Marilyn Monroe] Thanks, [[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 21:55, 7 April 2025 (EDT)

[I forgot to fill out the summary box. I am adding my summary]
:{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} you're getting there! It looks great. You must eliminate all the red errors at the bottom. These appear when there are errors in your citations. Let me know if you need help. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:15, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

@{{reply to|Grlucas}} I have tried everything I can think of and I still have harv and sfn no-target errors and harv and sfn multiple-target errors and cs1 uses editors parameter. Do I not include the editor? [[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 16:03, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

{{reply to|Grlucas}} I have managed to get rid of two of the red target errors. I am still working on finding the harv sfn multiple target error. Thanks, [[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 20:37, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

{{reply to|Grlucas}} I have tried everything i can think of to remove the last red error flag. I had to turn it in. I don't know that else I can do in this situation. I was given citation that did not follow any of the given formats. [[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 21:45, 8 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} all parenthetical citations must be remediated to {{tl|sfn}}; none of yours are. Get these done, then we can worry about the errors. (Some notes on sources: any generic <code><nowiki>{{citation}}</nowiki></code> will not be correct. I see you have a book review by Marshall that has no source (I tried to find the original and cannot; this is a weird citation; I'll continue to look for it). There's also one that looks like a film that should use the [[w:Template:Cite AV media|<code>Cite AV media</code> template]].) Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 13:16, 12 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation Submission ==

Hello!
Here's my remediated article; [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/The_Devil's_Party:_Reading_and_Wreaking_Vengeance_in_The_Castle_in_the_Forest|The Devil's Party: Reading and Wreaking Vengeance in ''The Castle in the Forest'']].
Thanks! Please let me know if there's anything I can review or correct.
[[User:Maggiemrogers|Maggiemrogers]] ([[User talk:Maggiemrogers|talk]]) 13:23, 6 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Maggiemrogers}} nice work! Banner removed, so please move on to something else in the volume. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:39, 7 April 2025 (EDT)

== Vol. 4: Rumors of Grace article remediated ==

I believe I have completed remediation of ''[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Rumors_of_Grace:_God-Language_in_Hemingway_and_Mailer|Rumors of Grace: God-Language in Hemingway and Mailer]]'', vol. 4. I was having last-minute trouble with sfn errors for sources without authors, but Justin Kilchenmann helped me out, so I think they are fixed.
:{{Reply to|Sherrilledwards}} You have done a remarkable job—a real Herculean effort! Footnotes should not go in any notes. See those I changed; the others should be changed in the same way. I have done some, but the others have to be fixed, I'm afraid. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:20, 8 April 2025 (EDT)
::{{Reply to|Grlucas}}I believe I have completed these fixes, so the article is again ready for review. [[User:Sherrilledwards|Sherrilledwards]] ([[User talk:Sherrilledwards|talk]]) 15:49, 12 April 2025 (EDT)
:::{{Reply to| Sherrilledwards}} truly exceptional work—a model remediation! Marked as complete. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:30, 13 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation of "Inside Norman Mailer ==

Hi Dr. Lucas - I have finished remediating the article, [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Inside Norman Mailer|Inside Norman Mailer]]. Please let me know if I need to make any adjustments. Thank you! [[User:Chelsey.brantley|Chelsey.brantley]] ([[User talk:Chelsey.brantley|talk]]) 18:09, 7 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|Chelsey.brantley}} good work! Please help with another article from volume 4. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:36, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Completed: Norman Mailer: Playboy Magazine ==

I hope I am doing this is right. I have finished remediating my article about Norman Mailer and its in my designated sandbox [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Norman_Mailer:_Playboy_Magazine_Heavyweight here.]
If there are any last minute edits, let me know. I got the last of the errors removed yesterday. And I believe we are on the same page with leaving the in-line citations for ''Playboy'' to be as is, since the author didn't put them down in the works cited. [[User:NrmMGA5108|NrmMGA5108]] ([[User talk:NrmMGA5108|talk]]) 20:14, 7 April 2025 (EDT)Nina Mizner
:{{Reply to|NrmMGA5108}} looking good! So, the parenthetical citations still in the article, I'm assuming, are there because of those missing sources? Please check your page numbers; some seem to be off. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:04, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

:{{Reply to|Grlucas}} I found the page number error and its corrected, and yes all the parenthetical citations should be referencing issues of the ''playboy'' magazine, which were not listed in the works cited. --[[User:NrmMGA5108|NrmMGA5108]] ([[User talk:NrmMGA5108|talk]]) 20:54, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
::{{Reply to| NrmMGA5108}} it looks great. I removed the banner! Thank you. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 13:29, 12 April 2025 (EDT)

== Completed Remediation From Here to Eternity and The Naked and The Dead: Premier to Eternity? ==

Greeting Dr. Lucas,

I have made the adjustment that you mentioned.

I also made additional edits to my short footnotes and noticed that my citations did not link to my references - which has been fixed.

I have tested all of my citations, and they all work.

Here is my article by Alexander Hicks, ''From Here to Eternity and The Naked and The Dead: Premier to Eternity?''

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/From_Here_to_Eternity_and_The_Naked_and_the_Dead:_Premiere_to_Eternity%3F

Have a great day.
:{{Reply to| THarrell}} Please always sign your talk page posts. Several “quoted items” in the article appear as ‘quoted items’; these must be corrected, please. No spaces or returns should surround {{tl|pg}} calls. Multiple page numbers should look like this <code><nowiki>{{sfn|Moretti|1996|pp=11-14}}</nowiki></code>; note the double <code>pp</code>. There seem to be many typos. I corrected some for you, but you must see to the rest. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:16, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

:{{Reply to| Grlucas}} Greetings,

Are these the only additional corrections that need to be made? This is different from what you mentioned before.

I just want to be sure that I have hit everything.

Also can you verify what other typos you are seeing, I have ran through this twice.

If something is spelt a certain way, for example "Soljer", I have left it that way. Since it is mentioned like that in the article.
—[[User:THarrell|THarrell]] ([[User talk:THarrell|talk]]) 06:49, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

:{{Reply to| Grlucas}} Greetings,

I have gone through and fixed all of the short footnotes.

I have gone line by line with a ruler to look at any typos, and fixed the words that I found that had a dash in them/needed to be lowercased.

I have also fixed the quotations.

—[[User:THarrell|THarrell]] ([[User talk:THarrell|talk]]) 12:31, 9 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| THarrell}} much better. Periods go inside quotations marks; I think I fixed these, but please check. Also, there are no spaces before footnotes; again, I did a find/replace, but you should check. Also, check that all titles of novels are italicized (if it's italicized in the PDF, then it has to be italicized in the remediation, including abbreviations, like ''Naked''); I fixed a couple. Also, no extra spaces; there should only be a single blank space between paragraphs. There are quite a few little details that needed (need?) fixing. I removed the banner, but please check my work. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 12:41, 12 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation for “Footnote to Death in the Afternoon” ==

Greetings Dr. Lucus,

My article is ready for your review. Thank you.

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Mailer%E2%80%99s_%E2%80%9CFootnote_to_Death_in_the_Afternoon%E2%80%9D)
:{{Reply to| KForeman}} it's coming along. Please ''always'' sign your talk page posts. Right up top, there are errors. Please use the real {{tl|pg}}, like all the other articles. Citations need to be fixed. All parenthetical citations must be converted. You still have quite a bit of work to do. All red sections need to be seen to and corrected. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:20, 8 April 2025 (EDT)
@Grlucs, per your suggestions, I've made the corrections. Please review. I look forward to your feedback. Thank you.
:{{Reply to| KForeman}} looking better. All parenthetical page numbers should be removed and added to the {{tl|sfn}}. Check your page numbers in {{tl|pg}}. Footnotes should have no spaces around them; periods and commas go ''inside'' quotation marks and before the footnotes. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:28, 19 April 2025 (EDT)
@Grlucs, per your suggestions, I've made changes, please review. Thank you.

=Remediation of "Cluster Seeds and the Mailer Legacy"=
Hello, Dr. Lucas. I have completed the remediation of [https://projectmailer.net/index.php?title=The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Cluster_Seeds_and_the_Mailer_Legacy&oldid=18200| my article], and it is ready for your review. Thank you!—[[User:ADavis|ADavis]] ([[User talk:ADavis|talk]]) 11:32, 8 April 2025 (EDT)@ADavis
:{{Reply to| ADavis}} got it. I think I check it yesterday and removed the banner then. Please move on to another piece. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:29, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediating Article: Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing Volume 4. ==

Hello Dr. Lucas,

I have completed remediating my article. Here is the link [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing|The Mailer Review: Volume 4: Mailer, Hemingway, Boxing (2010)]] [[User:JBrown|JBrown]] ([[User talk:JBrown|talk]]) 13:01, 8 April 2025 (EDT)JBrown
:{{Reply to|JBrown}} a good start, but all parenthetical citations need to be footnotes. Also, check your headers. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:29, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation for ''Norris Church Mailer'' ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished up remediating the article [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norris Church Mailer|Norris Church Mailer]], and it is ready for review. Please let me know if I missed something. Thank you! —[[User:Kamyers|Kamyers]] ([[User talk:Kamyers|talk]]) 13:42, 8 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{reply to|Kamyers}} awesome work! Thank you! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:29, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Final Edits Completed and Ready for Review ==

Dr. Lucas, I have completed my assigned remediation article: [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Looking_at_the_Past:_Nostalgia_as_Technique_in_The_Naked_and_the_Dead_and_For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls|Looking at the Past: Nostalgia as Technique in The Naked and the Dead and For Whom the Bell Tolls]]. Please review at your convenience. I enjoyed working on this assignment. I look forward to your suggestions and feedback. All the best, Danielle (DBond007)
:{{Reply to| DBond007}} ok, good work. Please remove all the external links. Links to Wikipedia are not necessary, but if used, they need to be done correctly. There should be no spaces before {{tl|sfn}}. May sure all your ' and " are actually typographical apostrophes and quotation marks. Remove any superfluous spaces and line breaks; these mess up the formatting. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:29, 8 April 2025 (EDT)
::{{Reply to| Grlucas}} Thank you. I will get started on these revisions immediately. Thanks for the feedback and your time. :)[[User:DBond007|DBond007]] ([[User talk:DBond007|talk]]) 11:30, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
::{{Reply to| Grlucas}} I have completed all the requested revisions and ready for review round 2. Thank you again![[User:DBond007|DBond007]] ([[User talk:DBond007|talk]]) 12:10, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
:::{{Reply to|DBond007}} looking better! There are still items to be seen to, like titles on novels and magazines need to appear like they do in the original: if it's italicized in the PDF, it must be italicized on the web. I added the epigram for you and corrected that pesky citation. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:41, 12 April 2025 (EDT)
::{{Reply to| Grlucas}}I have completed edits. I went through and took out quotes around The Time Machine, except for one instance that the author uses them. All my other titles seem to correspond to the original article. Please let me know if I missed something. Thank you for the epigram and the pesky citation correction. Best, [[User:DBond007|DBond007]] ([[User talk:DBond007|talk]]) 15:25, 17 April 2025 (EDT)
:::{{Reply to|DBond007}} received, and good work. I had to clean up the sources a bit, so you might want to have a look. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:42, 18 April 2025 (EDT)
::{{Reply to| Grlucas}}I went back and reviewed some of the other articles marked complete to compare and look for remaining revisions. I made one change on Works Cited and also added the page numbers to correspond to the pdf. Let's try this again. Again, I *believe I am finished with this article. Best,[[User:DBond007|DBond007]] ([[User talk:DBond007|talk]]) 10:36, 18 April 2025 (EDT)

Hopefully this works!. I'm not sure how to reply to other threads, but I was scrolling through the PDF and noticed the publisher is Iowa Pres? Just curious if it's supposed to be Iowa Press? [[User:Wverna|Wverna]] ([[User talk:Wverna|talk]]) 22:33, 18 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Wverna}} I'm not sure what you're talking about. Perhaps if you included a link to the article? See [[w:Help:Talk pages|Talk page guidelines]] if you don't know how to use them. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:33, 19 April 2025 (EDT)
Just kidding, I responded to the wrong "Bell Tolls' article. I was referring to this one: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Tolls_of_War:_Mailerian_Sub-Texts_in_For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls sorry about that! [[User:Wverna|Wverna]] ([[User talk:Wverna|talk]]) 17:49, 19 April 2025 (EDT)

== Completed the remediation assignment ==

Good evening Dr. Lucas,

I hope I am doing this right. Here is the link for my completed Remediation articles: [http://The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Encounters_with_Mailer Encounters with Mailer].

&

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Effects_of_Trauma_on_the_Narrative_Structures_of_Across_the_River_and_Into_the_Trees_and_The_Naked_and_the_Dead

I look forward to reading your feedback.

All the best,

Patrick Riley
:{{Reply to|Priley1984}} thank you! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:40, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation Project Submission: An Expected Encounter in an Unexpected Place ==

Link:

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman_Mailer:_An_Expected_Encounter_in_an_Unexpected_Place

Winnie Verna
:{{Reply to|Wverna}} received, thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:51, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== E.Mosley ==

Good evening, @Grlucas. I have completed my Remediation Articles[[https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/On_Reading_Mailer_Too_Young]]. The article I had was " On Reading Mailer Too Young Volume 4, 2010
:{{Reply to| Essence903m}} thank you. I had to fix and clean-up quite a bit. Your saves also do not include summaries. When you move on to your next article, please be more careful and follow the instructions. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:12, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Kynndra Watson ==

Good Evening, @grlucas. i have completed my Remediation articles: Volume 5: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Making_Masculinity_and_Unmaking_Jewishness:_Norman_Mailer%E2%80%99s_Voice_in_Wild_90_and_Beyond_the_Law and Volume 4: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Mailer,_Hemingway,_and_the_%E2%80%9CReds%E2%80%9D.

Thank you.
:{{Reply to| KWatson}} thank you, and this is a good start, but there are still many items that need to be cleaned up, like footnote indications (They go after punctuation), citation errors (all the red errors at the bottom need to be seen to), extra spaces and ALL CAPS need to be removed. Please see other completed articles for models. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:18, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Tribute Remediation ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/What Would Be the Fun of That?|"What Would Be the Fun of That?"]] by Peter Alson.—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 09:33, 9 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JHadaway}} awesome! Thank you! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:21, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== “Remembering Norris Church” Tribute Remediation ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Remembering Norris Church|“Remembering Norris Church”]] by John Bowers.—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 16:17, 9 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JHadaway}} and again, excellent! Thank you! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:22, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== “The Norris I Knew” Tribute Remediation ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/The Norris I Knew|“The Norris I Knew”]] by Christopher Busa.—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 09:04, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JHadaway}} rockin’! 👍🏼 —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:24, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== "Norris Mailer" Tribute Remediation ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Norris Mailer|"Norris Mailer"]] by Nancy Collins.—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 09:35, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JHadaway}} thanks again. You’re tearing it up. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:32, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== "Rise Above It" Tribute Remediation ==

Dr. Lucas, I have finished [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Rise Above It|"Rise Above It"]] by David Ebershoff—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 11:12, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|JHadaway}} excellent. Many thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:15, 12 April 2025 (EDT)

== Completed Additional Articles ==

Hello, Dr. Lucas. I have remediated [https://projectmailer.net/index.php?title=The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Tributes_to_Norris_Church_Mailer/A_View_Through_the_Prism&oldid=18744|"A View Through the Prism"], [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Tributes_to_Norris_Church_Mailer/Lip_Liner|"Lip Liner"], and [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/The_Living_Room_Show#|"The Living Room Show"] in Volume 5. They are ready for your review. Thank you!—[[User:ADavis|ADavis]] ([[User talk:ADavis|talk]]) 12:31, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|ADavis}} great work. Thank you! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:26, 12 April 2025 (EDT)

== Submission notification sent 29 March ==

@grlucas

Dr. Lucas - I sent a Talk Page notification that I had completed the page I remediated on 29 March. The table indicates I haven't done anything yet. I sent it from the Talk Page from the article site. I don't see a response from that notification, but I had received one from you earlier in the process.
I don't understand what happened.

[[User:LogansPop22|LogansPop22]] ([[User talk:LogansPop22|talk]]) 14:54, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{reply to|LogansPop22}} sorry if I missed that. [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Hemingway and Women at the Front: Blowing Bridges in The Fifth Column, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Other Works|this article]], right? It's looking great, though all the parenthetical citations must be converted to footnotes using {{tl|sfn}} and some of the author names in your notes should use {{tl|harvtxt}}. I added the "citations" section for you. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:39, 12 April 2025 (EDT)

== Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness: Norman Mailer’s Voice in Wild 90 and Beyond the Law ==

@Grlucas, I have made some additional edits to this [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Making_Masculinity_and_Unmaking_Jewishness:_Norman_Mailer%E2%80%99s_Voice_in_Wild_90_and_Beyond_the_Law article] in Volume 5 by correcting most of the citations. There are 2 that still do not work, but I think that is because the sources are incomplete.

[[User:TPoole|TPoole]] ([[User talk:TPoole|talk]]) 21:16, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| TPoole}} Looking really good, and this is a complicated one. A couple of things: no spaces or line breaks before or after {{tl|pg}}; I removed the spaces before {{tl|sfn}}, but you might want to check them; there are some typos, like missing spaces before some parentheses; no footnotes should appear in the notes section: use {{tl|harvtxt}} instead. And all the red errors at the bottom need to be cleared up. Great work so far! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:00, 12 April 2025 (EDT)

== Red Error-Gone ==

{{reply to|Grlucas}}I have deleted all the sfn's and the red error is gone. I don't know why I didn't think about this days ago.

[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Piling_On:_Norman_Mailer’s_Utilization_of_Marilyn_Monroe|Gladstein-Monroe]]

[[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 23:07, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|MerAtticus}} getting closer. A few things: you should use <code>|author-mask=1</code> for repeated author names in your works cited; all parenthetical citations need to be replaced with footnotes using {{tl|sfn}}; must punctuation in your sources need to be removed as the templates do that for you; and you need to use {{tl|harvtxt}} for citations in your endnotes. Also, letters and films have their own templates. I did a couple of these for you as examples. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:14, 12 April 2025 (EDT)

== "Remembering Norris" Tribute Remediation ==

Dr. Lucas, I have finished [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Remembering Norris|"Remembering Norris"]] by Margo Howard.—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 09:20, 12 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JHadaway}} excellent! Thank you. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:35, 13 April 2025 (EDT)

== Norman Mailer: From Orgone Accumulator to Cancer Protection for Schizophrenics ==

Dr. Lucas,

The following article is ready for your review:
https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman_Mailer:_From_Orgone_Accumulator_to_Cancer_Protection_for_Schizophrenics

I was unable to find the correct format for the first works cited entry under Mailer. It is a reprint of a magazine article. Thank you. [[User:JKilchenmann|JKilchenmann]] ([[User talk:JKilchenmann|talk]]) 16:28, 12 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JKilchenmann}} you are a master remediator! Thank you for going above and beyond. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:44, 13 April 2025 (EDT)

==Tolls of War: Mailerian Sub-Texts in For Whom the Bell Tolls, Trust & Sparring with Norman==
Dr. Lucas, these were some of the smaller ones, so I went ahead and knocked them out. They are ready for review: [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Sparring with Norman|Sparring with Norman]], [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Trust|Trust]], and [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tolls of War: Mailerian Sub-Texts in For Whom the Bell Tolls|Tolls of War: Mailerian Sub-Texts in For Whom the Bell Tolls]]. —[[User:Kamyers|Kamyers]] ([[User talk:Kamyers|talk]]) 10:27, 13 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Kamyers}} all excellent—above and beyond! Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:56, 13 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation for ''Death, Art, and the Disturbing: Hemingway and Mailer and the Art of Writing'' ==

Hi everyone,
I am currently helping with the article, [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Death,_Art,_and_the_Disturbing:_Hemingway_and_Mailer_and_the_Art_of_Writing Death, Art, and the Disturbing: Hemingway and Mailer and the Art of Writing]. It still has a good bit to go, if anyone wants to help out.
—[[User:CVinson|CVinson]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 5:17 PM, 13 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|CVinson}} thanks! I added the author info. I'm not sure many will see your request; you might want to post it on the forum. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 14:56, 14 April 2025 (EDT)
::{{Reply to|Grlucas}} Thank you for adding the author information and I have posted the request in the forum. Thank you! —[[User:CVinson|CVinson]] ([[User talk:CVinson|talk]]) 6:53 PM, 14 April 2025 (EDT)

== Mimi and Mercer ==

{{reply to|Grlucas}}
I have corrected the Mimi Gladstein [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Piling On: Norman Mailer’s Utilization of Marilyn Monroe]] and removed all the red errors. I also have finishe the Erin Mercer article [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Automatons and the Atomic Abyss: The Naked and the Dead]], except the ''The Naked and the Dead'' in the display title. An error occured.
[[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 19:26, 13 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} good work. There should be no footnotes in the endnotes, please. Since this is the only thing to correct, I have removed the banner, but please let me know when you made that final correction. Thanks! (I will respond about your second article shortly.) —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 14:59, 14 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} your second article looks good. Could you use the [[w:Template:Cite interview|Template:Cite interview]] for interviews. I did one for you. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 16:33, 14 April 2025 (EDT)

== Through the Lens of the Beatniks Remediation ==

Hello, Dr. Lucas! I've completed the remediation of [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Through_the_Lens_of_the_Beatniks:_Norman_Mailer_and_Modern_American_Man’s_Quest_for_Self-Realization#CITEREFNaked1992|Through the Lens of the Beatniks]]. I wasn't able to get the letter citations exactly how I thought they should be. If there's anything I'm missing, please let me know! Thanks! [[User:Maggiemrogers|Maggiemrogers]] ([[User talk:Maggiemrogers|talk]]) 10:09, 14 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Maggiemrogers}} got it! It looks great. I made some format changes, but you did a great job! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 15:58, 14 April 2025 (EDT)

== Finish Mimi ==

{{reply to|Grlucas}}

I have made the final edit to Mimi and removed the footnotes from the endnotes. [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Piling_On:_Norman_Mailer’s_Utilization_of_Marilyn_Monroe]] [[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 15:50, 14 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} you removed all the citations. Only '''footnotes''' need to be removed, but citations need to stay. I did the first note for you (now erased, but you can see it in the history) so you could see how it was done. You can also see [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Rumors of Grace: God-Language in Hemingway and Mailer|this one]]. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 16:52, 14 April 2025 (EDT)

== Completed? All You Need is Glove ==

Hi Dr. Lucas, I believe the book review, [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/All_You_Need_is_Glove|All You Need is Glove]] is done and ready for review! [[User:Hobbitonya|Hobbitonya]] ([[User talk:Hobbitonya|talk]]) 19:10, 14 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Hobbitonya}} awesome work! Banner removed, and many thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:08, 16 April 2025 (EDT)

== Harv and Sfn no-target ==

{{reply to|Grlucas}}
I changed the citations in the article to interview and I tried a few things to get rid of the Harv and Sfn no-target with little luck. [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Automatons_and_the_Atomic_Abyss:_The_Naked_and_the_Dead]]
[[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 21:04, 14 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} this was because your interviews had no dates. Most are from Lennon's book, published in 1988. I added the dates to the citations, but the sfn footnotes need to be fixed to correspond with those. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:24, 16 April 2025 (EDT)
::{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} OK, between your fixes and my little tweaks, this one is finished! Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:50, 17 April 2025 (EDT)

== Erros fixed ==

{{reply to|Grlucas}}
I have fixed all citation errors in both articles and added the harvtxt. Atomic Abyss still has the Pages using duplicate arguments in template calls error.
[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Automatons_and_the_Atomic_Abyss:_The_Naked_and_the_Dead]]
:{{Reply to|MerAtticus}} see above. These still need fixing. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:35, 16 April 2025 (EDT)

[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Piling_On:_Norman_Mailer’s_Utilization_of_Marilyn_Monroe]]
:{{Reply to|MerAtticus}} this one looks great! Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:35, 16 April 2025 (EDT)

[[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 08:23, 15 April 2025 (EDT)

== completed: Advertisements for Others ==

Thanks to some classmates helping with the finishing touches, my second article should be ready. [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Advertisements_for_Others:_The_Blurbs_of_Norman_Mailer|Advertisements for Others.]]
--[[User:NrmMGA5108|NrmMGA5108]] ([[User talk:NrmMGA5108|talk]]) 19:24, 17 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{reply to| NrmMGA5108}} received, and thank you! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:15, 18 April 2025 (EDT)

== Two Poems Vol 4 Ready? ==

Hi Dr. Lucas! I think these two poems are ready for review: [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/The Boxer in the Park|The Boxer in the Park]] and Norman Mailer and [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman_Mailer_and_Ernest_Hemingway_Do_Not_Box_in_Heaven|Ernest Hemingway Do Not Box in Heaven]]. The second on says the display title is wrong, but again, I don't know what I am missing there. Thank you![[User:Hobbitonya|Hobbitonya]] ([[User talk:Hobbitonya|talk]]) 09:05, 18 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Hobbitonya}} excellent! Thank you. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:56, 18 April 2025 (EDT)

== A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway ==

Hey,

I see that [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway|A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway]] is missing text. Can you email me a copy or link it as a reply, so I can remediate this article. [[User:APKnight25|APKnight25]] ([[User talk:APKnight25|talk]]) 09:44, 18 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| APKnight25}} you may download both volumes’ PDFs on the [https://forum.grlucas.net/t/project-mailer-assignments-remediation-project/88/3?u=grlucas forum]. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:40, 18 April 2025 (EDT)

== Almost complete ==

@grlucas
I've made a ton of progress.
The only thing I have left is going through all of the links to do away with harvtxt and sfn target error and an error for extra text in the author section. I fixed the error about using an "en" dash between years.
I'll still be working on it until tomorrow night, but please take a look: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Hemingway_and_Women_at_the_Front:_Blowing_Bridges_in_The_Fifth_Column,_For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls,_and_Other_Works

@grlucas
I’ve gotten rid of the second of three error messages. Still looking for the harvtxt sfn target error.
[[User:LogansPop22|LogansPop22]] ([[User talk:LogansPop22|talk]]) 14:45, 20 April 2025 (EDT)

@grlucas
I’ve gone through every citation. Did the YEARa and YEARb designations. Made sure there weren’t extra spaces or missing {, |, or anything else.
I’ve corrected everything I can find after extensive proofreading. I still have the harvtxt and sfn no target error.
Here it is: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Hemingway_and_Women_at_the_Front:_Blowing_Bridges_in_The_Fifth_Column,_For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls,_and_Other_Works
[[User:LogansPop22|LogansPop22]] ([[User talk:LogansPop22|talk]]) 19:50, 20 April 2025 (EDT)

== Articles complete ==

@grlucas
I have also made a lot of progress with my articles and luckily received a last minute assit from a few of my class mates. I beleive both volumes to be complete: Vol 4: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Mailer,_Hemingway,_and_the_%E2%80%9CReds%E2%80%9D (Which I believe has already been submitted) and Volume 5: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Making_Masculinity_and_Unmaking_Jewishness:_Norman_Mailer%E2%80%99s_Voice_in_Wild_90_and_Beyond_the_Law (I just received the final error correction from a fellow student.

I also started working on this Vol 4 article once I got back into the system: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Style,_Politics,_and_Hemingway%27s_Spanish_Civil_War_Dispatches in my sandbox https://projectmailer.net/pm/User:KWatson/sandbox but another user has already completed it.

Please review my articles and advise what else is needed from me. Thank you [[User:KWatson|KWatson]] ([[User talk:KWatson|talk]]) 15:37, 19 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| KWatson}} OK, I already checked the [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and the “Reds”|Peppard article]]. For [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness: Norman Mailer’s Voice in Wild 90 and Beyond the Law|the Cohen]], the notes are still not quite right. Citations must be logically inserted. Instead of <blockquote>Mary V. Dearborn writes that Mailer picked up Yiddish at home from his parents, “enough so that many years later, in Germany, he was able to ask for directions in this language and be understood.” {{harvtxt|Dearborn|1999|p=14}}</blockquote> it should be <blockquote>Mary V. {{harvtxt|Dearborn|1999|p=14}} writes that Mailer picked up Yiddish at home from his parents, “enough so that many years later, in Germany, he was able to ask for directions in this language and be understood.” </blockquote> See the difference? Please be meticulous on these. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:57, 20 April 2025 (EDT)

== Additional edits ==

Hello! I reformatted all in text citations, did some editing, and added page numbers to [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing|Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing]]- could you please take a look at the updated page and see if there's anything additional that it needs?

I was also wondering: on this page, I had also recieved confirmation from you that my [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/The American Civil War in The Naked and the Dead and Across the River and Into the Trees|originally assigned article]] was complete, and the banner could be removed. However, it is still showing as an X on the page, and I am unable to find the comment from you! Could you please clarify if anything needs to be fixed? Thanks so much!
[[User:KaraCroissant|KaraCroissant]] ([[User talk:KaraCroissant|talk]]) 16:25, 19 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| KaraCroissant}} good! I was making quite a few corrections on “[[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing|Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing]],” but I stopped, figuring you might want to finish it. Put footnotes directly after the quotations, not all at the end of sentences. No spaces or line breaks before or after {{tl|pg}}. Use <code>|author-mask=1</code> with repeated author names in works cited entries, titles of books must be italicized like they are in the original text, etc. Thanks. After a few fixes, I removed the banner for the [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/The American Civil War in The Naked and the Dead and Across the River and Into the Trees|Meredith article]]. Well done. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:20, 20 April 2025 (EDT)

== Civil War..Dispatched. ==

{{reply to|Grlucas}}

I believe the Hemingway's Spanish Civil War is complete except the harvtext were not working. [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Style,_Politics,_and_Hemingway's_Spanish_Civil_War_Dispatches]]
[[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 17:37, 19 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} I made many small corrections. Please view them in the history and continue in the same way. This one just needs a bit more attention. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:33, 20 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation, Vol. 4 & 5 ==

For your review,

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norris_Church_Mailer:_An_Artist_from_Arkansas

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Imagining_Evil:_The_Sardonic_Narrator_of_Mailer%E2%80%99s_Last_Novel (Wasn't sure whether or not to add the dinkus)

[[User:Wverna|Wverna]] ([[User talk:Wverna|talk]]) 11:15, 20 April 2025 (EDT)

== Hemingway ==

{{reply to|Grlucas}} I revised early this morning and I have gone back through it this afternoon. Hopefully it looks okay. Any ciations in the notes at this point is beyond my understanding of the topic. [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Style,_Politics,_and_Hemingway's_Spanish_Civil_War_Dispatches]]

[[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 14:11, 20 April 2025 (EDT)

== Combat ==
Hello
For your review [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/What_Norman_Mailer_Taught_Me_about_Combat|What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat].
Completed by me and @Flowersbloom
[[User:Tbara4554|Tbara4554]] ([[User talk:Tbara4554|talk]]) 18:45, 20 April 2025 (EDT)

== Article Completed ==

Hi Dr. Lucas - I have finished the article [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/“A_Noble_Pursuit”:_The_Armies_of_the_Night_as_Outside_Agitator|“A Noble Pursuit”: The Armies of the Night as Outside Agitator]]. Please let me know if any changes are needed. Thanks!--[[User:Chelsey.brantley|Chelsey.brantley]] ([[User talk:Chelsey.brantley|talk]]) 19:13, 20 April 2025 (EDT)

== A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway ==

I believe I have finished remediating this [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway|article]]. [[User:APKnight25|APKnight25]] ([[User talk:APKnight25|talk]]) 22:44, 20 April 2025 (EDT)

== Volume 4 ==

https://projectmailer.net/pm/User:JBawlson/sandbox
Hi Dr. Lucas! I've finished remediating my article.

== Diligently Continuing to Remediate ==

Hi, I remediated the article, [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman vs. Ernest: Influence and Identity|Norman vs. Ernest: Influence and Identity]].

I'm not sure if it will count towards the editing grade because it is overdue, but I wanted to keep editing volume 4. I really would like to get it to complete status.

I am having a major error, and I'm positive it has to do with the roman numeral citations. Please help me out with this if you can.

Ex. p=xii–xiii --[[User:APKnight25|APKnight25]] ([[User talk:APKnight25|talk]]) 15:22, 24 April 2025 (EDT)

Disregard the sfn error. I found a solution. --[[User:APKnight25|APKnight25]] ([[User talk:APKnight25|talk]]) 07:53, 25 April 2025 (EDT)

== Further Remediation ==

I'm currently remediating the article, [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/A_Visionary_Hermeneutic_Appropriation:_Meditations_on_Hemingway’s_Influence_on_Mailer|A Visionary Hermeneutic Appropriation: Meditations on Hemingway’s Influence on Mailer]] I've complete a good chunk of it, but it is very long. I will try to finished it this weekend. I'm not sure if anyone else is still remediating in an attempt to finish the volumes. When I finish this article, there will be no more left in Volume 4. I'm not sure about volume 5 yet and will investigate later. I did have to create the page from scratch, so there is no "under construction" notice. --[[User:APKnight25|APKnight25]] ([[User talk:APKnight25|talk]]) 15:23, 25 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| APKnight25}} that is very kind of you. I appreciate all of the extra work, but do not kill yourself. I don't believe that anyone else is working; see [[Special:RecentChanges]]. That said, any additional will look very good for your evaluation. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 16:15, 25 April 2025 (EDT)

== Finished Remediating A Visionary Hermeneutic Appropriation: Meditations on Hemingway’s Influence on Mailer ==

I believe that I'm finished remediating [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/A_Visionary_Hermeneutic_Appropriation:_Meditations_on_Hemingway’s_Influence_on_Mailer|A Visionary Hermeneutic Appropriation: Meditations on Hemingway’s Influence on Mailer]]. I think that all of Volume 4 is remediated. This was a really fun and informative experience, so thank you. I wish future students well in editing volumes. --[[User:APKnight25|APKnight25]] ([[User talk:APKnight25|talk]]) 14:05, 28 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| APKnight25}} awesome! Again, that you ''so'' much for going above-and-beyond. I’m glad you enjoyed it—I do, too. 😀 —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 12:03, 29 April 2025 (EDT)

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Ernest and Norman (Exit Music)

2025-04-29T15:53:56Z

Grlucas: Fixes and updates.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{MR04}}
{{Byline|last=Kaufmann|first=Donald L.|url=http://prmlr.us/mr04kau |abstract=Hemingway’s suicidal shadows reinforced the literary truism that Mailer was Papa’s heir apparent for the postwar generation. In 1948 Hemingway was revisited in the guise of ''The Naked and the Dead''. Both men abided by the Neo-Primitive, a distrust of civilization and complication, a demand that man
shift to the natural and simple and go back to the tough-guy earth. |note=Nearly four decades ago I wrote an essay, “The Long Happy Life of Norman Mailer,” an ironic echo of Hemingway’s Francis Macomber’s split-second demise (''Modern Fiction Studies'', 1971). Norman Mailer’s passing in 2007 inspired this revision of my premature “last words.” [Author’s note. —Ed.]}}
{{dc|dc=H|emingway’s suicidal shadows reinforced the literary truism}} that Mailer was Papa’s heir apparent for the postwar generation. In 1948 Hemingway was revisited in the guise of ''The Naked and the Dead''. John Aldridge and other critics gave their blessings. At Hemingway’s death, Mailer’s eternal debt still echoed: “I shared with Papa the notion, arrived at slowly in my case, that even if one dulled one’s talent in the punishment of becoming a man, it was more important to be a man than a very good writer.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=265}} Even without such “advertisements,” few readers, then or now, could ignore the surface similarities, so massive as to make a kind of Siamese twins out of Hemingway and Mailer.

Both men were exponents of lifestyles that almost push their writing off stage. Both took to notoriety that keeps time to gyrations of Byron in the raw. Mailer’s summer action at Provincetown was a rerun of Hemingway’s action at Key West and Cuba. Papa’s conformation with the outdoors—bulls, fish, game—had its counterpart in Mailer’s gestures at prize fighting, glider flying, hand wrestling. Both abided by the neo-primitive, a distrust of civilization and complication, a demand that man shift to the natural and simple and go back to the tough-guy earth. Females, usually, ended up as second class in fictive worlds that rocked with masculinity.{{pg|243|244}}
With current American sexuality in flux, mostly spouts of neo-feminism, the Mailer-Hemingway flair for the art and life of the he-man makes for instant hate/love from the literary world. Legends-still-in-the-making cannot not wait for smug cultural certitudes. Future scholars will discover ultimate Mailer-Hemingway clarity. Much will depend on the vagaries of overall “Canon Esteem” and “Legacy Quotients.” A more likely future scenario, both American and global, is, ZIP—near-zero books and readers, a literary dystopia. Already the times may be too much out of joint to include Hemingway and Mailer in the same slice of literary history after all their shadowboxing with posterity ends.

But no such utopias or dystopias are yet here; but still lumping Norman and Ernest in a time capsule makes a generation gap look like a cultural chasm.

Such ongoing cultural and literary fireworks have already pushed Hemingway and Mailer into separate spheres of no-man’s land. In the Hemingway canon, a thin slice of experience repeats itself. Heroes look and sound alike. A code emerges with an inner order. Various settings, moods, and actions almost blur, as if popping from the same narrow but deep bag of ideas and themes. And there is that prose style, unique, that brooks no imitation. Despite all the ado about his writing of hyperaction, violence, madness, and confrontation with the void, Hemingway’s work survives as giving off a sense of unity, coherence and simplicity. Ultimately, there exists a rapport with the natural and the individual .All such trademarks of Hemingway end with Mailer, whose writing features a series of non-heroes without a code. Instead of Hemingway’s mannered serenity, a fictive world “clean and well-lighted” as a foil to the outside void, Mailer lets the outside chaos shape his fictive world. As a chameleon of American letters, Mailer seldom repeats himself. It is either change for the sake of change or, more likely, an attempt to mark time with the headlong rush of American history. Unlike Hemingway, whose culture was ripe for “a separate peace,” Mailer’s culture seems ripe for a separate war.

Language takes to different styles depending on whether the writer’s strategy is peace or war. Hemingway sees language as a way of disengaging from an institutionalism that brings to the individual the effects of a constant condition of war. Silence becomes an index to inner peace, the kind “that passes all understanding,” the best to be had during an age given over to Nada. The answer to complication is simplification—to corruption, purification. This is {{pg|244|245}} how Hemingway’s language works—as a tactic of survival for those at one with the code. His hero’s rapport with relative silence—tight-lipped, coolgestured—reveals one key to how experience can be made more simple and pure. Much of the hero’s pullout from the “messy” establishment rides on verbal omission.Words have become noisy lies, products of the cerebral and the institutional taboos of the Hemingway world. The magic in Papa’s language rests on the ability to keep sensation a one-man show. Hemingway’s ear for cutting experience to the bone gives him a one-man authorial voice and explains why he so mastered the short story, an accomplishment not repeated in the Mailer canon with its fewer and lesser Dreiser jumbo-sized stories. But for Mailer, for decades on a kaleidoscopic search for authorial voices, language poses an altogether different challenge. Words must echo history. Instead of the Hemingway sound of disengagement, Mailer’s language leads to a confrontation with the stuff of American culture, past and present. Since culture continues to undergo shock, language as communication is pushed to its limit. This results in language complicated and experimental. Unlike Hemingway with his one-man style, Mailer has turned into an everyman. Versatility sounds throughout his canon: to read Mailer’s novels—from the neo-naturalism of ''The Naked and the Dead'' to the mixture of bland essay and flip allegory in ''Barbary Shore'' to the aesthetics of magic and mood in ''An American Dream'' to the pop dynamics of ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' and to the “simple declaratives” Hemingway echoes of ''The Executioner’s Song'', and to ''Ancient Evenings'', a time capsule with Melville operatics; and to elevated Le Carré and Clancy genre diction of ''Harlot’s Ghost''; and later “near novels”—''Oswald’s Tale'' or neo-classic “Creative Nonfiction”; and ''The Gospel According to the Sun'' with its show-stopping “Divine First Person Narrator,” and the Mailer literary finale, ''The Time of Our Time'', a six-decade creative tome, is the antithesis of Hemingway’s clean well-lighted pocket dictionary. As a bonus, the stuff of Mailer’s prose is a kind of rhetoric that rocks with grace and wit. It befits a mod Jeremiah who aims to win over readers to the word, an image that has made Mailer a modern master of the essay. His is the language of involvement, the opposite of Hemingway’s voice at the fringe of American experience, almost underground. No other American writer but Hemingway has made it so big with so small a vocabulary while Mailer, in his attempt to interpret what makes his culture tick, uses a vocabulary that pumps without beginning to end.{{pg|245|246}}
This dissimilarity between Hemingway and Mailer holds when the focus shifts from language to hero, from voice to face. The Hemingway hero enters as a fixture. His face fits the contour of a generation more letdown than lost. His is masculinity plus with a next-door name. He sports a big wound (scarring body and soul) but puts down any self-pity. With heavyweight thought in hock, he leads with his body, seeks out a life of sensation with much coolness and courage until hedonism turns into his religion. If Nada still bothers, the hero counters with an ironic lip and enough cosmic stoicism to insure belief in selfhood. Such a lifestyle clings to the Hemingway hero with little variation—Nick Adams, Jake Barnes, Frederick Henry, Robert Jordan, and others all resembling the same Papa with the same message. The code to be emulated enables an individual to erect a no-man’s land between himself and the establishment. At least there is survival with dignity as Hemingway’s heroism passes on a vital advertisement that even if God is dead, man, alone, is very much alive.

Any such hope fades with what passes for heroism in the Mailer canon. Here a hero is defined as someone to be emulated in terms of cultural survival. But America is cancerous, too sick a culture to justify automatic survival and thus more ripe for villainy than heroism. As a result, Mailer takes to a diverse and tentative approach to heroism that had turned out non-heroes, antiheroes and, at best, heroes-in-training. The wartime culture of ''The Naked and the Dead'' offers five soldiers—Ridges, Goldstein, Valsen, Hearn, and Croft—whose heroics are halfhearted and part-time. In ''Barbary Shore'', the theme of mankind drifting toward barbarism squelches any vital heroism. As for ''The Deer Park'', Sergius O’Shaugnessy (the cool one) and Marion Faye (the cold one) are experts in styles of sensibility that mark them as villains in a sickly sentimental land. Stephen Rojack, in the shadow of hipsters and “White Negroes,” acts as a “philosophical psychopath” who exposes the nerve of cancer in ''An American Dream'' and ends more the murderer than savior of his culture: a happening in language serves as makeshift heroism in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?''

An omniscient “D.J.” (disc jockey) in a way-out version of the “Voice of America” spews out a one-way dialogue at the heart of cultural abyss. Any reader, bothered by books without overt classic heroes, can tune in or turn off the Word as hero. In his socio political work—''The Armies of the Night'' and ''Miami and the Siege of Chicago'' and ''Some Honorable Men''—Mailer playacts as hero-narrator, camouflaged with all the tonal acrobatics of self as third person {{pg|246|247}}(shades of Joyce’s ''Stephen Hero'' and ''Portrait''). And there is Gary Gilmore, the Maileresque philosophical soulful All-American Murderer, and, ultra pop celebs, Ali and Marilyn, and super-stud artists or writers, Picasso and Henry Miller; and the “historic” Lee Harvey Oswald, the eternal “suspect” J.F.K. killer, subtitled, “An American Mystery.” But there is no mystery hero in Mailer’s idiosyncratic tome, ''Time of Our Time''. Just open it and out will rush a one-man’s “The American Language” in all its “Baroque Glory.” Yet, there remains a Manichean-based “hero” mystery—Mailer’s final project and protagonist. During his last days, Mailer envisioned a trilogy centered on Adolf Hitler, his generation’s consummate human evil. No human heroism here, just villainy, with a Nazi-SS point of view, and no counter American in sight. Finally the Mailer hero has stopped wrestling with tangible American culture. All in all, there is little chance (so sayeth posterity) that Mailer will duplicate Hemingway’s feat of making a mode of heroism and his name inseparable.

Hemingway’s and Mailer’s split over the hero carries over to their authorial tone. Unlike Mailer, whose rhetoric of self sends out an array of attitudes throughout his work, Hemingway usually lets his authorial voice play it straight.Whether fiction or nonfiction, Hemingway relies on an expertise of total experience to cut down on tonal ambiguity. When it does occur—playful or serious or in between—such ambiguity clings to the work or to the reader and rarely refers to Hemingway himself. One authorial mask that Papa rejects is that which undercuts the authority of self, especially any tone that smacks of self-parody. Papa, at bottom, is serious. As Carlos Baker and others have pointed out, Hemingway as man often takes to the gross lie, a way to make his life as jazzy as his art. But once the claims of art intrude, he subscribes to a law of authenticity, fact or pseudo-fact done up in a style that tells it the way it is. Autobiography passes into fiction. As for nonfiction, fact becomes the final word. No matter how well he could hunt, fish, fight bulls or men, Hemingway’s greatest and most lasting gift is with words whose main power derives from an authority of self.

But America’s current increasingly reader-free, flashy-iffy pop culture for decades ran counter to any one-man expertise as a serious writer. But the expatriate Hemingway’s fame occurred in the early 1920s,with America on the brink of worldwide literary acclaim. Mailer’s overnight Byronic literary debut with his “Big War Novel” happened with America on the brink of “culture shock” that erupted in the 1960s. Quickly the Hemingway-Mailer time {{pg|247|248}} frames differed. As Norman weated over a disappointing Barbary Shore, Ernest was surfing to literary heights with ''The Old Man and the Sea''. Clearly, literary times were out of joint. Mailer’s new radicalized America superseded any possible tonal uniformity with Papa. See ''Advertisements for Myself'', the Mailer opus with underlined homage to the new “Cultural Papa,” mass media. Granted, Hemingway knew how to create notoriety (becoming an instant celebrity in his own time) by doing “tricks,” his way, cool and sly, with the voracious media. But by Mailer’s time, mega-media (no less) demanded excess, derring-do, and out-and-out egomania. Mailer complied with inflated prose and personality. In Hemingway’s day, a writer’s life could be (should be) derring-do, but a writer’s craft (his art) should be highly disciplined and aesthetically grounded. But by Mailer’s time, derring-do had to be both on and off the page.

''Advertisements'' introduces the necessary hard sell. Mailer’s tonal grotesqueries range from self-exalting arrogance to self-pitying confessions. What also shapes such a personality plus is a style of existentialism that leads Mailer into “those areas of experience where no expert is competent.”{{sfn|Kaufmann|1969|p=111}} More at home with the radical, the tabooed and the mysterious, Mailer veers from the Hemingway rapport with a clean well-lighted slice of experience. Unlike Papa’s assimilation of autobiography, Mailer makes do with bits and pieces of his life revised to fit his fiction. This makes for writing spiced with sound effects of a pseudo-self. During the media craze for privacy, Mailer finds that aping Papa and restricting the big lie to real life is superfluous. Notoriety is automatic once an American writer makes it big. That is the iron law of mass media. As a result, the authorial voice in Mailer’s nonfiction runs on an overload of tone—arrogant, perceptive, naughty, defiant, confessional, scatological, humble, profane, candid, and so on. Such a barrage of attitudes blurs the images of Mailer as man and Mailer as writer. At times, readers cannot distinguish between the authentic and the phony and between the sincere and the put-on, as if Mailer is a kind of writer on a tightrope straddled between wisdom and nonsense. Irony, Hemingway’s key tactic for insulating the me from the not-me, can become in Mailer’s hands a radical extension of self, from the heights of adulation to the depths of parody. Such is the price—seer or clown?—that Mailer pays for his refusal to settle on expertise not heavyweight enough to confront the ills of his culture.

The fact that Mailer is more the heavyweight thinker than Hemingway points to how the American milieu has grown evermore a mix of the high-tech {{pg|248|249}} and lowbrow: the result, the current obsession with the “touchy-feely,” and the chic media creation, the celebrity writer, billed as the “Popular Culture Philosopher.” Hemingway’s earlier aversion toward “Big Thinking” stems from his believing the roots of American experience to be (at that late date) still tied to the frontier. Thus he sees the urban and industrial side of the American Twenties as transplanted Europe, foreign to what really makes Americans tick—nature as the ultimate test for man, alone. Papa’s resultant flair for the neo-primitive and raw sensations does away with the intellectual style of art. Ideology weighs down fiction. Thought, even in nonfiction, should be cut to the bone. The intensity of self, tuned to the body, not the mind, becomes Hemingway’s touchstone for art.

But Mailer takes art far outside the heart of self into the glare of history, American style. Neo-primitivism, in the Mailer style, also enshrines the role of sensations but only as an adjunct to a more vital mission of the artist—“making a revolution in the consciousness of our time.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=17}} Art, as a style of revolution, feeds on ideas, especially those that expose the underside of American experience, the roots of orgy, orgasm, psychopathy, violence, suicide, and the rest of the cultural abyss. Hemingway’s frontier—as an index to American experience—is art that is dead-end. In its place, and saturating the entire Mailer canon, stands the image of America as worldwide number one, a modern Rome, the undisputed shaper of current history, the key to why Mailer’s writing remains a “peculiarly American statement.” It also makes Mailer (despite his protestations to the contrary) one of America’s arch-intellectual writers of all time. Hemingway’s standard of art has gone into reverse.

Even those themes—sex, violence, death—which look to be Hemingway hand-me-downs are worked over by Mailer with a scope and depth never attempted by Papa. Hemingway’s mode of sex, he-man’s “pleasures on the run,” strikes a Mailer reader as a throwback to the pristine sex of yore. Of course, the Hemingway hero does not make love to unpolluted maids on horsehair sofas. Nick Adams meets his quota of perverts, and Jake Barnes does the can-can with occasional whores as expatriate homosexuals cruise Left Bank bars. But nowhere in the Hemingway canon is there anything that matches Mailer’s souped-up probe into the guts of current American sexuality on a 3-D online “XXX” rated romp. In his earlier fiction, Mailer takes apart autoeroticism, onanism, and narcissism, a prelude to the analism, orgy, incest, “apocalyptic orgasm,” and other erotic cousins of violence and {{pg|249|250}} murder in ''An American Dream'' and ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' In the latter, Mailer takes Hemingway’s dictum that the real obscene words are institutional abstractions (such as “honor” or “patriotism”) to a linguistic point of no return. “Vietnam” sports so-called obscenities by the hundreds before it is finally mentioned twice on the last page. “Vietnam,” for Mailer, is the only dirty word in the book. The sexual and cultural revolution in American letters has put Mailer’s style of sex almost outside Hemingway’s shadow.

The same holds for the theme of violence. Hemingway, as expected, snubs cerebral comment and sticks to dramatic action. His hero finds violence the key unit of sense experience, the most natural way of discovering the sources of one’s own feeling. When he confronts violence, all concerns about the not-me (all those institutionalized obscenities) fade; in their place, there is only a lust for survival, a passion for life, self-contained, unique. Philip Young and others have traced Hemingway’s obsession with violence to “traumatic neurosis” or a permanent shock after a wartime Big Wound, which makes for suicidal urges that must be diverted and purged through the destruction of other things. This may well be true, but Hemingway stays silent and lets his critics supply a rationale to his style of violence.

Again, Mailer does the expected, doing Papa one better. Not content with just dramatizing a mode of violence, Mailer adds his own ideology. In “The White Negro,” he projects from hipsterism the “philosophical psychopath” or “the antithetical psychopath who extrapolates from his own condition, from the inner certainty that his rebellion is just, a radical vision of the universe which thus separates him from the general ignorance, reactionary prejudice, and self-doubt of the more conventional psychopath.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=343}} Once this psychopathy is set up as a revolutionary force against the establishment, Mailer focuses on how philosophic psychopaths create “a new nervous system for themselves.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=345}} This sounds like a see-all composite of Rojack, Gilmore, Oswald, and other hip derring-do “tough guys.” Hemingway’s noted—“killing is not a feeling that you share”—passes into the complexity of Mailer’s “authentic violence,” an existential way of seeing the roots of emotions during a violent act. The ancient intimacy of violence of “''et tu, Brute?''” is updated to explain the zest for love and the reign of violence in a modern Rome. In America, killing (contrary to Papa) has become a last ditch way to share a feeling that love will conquer all.

Those changing times have also revised the concept of death, long a thematic trademark of Hemingway and Mailer. Death as terminal experience {{pg|250|251}} is what the Hemingway code is all about. Existence before or after death, no such nonsense! Courage spiced with stoicism is all the hero can muster against his ultimate encounter with nothingness. ''Carpe diem'' will, in the meantime, keep Nada at bay. But Hemingway’s cosmic blackout does not hold for Mailer, who rejects old-time God-is-dead and seeks a mode of eschatology that fits modern times. In Mailer’s existential theology, God is much alive but “not all-powerful; He exists as a warring element in a divided universe.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=380}} Old-time Manichaeism takes on a modern look as Mailer sees drama flare up at the hub of the universe: “If God and the Devil are locked in an implacable war, it might not be excessive to assume their powers are separate, God the lord of inspiration, the Devil a monumental bureaucrat of repetition.”{{sfn|Mailer|1998|p=1233}} The 2007 Mailer/Lennon’s “An Uncommon Conversation,” entitled ''On God'', offers final Mailer words on his “iffy” theology. Of course, such an existential vision makes death a mere workable mystery. Unlike Hemingway’s pinpointing death as a one-way ultimate experience, Mailer runs variations on the concept of death—from the “naked knowledge of wartime to the sophisticated techniques of the concentration camps, death “unknown, unhonored and unremarked.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=338}} He most resembles Hemingway when he approaches death from an existential standpoint—death as the most exact way of defining the self. But in his later work, Mailer passes beyond Papa’s orbit into the mysticism of death “as sea change, voyages, metamorphoses.”{{sfn|Mailer|1966|p=328}} Rojack’s “private kaleidoscope of death” is as much his as his culture’s.{{sfn|Mailer|1965|p=7}} Hemingway’s use of death as the ultimate definer of a man still appeals to Mailer, but not as much as death as a crucial definer of a culture.

The one area that creates a sophistication gap is political thought. Next to Mailer, Hemingway comes out naïve. His journalism has its quota of surface accounts of revolutions gone astray. The action spills outside America onto the world scene as Communists and Fascists vie with each other. Hemingway’s emphasis stays pragmatic; his is the politics of action, immediate and tangible, with issues clear-cut. As for speculation and theory, Papa declares “a separate peace” from all that political claptrap. But Mailer’s salvos on the ills of America shift into total war. What stays fixed as a target is America’s political horror—totalitarianism. The writer as political warrior now employs new literary weaponry, heightened nomenclature, “The Novel as History,” known earlier as “Art Journalism,” and more recently, “Creative Nonfiction.” But in 1968, the award-winning ''The Armies of the Night'', Mailer’s {{pg|251|252}} “hybrid novel” still remains a literary revelation. Writers, on the cultural or political beat, now can do it many ways—as fact or fancy, in either first or third person, or other multiple tones and moods. (Hemingway, if still around, would have either smirked or shuddered.) But not media-crazed 1968 America. Mailer (also Vidal and Capote) achieves media stardom. The new Mailer calendar now features big-time television appearances as sage and seer; and, in print media, numerous essays, articles, interviews, and other “talking points” literary ephemera. And, of course, multi-books on politics (''Some Honorable Men'') or pop culture happenings, the Marilyn books and the Ali fights. And don’t forget Mailer’s “live” campaign for the New York City mayoralty. Politics and culture literature, at such protean times, entirely blur. (The literary world once thought that History itself cannot be invented.) Hemingway’s world is dead. But not for Mailer. A few years before his death, he interrupts his massive Hitler biography, to publish a slim soft-cover, entitled ''Why Are We at War?'' (2003). (No Vietnam—this time, Iraq.) Until the end, Mailer remains a literary warrior and, perhaps a history-maker.

Gone are Papa’s days when fiction—in the hands of a master—seems stranger than truth and, not surprisingly, with Mailer’s canon in an orbit unknown to Hemingway’s, this is also true of aesthetics. Critics agree that aesthetic thought is not one of Hemingway’s strong points. Besides the of tresurrected “principle of the iceberg” of ''Death in the Afternoon'', Hemingway usually limits aesthetics to his own problems as writer and gray-bearded advice to young writers. Papa’s dicta include the high premium on honesty and imagination in fiction, with an accent on the sensuous and concrete, a muscled version of Henry James’ “felt life.” The abstract and other cerebral fallout he relegated to the essay. For the writer, action is rooted in his inner life; its highest quality turns into the stuff of fiction. To do any more with aesthetics would be superfluous to Hemingway, who learned early how to key up and measure out his life for his art, a tactic that later times denied to Mailer.

If Papa (like Byron) woke up in the twenties to find himself famous, Mailer wakes up in a postwar milieu intent on converting overnight fame into instant notoriety. ''Advertisements for Myself'' brims with personality jitters as Mailer confronts a media-minded America given over to pushing writers into the limelight, Horatio Algers as entertainers. Show business and cutthroat competition are a writer’s touchstones for survival in an electric {{pg|252|253}} age and Mailer reacts with an electric personality. Unable to do smooth autobiographical fiction in the Hemingway manner, Mailer begins living, rather than writing novels. This results in aesthetic stance and thought that hover between the sublime and banal. The overload of egocentricity, courage, and honesty that Mailer expends on his public image puts his aesthetics outside past norms of separating a man from his work, an artist from his mission. For Hemingway’s “iceberg,” he substitutes a metaphor of writers as “pole vaulters”—“a being who ventured into the jungle of his unconscious to bring back a sense of order or a sense of chaos. . . . If a writer is really good enough and bold enough he will, by the logic of society, write himself out onto the end of a limb which the world will saw off. He does not go necessarily to his death, but he must dare it.”{{sfn|Mailer|1966|p=108}} As a mode of literary survival and self-preservation, Mailer projects on the national scene a panorama of aesthetic possibilities—self images of the writer as prize fighter, as army general, as a cultural spokesman, soulful revolutionary, and so on—a razzle-dazzle public image whose strategy aims to “influence the history of my time a little bit.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=269}} Such a grandiose goal seems within reach, thanks to the literary establishment’s belated taking up with Mailer. But if some critics still insist that Mailer’s image as a writer ends up more clown than sage, Mailer would blast back with the ironic fact that his inner life is already a matter of public record in ''Time or Life'' or Talk Radio or ''Vanity Fair'' or blogs or Google, and that Hemingway’s “principle of the iceberg” sounds quaint during a time given over to disappearing books and “brain modification” and ubiquitous computers and “identity theft.” Mailer also eclipses and excels Papa in the realm, usually reserved for academe and prestigious publications—serious literary criticism. The Mailer canon sports many tidbits on the craft and tribulations of “The Writing Life.” Typically, Mailer, as literary critic, is candid and blustery, usually softened by surplus charm and wit and, an unusual gift, serendipity, and, at bottom, some genuine literary heft and depth. Thus far, this phase of Mailer has been either ignored or underrated. His “Some Thoughts about Writing” has been collected and published in 2003, aptly entitled ''The Spooky Art''. By contrast, Hemingway’s life seems the more “spooky.”

As for present and future biographers of Hemingway and Mailer, they can only note a growing incompatibility in lifestyles. Mailer’s career, especially its later stages, points up the absurdity of any conscious imitation of classic Hemingway. Even the two World Wars, supposedly Hemingway’s and {{pg|253|254}} Mailer’s twin springboards, make for little harmony. In the South Pacific, Private Mailer with his cool rifle and hot dream of being first with the big postwar novel looks bush league next to the legendary adventures of a warrior-Papa who (as an over-aged World War II war correspondent) still takes a lion’s share of frontline action around Paris and elsewhere. Hemingway’s “big” wounds—237 mortar fragments from World War I plus countless late injuries—look like high romance when set against the black eyes and bruised fists and other more prosaic variations of Mailer’s peace “in our time.” Mailer’s world—Dachau, Hiroshima, Watts, man on the moon, 9/11, and Iraq—is tone-deaf to the Byronic rumblings of a writer whose shadow loomed over bullrings, safaris, and big and little wars. This disparity in lifestyles comes out in their fiction. “Big Two-Hearted River,” which features Nick Adams—a chunk of composite Hemingway—the wounded outdoor man who embodies the American loner’s last rapport with nature, passes into the Mailer canon as the surrealistic autobiography of ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' where an American eclectic voice chimes in and beeps out an overkill world of Heinrich Himmler. A second go-round with Papa’s classic life was off the American literary map, and this Mailer well knew.

But Mailer and the rest of the literary world had to ride out Hemingway’s grotesque finale, a suicide that made his life in retrospect read like terminal writer’s block. Prior to the end, the Hemingway style as a viable force in American letters had already been eclipsed, even Papa’s twilight triumph in ''The Old Man and the Sea'', despite its fine prose, still reeked with the lastditch happenings of hero, code, and the rest of Hemingway’s message, tied neatly with upbeat humanism. An old Cuban fisherman’s stoic victory over a big fish sounded hollow to Mailer’s generation, more in tune with the earlier Hemingway whose fictive world was rooted in an encounter with Nada without any fishy ''deus ex machina''. A big fish or any ready made index to identity was a metaphysical luxury out of sight for Mailer’s generation. Papa was human after all. Like most men, Hemingway has lacked the ultimate “grace under pressure,” that of growing old. The Hemingway message in the sixties had a last-minute relevancy for the middle-aged. Or, as Mailer said— in regard to ''An American Dream'' and how he cast Rojack (age 44) in the Hemingway mold—a reader “really enjoys Hemingway” when middle-aged, when ripe for “that attack on masculinity that comes about the time when life is chipped away.”{{sfn|Kaufmann|1969|pp=124-125}} Mailer was speaking, three years after a death that had shocked both him and America:
{{pg|254|255}} <blockquote> I think Ernest hates us by the end. He deprived us of his head. It does not matter so much whether it was suicide or an accident— one does not put a gun barrel in one’s mouth, tickle the edge of an accident and fail to see that people will say it’s suicide. Ernest, so proud of his reputation. So fierce about it. His death was awful. Say it. It was the most difficult death in America since Roosevelt. One has still not recovered from Hemingway’s death. One may never.{{sfn|Mailer|1963|p=103}} </blockquote>

Then, Mailer tried to clean up a “messy” suicide by substituting an existential ritual that made Papa’s “deed . . . more like a reconnaissance from which he did not come back.” Mailer’s imagination saw Hemingway each morning “go downstairs secretly in the dawn, set the base of his loaded shotgun on the floor, put the muzzle to his mouth, and press his thumb into the trigger. There is a no-man’s-land in each trigger.” To enter here became Hemingway’s (a skilled hunter’s) final expertise, to press as far as possible, to recover “the touch of health” by daring to “come close to death without dying.” Mailer ended by suggesting that this may not be suicide: “When we do not wish to live, we execute ourselves. If we are ill and yet want to go on, we must put up the ante. If we lose, it does not mean we wished to die” (104–105). Mailer’s version of Hemingway’s death (not meant for official biographies) was his way of “recovering” from a literary fact—that Papa’s suicide (even by any other name) had instantly converted all his life into an American tragedy, a total experience that any other American writer would find suicidal (no joke intended) to follow.

Norman Mailer didn’t. He must have concluded that Hemingway’s death reflected how void of grace American old age still is. Mailer died on November 10, 2007, and his dying provided some telling final words on the Mailer-Hemingway connection. (I should add that during Mailer’s final three years, I was periodically privy to Mailer and to his inner circle. I have either seen or heard firsthand some of this Mailer epilogue.)

At the 2005 Norman Mailer Society conference, in Provincetown, members were offered souvenir tokens, key holders attached to a miniature pair of finger-sized red and white boxing gloves, with the caption, “Norman {{pg|255|256}} Mailer Takes on America.” At that time, Mailer, in his early eighties, was already visibly aging. He might have amended that caption to read, “Norman Mailer Takes on Norman Mailer.” His opponent was his body. His mind, probably from enriched family DNA, thus far, had decided to “sit this bout out.” His body, subject to decades of excess, was finally saying “enough.” It also more and more whispered such dire sounds as “bedridden” and “house arrest.” This also meant no more moneyed celebrity outings for the octogenarian writer, still the reputed “Super Papa,” and also the blue chip “Good Family Man” who (unlike Hemingway) befriended ex-wives and supported the offspring. Still, “not enough,” said his stubborn body, after decades of supporting a literary celebrity too often “off the page” and “out” on the edge—what some might call “crypto-suicidal.”

Was this an existential Mailer-Hemingway combo attempt to “fix” the bout? Would Norman do an Ernest encore?

Some of the early signs said “either way.” The Mailer mind was on the march. Alzheimer’s was not welcomed here. Each day he religiously assaulted the ''New York Times'' “toughie” crossword puzzles, usually to his advantage. Much of his time was still devoted to various writing projects—that steady grind along with other mental feats. The Mailer mind, like those deathless counterparts in ''Ancient Evenings'', seemed steely hip and immune to termination.

Other signs played more overt Papa music. What resounded from Mailer’s refusal to become housebound was his battle with the dreaded wheelchair (echoes of Hemingway’s “Old Man” and “Big Fish”). Reports out of his Provincetown home told of his herculean attempts to stay robust and mobile. Such were his indoor military manners, but what about the more showy outdoors and the public image of Mailer-being-Mailer? What result was battleground vanity? Using a “walker” was a no-show, most unbecoming for the (another Papa echo) “undefeated.” Instead of the old folk’s “walker,” the Mailer choice—the “telling” tough guy sleek twin dark walking canes and yes, more Hemingway grace notes: Papa’s matador with his code-blessed minimal artsy cape. Lastly, the public Mailer’s outer countenance: massive stress and pain, notwithstanding, the sustained and composed image of a laconic stoic, a muted reminder of Hemingway’s “grace under pressure.”

The end-result: a surprising engaging, elderly avuncular Mailer, once again stage center. I witnessed in a South Florida auditorium, its audience hushed, on seeing the featured speaker’s laborious Mailer reading Mailer, spiced with meaty but cozy cultural nuggets, the focus on his current favorite, the mystery of creative writing, or ''The Spooky Art''. There was an {{pg|256|257}} encore (surprise), for those fortunate admirers able to get up close and personal and seeing, almost touching, healthy gray hair, and, still a muscled toned face, and that prime-time Irish glint and smile. Had those giddy 1960s made a comeback? But this was still February 2007, and those up close soon realized that today’s feature performer had but one imperfect ear, and that his body was locked in last ditch combat.

Yet, there was some leftover Mailer celebrity magic, especially, when the Mailer Society met in Provincetowntown, where the Mailers (Norman and wife, Norris Church) held an open house. These parties were an instant follow-up of Mailer’s live dramatics at the nearby, legendary Provincetown Playhouse. Now our host was ready for closet drama. Such stage hopping rejuvenated and morphed octogenarian Norman into a vintage host. He stationed himself room-center, seated, with his twin parked canes. He was the hub, the party’s only main artery. About one hundred guests took turns, passed by and pressed flesh, hearts, and minds. All later agreed that the Mailer mind remained indomitable. At mid-party, guests could believe in miracles—endless Mailer parties, what with Norman, intermittently, swigging whiskey, flirting with young, sexy, guests, still dispensing loads of rapturous charm and wit, but (below the party’s radar) the party-room’s one indomitable brain knew that a “war” was going on.

What those partygoers did not see was the hands-off sign on Mailer, what the insiders, supposedly respected, a warning temporarily deactivated, for this time, under this roof. On these open house occasions, guests, including some of his own family, and, of course, neighbors and friends and Society members, in short, this onetime extended family could be hands-on. Hence, those wishful images of the host as an ephemeral “Life of the Party,” reinforced by the reputed Norman Mailer, the good Family Man (no Hemingway overtones here). But those partygoers, oblivious to “hands off,” did not see what the usually mannerly Mailer did when I tried to help him up a steep building ramp. His twin canes miscued. He lost his balance and I, instinctively, grabbed and held him and he glared and pushed me off, saying, “Never do that again.” I nodded and obeyed. His strategy for survival was his and nobody else’s. Few, if any, knew the totality of Mailer’s wrestling with death.

In his final weeks, amid media whispers of overnight Boston hospital “check-ups,” Mailer was “failing.” Dire Provincetown reports told of morning and midnight tussles with newspaper crosswords and other mindboosters, and sweat over the ongoing Hitler book. There were in-house {{pg|257|258}} endurance feats, such as prolonged torturous twin-caned inching, alone, to use the bathroom. All indoor and outdoor activity had become an obstacle course. The last battle alert read: his body, situation hopeless.

Hemingway did his own mop-up. Suicide, no less. And where was his beloved code? His end was not clean and well lighted. His last act, instead, was darkly done and downright messy. Mailer’s version of Papa’s final act was creative, revealing much more about Mailer and the extremities of the “Spooky Art.”Hemingway’s suicide remains more mystery than fact.Instead of a lengthy tell-all letter, a shotgun in the mouth was his final word. America’s famed literary Papa, at the end, seemingly sought a separate peace.

Mailer, instead, remained Mailer.

One of the most eloquent maxims on confronting one’s own death remains: “Do not go gentle into that good night”—so said Dylan Thomas with his battle cry: and Norman Mailer, seemingly, was “going” in the midst of a one-man war.{{sfn|Thomas|2005|p=791}} No separate peace here. Mailer ended, an existential warrior more and more resembling an aging and defiant Nick Adams but certainly not this hero’s creator. On November 10, 2007, in a Boston Hospital, Mailer closed his eyes for the final time, and no Hemingway in sight.

==Citations==
{{Reflist|15em}}

==Works Cited==
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|20em}}
* {{cite book|last=Kaufmann|first=Donald L.|title= Norman Mailer: The Countdown (The First Twenty Years) |publisher=Southern Illinois UP |location=Carbondale |date=1969|ref=harv}}
* {{cite book|last=Mailer|first=Norman |title=Advertisements for Myself |location=New York |publisher=G. P. Putnam’s Sons |date=1959 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book|last=Mailer|first=Norman |author-mask=1 |title=An American Dream |location=New York |publisher=Dial Press |date=1965 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book|last=Mailer|first=Norman |author-mask=1 |title=Cannibals and Christians |location=New York |publisher=Dial Press |date=1966 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book|last=Mailer|first=Norman |author-mask=1 |title=The Presidential Papers |location=New York |publisher=G. P. Putnam’s Sons |date=1963 |ref=harv}}
*{{cite book|last=Mailer|first=Norman |author-mask=1 |title=The Time of Our Time |location=New York |publisher=Random House |date=1998 |ref=harv}}
*{{cite book|last=Thomas|first=Dylan |chapter=Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night |title=The Norton Introduction to Literature |editor1-last=Booth |editor1-first=Alison |editor2-last=Hunter |editor2-first=Paul |editor3-first=Kelly J. |editor3-last=Mays |edition=Shorter 9th |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton |date=2005|ref=harv}}
{{Refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ernest and Norman (Exit Music}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Jive-Ass Aficionado: Why Are We in Vietnam? and Hemingway's Moral Code

2025-04-29T13:52:59Z

Grlucas: Quite a bit of cleanup and corrections.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>Jive-Ass Aficionado: ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' and Hemingway's Moral Code}}
{{MR04}} 
{{byline| last=Plath |first=James |abstract=An analysis of the influence of Hemingway on Norman Mailer’s ''Why Are We in Vietnam?{{sfn|Mailer|1967}}''It is Mailer and D.J.’s adoption of the Hipster mind-set and way of talking that sets them apart from others, even more so than the hunter’s code of honor. And being an insider—someone who knows what the outside world can only imagine—is perhaps the most crucial element of ''aficion'', as Hemingway detailed it. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr04pla }}
{{dc|dc=I|n ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' Norman Mailer alludes}} to James Joyce twice,{{sfn|Mailer|1967|pp=126, 149}} and certainly his 1967 anti-war novel has a Joycean feel. It incorporates the same sort of monologic stream-of-consciousness narrative and language play as we saw in ''Ulysses'', all tinged with the “color” that put "Ulysses" on trial in America for obscenity. But Mailer’s novel is also richly evocative of that other great modernist writer, Ernest Hemingway.

Hemingway was conspicuously singled-out with a few adjectives when Mailer told an interviewer six years earlier that if he has “one ambition above all others, it is to write a novel which Dostoevsky and Marx; Joyce and Freud; Stendhal, Tolstoy, Proust and Spengler; Faulkner, and even old moldering Hemingway might come to read.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1986|p=76}} A close reading reveals that ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' may actually be that novel, but I’ll leave it to future critics to explore how it would have appealed to the sensibilities of the other writers mentioned. I’m going to focus on Hemingway, because apart from echoes of Joyce’s style, his influence here seems most prevalent.

As Laura Adams observes, “three of the most powerful influences on Mailer’s scheme of things have been war and Ernest Hemingway and the intersection of the two.”{{sfn|Adams|1976|p=173}} Mailer told an interviewer that Hemingway’s death made him feel “a little weaker,” {{sfn|Hemingway|1986|p=71}} no doubt because he had felt a connection. Like Hemingway, Mailer wrote about boxing, he
wrote about bullfighting, he talked tough, he hung out with tough friends, he went to war, he wrote about war, he backed the underdog, he infuriated feminists, he was suspicious of governmental structures, and he seemed to {{pg|194|195}} take special delight in writing fiction that shocked readers or showcased his “insider” knowledge. “Hemingway and Fitzgerald are important imaginative figures in my life,” Mailer told the ''Washington Post Book World'' in 1971, explaining that “in Hemingway and Fitzgerald, it’s the sensuous evocation of things. The effect on the gut is closer to poetry.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1986|p=189}}

''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' Mailer seems to have borrowed a number of things from Hemingway, including the narrative structure for the novel, Hemingway’s “iceberg theory” of omission, the attempt to make the reader actually experience the fiction in his “gut,” and thematic elements that reflect the code and code heroes that Robert Penn Warren and Philip Young recognized during the early years of Hemingway scholarship.

In the spring of 1924 Hemingway had written the lower-case in our time, which consisted of eighteen vignettes drawn from the young writer’s journalistic observations of political upheaval, war, and bullfighting, published in an edition of only 170 copies. For ''In Our Time'' (1925) which was released by a major publisher in a first edition of 1,335 copies, he elevated two of those vignettes to stories and used the other sixteen as interlocutory chapters inserted in front of each of the longer new stories that he had crafted, most of which involved a coming-of-age protagonist named Nick Adams. To solve the problem of having an extra vignette, Hemingway broke the last story—“Big Two-Hearted River”—into Parts I and II. Interestingly, as Michael Reynolds reminds, Hemingway later said he always intended the vignettes to function as “chapter headings,” explaining, {{" '}}You get the close up very quietly but absolutely solid and the real thing but very close, and then through it all between every story comes the rhythm of the in our time chapters.{{' "}}{{sfn|Reynolds|1989|p=233}}. As Hemingway further clarified for critic Edmund Wilson, his intent was to “give the picture of the whole between examining it in detail.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1981|p=128}}

That’s exactly how ''Why Are We in Vietnam?''{{sfn|Mailer|1967}} is structured with similar effects that it has on the reader. Just as Hemingway’s short stories focused onNick and the personal lives of people “in his time,”while the vignettes served as newspaper-headline reminders of the violent, larger world that was affecting individual psyches, so, too, Mailer’s highly personalized and detailed narrative of sixteen-year-old D.J.’s hunting trip with his father, his father’s business associates, and his best friend Tex in the rugged Brooks Range of Alaska is intercut with “Intro Beeps” that serve the same function and add “rhythm” as did Hemingway’s vignettes. The chapters in ''Why Are We in'' {{pg |195|196}} ''Vietnam?''{{sfn|Mailer|1967}} focus on the story of the hunting trip, while the Intro Beeps are digressively vocal ''tour de forces'' that give Mailer the chance to evoke a broader world by allowing D.J. the freedom to rant about things outside the constraints of narrative. For one thing, the Intro Beeps feature the narrator as an eighteen-year-old, so there is a broader prospective already involved. D.J. at eighteen is wiser than D.J. at sixteen, who is recalled in the main narrative. In the Intro Beeps D.J. thinks and “speaks” in an even more pronounced stream-of-consciousness while at a dinner party his parents throw for him the night before he and Tex are scheduled to ship out to fight in Vietnam. It is in these numbered Intro Beeps where D.J., unfettered by storytelling, can rant and ramble about more general and abstract topics like the teachings of Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian philosopher who warned that the media and the constant bombardment of pop culture messages would have a deleterious effect on the human condition.{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=8}} It is these big-picture concerns that surface mostly in the Intro Beeps and do indeed remind the reader of a world outside the hunting narrative of the novel, just as listening to a radio dee-jay makes one aware of the source and also other listeners—a “broadcast” that is simultaneously reaching a larger world. And that in itself can be unsettling. “As D.J. suggests,” one critic observes, “society acts as a kind of succubus upon the unconscious of Americans so that ‘you never know what vision has been humping you through the night.{{' "}}{{sfn|Wenke|1987|p=123}}

Although the white noise of media forms a powerful current that runs through the whole of D.J.’s Intro Beeps, the young narrator also weaves in his musings about bullfighting, machismo, existential dread, and Freudian theories on the centrality of sex and sexual issues. It is also in these Intro Beeps where Mailer teases readers by having D.J. insist, as early as Beep 4, that he may not be a white, young, and virile genius from Texas after all—maybe he’s really the voice of Black America:
<blockquote>I, D.J., am trapped in a Harlem head which has gone so crazy that I think I am sitting at a banquet in the Dallas ass white-ass manse remembering Alaska am in fact a figment of a Spade gone ape in the mind from outrageous frustrates wasting him and so now living in an imaginary white brain. . . .{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=58}}</blockquote>{{pg|196|197}}

As Adams notes, “Although D.J. can ‘see right through shit’ [50], he is not emancipated (he is only a ‘presumptive philosopher’ [93]) and the reader has no alternative but to confront the narrative’s white noise.”{{sfn|Adams|1976|p=127}} Hemingway famously remarked, “The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1986|p=128}} Though D.J. has enough “radar” to make connections between corporate power, “yes men,” sexual acts, hunting, power-brokering, commercialism, and politics, he seems as affected by society’s white noise as he hopes his own “broadcasts” will be on readers, listeners, anyone within psychic earshot. And his voice deliberately shifts so many times that it is hard for anyone to get a “fix” on him.

Hemingway’s ''In Our Time'', not coincidentally, produced a similar effect. Michael Reynolds puts it best: “Eliot used so many voices in ''The Wasteland'' that it was hard to say when he was speaking. When Hemingway finished ''in our time'', he achieved something of the same effect.”{{sfn|Reynolds|1989|p=125}} The same is true with D.J., whose narrative voice encompasses a disc jockey’s Hipster talk and bemused take on society, philosophical riffs from a deep thinker, more standard narration, and anger-fueled rants that suggest a disturbed side we suspect will come out in full flower once D.J. finds himself in Vietnam: “That’s how they talk in the East, up in those bone Yankee ass Jew circumcised prick Wall Street palaces—take it from D.J.—he got psychic transistors in his ear (one more gift of the dying griz) which wingding on all-out pickup each set of transcontinental dialogues from the hearts of the prissy-assed and the prigged. Fungatz, radatz, and back to piss.”{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=151}} Yet, the more he gets close to his father or describes the hunt in detail, the more D.J. settles into a less provocative, more evocative narration that comes closer to a standard issue voice, if there is such a thing: <blockquote>On and on they go for half an hour, talking so close that D.J. can even get familiar with Rusty’s breath which is all right. It got a hint of middle-aged fatigue of twenty years of doing all the little things body did not want to do, that flat sour of the slightly used up, and there’s a hint of garlic or onion, and tobacco, and twenty years of booze gives a little permanent rot to the odor coming off the lining of the stomach. . . .{{sfn|Reynolds|1989|p=133}}</blockquote> {{pg|197|198}}
That the multiple voices and structure of ''Why Are We in Vietnam''? derive from ''In Our Time'' seems even more likely when one considers Mailer’s ending. Curiously, like Hemingway, Mailer also breaks his final narrative installment—Chapters Ten and Eleven—into two, although there is no logical reason for doing so. The tenth chapter ends, “And the boys slept”;{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=197}} the eleventh begins, “And woke up in three hours. And it was black, and the fire near to out,”{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=199}} in what is most probably a reference to Hemingway’s narrative divisions for “Big-Two Hearted River”—inexplicable to the reading public unless, of course, one considers Hemingway’s desire to incorporate all of the vignettes from ''in our time''. Here, Mailer apparently has a little joke at Hemingway’s expense, breaking up the narrative but then actually drawing attention to the break by juxtaposing the two chapters with no Intro Beep between them, using conjunctions to show they should or could have been one, and positioning the final Intro Beep at the very end of the novel, the way that Hemingway ended his book. By so doing, Mailer engages in an intertextual dialogue with his literary “papa,” as he does with other literary forebears in the interlocutory sections.

It is in the Intro Beeps where Mailer situates his attempts at creating a new American fictional voice by invoking the book that Hemingway said begat modern American fiction—Mark Twain’s ''Huckleberry Finn''{{sfn|Hemingway|1935|p=23}}—which D.J. talks about in Intro Beep 1. The next major, irreverent young voice in American fiction was undoubtedly Holden Caulfield, J.D. Salinger’s hero from ''The Catcher in the Rye,'' to whom D.J. refers in Intro Beep 2, along with “Call me Ishmael” Melville.{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=26}} With these references, Mailer obviously was drawing attention to young D.J. as a new American Adam with a new and distinctive voice that, like his predecessors, questions or indicts current society for its misguided thinking and behavior.

Just as Hemingway opted for irony in his title—Philip Young suggests the likelihood that ''In Our Time'' is a “sardonic allusion to a well-known phrase from the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer: ‘Give peace in our time, O Lord{{' "}}{{sfn|Young|1959|p=5}}—Mailer took the title of an address that President Lyndon Johnson gave at Johns Hopkins University in the spring of 1965 (“Why We Are in Vietnam”), in which Johnson presented his case for American involvement, then turned Johnson’s explanatory title into a question . . . which, of course, it was becoming by the spring of 1966 when Mailer began ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' Why ''was'' America in Vietnam, and more importantly, {{pg|198|199}}
why would there be, at the time Mailer was inspired to write this novel, still such flag-waving support for Johnson’s war?

As historian John Hellman reports, it begins earlier, during the presidency of John F. Kennedy, whose “well-publicized interest in the Special Forces made them extensions of the commander-in-chief, just as the Hunters of Kentucky and the Rough Riders had once magnified the respective images of Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt.”{{sfn|Hellman|1986|p=44}} Hellman identified the Green beret as a “contemporary reincarnation of the western hero” who “personified the combined virtues of civilization and savagery without any of their respective limitations”{{sfn|Hellman|1986|pp=45-46}}—which helps to explain why the bestselling novel to come out of the Vietnam War era wasn’t any of the realistic accounts that generated support for the anti-war movement, but rather Robin Moore’s ''The Green Berets,'' published in 1965. This flag-waving novel that lionized the Special Forces reached Number 5 on the bestseller list in hardcover, and when it appeared in paperback that same year, “buyers at drugstore racks made it what ''80 Years of Best-Sellers'' calls ‘the phenomenon of the year, with 1,200,000 printed in only two months,{{' "}} Hellman writes. It inspired former Green Beret Barry Sadler to record his “Ballad of the Green Berets,” which vaulted to Number 1 on the Billboard charts and “reportedly induced so many enlistments of young men hoping to become Green Berets that the Selective Service was able to suspend draft calls during the first four months of 1966.”{{sfn|Hellman|1986|p=53}}

If Mailer found such early support for the war maddening, in this antiwar novel he again takes his cue from Hemingway, whose famous “iceberg theory” dictated, “If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1932|p=192}} Hemingway felt that the writing becomes more powerful by omitting things you know, and the quintessential examples of the theory in practice are to be found in the short story “Hills Like White Elephants,” in which a couple avoids talk of a pregnancy and abortion, and the final story from ''In Our Time.'' Of “Big Two-Hearted River, Pts. I & II,”Hemingway wrote, “The Story was about coming back from the war but there was no mention of the war in it.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1964|p=76}} Nick is a young veteran who not only finds no hero’s welcome; his favorite wilderness fishing area looks like a war zone, blackened by fire. And that {{pg|199|200}} external devastation mirrors the interior landscape of his war-ravaged soul. No mention of the war is necessary.

Mailer accomplishes nearly the same thing by titling his book with a blunt question and then appearing to avoid it for the length of the entire narrative. “Vietnam” is mentioned only once in the book . . . and on the final page, in the final sentence. It is almost as if the character of D.J. took on a life of his own and steamrolled in whatever direction his voice could take him, and to whatever end. The mention of the word is, in fact, so shocking by the time we hear it that it almost has the feel of authorial intrusion. And Mailer was well aware of the gap that could be created between a strong fictional character living in the text and the author himself. As he wrote in an essay on “Miller and Hemingway”:

<blockquote> [I]f we take ''The Sun Also Rises'' as the purest example of a book whose protagonist created the precise air of a time and a place, even there we come to the realization that Hemingway at the time he wrote it could not have been equal to Jake Barnes—he had created a consciousness wiser, drier, purer, more classic, more sophisticated and more graceful than his own. He was still gauche in relation to his creation.{{sfn|Mailer|1982|p=91}}</blockquote>

Partly that is because Hemingway, through his narrative personae, was determined not to describe “or depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that . . . you actually experience the thing.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1986|p=153}} Laura Adams was the first to see a similar technique at work in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' although she stopped short of drawing the connection to Hemingway in identifying the “radical promise” of Mailer’s novel, which is that the reader will not only receive an adequate account of the way things are in America (“know what it’s all about”), but also experience at the level of sensibility remission from the cultural plague that is “an ultimate disease against which all other diseases are in design to protect us.”{{sfn|Adams|1976|p=124}} Adams concludes, in language that makes us think of Hemingway’s goals, “The radicalized or ‘shamanized’ reader, whose silence has been rewarded, participates in Mailer’s attempt to reintegrate the old, now suppressed, human circuitry with the baneful new.”{{sfn|Adams|1976|p=124}} And this happens, as it does in Hemingway, through detailed description and a compelling new narrative voice. As one critic astutely observes, D.J. makes us experience the {{pg|200|201}} narrative more viscerally “through language that is a free and manic association of puns, obscenities, hip slang, jive-talking rhyme, technologese, and mutated psychological jargon.”{{sfn|Wenke|1987|p=123}} D.J.’s voice is such a dominant and constant presence that the very act of listening to him makes us feel as if we are indeed “experiencing” D.J. and his concerns, rather than simply reading about them. Like Hemingway’s Nick Adams, D.J. is also bursting with existential dread—though for neither young man is it a philosophical position. Rather, it is a near-paralyzing condition that afflicts them both, despite Mailer’s hero being more flippant about it. Hemingway’s young Adams was so shocked after he suddenly “realized that some day he must die. It made him feel quite sick.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1972|p=14}} Nick is the first of many Hemingway alter egos who experiences the pangs of existential dread, which Jake Barnes succinctly summarized: “It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926|p=34}} D.J., meanwhile, is “up tight with the concept of dread”:
<blockquote>ever read ''The Concept of Dread'' by Fyodor Kierkegaard? No, well
neither has D.J. but now he wants to know how many of you assholes even knew, forgive me, Good Lord, that Fyodor Kierkegaard has a real name, ''Sören'' Kierkegaard. Contemplate that. You ass.{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=34}}</blockquote>

D.J. too has a moment in which he recognizes his mortality, and “D.J. breathes death—first time in his life—and the sides of the trail slam onto his heart like the jaws of a vise . . . like attack of vertigo when stepping into dark and smelling pig shit, that’s what death smells to him.”{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=136}} With Harry, Hemingway’s dying hero from “Snows of Kilimanjaro,” he sensed death’s presence and “he could smell its breath.”{{sfn|Hemingway|2003b|p=54}} But of all the things that D.J. and the Hemingway heroes share in common, it’s an ostensible cure for dread—a moral code for doing things precisely and with passion—that gives them a sense of importance as well as being, and offers
both respite from those dread-full nights and the courage to confront the possibility of death by day.

As Barry Leeds notes, “The story of the hunting trip embodies certain mythic elements (notably the initiation into manhood of D.J. and Tex) and proceeds along a line of progressively more crucial conflicts between man {{pg|201|202}}
and nature.”{{sfn|Leeds|1969|p=181}} But the conflicts also manifest themselves as an alpha male competition and a clash of values over the right and wrong ways of doing things—what Hemingway dubbed “''aficion''” in ''The Sun Also Rises'': “''Aficion'' means passion. An ''aficionado'' is one who is passionate about the bullfights. All the good bull-fighters stayed at Montoya’s hotel; that is, those with ''aficion'' stayed there. The commercial bull-fighters stayed once, perhaps, and then did not come back.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926|p=131}} In ''The Sun Also Rises,'' ''aficion'' is linked to bullfighting, but Hemingway scholars have extended the term to apply to the Hemingway code hero and code aspirant who live according to principles that elevate them above others. As Robert Penn Warren observes, <blockquote>Hemingway’s characters are usually tough men, experienced in the hard worlds they inhabit, and not obviously given to emotional display or sensitive shrinking. . . . His heroes are not squealers, welchers, compromisers, or cowards. . . .They represent some notion of a code, some notion of honor, that makes a man a man, and that distinguishes him from people who merely follow their random impulses and who are, by consequence, “messy.”{{sfn|Warren|1974|p=79}}</blockquote>

For the Hemingway hero, this meant high standards and an equally high skill level, whether it is keeping his lines “straighter than anyone” as Santiago did in ''The Old Man and the Sea'',{{sfn|Hemingway|1952|p=32}} or knowing “how to
blow any sort of bridge that you could name,” as with Robert Jordan in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''.{{sfn|Hemingway|1940|p=4}} And in the matter of hunting, it means precise, accurate shots that make for clean and humane kills.

Someone familiar with Hemingway will find it difficult to read ''Why We Are in Vietnam?'' without thinking of ''Green Hills of Africa'',{{sfn|Hemingway|1935}} Hemingway’s fictionalized account of his much-anticipated 1934 safari with his wife, Pauline, and Key West best-friend Charles Thompson—a safari which, according to biographer Michael Reynolds, “degenerated badly,” turning into an alpha-male contest of measurements between Hemingway and Thompson.{{sfn|Reynolds|1989|pp=162-65}} But more than that, it was a contrast between Poppa’s (Hemingway’s) ''aficion'' and Karl’s (Thompson’s) apparent indifference to or ignorance of the higher values.

Poppa’s values are established early in the novel. In addition to insisting that guns be kept clean and in perfect working order and becoming angry if they’re not,{{sfn|Hemingway|1935|p=146}} he also has a keen sense of the “rules” of {{pg|202|203}} hunting.“God damn them,” he says of Karl and his guides and bearers.“What the hell did he have to blow that [salt] lick to hell for the first morning and gut shoot a lousy bull and chase him all over the son-of-a-bitching-country spooking it to holy bloody hell”—too much shooting at the wrong place, which spoils the hunting for miles, and then a bad shot that makes the animal suffer.{{sfn|Hemingway|1935|p=148}} D.J. has a similar reaction when he watches his friend squeeze off a bad shot on a wolf: “Tex took him down with a shot into the gut and at first he could have been there dead, the animal fell and for an instant the hills clapped together” and “D.J. was on with the blood, he was half-sick having watched what Tex had done, like his own girl had been fucked in front of him and better, since he had had private plans to show Tex what real shooting might be.”{{sfn|Mailer|1967|pp=68-69}} Hunting is linked to manhood in both Hemingway’s and Mailer’s novels, and though “Rusty’s got cunt in him,”{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=120}} D.J. is “the only one not to shoot at the female grizzer.”{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=121}}

In ''Green Hills,''{{sfn|Hemingway|1935}} Poppa’s superior skills and knowledge are demonstrated later, when he insists on going after kudu at dusk, leaving the guide who insisted, “Hunt tomorrow.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1986|p=164}} Then, confronting the kudu he knew would be there, Poppa “saw the bead centered exactly where it should be just below the top of the shoulder and squeezed off.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1986|p=165}} And when he thought it ran off into the forest they pursued and he shot again, only to realize that he had felled the first one with a clean shot and a second one as
well, he was even more ecstatic that he hadn’t just wounded the first animal. Both had trophy racks, and there was much elation . . . until they got back to camp and saw that Karl had somehow bagged a bigger one.{{sfn|Hemingway|1986|p=205}} The hunt was pure competition, not recreation, and that’s the way the hunting trip plays out in Mailer’s novel.

Like Pop, the Great White Hunter in ''Green Hills'', and Wilson in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” Big Luke is the big expert on hunting in his particular stretch of wilderness, and his derision or validation of those who hire his services somehow matters. It does to D.J., who himself has already pronounced similar judgment on the “medium-grade and high-grade asshole”{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=50}} that compete in his corporate culture. Even Rusty, the corporate “father” as well as D.J.’s, is in it hoping to bag a big-enough bear for Big Luke to say that he got off “a fair shot”{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=51}}—just a little show of approval, which is all, one suspects, that D.J. ever wanted from his father. {{pg|203|204}}

The closest D.J. comes to that approval is when he and Rusty break off from the rest of the group as Hemingway’s hero did—{{" '}}Son, let’s split from Luke the Fink cause he ain’t going to get your ass or mine near a grizzer.{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=123}} Alone and apart from the main competition, they become “real good, man, tight as combat buddies.”{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=128}}. Rusty tells D.J. how much he learned about hunting from his father and passes on this bit of advice, which ironically D.J. already knows: {{" '}}the only time a good man with a good rifle is in trouble is when he steps from sunlight into shadow, cause there’s two or three seconds when you can’t see.{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=132}} Together they decide to let an old caribou pass without shooting at him and stick to the grizzly they’re trying to bag—and the bear, which is “about as frightening as a stone-black seven foot three-hundred-pound Nigger,”{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=135}} provides D.J.’s chance to shine, perhaps because he knows how a “bear” of this metaphorical nature thinks, him being a “black-ass cripple Spade” from Harlem, and all.{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=208}} In the matter of black culture, white noise, and an elevated form of hunting that respects nature, D.J. has ''aficion''. There are “those who know and those who do not know when a very bad grizz is near to you (a final division of humanity)
and D.J. knew, and D.J. was in love with himself because he did not wish to scream or plead, he just wished to encounter Mr. D., big-ass grizz.”{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=140}}

When a grizzly bear charges them and both men fire, wounding it, their disparate level of ''aficion'' is also made clear. Rusty’s impulse is to blame the absent guide for {{" '}}sticking us around the chimney.{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=142}} D.J. is more tuned in to nature and the dynamics of the natural world, and he realizes that “no man cell in him can now forget that if the center of things is insane, it is insane with force.”{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=143}} Although Rusty is hesitant to pursue the wounded grizzly into thick brush, as Francis Macomber was reluctant to pursue the lion early in “The Short Happy Life,” D.J.’s self-encouragement—“That’s
it”—echoes what Wilson told Macomber who seemed suddenly cheerful and determined to face the lion. {{" '}}After all, what can they do to you?{{' "}} Macomber says, and Wilson responds, {{" '}}That’s it. . . . Worst one can do is kill you.{{' "}}{{sfn|Hemingway|2003a|p=25}} D.J. would rather face God than “look into the contempt and contumely of that State of Texas personified by Gottfried Tex Hyde Jr.”{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=143}}

Another interesting Hemingway-Mailer crossover occurs when both men shoot at the grizzly and only D.J. has the nerve to walk close to make sure he’s dead. Yet, Rusty (“wetting his pants, doubtless”) takes credit for the kill shot, ultimately choosing the respect of the other hunters over the respect of his {{pg|204|205}} son, none of which is lost on D.J. After the grizzly is felled by both men shooting and Rusty takes the credit, he forever alienates his son: “Final end of love of one son for one father.”{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=147}} That is different from a similar scene
in ''Green Hills''{{sfn|Hemingway|1935}} in which Poor Old Mama and Poppa shoot at a lion, and while the “killing of the lion had been confused and unsatisfactory,” Poppa nonetheless gives the credit to his wife, even after seeing that the bullet dug out of the animal came from his gun.{{sfn|Hemingway|1986|pp=36-37}} As Foster notes,
<blockquote>D.J. breaks spiritually with his father when, out of habits of competitive vanity and self-justification, his father claims the grizzly bear that D.J. has mortally wounded, violating not only the father-son bond as reinforced by the hunt (stalking their dangerous quarry D.J. sees himself and his father as ‘war buddies’) but also the sacred blood bond between killer and prey.{{sfn|Hemingway|1986|p=20}}</blockquote>
Would D.J. have gone off to war a different man had his father given him the credit?

Mailer says in the introduction to ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' that he had intended to write about a murderous Charles Manson-style clan in Provincetown, but began with a chapter on hunting bear in Alaska as “a prelude,” with the boys “still young, still mean rather than uncontrollably murderous” so that “the hunting might serve as a bridge to get them ready for more.”{{sfn|Mailer|1988|p=10}} As Foster summarizes, <blockquote>High on pot, the prose of the Marquis de Sade and William Burroughs, and the cheerfully psychotic inspiration that he may be the voice of a ‘Harlem spade’ imprisoned in the body of the son of a white Dallas tycoon, he tells the story of how he got that way. It is an initiation story (new style) as An ''American Dream'' was a new-style story of sacrifice and redemption.{{sfn|Foster|1968|pp=19-20}}</blockquote>

How D.J. got that way explains how America got where it is, and why, by novel’s end, a boy who has enough aficion to know right from wrong in the matter of hunting etiquette seems suddenly hot to board that plane for “Vietnam, hot damn.”{{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=208}} Unless, of course, he is the voice of an ironist who asks which is worse, Harlem guiding Dallas or vice versa? The Hipster or the Redneck? {{pg|205|206}}

Ultimately, it is Mailer and D.J.’s adoption of the Hipster mind-set and way of talking that sets them apart from others, even more so than the hunter’s code of honor. And being an insider—someone who knows what
the outside world can only imagine—is perhaps the most crucial element of ''aficion'', as Hemingway detailed it. “Jake achieves prominence in the group because he is the aficionado,” Linda Wagner-Martin observes. And with Barnes as narrator, “Hemingway tries to use that mocking, quasi-humorous tone that he chooses for his ''Esquire'' columns during the 1930s, for ''Green Hills of Africa'', and for some of his stories.”{{sfn|Wagner-Martin|1987|p=10}}. In ''The Sun Also Rises'', the Pamplona hotel owner who has ''aficion'' and who boards bullfighters that share his ''aficion'', puts his hand on Jake Barnes’ shoulder and smiles. Jake writes, <blockquote>He always smiled as though bull-fighting were a very special secret between the two of us; a rather shocking but really very deep secret that we knew about. He always smiled as though there were something lewd about the secret to outsiders, but that it was something that we understood. It would not do to expose it to people who would not understand.{{sfn|Hemingway|1926|p=131}}</blockquote>
Likewise, in ''Green Hills of Africa'', Poppa’s prowess and hunting ''aficion'' earns him a special tribal handshake “using the thumb which evidently denoted extreme emotion”;{{sfn|Hemingway|1986|p=167}} later, he asks what it means, and Pop explains, “It’s on the order of blood brotherhood but a little less formal,” and quips, “You’re getting to be a hell of a fellow” when he hears that the Massai have accepted Poppa into their circle.{{sfn|Hemingway|1986|p=206}}

“Hip makes for a livelier vocabulary, a more stylish way of carrying oneself, more and better orgasms,” writes one critic.{{sfn|Dupree|1972|p=101}} The Hipster, which D.J. embraces, is a culture whose Mandarin language is understood only by members of an exclusive group, the same as with Hemingway’s heroes. “The Hipster is, of course, only one of many possible realizations of the ‘new consciousness’ of which Mailer is the prophet,” Foster concludes{{sfn|Foster|1968|p=26}} and prophets are always insiders. By the end of ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' it has become clear that D.J. is indeed an insider with a unique and prophetic voice. He’s also a true aficionado. But the disturbing question (and the force behind what power the novel possesses) is, as Mailer was fully {{pg|206|207}} aware, of ''what''? More and better orgasms? As Hemingway’s war-wounded hero quips at the end of ''The Sun Also Rises'', “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”{{sfn|Hemingway|1986|p=247}}

===Citations===
{{Reflist|15em}}

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|30em|indent=yes}}
* {{cite book |last= Adams|first= Laura|date=1976 |title=Existential Battles: The Growth of Normal Mailer.|location= Athens |publisher=Ohio UP |pages= |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last= Dupree |first=F. W. |date=1972 |chapter=The American Norman Mailer |title=Norman Mailer: A Collection of Critical Essays |location=Englewood Cliffs, N.J. |publisher=Prentice Hall|editor-last=Braudy |editor-first=Leo |pages=96-103 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last= Foster |first= Richard|date=1968 |title=Norman Mailer |location= Minneapolis |publisher=U of Minnesota Press |series=Unversity of Minnesota Pamphlets of American Writers |volume=73 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last= Hellman |first= John|date=1986 |title=American Myth and the Legacy of Vietnam|location= New York |publisher=Columbia UP |pages= |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last= Hemingway |first= Ernest|date=1986 |title=Conversations with Ernest Hemingway. |location= Jackson |editor-last=Bruccoli |editor-first=Matthew J. |publisher=UP of Mississippi |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |author-mask=1 |date=1932 |title=Death in the Afternoon |location= New York |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |date=1981 |last=Hemingway| first= Ernest |author-mask=1 |title=Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters |editor-last=Baker |editor-first=Carlos |location= New York |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book| last=Hemingway |first= Ernest |author-mask=1 |date=1940 |title=For Whom the Bell Tolls |location= New York |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book| last=Hemingway |first= Ernest |author-mask=1|date=1935 |title=Green Hills of Africa |location= New York |publisher= Scribner Classics |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Hemingway |first= Ernest |author-mask=1 |date=1925 |title=In Our Time |location= New York |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book| last=Hemingway |first= Ernest |author-mask=1 |date=1964 |title=A Moveable Feast |location= New York |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Hemingway |first= Ernest |author-mask=1 |date=1952 |title=The Old Man and the Sea |location= New York |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Hemingway|first= Ernest |author-mask=1 |date=2003a|chapter=The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber |title=The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway |location= New York |publisher= Charles Scribner's Sons |pages=5-28 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Hemingway |first= Ernest |author-mask=1 |date=2003b |chapter=The Snows of Kilimanjaro |title=The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway |location= New York |publisher= Charles Scribner's Sons |pages=39-56 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Hemingway|first= Ernest |author-mask=1 |date=1926 |title=The Sun Also Rises |location= New York |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Hemingway|first= Ernest |author-mask=1 |date=1972|chapter=Three Shots |title=The Nick Adams Stories |location= New York |publisher= Charles Scribner's Sons |pages=13-15 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last= Leeds |first= Barry H. |date=1969 |title=The Structured Vision of Norman Mailer |location= New York |publisher=New York UP |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last= Mailer |first= Norman |date=1988 |title=Conversations with Norman Mailer |editor-last=Lennon |editor-first=J. Michael |location= Jackson |publisher=UP of Mississippi |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1982 |title=Pieces and Pontifications |location= Boston |publisher=Little, Brown and Company |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1967 |title=Why are we in Vietnam? |location= New York |publisher=G. P. Putnam's Sons |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last= Reynolds |first= Michael |date=1989 |title=Hemingway: The Paris Years |location= Oxford |publisher=Basil Blackwell |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last= Wagner-Martin |first= Linda |date=1987 |title=New Essays on ''The Sun Also Rises'' |location= Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge UP |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Warren |first=Robert Penn |date=1974 |chapter=Ernest Hemingway |title=Ernest Hemingway: Five Decades of Criticism |editor-last=Wagner |editor-first=Linda Welshimer |location=East Lansing |publisher=Michigan State UP |page=79 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last= Wenke |first= Joseph |date=1987 |title=Mailer's America |location= Hanover, NH |publisher=UP of New England |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last= Young |first= Philip |date=1959 |title=Ernest Hemingway |location= Minneapolis |publisher=U of Minnesota Press |series=University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers |volume=1 |ref=harv}}
{{Refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jive-Ass Aficionado: Why Are We in Vietnam? and Hemingway's Moral Code}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

Talk:The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010

2025-04-28T15:58:48Z

Grlucas:

===Article Assignments, Vol. 4===
You will need to request an article and user name for {{PM}}. You may click the link to your article below to begin your edits. Status indicators: {{tick}} = complete (ready for final edits and banner removal); {{yellow tick}} = in process; {{cross}} = not started.

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="width: 100%;"
|-
! Author !! Article !! Editor !! Status
|-
| Mailer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Postscript to the Fourth Advertisement for Myself|Postscript to the Fourth Advertisement for Myself]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Mailer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway Revisited|Hemingway Revisited]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Lennon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway to Mailer — A Delayed Response to The Deer Park|Hemingway to Mailer]] || [[User:Hobbitonya]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hemingway || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman, Ernest, and Greg|Norman, Ernest, and Greg]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Begiebing || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Ernest and Norman: A Dialogue in Two Acts|Ernest and Norman]] || [[User:DSánchez]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Bufithis & Curnutt || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway|A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway]] || [[User:Grlucas]] [[User:DBond007]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Meredith || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/The American Civil War in The Naked and the Dead and Across the River and Into the Trees|The American Civil War]] || [[User:KaraCroissant]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Shuman || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman vs. Ernest: Influence and Identity|Norman vs. Ernest]] || [[User:APKnight25]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Lowenburg || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hooking Off the Jab: Norman Mailer, Ernest Hemingway and Boxing|Hooking Off the Jab]] || [[User:ASpeed]] [[User:DBond007]]|| {{yellow tick}}
|-
| Cirino || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer's The Fight: Hemingway, Bullfighting, and the Lovely Metaphysics of Boxing|Norman Mailer's ''The Fight'']] || [[User:TWietstruk]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Boddy || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing|Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing]] || [[User:JBrown]] || {{yellow tick}}
|-
| Leeds || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Firearms in the Works of Hemingway and Mailer|Firearms in the Works of Hemingway and Mailer]] || [[User:CVinson]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Plath || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Jive-Ass Aficionado: Why Are We in Vietnam? and Hemingway's Moral Code|Jive-Ass Aficionado]] || [[User:ADear]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Cappell || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway's Jewish Progeny: Roth and Goldstein in ''The Naked and the Dead''|Hemingway's Jewish Progeny]] || [[User:THarris]] [[User:Tbara4554]]|| {{tick}}
|-
| Peppard || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and the “Reds”|Mailer, Hemingway, and the “Reds”]] || [[User:KWatson]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Kaufmann || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Ernest and Norman (Exit Music)|Ernest and Norman (Exit Music)]] || [[User:Flowersbloom]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Justice || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Authorship and Alienation in Death in the Afternoon and Advertisements for Myself|Authorship and Alienation]] || [[User:APKnight25]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Josephs || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer's "Footnote to Death in the Afternoon"|Mailer's "Footnote to Death in the Afternoon"]] || [[User:KForeman]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hays || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Battles for Regard, Writerly and Otherwise|Battles for Regard]] || [[User:ALedezma]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Gladstein || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman|Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman]] || [[User:ALedezma]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Batchelor || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Looking at the Past: Nostalgia as Technique in The Naked and the Dead and For Whom the Bell Tolls|Looking at the Past]] || [[User:DBond007]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Robinson || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Effects of Trauma on the Narrative Structures of Across the River and Into the Trees and The Naked and the Dead|Effects of Trauma on the Narrative Structures]] ||[[User:Priley1984]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Sanders || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Death, Art, and the Disturbing: Hemingway and Mailer and the Art of Writing|Death, Art, and the Disturbing]] || [[User:JBawlson]] [[User:CVinson]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Stoneback || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/"Oohh Normie — You're Sooo Hemingway": Mailer Memories and Encounters|Mailer Memories and Encounters]] || [[User:Tbara4554]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Jacomo || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Sparring with Norman|Sparing with Norman]] || [[User:Kamyers]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Gordon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Encounters with Mailer|Encounters with Mailer]] || [[User:Priley1984]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Vince || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Rumors of Grace: God-Language in Hemingway and Mailer|Rumors of Grace]] || [[User:Sherrilledwards]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Apple || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Inside Norman Mailer|Inside Norman Mailer]] || [[User:Chelsey.brantley]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Sinclair || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer: An Expected Encounter in an Unexpected Place|An Expected Encounter]] || [[User:Wverna]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Klavan || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/On Reading Mailer Too Young|On Reading Mailer Too Young]] || [[User:Essence903m]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Miele || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat|What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat]] || [[User:Flowersbloom]], [[User:Tbara4554]]|| {{tick}}
|-
| Vernon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Style, Politics, and Hemingway's Spanish Civil War Dispatches|Style, Politics, and Hemingway's Spanish Civil War Dispatches]] || [[User:MerAtticus]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Hooker || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer: From Orgone Accumulator to Cancer Protection for Schizophrenics|From Orgone Accumulator to Cancer Protection for Schizophrenics]] || [[User:JKilchenmann]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hinton || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Advertisements for Others: The Blurbs of Norman Mailer|Advertisements for Others]] || [[User:NrmMGA5108]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hicks || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Harlot's Ghost, Bildungsroman, Masculinity and Hemingway|''Harlot’s Ghost'', ''Bildungsroman'', Masculinity and Hemingway]] || [[User:JKilchenmann]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Mercer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Automatons and the Atomic Abyss: The Naked and the Dead|Automatons and the Atomic Abyss]] || [[User:MerAtticus]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Westaway || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/“A Noble Pursuit”: The Armies of the Night as Outside Agitator|“A Noble Pursuit”]] || [[User:Chelsey.brantley]] || {{yellow tick}}
|-
| Fox || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norris Church Mailer|Norris Church Mailer]] || [[User:Kamyers]] || {{tick}}
|}

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat

2025-04-28T15:58:03Z

Grlucas: Added url. Tweaks.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{MR04}}
{{byline|last=Miele|first=Erin |url=http://prmlr.us/mr04mie |abstract= A memoir of an encounter with Norman Mailer in the 1980s.}}
{{dc|dc=N|orman Mailer owes me one.}} This statement rings worthy of Mailer’s own limitless chutzpah, but I figure I have a right. I base this calculation on a brief encounter I had with him at long-ago dinner party. Despite Mailer’s reputation as a fighter and scoundrel, I sensed a simple, masculine justice to his character: That is, I hit you, you hit me back, so we’re even, and now we can be friends. I could be wrong, but I think that he, a former boxer and soldier, appreciated a fair fight.

I didn’t meet this hell-raising literary standout on a social basis. As a
chronically broke student, I supplemented my scholarship with a variety of
temporary jobs—working as an ''au pair'', a library clerk, a Chinese food delivery
person, a tutor, and once as a model for a hair styling magazine. While some students at the expensive school I attended lived off trust funds and their parents’ credit cards, most of my friends held part-time jobs. I was excited one weekend to snag a well-paying, Saturday night waitressing gig through my college’s jobs’ board. The listing described a need for a server for an “exclusive dinner party ''cum'' political discussion with several well-known novelists in attendance.”

It was the promise of meeting real writers that attracted me to the position.
I anticipated a modern version of the ''salon'', those elegant affairs so crucial
to nineteenth century culture. I looked forward to eavesdropping on the
conversation, which was bound to be brilliant, witty, and profound. Perhaps
those assembled might even include me in their conversations, while from my part I might find an opportunity to quote off-handedly a Shakespearean quatrain or a few trenchant lines from Yeats. “It’s obvious you have a gift for{{pg|420|421}}language,” one of the distinguished guests would say. “You must send me something you have written.”

In short, I was that creature most dreaded by established authors, an aspiring writer, green as lettuce. I probably deserved what happened.

In high school, I had written my first two short stories, which subsequently won two first prizes in ''Scholastic Magazine''‘s fiction contest. That unexpected coupled to a full scholarship to Barnard in New York City. I had grown up in rural Pennsylvania with my parents and twelve brothers and sisters. In the Upper West Side Manhattan, during the Koch years, we faced a fairly drastic change of pace.

At college, many professors encouraged my ambitions. “You have a depth to your writing that many older writers would envy,” one teacher told me.
Another professor, no slouch of a writer herself, praised my “genius for description.” When my philosophy professor (author of the standard introductory textbook on the subject), handed back our first papers, he announced that there was only one philosopher in the class and only one promising writer. On my paper he’d scrawled, “This isn’t philosophy but you can write. Best of luck”

On the other hand, some people were far less enthusiastic about my creations.
With carefully shielded pride, I showed a story to a teacher whose seminar I hoped to join. As a child I had read and admired, in a ''Reader’s Digest'' condensed volume, this woman’s saga of her Armenian relatives, owners of a restaurant in Queens. She scanned the first pages, then remarked that only James Joyce was allowed to write in the stream-of-consciousness style. Cringing dog that I was, I found myself agreeing with her completely.

It didn’t help matters that I suffered in my youth from what is now labeled a “social anxiety disorder,” coupled with masochistic tendencies. I was so thin-skinned as to be nearly transparent, so shy that I wrote lists of interesting conversational topics before leaving my dorm room. Just as praise for my work could elate me to a dangerous degree, criticism too easily flustered me and made me doubt myself.

During one writing class, a professor distributed, without naming the author, a piece that I had written. Her private opinion of the work was favorable, but she allowed my peers to offer their feedback first. Looking back, I have a memory of my fellow English majors at my all-girls college, an irritable group at best, eviscerating the story. One girl, whose t-shirt slogan instructed Pope John Paul to keep his rosaries off her ovaries, took particular{{pg|421|422}}umbrage. “Invalid, stultifying negation of “herstory”...obviously derived from patriarchal white-male, so-called “classical” literature, were some of the gentler phrases she used. Another student, who, within ten years, would marry a cardiologist and settle in Scarsdale, damned the anonymous writer both for being an undercover male and a reactionary. I mounted a feeble defense of certain passages I knew were decently written, but by the end of the class, I found myself if not agreeing with, at least not objecting to, the general condemnation.

It took me years to learn how to distinguish objective, helpful criticism from personal bias, years to develop enough calluses to survive a writer’s life, and by that time, I had pretty much stopped writing.

That Saturday night dinner party, back in the 1980s, when Norman Mailer was in his rascally prime, was held at the spacious Central Park West apartment of a political writer known for his unapologetic Marxist views. The host was gathering a trio of famous authors—Bernard Malamud, Kurt Vonnegut, and Mailer—along with their wives to discuss how best to achieve worldwide nuclear disarmament. In the giddy pre-party moments, as I set the table and tried to calm myself down after hearing Malamud’s name, the hostess, a well-upholstered, fortyish brunette, spoke warmly to me about the evening ahead. “So you’re at ''Bar''-nard, how ''wonderful''... and an aspiring writer yourself, excellent...well, we have some very important people coming in tonight, I’ll be sure to introduce you.”

But when the illustrious guests showed up, my hostess’ tone turned a little snappish, and her promise of personal introductions did not materialize. In fact, she suddenly misplaced my name and began referring to me as “you,” as in “I’d ''so'' appreciate it if you’d hang up the wraps a bit more carefully,” and “Would you mind hurrying with those drinks?”

The evening progressed, although not quite as planned. Malamud, whose luminescent stories still captivate me, seemed something of a fusspot, several times complaining of a stomachache. Supervised by an anxious Mrs. Malamud, he suffered through his meal, declining most of the food and all of the alcohol offered to him. The other attendees, however, more than made up for his abstention. A gloomy Vonnegut gulped Scotch while lighting the tip of one Pall Mall from another, pinching the butts out on his Havilland plate. By the end of the soup course, those in attendance appeared to have abandoned any thoughts of collaborating on an anti-nuclear treatise. The conversation had drifted to other, less global concerns. I recall a few malicious tidbits{{pg|422|423}}involving mutual enemies and some personal chat about families. I hadn’t yet lost hope that the writers would start providing me with fresh insight into Proust, or elaborating on the major themes of Russian literature in the last century.

Norman Mailer, possibly out of boredom, perhaps to exhibit solidarity with the working class, abruptly stood up, picked up his soup bowl, and followed me out of the dining room. Norman’s wife rolled her beautiful eyes. “Oh Norman, don’t bother, the girl can handle that,” protested the hostess as we exited.

In the kitchen, where the chef was plating the fish course, I thanked Mailer for his help, and he politely introduced himself. He then asked me my name, and when I told him “Erin Bridget Kelley,” his face brightened and he squared off in front of me, asking in an atrocious brogue, “Hey, Erin, do ye happen to know what an oxymoron is?”

I was about to tell him that of course I did, that I was an English/classics major, who could explicate ''The Good Morrow'' and had translated ''The Symposium'' from the Greek. But before I could answer, the literary lion burst out, grinning like a bratty ten-year-old boy. “A sober Irishman! That’s an oxymoron for you!”

I was too startled to reply and instead blushed to the parting in my hair, a vexing physiological reaction that had plagued me since eighth grade. The man seemed disappointed when I wouldn’t insult him back in kind. A couple of times during the rest of the evening, Mailer tried to catch my eye and include me in the conversation, but I, stiff-necked and ashamed to be looked on as a servant by these people, celebrated novelists or not, refused to look in his direction.

In those days, I was reticent about speaking my mind, prone to what the French call ''l’esprit d’escalier'',” or “staircase wit.” To me, the phrase connoted the quick, cutting reply, the clever argument dreamed up on the subway ride home after a party, all the words that I ought to have said. While climbing the stairs to my room, I’d regret not having had the perfect comeback to silence the know-it-all, the bully or the Nosey Parker. I should have jousted with Mailer in kind, countered his insult with a “Hey, wise guy, is ‘a well-mannered Norman Mailer’ an oxymoron, too?”

I’d like to think that Mailer could take it as well as he could dish it out. But it would take me years to learn to speak my mind, to respond quickly to{{pg|423|424}}verbal challenges. That night, I was way too young, way too touchy and self-conscious.

Still, in time I realized that Norman Mailer had taught me some things through our little exchange. First, I learned to avoid meeting icons in person, as they are bound to disappoint you. Second, whatever my opinion of Mailer’s many crusades, I had to admire his blunt and outspoken style, the great faith in himself he had to produce not only a new kind of literature in ''The Executioner’s Song'', but also works stunning for their epic length—almost fifteen hundred pages on the CIA, almost a thousand on ancient Egypt. Whatever Mailer did or didn’t do, he did one thing consistently right and that was to take his talent as a writer seriously. I can’t imagine him ever letting anyone sneer at his work.

After graduation from college, I started off determined to write. For a year, I lived alone aboard a Chris-Craft on the Potomac in Washington, DC. I supported myself with temporary office jobs, writing at night in the boat’s galley. At that time, my work-in-progress was a lengthy “fictional” account of two young girls, one of them a double for my younger sister Lizzie. The older girl, Molly, bore striking similarities to me. Coincidentally, the children were members of a large, Irish-Catholic family, and were growing up in the Pennsylvania countryside. The girls enjoyed visiting their lovable old coot of a neighbor, Mr. Welliver, who warmed his dentures in a jar that he set on the old-fashioned coal stove. The old man was notable for the multitude of feral cats living under his back porch. The story kept going on and on, stretching to more than one hundred pages, and I hadn’t even managed to lure the children from Mr. Welliver’s yard. The girls alternated between fashioning bouquets of Queen’s Anne’s lace, whose flowers reminded Molly of “the chaplet her mother wore to Mass,” and chasing the increasingly frenzied kittens around the property. Meanwhile, that quaint old dear, Mr. Welliver, had fallen asleep on page twenty-seven, while watching a Phillies game. By page one hundred and twelve, I could have gladly killed off both my main characters in as gruesome a manner as was credible. Fortunately, this particular manuscript has been lost to time.

When I got the chance to join a six-week scientific expedition to Maine aboard a Smithsonian research vessel, I took it. It seemed like a writerly thing to do. Eventually, I moved back to New York and began working in the textbook division of Harper & Row. Soon enough, I set sail again, this time to Ireland for a year, having enrolled in courses in Anglo-Irish literature. I had{{pg|424|425}}a great time tramping the same streets as the characters in ''Dubliners''. and visiting Stephen Daedelus’s tower in Dunlaoghaire. ''Ulysses'' finally made sense to me, thanks to the Trinity lectures, but I ran out of tuition money, and finished up the year working at a pub.

When I returned stateside, I moved in with my brother Michael in Boston. I was accepted into Boston University’s M.F.A. program, but chose instead to move to Maine and get married. For the next several years, I kept writing, kept holding on to the idea that writing was my true vocation. At that point, I believed that with steady, honest work and some luck, recognition for my work would come. In the spring of 1993, I was deep into a work of fiction that I believed to be the best that I had done. I had recently received a friendly, handwritten note from the managing editor at ''The Atlantic Monthly'', rejecting a story I had sent in, while encouraging me to send him more work. I was thirty-three, my wanderlust at last satisfied. I was grateful for my marriage, and my beautiful sons, confident that I would fulfill my writer’s destiny, and eventually get on paper what I needed to say. Yet I couldn’t seem to carry out these plans when the boys were small.

A few years ago, I taught myself to paint in oils, hoping that creating art in another medium might somehow lead me back to writing. Instead, I found I loved painting. Where my writing seemed more effective when it was sad, my best canvases were happy and high-keyed in tone. I’ve exhibited in solo and group shows, and sold a respectable number of paintings. This year, I was awarded a grant from the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts, through the Scranton Foundation, to create a series of portraits.

Although I have since run into other well-known people, among them Tolstoy’s grandnephew, Maud Gonne’s son Sean MacBride, and George Steinbrenner (bizarre bedfellows, I admit), I retain a fondness for the memory of my quick exchange with Norman Mailer. Out of all those big shots at that dinner party, he had looked me in the eye and spoken to me as if I were a real human being. Maybe he could sense that I, like him, didn’t appreciate being bossed around, even though I had signed up for the job and had only myself to blame.

I hadn’t thought about that chance meeting in years. Last week, I attended the Wilkes University Graduate information session, which was presented by a young playwright, who mentioned that he was research assistant for a professor who was writing a biography of Mailer. The mention of Mailer’s name recalled to me that distant, almost forgotten memory.{{pg|425|426}}
Suddenly, present and past converged. It was as if Mailer were challenging me again. Maybe I have an answer for him now. I’m Irish enough to recognize portents. I’m enough of a believer in the spirit world that I might think it just possible that that bellicose genius, that fearless s.o.b., Norman Kingsley Mailer, might be giving me a shout out from wherever he is now. His exaggerated life, sprawling across nine decades, seems too enormous, too gaudy and messy, to be completely contained by death. I’d prefer to think there’s a chance that he’s signaling me to show some gumption, to answer back for once. Art itself is the only real response to a ruthless world. Call it hubris, but could Mailer’s ghost be prodding me to follow his hyperbolic example, to write down what I have to say before it is too late, before the party ends, the whole battle’s done, and it’s all over for me? After all, Mr. Mailer does owe me a chance to answer him back.

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT: What Norman Mailer Taught Me About Combat}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway's Jewish Progeny: Roth and Goldstein in ''The Naked and the Dead''

2025-04-28T15:54:45Z

Grlucas: Corrections. Added abstract and url.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{MR04}}
{{Byline|last=Cappell|first=Ezra|abstract=Ernest Hemingway published his first novel, ''The Sun Also Rises'', which established Hemingway’s lean, hard literary voice a style that would influence countless American writers. In 1948, a young Norman Mailer published his first novel, ''The Naked and the Dead'', to critical and commercial acclaim. Mailer established a hard and unforgiving narrative voice very much in Hemingway’s debt. Yet there is another aspect which unites the early work of these two often compared writers: their representation of stereotypical Jewish characters. In ''The Sun Also Rises'', Hemingway created his petulant and “superior” Jewish character, Robert Cohn, who is often seen in the narrative as being a step out of line with WASP characters. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr04cap }}
==I. ==
{{dc|dc=I|n 1926, Ernest Hemingway published his first novel,}} ''The Sun Also Rises'', which established his lean, hard literary voice—a style that would influence countless American writers. In 1948, a young Norman Mailer published his first novel, ''The Naked and the Dead'', to critical and commercial acclaim. In his first novel, Mailer established a tough and unforgiving narrative voice very much in Hemingway’s debt. Yet there is another aspect that unites the early work of these two often compared writers: their representation of stereotypical Jewish characters. In ''The Sun Also Rises'', Hemingway created his petulant and “superior” Jewish character, Robert Cohn, who is often seen in the narrative as being a step out of line with the other characters. Hemingway sums Cohn up as possessing “a hard, Jewish, stubborn streak.” {{sfn|Hemingway|1926|p=18}} Two of Mailer’s characters from ''The Naked and the Dead'', Roth and Goldstein, have been described by Morris Dickstein as being “almost anti-Semitic caricatures of sensitive weaklings, too eager for acceptance, as uneasy in their own skin as in a man’s army.”{{sfn|Dickstein|2002 |p=33}} As one of Mailer’s characters in ''The Naked and the Dead'' says of these two Jewish soldiers, “For that Roth and Goldstein, you could shoot ’em in the nuts and they wouldn’t even know the difference.”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=429}}

How is Mailer building on Hemingway’s representation of an emasculated Jewish character as well as complicating and subverting Hemingway’s{{pg|208|209}}conception of the effete Jew? Throughout his long career as a writer, Norman Mailer was often condemned for creating stereotyped Jewish characters, or alternately, for not creating enough Jewish characters in his fiction, but I believe that far from slavishly following Ernest Hemingway’s anti-Semitic lead, Mailer in ''The Naked and the Dead'' (much like Philip Roth would do a decade later at the beginning of ''his'' career) creates a complex portrait of Jewish characters attempting to negotiate the constraints of an anti-Semitic, mid-century America. Although Mailer has often been portrayed as having broken with his Jewish upbringing and eschewed Jewish values and ideas, as we will see in this essay, I believe that Mailer was deeply engaged by both Jewish ideas and values, and that he deals with his complex Jewish identity throughout his long and prolific career, starting with his first novel in 1948 through his last published work in 2007.

==II. ==
When I was a kid growing up on Long Island, my father gave me a short biography of the “The Ghetto Wizard,” Benny Leonard, who rose from the tough tenements of the Jewish Lower East Side to become the lightweight boxing champion of the world. I remember reading about how as a young boy Benny always listened to his Jewish mother and how he not only fought with his fists, but with his head as well. A few years later when I picked up ''The Sun Also Rises'', I was keenly interested in this Jewish boxing champion of Princeton, Robert Cohn, whom readers meet in the very first line of the narrative. As I read further, I was quickly disabused of any Jewish pride I might have in Cohn. I soon discovered that not only is Hemingway’s first-person narrator, Jake Barnes, unimpressed by Cohn’s boxing title, he is even less enthralled by the “Jewish” nature of his acquaintance. After showing Cohn to be both emasculated and hen-pecked in the opening chapter of the book, Hemingway quickly adds, in the second chapter, that the extremely wealthy Cohn (after all, he is Jewish) “had a hard, Jewish, stubborn streak.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=18}} Things quickly degenerate for Mr. Cohn from that point on. By the end of the novel—which tells of the exploits of a group of young friends carousing their way across Europe on their way to the famous bullfights of Pamplona, Spain—Cohn has managed to sucker-punch two of his friends, Bill and Jake, and he beats nearly senseless the handsome, young bull-fighter Pedro Romero. In the process of these altercations, Cohn provokes the hatred and ire of just about every character in Hemingway’s book. Toward the{{pg|209|210}}end of the novel, Jake, who in the opening chapters claimed to like Cohn, says to Brett, “I’m not sorry for him. I hate him, myself.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=186}} To which Brett responds: “I hate him too...I hate his damned suffering.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=186}} Later, in the same conversation, when Brett announces her intentions of having an affair with the young bullfighter Pedro Romero, Jake tells her, “You oughtn’t to do it.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=187}} Brett responds: “Oh darling, don’t be difficult. What do you think it’s meant to have that damned Jew about...?”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=187}}

Now, as I pick up ''The Sun Also Rises'' many years after my first encounter with Robert Cohn and his lost generation friends, I am struck by the fact that Hemingway is not content to simply produce a minor anti-Semitic character in his work, as is customary in the work of other modernist writers, for example, F. Scott Fitzgerald in ''The Great Gatsby'' with his malevolent Jew, Meyer Wolfsheim.{{efn|Recently (2005), ''Modern Fiction Studies'' devoted a special issue to this topic. In her introduction to ''Modernism’s Jews/Jewish Modernisms'', guest editor Maren {{harvtxt|Linett|2005 |p=249}} writes that the issue “considers some of the processes by which Jewish writers shaped literary modernism and the intricate ways modernism was in turn shaped by its figurings of Jews and Jewishness.” }} In contrast, Hemingway’s anti-Semitic character Robert Cohn is crucial to the entire structure of the novel; I would go so far as to suggest that the emasculated figure of the Jew, most often viewed as a contrasting figure, might even be central to Hemingway’s credo of “grace under pressure” and the tough-guy persona that he embodied to the bitter end of his life. Hemingway portrays his Jew as the perfect (if obvious) foil to his WASP hero, Jake Barnes, a man who clearly lives up to the code. Barnes is a man of few words, but he is a man full of grace and, what critic Thomas Strychacz has termed, “emotional restraint.”{{sfn|Strychacz|2002 |p=141}} In short, Barnes is all the things that Hemingway’s imagined Jew is not.

It was not only Jewish readers who were concerned about Hemingway’s Jewish characters, but Jewish writers of the period were just as anxious about the long shadow Hemingway cast over American literature. This apprehension, some might even call it a preoccupation, is perhaps most clearly seen in the very beginning of Saul Bellow’s first novel, ''Dangling Man'', where his narrator, Joseph, frets over his masculinity. He worries that keeping “a journal nowadays is considered a kind of self-indulgence, a weakness, and in poor taste.”{{sfn|Bellow|1944 |p=9}} Although Joseph admits that this concern with his emotions and feelings is a “weakness,” in his present state of demoralization, in the midst of the fiercest fighting of World War II, suspended between civilian and military life as he waits to be inducted into the US Army, Joseph has no choice but to keep his diary. Joseph ends these thoughts with an obvious nod to Hemingway when he writes, “The hard-boiled are compensated for their silence; they fly planes or fight bulls or catch tarpon, whereas I rarely leave my room.”{{sfn|Bellow|1944 |p=10}} {{pg|210|211}}
As a young Jewish American reader, I remember being so unsettled by Hemingway’s Jewish character Robert Cohn that I asked my father about what it all meant. He thought for a while and then replied, as was his custom, with a little story. He said that Grandpa, a survivor of several Nazi concentration camps in Belgium, used to define an anti-Semite as someone who hates Jews more than is normal. I was left to infer from this anecdote that Hemingway’s mild form of social anti-Semitism in America did not bear all that much resemblance to the horrors perpetrated upon my family by the Nazis in Europe. In short, Hemingway’s anti-Semitism was, while not particularly nice, a respectable, long-accustomed “normal” form of Jew-hatred practiced the world over. At the time, laboring to enjoy Hemingway’s novel despite the disturbing use of the term “Jew” as an adjective, I tried to “read around” the offending passages.

More recently, I was asked to substitute for a colleague who was teaching a class on modernist American writers; the class I taught was focused on ''The Sun Also Rises''. Upon re-reading Hemingway’s novel, I was more than a little disturbed by my fictional co-religionist, Robert Cohn, and due to his centrality in the novel, this time there was no “reading around” the offending passages. Perhaps more disturbing was that at the same time I had been rereading Norman Mailer’s monumental World War II tome, ''The Naked and the Dead'', for a course of my own dealing with war fiction. In my reading of Mailer’s novel and his portrayal of two Jewish soldiers, Roth and Goldstein, I was often, and uncomfortably, reminded of Hemingway’s disparaging portrait of the Jew in ''The Sun Also Rises''. So maybe Hemingway, the arch WASP American writer had a bit of a Jew problem (as did so many of the great modernist writers from T. S. Eliot to F. Scott Fitzgerald, dare I even bring up Ezra Pound?). But Norman Mailer? Nachum Malech, the proud grandson of a Rabbi? Perhaps the fault was mine? Maybe there was something in the text that I was missing? What was this Jewish American writer Norman Mailer up to in his first novel, and how might his fraught construction of Jewish characters help reveal his aims? When Morris Dickstein calls Mailer’s two Jewish characters “sensitive weaklings” and “almost anti-Semitic caricatures,”{{sfn|Dickstein|2002 |p=33}} he is wholly correct in his assessment: Roth and Goldstein are definitely stereotypical constructions of ethnic characters, as are many of the other characters in Mailer’s novel, from Martinez the Mexican American scout who in many pensive moments worries obsessively if he is a “true American,”{{pg|211|212}}to Mailer’s cliché-ridden portrait of an uneducated southern hick, Private Wilson.

My reading of Hemingway’s and Mailer’s constructions of Jewish stereotyped characters will explore the complicated legacy of Jewish fictional representation that Mailer tapped into in his first novel—so while it would be easy to suggest that in an effort to ingratiate himself to his literary hero Ernest Hemingway and to distance himself from his own biography (the good and obedient, middle-class Jewish boy who was Bar-Mitzvahed in Brooklyn), Norman Mailer slavishly copies Hemingway’s lead in creating distasteful Jewish characters—I believe that there is something far more complex going on in Mailer’s creation of his two Jewish soldiers a generation after Hemingway’s first novel was published. In fact, I would argue that Mailer is not creating his stereotypical Jewish characters in homage to Hemingway, but rather as a response and a challenge to Hemingway’s literary legacy.

==III. ==
The editors of ''The Norton Anthology of Jewish American Literature'', in their introduction to Norman Mailer, claim that “Mailer’s work occasionally includes Jewish and part-Jewish characters, good and bad, but the most deliberate avoidance of what seem to be centrally and recognizably Jewish issues in the greatest part of his prolific output over six decades has been noted and decried by almost all concerned with Jewish American literature.”{{sfn|Chametzky|Felstiner|Flanzbaum|Hellerstein|2000 |p=815}} I couldn’t disagree more with this assessment of Mailer’s career. Mailer’s portrait of Jewish characters and his sustained focus on the inherent anti-Semitism of the US Army, from the enlisted man all the way to the top of the chain of command, force readers of his first novel into a place of discomfort, a place where they will need to rethink their own preconceived notions about American ideals of pluralism and democracy in the immediate postwar period and reconsider their views on Jewish Americans’ place in that postwar pluralistic culture. I believe that Mailer is dealing with the nexus of decidedly Jewish and American issues in almost all of his works, perhaps not as explicitly as some of the critics would like to see these issues addressed, but that would seem to be beside the point. Indeed, Mashey Bernstein quite convincingly argues that “Mailer’s ideology, as an American writer and social commentator, stems from both the intellectual ideas of Judaism and how these ideas make themselves manifest in our daily lives.”{{sfn|Bernstein|2008 |p=377}} This{{pg|212|213}}focus is evident at the very beginning of Mailer’s career in ''The Naked and the Dead'' with those two stereotypically Jewish characters: Privates Roth and Goldstein.

==IV. ==
In ''Advertisements for Myself'', Mailer recounts the story of how he sent a copy of his third novel, ''The Deer Park'', to his literary hero Ernest Hemingway. The short piece, titled “Literary Pain and Shame,” reprinted in Mailer’s massive 1999 retrospective, ''The Time of Our Time'', suggests that close to a decade after writing ''The Naked and the Dead'', Mailer was still enamored of Hemingway and still obviously ambivalent about his feelings towards his literary forefather. Mailer’s inscription reads,
<blockquote>
TO ERNEST HEMINGWAY

—because finally after all these

years I am deeply curious to know

what you think of this.

—but if you do not answer, or if you

answer with the kind of crap you

use to answer unprofessional writers,

sycophants, brown-nosers, etc. , then

fuck you, and I will never attempt

to communicate with you again.{{sfn|Mailer|1998 |pp=207-8}}
</blockquote>
Despite not receiving a reply from Hemingway, Mailer was still eager to meet with his hero when Hemingway was in New York City in 1958 to be interviewed by George Plimpton for ''The Paris Review''. Plimpton was friendly with both writers and attempted to set-up a dinner meeting. Although the dinner was scheduled, it never came off. In a 2002 interview with ''The Guardian'', Plimpton told the story of why Mailer never did get to meet Hemingway. In the article, “Hemingway, Mailer and Me,” Plimpton recalls,
<blockquote>
“I set it up, and then Hotchner stopped me. Said it wouldn't be a good mix. Oh, it was awful. Poor old Norman sat by the telephone. It was,” he concludes, still smiling, “very bad.” He pleads intimidation: “Hemingway? Scared to death of him. Not an easy
</blockquote> {{pg|213|214}} <blockquote>
man to be around. Although I must say, I do treasure that relationship.”{{sfn|Plimpton|2002 |p=4}} </blockquote>

To the casual observer it might seem that adding a Jewish writer to the mix would be toxic to the genteel dinner crowd. Might this be a rather obvious example of life following art? In this sad little drama the role of Robert Cohn was clearly played by Norman Mailer, easily pictured stubbornly sitting by his phone waiting for a call that would never arrive.

So just what was Cohn’s big “stubbornness” in ''The Sun Also Rises''? Hemingway’s narrator explains Cohn’s problem this way:
<blockquote>
Then there was another thing. He had been reading W. H. Hudson. That sounds like an innocent occupation, but Cohn had read and reread ''The Purple Land''. ''The Purple Land'' is a very sinister book if read too late in life. It recounts splendid imaginary amorous adventures of a perfect English gentleman in an intensely romantic land, the scenery of which is very well described. For a man to take it at thirty-four as a guide-book to what life holds is about as safe as it would be for a man of the same age to enter Wall Street direct from a French convent, equipped with a complete set of the more practical Alger books.{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=17}}
</blockquote>

Hemingway’s narrator Jake Barnes suggests that Cohn’s stubbornness had a “romantic streak,” but just what did this schoolboy idealism entail? ''The Purple Land'' might afford us a clue:
<blockquote>
Here the lord of many leagues of land and of herds unnumbered sits down to talk with the hired shepherd, a poor, bare-footed fellow in his smoky rancho, and no class or caste difference divides them, no consciousness of their widely different positions chills the warm current of sympathy between two human hearts. How refreshing it is to meet with this perfect freedom of intercourse, tempered only by that innate courtesy and native grace of manner peculiar to Spanish Americans! What a change to a person coming from lands with higher and lower classes, each with its innumerable hateful subdivisions—to one who aspires
</blockquote> {{pg|214|215}} <blockquote>
not to mingle with the class above him, yet who shudders at the slouching carriage and abject demeanour of the class beneath him! If this absolute equality is inconsistent with perfect political order, I for one should grieve to see such order established.{{sfn|Hudson|1885 |p=335}}
</blockquote>
So now we can see just what makes ''The Purple Land'' such a dangerous book for Robert Cohn. At the ripe age of thirty-four, Cohn, much like the narrator of ''The Purple Land'', still dreams of being accepted into a classless society by his Anglo-Saxon peers. Surely, Jake suggests, this was an idea that Cohn’s years at Princeton should have beaten out of him. As he says of Cohn, “No one had ever made him feel he was a Jew, and hence any different from anyone else, until he went to Princeton.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=12}} Yet Cohn—even after Princeton should have convinced him of his inherent difference from people like Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley—in his arrogance and stubbornness still believes that he will be accepted by his WASP acquaintances. Hemingway’s narrator says rather bitterly of Cohn, that all of his romanticism and his “stubborn” clinging to an idea that life is fair and equal stems from Cohn’s immature belief in two books. As Jake says, “So there you were. I was sorry for him, but it is not a thing you could do anything about, because right away you ran up against the two stubbornnesses: South America could fix it and he did not like Paris. He got the first idea out of a book, and I suppose the second came out of a book too.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=20}} So the first book that leads Cohn to think his life will be more on par with his peers in South America is clearly ''The Purple Land'' by W. H. Hudson, but what of the second book? What second book lends Cohn both his stubbornness and his air of moral superiority? Perhaps Hemingway is coyly referring to the Hebrew Bible, which he does in several key ciphered passages in ''The Sun Also Rises''.{{efn|An obvious example would be the title of his novel, ''The Sun Also Rises'', which Hemingway takes from a famous passage in Ecclesiastes ({{harvnb|Carroll|Prickett|2008|loc=Ecc. 1.5}}).}} The Hebrew Bible speaks of the ancient Hebrews and their legendary stubbornness: “And the Lord said unto Moses: I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people.”{{sfn|Carroll|Prickett|2008|loc=Exod. 32.9}} Cohn’s restless dissatisfaction with the way things were in the post-World War I period for Jews, stemmed from his reading and his inherent (read: Jewish) stubbornness. Hemingway famously spoke of the need for omniscience in a young writer—to know all that one can before putting pen to paper—but in this passage, Hemingway seems to defer to God himself. It is as if Hemingway says, “See, don’t blame me, I didn’t invent this Jewish stubbornness, it is as{{pg|215|216}}old as the Hebrew Bible itself and as obvious as the large, hooked, and bent nose on Robert Cohn’s face.”

These supposed Jewish characteristics are referenced numerous times in ''The Sun Also Rises''. For example, in Chapter Fifteen, while the veterans (of both war and bullfighting) are discussing the best way to endure the graphic and violent nature of the bullfighting, Cohn takes on an air of superiority, stating “I’m not worried about how I’ll stand it. I’m only afraid I may be bored.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=165}} As is apparent, Hemingway imbues his Jewish character with an unmitigated superior and condescending attitude, which, not surprisingly, infuriates the rest of the group. As Bill tells Jake, “That Cohn gets me. He’s got this Jewish superiority so strong that he thinks the only emotion he’ll get out of the fight will be being bored.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=166}} Cohn’s stubborn and whiny attitude is immediately contrasted with both Jake’s quiet calm in the face of personal tragedy and with the dignified figure of the physically resplendent bullfighter, Pedro Romero. Of course, Cohn’s repeated attempts at being accepted by his gentile peers—in effect, his attempts to change the unfair nature of his social and cultural reality like in the fictional South America of ''The Purple Land''—becomes yet one more “Jewish characteristic,” to the disdain of the other group members. After all, Jake has been unfairly and mercilessly left impotent {{efn|In an interview with ''The Paris Review'', {{harvtxt|Hemingway|1986|p=120}} takes exception to the wide-spread idea that Jake Barnes has been “emasculated” by his war injury:
<blockquote> '''INTERVIEWER:''' Continuing with just one question on this line: One of the advisory staff editors wonders about a parallel he feels he’s found in The Sun Also Rises between the dramatis personae of the bull ring and the characters of the novel itself. He points out that the first sentence of the book tells us Robert Cohn is a boxer; later, during the ''desencajonada'', the bull is described as using his horns like a boxer, hooking and jabbing. And just as the bull is attracted and pacified by the presence of a steer, Robert Cohn defers to Jake who is emasculated precisely as is a steer. He sees Mike as the picador, baiting Cohn repeatedly. The editor’s thesis goes on, but he wondered if it was your conscious intention to inform the novel with the tragic structure of the bullfight ritual.<br /><br /> '''HEMINGWAY:''' It sounds as though the advisory staff editor was a little bit screwy. Whoever said Jake was “emasculated precisely as is a steer”? Actually he had been wounded in quite a different way and his testicles were intact and not damaged. Thus he was capable of all normal feelings as a man but incapable of consummating them. The important distinction is that his wound was physical and not psychological and that he was not emasculated.</blockquote>}} from an injury during the war, an inequity and a horror which he does his best to accept and to bear with grace; only occasionally and only in the privacy of his own hotel room does Jake despair of his condition. It is as if Hemingway is saying, here’s this true American, Jake Barnes, injured in the most brutal way fighting for other people’s freedom and all this rich Jew Cohn can think about is himself and how sad it is for him to have to spend all of his millions in Paris.

==V. ==
Which brings us to Norman Mailer, whose first novel was published to critical and commercial acclaim and he was hailed as the new, great postwar American writer. ''The Naked and the Dead'' tells the story of one platoon’s dangerous reconnaissance mission in the battle for a Japanese-held island in the Pacific, Anopopei, toward the end of World War II. Control of this island might prove of key strategic importance for ultimate victory in the Pacific and an end to the war. Throughout the novel, Mailer introduces us to the varied members of the platoon, all of whom represent different aspects of working-class America. The difficulties encountered by the enlisted men{{pg|216|217}}are contrasted with the often pampered day to day life of the officers. This is especially true of both the calculating General Cummings, a highly successful general with political ambition—at one point Cummings says, “a more effective soldier the poorer his standard of living has been in the past”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=174}}—and Lieutenant Hearn, a Harvard-educated WASP who has more liberal ideas and regard for the lives of the enlisted men. The men of the platoon have for months been led by the tyrannical Sergeant Croft. After the deaths of several members of the platoon, two new Jewish soldiers, Roth and Goldstein, are added to the group. These two Jewish soldiers bear more than a passing resemblance to Hemingway’s Robert Cohn.

Despite the familial likeness of Hemingway’s and Mailer’s Jewish characters, in A. E. Hotchner’s 1966 book, ''Papa Hemingway'', Hemingway revealed his less than favorable overall opinion of ''The Naked and the Dead'' and its author: “The guy who wrote ''The Naked and the Dead''—what’s his name, Mailer—was in bad need of a manager. Can you imagine that a general wouldn’t look at the co-ordinates on his map? A made-up half-ass literary general. The whole book’s just diarrhea of the typewriter.”{{sfn|Hotchner|1966 |p=113}} While Hemingway did not admire Mailer’s credentials as a war correspondent, one thing he might have admired was Mailer’s creation of two Jewish characters as stereotypically Jewish as Robert Cohn: Privates Roth and Goldstein. So what are we to make of these two Jewish characters in ''The Naked and the Dead''?

The novel often switches between the men’s present reality in the Pacific and flashback sections called “The Time Machine,” which are interspersed throughout the narrative in which the men are seen at earlier moments of their civilian lives. At one point, the men of the platoon are sitting around waiting for the fighting to begin and, somewhat humorously, discuss the best way to give oneself a “million dollar” wound: a non-debilitating injury that will get the soldier sent home and out of the horrors of the war. In the midst of this conversation, Private Gallagher says of the two Jewish soldiers in the platoon: “For that Roth and Goldstein, you could shoot ’em in the nuts and they wouldn’t even know the difference.”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=429}}

This sense of the emasculated, literally castrated, Jewish soldiers parallels Robert Cohn in Hemingway’s novel. At one point during the bullfighting section, the group of friends is talking about the awful way one of the bulls gored a steer. Cohn adds to the discussion: “It’s no life being a steer,” which leads to the following exchange: {{pg|217|218}} <blockquote>“Don’t you think so? Mike says. “I would have thought you’d loved being a steer, Robert.”

“What do you mean, Mike.”

“They lead such a quiet life. They never say anything and they’re always hanging about so...I should think you’d love it. You’d never have to say a word. Come on, Robert. Do say something. Don’t just sit there....''Is'' Robert Cohn going to follow Brett around like a steer all the time?”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926|p=146}}</blockquote>

Clearly both Hemingway and Mailer create emasculated Jewish characters. Yet despite the obvious similarities between these three fictional characters, I believe that Mailer is actually attempting something diametrically opposed to Hemingway’s Jewish portrayal. Mailer’s portrait of emasculated Jewish characters is designed to draw attention to the complex negotiations his Jewish characters must make with an outwardly hostile and clearly anti-Semitic US Army during World War II. As a result of Mailer’s multifaceted portrait of the struggle of ethnic others, in this case Jewish Americans,{{efn|A similar argument could be made about Martinez being used in ''The Naked and the Dead'' to challenge prevailing negative stereotypes about Mexican Americans.}} in a pluralistic society, readers are challenged to delve deeper into the racial, religious and social attitudes prevalent in mid-twentieth century America

==VI. ==
There are numerous parallels between Hemingway’s Cohn and Mailer’s Roth and Goldstein. Take drinking, for instance. Jake, Bill, Mike and Brett all drink legendary amounts of alcohol to dull their pain of the losses they have suffered in the war. In contrast, Cohn often does not participate in their extended drinking sessions. At the high point of the fiesta, Cohn does get drunk and passes out, leaving the others to continue their drinking for several more hours. When he reappears, Cohn tries to ingratiate himself with the group by saying “What a lot we’ve drunk.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=163}} This elicits an angry response from Bill: “You mean what a lot ''we’ve'' drunk. You went to sleep”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=163}}

Similarly, in ''The Naked and the Dead'', when we meet Private Roth for the first time we see how Roth’s exclusion is a result of both his own defensive actions as well as the inherent and casual anti-Semitism of the Army: “The man with whom he was bunking, a big good-natured farm boy, was still over at another tent with his friends, and Roth didn’t want to join them. He had gone along the previous night and, as it usually happened, he had felt left out of things.”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=50}} We can easily see from the narrator’s{{pg|218|219}}comments how Roth is both excluded by the group and that he excludes himself, almost as a preemptive maneuver designed to gain a sense of agency in an environment in which he has very little standing and even less power. Similarly, in his isolation, Roth, a college-educated man, reflects on the intellect of his fellow soldiers and, with disdain, decides that “they were all stupid.”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=51}} In this same scene, Roth has a lengthy conversation with the other Jewish member of the platoon, Goldstein. In the creation of these two figures, Mailer is attempting to draw out the numerous social and religious differences between these two vastly different Jewish characters.

Despite their obvious differences, both Jewish soldiers are despised by the other members of the platoon. In this portrayal, Mailer is scrupulously careful to honestly portray the Army in all of its inherent bigotry. For example, while speaking with Roth, Goldstein recalls overhearing a conversation earlier that day between a group of soldiers and a truck driver. The driver was warning the soldiers about the good and bad companies. The driver said, {{" '}}Just hope you all don’t get in F Company, that’s where they stick the goddam Jewboys.{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=53}} After much mirth among the men, one of the soldiers responds. {{" '}}If they stick me there, I’m resigning plumb out of the Army.{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=53}} Thus Mailer offers us a well-rounded conception of these two Jewish soldiers’ treatment in the Army and the difficult time they have just trying to survive in a doubly hostile environment. In addition to the constant threat of the Japanese enemy, the Jewish soldiers must always be on guard for the next anti-Semitic outburst from one of their own fellow platoon mates. Although he doesn’t respond to the anti-Semitic comments of the truck driver and the other soldiers laughing with him, Goldstein intuits “that kind of face was behind all the pogroms against the Jews.”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=53}}

Or later, when some of the men are sitting around talking, one of the veterans of the platoon, Gallagher, begins to reminisce of his time back home in Boston when he used to run with a gang. He recalls an incident where he and his friends beat-up a local Jewish kid; this memory gives him a good laugh, but the story also gets him thinking about the larger problem of “the goddam Yids.”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=93}} This memory leads him to dwell on his lack of advancement in civilian life, which, he also, conveniently, blames on Jewish nepotism: “if it hadn’t been for that Alderman Shapiro and his fuggin nephew Abie or Jakie.”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=94}} This in turn leads him to further reflect on the two new soldiers assigned to his platoon. Gallagher says, {{" '}}I see we got a couple of fuggin Yids in the platoon.{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=94}} Red Valsen, the unsung hero of the{{pg|219|220}}novel, tries to mitigate this harsh anti-Semitic statement of Gallagher’s by responding: {{" '}}Yeah...they’re sonsofbitches just like the rest of us.{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=94}} Gallagher responds furiously, {{" '}}They only been in one week and already they’re lousin’ up the platoon.{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=94}} This leads to a more subtle formulation by another soldier, Wilson, who draws a distinction between Roth, who is, by even the most objective standard, not a very good soldier, and Goldstein, who has given every indication that he might become a first-rate soldier. However, Gallagher only pushes aside all subtleties and concludes with the thought, {{" '}}I wouldn’t trust a fuggin one of them.{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=94}}

Much like ''The Sun Also Rises'', Mailer’s novel reveals a considerable amount of talk concerning the emasculated Jewish male. In one scene, Goldstein, along with several of the men of the platoon, is complaining about the inefficiency of the Army. Along with all the other men, Goldstein adds his assessment. Yet the sadistic Sergeant Croft immediately seizes on Goldstein’s casual remark:
<blockquote>
“You bitching again, Goldstein?” Croft asked.

The anti-Semite, Goldstein thought. “I’m just expressing my opinion,” he said.

“Opinion!” Croft spat. “A bunch of goddam women have opinions.”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=127}}
</blockquote>
This emasculating comment by Sergeant Croft only goads Gallagher to draw Goldstein’s manhood into further question: “What’s the matter, you want some gefüllte fish?”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=127}}

This feminization of Mailer’s two Jewish soldiers bears many of the physical stereotypes Modernist American literature often associates with Jewish characters. This is particularly true of the diminutive Roth, who often chews on his bitter thoughts of how much better he is than all of the uneducated men that surround him. Yet despite these many surface similarities with Hemingway’s Jewish characterization, ultimately Mailer portrays a complex understanding of America’s perception of the Jew both during the war years as well as in the immediate postwar period. Mailer repeatedly counters a scene that emasculates either Goldstein or Roth with a further scene highlighting the rampant anti-Semitism of the US Army.

Concurrently, Mailer also presents a strikingly realistic portrait of the difficult life for the average US soldier during World War II, and his novel is no{{pg|220|221}}idealized “best generation” portrait of the era. The soldiers and the officers are often racist and many of the men believe that their wives are unfaithful to them as they are off far from home fighting the war. In regard to his Jewish portrayal, as opposed to Hemingway, Mailer affords his readers insight into the consciousness of his Jewish characters. Mailer carefully portrays two vastly different Jews in the novel: Roth is a college-educated agnostic prone to fits of fury, pessimism, and general arrogance, while Goldstein is a working-class man from Brooklyn who, despite numerous hostile experiences, generally wants to think well of people and institutions. Ultimately, Roth proves himself an inept soldier, whereas Goldstein redeems himself by displaying fortitude and dedication in attempting to save his wounded platoon-mate Wilson. Nevertheless, Mailer asserts that both soldiers are lumped under a general term of disapprobation, and all they will ever be known as in the army is simply and eloquently—Jews.

Mailer also paints a scary yet realistic portrait of an officer corps rife with bigots and racists. At one point, an officer, Colonel Conn, is ranting in the mess hall voicing a racist tirade on “the treachery and depravity of the Negro, and the terrible fact that Jew York was in the hands of foreigners.”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=69}} Lieutenant Hearn can take no more of this racism and anti-Semitism, and although he is outranked by Conn, he humiliates his superior officer in an exchange that is overheard by all of the other officers.{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=73}} Later that evening, General Cummings summons Hearn to his tent to upbraid him for his insubordination, but the conversation quickly turns from Hearn’s actions towards other matters: American power, politics and the progress of the war. The General says to Hearn, “I don’t disagree with Conn. There’s a hard kernel of truth in many of the things he says. As for example, ‘All Jews are noisy....They’re not all noisy, of course, but there’s an undue proportion of coarseness in that race, admit it.{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=82}} Although it might appear that Mailer is creating a stereotypical portrait of Jewish characters in ''The Naked and the Dead'', I believe that he is trying to underscore the widespread anti-Semitism inherent in all aspects of the Army, from the lowest enlisted man on up through the highest levels of command. Against this backdrop, readers of Mailer’s fiction must begin to gauge their own ideas about Jewish people in general and Roth and Goldstein in particular. Far from merely parroting Hemingway’s anti-Semitic construction of Jewish masculinity in ''The Sun Also Rises'', Mailer, a generation later, challenges his readers’ notions of{{pg|221|222}}American inclusiveness and concurrently exposes an ugly strain of anti-Semitism and racism in American institutions.

In ''The Naked and the Dead'', as in Hemingway’s novel, the ideas and feelings of the group come out most expressively and passionately at times of drunkenness. As if acknowledging Hemingway’s earlier portrait of emasculated Jewish characters, Mailer dramatizes a similar drinking scene in ''The Naked and the Dead'' to the one Hemingway wrote in ''The Sun Also Rises''. In a poignant scene, Mailer depicts five men of the platoon all pitching in to buy several canteens of homemade liquor from the mess sergeant. As they sit around getting completely hammered, one of the men, Wilson, notices Goldstein sitting off by himself writing a letter. In a moment of inclusiveness, Wilson good-naturedly invites Goldstein to join them for a drink. However, always on the defensive and having heard rumors of poisoned homemade liquor, Goldstein is wary of drinking the brew. Instead of focusing on bonding with his fellow platoon mates, Goldstein remains firmly focused on his wife and child back home in Brooklyn. Goldstein worries about what would happen to them if he were to die of poisoning out in the middle of the Pacific.

In this scene, Mailer starkly contrasts the numerous social and cultural differences and preoccupations that fuel the many conflicts between the men of the platoon. Goldstein asks Wilson, {{" '}}Is it real whisky or is it jungle juice?{{' "}} This incites Gallagher, who tells Goldstein, {{" '}}Take the goddam drink or leave it, Izzy.{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=204}} Of course, now that he has been insulted, Goldstein abstains, which in turn only isolates him further from the men of his platoon. Beneath the curses of his fellow soldiers, Goldstein walks back towards his tent to continue writing his letter to his wife. The narrator says, “Goldstein turned around abruptly and walked away. The circle of men who were drinking drew closer, and there was an almost tangible bond between them now.”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=205}} In contrast to the solidarity of the drinking men, Goldstein sits alone in his tent feeding on his bitterness: “Once his eyes filled with tears and he shook his head angrily. Why did they hate him so? he asked himself.”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=205}}

==VII. ==
In his recent essay, “The ‘Whine’ of Jewish Manhood: Re-Reading Hemingway’s Anti-Semitism, Re-Imagining Robert Cohn,” Jeremy Kaye suggests that while the vast majority of literary critics “have most often explored Cohn{{pg|222|223}}from the site of Hemingway’s ''production'', they overlook the site of ''reception''.”{{sfn|Kaye|2006 |p=48}} Perhaps my similar interrogation of the reception of Mailer’s controversial Jewish characters has helped us move beyond an understanding of Roth and Goldstein as simple stereotypes. Far from merely imitating Hemingway, Mailer’s Jewish characters in his first novel are as great a challenge to his literary forefather as was his inscription of ''The Deer Park''. Yet that did not stop the vast majority of critics from thinking of Mailer as a self-hating Jew. That Mailer was excoriated by many Jewish readers and critics for his depiction of stereotyped Jewish fictional characters in the US Army early in his career was, only a decade later, eerily paralleled in the harsh and unforgiving reaction to one of Philip Roth’s earliest stories, “The Defender of the Faith,” which was first published in ''The New Yorker'' in 1959. After the publication of this story, Roth was accused of being a self-hating Jew as well.{{sfn|Remnick|2000 |p=76}} The public outcry against Roth was so great that in an incident recounted rather humorously in Roth’s 1988 autobiography/novel, ''The Facts'', he was forced to meet with leaders of the Anti-Defamation League to talk about the rising storm of Jewish protest his story had let loose across America.{{sfn|Roth|1988 |p=123}}

From my perspective of a half century later, I would say that Roth is continuing a tradition begun a decade previous to the publication of “Defender of the Faith,” by one of his acknowledged literary forefathers, Norman Mailer. Although Roth was excoriated for creating a negative portrait of a Jewish soldier in the figure of Sheldon Grossbart, much like Mailer before him, Roth establishes the extremely anti-Semitic environment of the US Army during World War II that places Grossbart, along with all the other Jewish soldiers, in a disadvantageous position from the very beginning of Roth’s controversial short story. One could argue that for all the Jews behaving badly in “The Defender of the Faith,” the most offensive action in the story is perpetrated by the racist and anti-Semitic Captain Barrett. As Roth’s Sergeant Marx narrates,
<blockquote>
The next morning, while chatting with Captain Barrett, I recounted the incident of the previous evening. Somehow, in the telling, it must have seemed to the Captain that I was not so much explaining Grossbart’s position as defending it. “Marx, I’d fight side by side with a nigger if the fella proved to me he was a man. I pride myself,” he said, looking out the window, “that I’ve{{pg|223|224}}got an open mind. Consequently, Sergeant, nobody gets special treatment here, for the good or the bad. All a man’s got to do is prove himself. A man fires well on the range, I give him a weekend pass. He scores high in P. T. , he gets a weekend pass. He earns it.” He turned from the window and pointed a finger at me. “You’re a Jewish fella, am I right, Marx?”{{sfn|Roth|1993 |p=166}}
</blockquote>
Friday nights are for cleaning the barracks, and Grossbart is concerned because he has heard the other men complain that the Jewish soldiers who go to religious services Friday night are really just shirking their work. When Sergeant Marx tries to explain Grossbart’s concern to the Captain, he replies,
<blockquote>
“If the Jewish personnel feels the other men are accusing them of goldbricking—well, I just don't know. Seems awful funny that suddenly the Lord is calling so loud in Private Grossman's ear he's just got to run to church.”

“Synagogue,” I said.

“Synagogue is right, Sergeant. I'll write that down for handy reference. Thank you for stopping by.”{{sfn|Roth|1993 |p=166}}
</blockquote>

Much like Mailer did in his World War II novel, we see Roth in his short story addressing anti-Semitism in the American military and how it has affected several Jewish soldiers within the service. And much like Mailer had encountered a decade earlier, Roth was immediately at the center of a firestorm of Jewish protest. In a profile of Philip Roth (published in 2000), David Remnick describes the controversy “Defender of the Faith” elicited and he quotes directly from some of the letters Roth received in the late 1950s:
<blockquote>
Mr. Roth: With your one story, “Defender of the Faith,” you have done as much harm as all the organized anti-Semitic organizations have done to make people believe that all Jews are cheats, liars, connivers. Your one story makes people—the general public—forget all the Jews who have lived, all the Jewish boys who served well in the armed services, all the Jews who live honest hard lives the world over. One letter came to the Anti-</blockquote> {{pg|224|225}} <blockquote>Defamation League from a prominent rabbi, reading, “What is being done to silence this man? Medieval Jews would have known what to do with him.”{{sfn|Roth|1993 |p=76}}</blockquote>

In ''The Facts'', Roth recounts this early condemnation as being formative in his development as a writer. The outcry against Roth in 1959 continued for several years and built to a crescendo during a visit Roth made to Yeshiva University in 1962. Roth was invited to be part of a symposium on the theme of “The Crisis of Conscience in Minority Writers of Fiction.” In addition to Roth, Ralph Ellison was also a panelist, but the entire symposium, it would seem, was staged as a pretext for vilifying Roth and his supposedly anti-Semitic and self-hating work. Roth was attacked again and again by the audience members, who surrounded him to continue the barrage once the official program had come to an end. As Roth recalls in ''The Facts'',
<blockquote>
I listened to the final verdict against me, as harsh a judgment as I ever hope to hear in this or any other world. I only began to shout “Clear away, step back—I’m getting out of here” after somebody, shaking a fist in my face, began to holler, “You were brought up on anti-Semitic literature!” “Yes,” I hollered back, “and what is that?”—curious really to know what he meant. “English literature!” he cried. “English Literature is anti-Semitic literature.”{{sfn|Roth|1988 |p=129}}
</blockquote>
According to Roth, he initially wanted to forswear any more writing about Jews, and it was only years later that he understood the full import of what he termed “the Yeshiva battle.” Roth writes that “instead of putting me off Jewish fictional subjects for good,” the event “demonstrated as nothing had before the full force of aggressive rage that made the issue of Jewish self-definition and Jewish allegiance so inflammatory.”{{sfn|Roth|1988 |p=129}} Roth claims that “After an experience like mine at Yeshiva, a writer would have had to be no writer at all to go looking elsewhere for something to write about...the Jewish resistance that I aroused virtually from the start—was the luckiest break I could have had. I was branded.”{{sfn|Roth|1988 |p=130}}

Roth forcefully maintains that it was this opposition and resistance to the expectations of the Jewish community that would become the subject matter of his work for the rest of his career. Despite all of the anger focused on Roth’s{{pg|225|226}}character Grossbart, just as Mailer had done a decade before, in “Defender of the Faith,” Roth creates a stereotypical Jewish character as a means of challenging his readers to understand the inherent racism of American institutions during World War II and the effect these prevailing attitudes would have on Jewish security in postwar America. So the question remains: What about Mailer? Was Mailer similarly inspired by the overwhelmingly negative reaction the Jewish community had to his two Jewish characters in his first novel?

==IX. ==
Much like Philip Roth’s watershed experience at Yeshiva University, perhaps the initial scorn heaped upon Mailer as a result of his creation of two stereotypical Jewish characters sent the writing career of this good Jewish boy from Brooklyn on a trajectory that would confound his critics for over half a century. In responding to both the Jewish community and the anti-Semitic character of Hemingway’s Robert Cohn, Mailer launched his career with Jewish themes at the forefront. It is precisely these major Jewish themes, that in his last books, ''The Castle in the Forest'', and ''On God: An Uncommon Conversation'', Mailer would continue to explore.

Toward the end of his life Mailer was asked about his feelings for Hemingway. Mailer replied, “I wanted to be a writer since 1941, when I was 18. Hemingway was more important to us than Saint Paul is today to the Catholics.”{{sfn|Weeks|2002}} Mailer never did get to meet with Hemingway man-to-man as he had dreamed of in his youth. In that same interview—which was occasioned by the production of ''Zelda, Scott and Ernest'', the staged, dramatized reading of the letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Mailer read Hemingway while George Plimpton read Fitzgerald)—Mailer told a ''Washington Post'' reporter that his reading Hemingway’s lines in the performance was “as close as I’ll ever get to Hemingway.”{{sfn|Weeks|2002}} Although Mailer might have spent much of his life chasing Hemingway’s ghost, ironically, it is his earliest fictional portrait of two unremarkable Jewish soldiers that will ultimately serve as his fiercest and most personal response to his literary forefather.

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

==Citations==
{{Reflist|15em}}

==Works Cited==
{{refbegin|20em|indent=yes}}
* {{cite book |last=Bellow |first=Saul |year=1944 |title=Dangling Man |location=New York |publisher=Penguin |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last1=Ben Isaiah |first1=Rabbi Abraham |first2=Rabbi Benjamin |last2=Sharfman |year=1949 |title=The Pentateuch and Rashi's Commentary: A Linear Translation into English |location=New York |publisher=S. S. & R. |ref=harv}}
* {{cite journal |last=Bernstein |first=Mashey |title=Jewish Values in the Work of Norman Mailer |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=2 |issue=1 |date=2008 |pages=376-384 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |editor-last1=Chametzky |editor-first1=Jules |editor-last2=Felstiner |editor-first2=John |editor-last3=Flanzbaum |editor-first3=Hilene |editor-last4=Hellerstein |editor-first4=Kathryn |year=2000 |title=Jewish American Literture: A Norton Anthology |location=New York |publisher=W.W. Norton & Co. |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |year=2002 |title=Leopards in the Temple |location=Cambridge |publisher=Harvard UP |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |editor-last1=Plimpton |editor-first1=George |editor-last2=Bruccoli |editor-first2=Matthew Joseph |date=1986 |title=The Art of Fiction: Ernest Hemingway |location= Jackson |publisher= UP of Mississippi |pages=109-129 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |year=1926 |title=The Sun Also Rises |location=New York |publisher=Scribner, 2006 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Hotchner |first=A. E. |year=1966 |title=Papa Hemingway |location=Cambridge |publisher=De Capo Press, 2004 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Hudson |first=W. H. |year=1885 |title=The Purple Land |location=New York |publisher=E. P. Dutton and Company, 1916 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite journal |last=Kaye |first=Jeremy |title=The ‘Whine’ of Jewish Manhood: Re-Reading Hemingway’s Anti-Semitism, ReImagining Robert Cohn |journal= The Hemingway Review |volume=25 |issue=2 |date=2006 |pages=44-60 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |editor-last1=Carroll |editor-first1=Robert |editor-last2=Prickett |editor-first2=Stephen |year=2008 |title=Kings James Bible |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford UP |ref=harv}}
* {{cite journal |last=Linett |first=Maren |title=Introduction: Modernism’s Jews/Jewish Modernisms. |journal=Modern Fiction Studies |volume=51 |issue=2 |date=2005 |pages=246-257 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |year=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv}}
* {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |title=The Time of our Time |journal=Literary Pain and Shame. |date=1998 |pages=207-9|location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |year=1948 |title=The Naked and The Dead |location=New York |publisher=Rinehart and Company |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last1=Mailer |first1=Norman |authormask=1 |last2=Lennon |first2=Michael |year=2007 |title=On God: An Uncommon Conversation |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv}}
* {{cite interview |last=Plimpton |first=George |subject-link= |interviewer=Oliver Burkeman |title=Hemingway, Mailer and Me |work=The Guardian |date={{date|2002}} |publisher= |location= |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/oct/01/artsfeatures.classics |access-date=2025-04-28 |editor-last=Burkeman |editor-first=Oliver |ref=harv}}
* {{cite news |last=Remnick |first=David |date={{date|May 8, 2000}} |title=Into the Clear: Philip Roth Puts Turbulence in its Place |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2000/05/08/into-the-clear |work=The New Yorker |edition=76 |access-date=2025-04-28 |page= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Roth |first=Philip |year=1993 |chapter=Defender of the Faith |title=Goodbye Columbus and Five Short Stories |location=New York |publisher=Vintage |pages=159-200 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Roth |first=Philip |authormask=1 |year=1988 |title=The Facts |location=New York |publisher=Penguin |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Strychacz |first=Thomas |year=2002 |chapter=The Sort of Things You Should Not Admit: Hemingway's Aesthetics of Emotional Restraint |title=Boys Don't Cry |editor-last1=Shamir |editor-first1=Milette |editor-last2=Travis |editor-first2=Jennifer |pages=141-166 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite news |last=Weeks |first=Linton |date={{date|January 12, 2002}} |title=A Pride of Lions; For Norman Mailer et al., the Importance of Being Ernest, Scott and Zelda |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2002/01/12/a-pride-of-lions/de6b55ec-6326-44dc-8a4a-1d59a159aaf8/ |work=The Washington Post |edition=C01 |access-date=2025-04-28 |page= |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hemingway's Jewish Progeny: Roth and Goldstein in ''The Naked and the Dead''}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Imagining Evil: The Sardonic Narrator of Mailer’s Last Novel

2025-04-28T14:46:05Z

Grlucas: Removed banner. Tweaks.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{MR05}}
{{BookReview
| title = The Castle in the Forest
| author = Norman Mailer
| location= New York
| pub = Random House
| date = 2007
| pages = 477
| type = Cloth
| price = 27.95
| note =
| first = Christopher
| last = Busa
| link = http://prmlr.us/mr05bus
| url = https://amzn.to/3Gv4tIX
}}
{{dc|dc=R|eading sentences in ''The Castle in the Forest''}} is a fascinating pleasure, interrupted by involuntary eruptions of hilarity. Amusement does not depend on a lurid interest in Hitler’s perversities; rather it is won by the reader’s attention to the narrator’s measured, balanced, and calculated control of ''presenting'' Hitler’s perversities: scornfully cynical, derisively sneering, mockingly malicious, disdainfully disparaging, bitterly caustic, and acidly snarky. Mailer makes wickedly funny fun of woefully wicked people. He plants the seeds of bad deeds; he incites quarrels; he belittles and badmouths; he expands disconnections, facilitates discord, and enhances vanity, greed, envy, lust—and the rest of the “sacred seven” sins upon which the narrator concentrates.

Saint Augustine declared famously in his ''Confessions'' that “God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.” This commingling of antagonistic forces may be the fundamental inspiration for art to absorb evil into the fuller context of human affairs. The narrator of ''Castle'' offers understandings yoked to a pair of opposites, as if the ox of evil and the ox of good were pulling in unison a cart we call history.

Mailer’s narrator, “without salient personality,” is possessed of the negative capability to dwell within some man or woman’s body, because “a man {{pg|440|441}} or woman’s presence is closely related to their body, and so offers a multitude of insights.” Dramatic tension is maintained by the squeezing and releasing of the flow of information, which the narrator reveals in successive approximations to the reader’s growing understanding. The act of the narrator in writing his own novel utilizes petty dilemmas as a means of comprehending a much vaster subject. His existential act of revealing the Devil’s trade secrets is a singular betrayal. Writing about Hitler was Mailer’s last temptation—the occasion to test the power of imaginary characters to function as agents of reincarnation, and there is a Keatsian hint of a living hand holding forth, speaking from beyond the grave. Mailer speaks in an echo chamber of eternity, living ''sub specie aeternitatis'', a common post-traumatic afterthought resulting from boredom of political banter in the everyday press. Today, if you are a Republican, the Devil is a Democrat. If you are a Democrat, Republicans are forces of evil.

Mailer’s copious descriptions make real the sordid circumstances of Hitler’s family, and they prepare the reader for the plunge into the murky slather of intimate juices that is the future Fuehrer’s conception in the womb of his mother, his father’s own niece, and possibly his own daughter. In adopting the witnessing voice of a German SS officer, Mailer has found a persona in which he can whisper in the language of the enemy and gain subtle access to our consciousness. The narrator explains how he came to be present at the primal scene of Adolph’s conception, observing the act like a gynecologist performing artificial insemination.
<blockquote>

Some readers may notice that I first spoke of that exceptional event as if I were the one in the connubial bed. Now, I state that I was not. Nonetheless, in referring to my participation, I am still telling the truth. For even as physicists presently assume to their scientific confusion that light is both a particle and a wave, so do devils live in both the lie and the truth, side by side, and both can be seen with equal force.</blockquote>

The narrator demonstrates ability to live in duality, showing awareness that most decisions in life are closely akin to choices not taken. Any decision is laden with existential memory of times when there was a forty-nine to fifty-one percent split.

Evil entered Hitler’s being at the moment of conception. Mailer’s impish {{pg|441|442}} conceit (not infrequently uttered provocatively in the presence of women) is that two great births occurred in history: Jesus Christ and Adolph Hitler. The mass of women lived lives of less exaggerated glamour than either the immaculate Mary or the soiled and common Klara. Mailer extracts the lesson that every mother bears a genetic responsibility for the good or evil that manifests itself in their children—mothers pass on what was planted in them. Jesus was born from the seed of God, not that of her husband Joseph. Hitler was born of woman, but his mother, Klara, was suspected of being his father’s daughter. Complicated inbreeding influences the way psychic conceptions are read and remembered. These divergent conceptions occurred almost two thousand years apart; yet, they are linked by a Western consciousness capable of sustaining awareness of moments spread over a spectrum of time.

In ''Mein Kampf'', dictated while in prison early in his life, Hitler concluded that his life was and would be a “struggle.” He wrote in the first paragraph of chapter one: “Today it seems to me providential that Fate should have chosen Braunau on the Inn as my birthplace. For this little town lies on the boundary between two German states, which we of the younger generation at least have made it our life’s work to reunite by every means at our disposal.” Reunification was achieved in the phoenix nest of the funeral pyre of the Holocaust, a crazy paradox that yet animates the dynamics of regeneration from burned bodies.

Mailer draws hugely upon history, myth, and legend, combining these elements uniquely into a book that embodies the lingua franca of contemporary cultural memory. Hitler wounded the soul of the last century. His deeds invade our nightmares. Psychiatrists prosper because people’s wits are twisted.

Let us hear a string of utterances that summon the voice of the German intelligence officer, narrator of ''The Castle in the Forest:''<blockquote>

“Intelligence work can be understood as a contest between code and the obfuscation of a code.”

“Prevarication, like honesty, is reflexive, and soon becomes a sturdy habit, as reliable as truth.”

“He could shave a truth by a hair or subvert it altogether.”</blockquote> {{pg|442|443}} <blockquote>“My art was to replace a true memory by a false one [like] removing an old tattoo in order to cover it with a new one.”

“If I draw upon reserves of patience, it is because time passes here without meaning for me.”</blockquote>

Metaphoric dazzle drives the narrator’s thinking, strangely animating the banal lives of the novel’s characters. In his opening line, the narrator establishes immediate ease with the reader, offering his nickname, and suggesting that he be considered a friend in need of understanding how to accomplish the complex task of plausibly telling a story that is, so frankly, based on the fiction that the narrator is an agent of the Devil costumed as a person, rather like an actor playing a role.

Using the creaky, horse-drawn carriage of an omniscient “nineteenth century novelist,” the narrator assumes a post-modern authorial voice of immense range and depth, on a scale that speaks across reaches of time and knowledge to Dante’s use of citizens from Florence as characters in the ''Inferno''; Milton, whose concept of evil was embodied in God’s finest angel and glamorous rebel; Goethe, whose Faustian pact with an eminent scholar made us understand the temptation of yearning for greatness; Nietzsche, whose psychological superman was warped into Nazi war slogans; Blake, who said, “Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unsatisfied desire; and, in America, Melville. It is as if Melville had begun ''Moby-Dick'' with a diminutive of Ishmael’s name—“Call me Izzy.” If Melville commands, Mailer invites us to listen, and this intimacy of the narrator, always in the reader’s ear, makes the experience of reading an act of complicity. We are not asked to identify with Hitler or the Devil, but with a narrator whose relation with the reader becomes, by the book’s end, “as alone with each other as two souls out in the ocean on a rock not large enough for three.”

The question Mailer leaves us with in this farewell volume is ''curious'', and I use this open-ended word because Mailer’s narrator, having completed his European duties in shaping the first sixteen years of Adolph Hitler’s life, has been “demoted” to assignments in America, which he calls “this curious nation.” Following the time that the narrator has been “installed” in the “human abode” that was Dieter, an eerie voice speaks to us, the voice of the novelist speaking of his character in the past tense: “I was not without effect. Dieter had been a charming SS man, tall, quick, blond, blue eyed, witty. To {{pg|443|444}} give a further turn to the screw, I even suggested that he was a troubled Nazi. I spoke with a fine counterfeit of genuine feeling concerning the damnable excesses that were to be found in the Fuehrer’s achievements.” How subtle is the slither of this last snaking sentence!

A high‐level counterpart to Dieter—an “American Jewish psychiatrist”— is assigned to interview Dieter as a war criminal. Even though a revolver sits on the table while they talk, the narrator suggests the doctor has little familiarity with firearms: “Sequestered in the depths of the average pacifist—as one will inevitably discover—resides a killer. That is why the person has become a pacifist in the first place. Now, given my subtle assault upon what he believed were ''his'' human values, the American picked up his .45, knew enough to release the safety, and shot me.”

In an earlier aside, the narrator prepared us for his casual way of sounding cruel: “If it is discomforting to the reader that I usually present myself as a calm observer, capable of a balanced narrative, and yet am also able to abet the most squalid acts without a moment of regret, let it not come as a surprise. Devils require two natures. In part, we are civilized.”

Yes, and so adept at glimpsing truths that obviate our belief in any truth that does not contain the memory of all that for which it is not true. The narrator’s tone navigates the most spontaneous kinds of sardonic irony, causing unbidden laughter verging on the death-causing convulsions resulting from eating the plant, grown in Sardinia, which gave sardonic laughter its name and a definition more deeply unsettling than mere sarcasm.

Dieter, speaking as a German, indicates how voice is visceral, and produced by the body:<blockquote>

If you are German and possessed of lively intelligence, irony is, of course, vital to one’s pride. German came to us originally as the language of simple folk, good pagan brutes and husbandmen, tribal people, ready for the hunt and the field. So, it is a language full of the growls of the stomach, and the wind in the bowels of hearty existence, the bellows of the lungs, the hiss of the windpipe, the cries of command that one issues to domesticated animals, even the roar that stirs in the throat at the sight of blood. Given, however, the imposition laid on this folk through the centuries—that they enter the amenities of Western civilization before the opportunity passes away from them altogether—</blockquote> {{pg|444|445}} <blockquote>I did not find it surprising that many of the German bourgeoisie who had migrated into city life from muddy barnyards did their best to speak in voices as soft as the silk of a sleeve. Particularly, the ladies. I do not include long German words, which are often a precursor to our technological spirit today, no, I refer to the syrupy palatals, sentimental sounds for a low-grade brain. To every sharp German fellow, irony had become the essential corrective.</blockquote>

Mailer connects character to the intimate feeling of how the organs and chambers of the body produce the unique inflections that are ultimately articulated when air is shaped by the muscles in the lips. Mailer emphasizes the mouth-washing compulsion Hitler suffered from most of his life. He became a vegetarian because he was disgusted when he chewed sausage, which so reminded him of his childhood abuse by his father’s forced fellatio.

Even more curious is why Mailer should end his life writing about a tyrant who sickened his mother’s stomach, when he was a nine-year-old, while she listened to radio reports from Germany, during the prelude to the war. She could picture the trouble from far away because she had lived in Russia and had experienced the conditions that now frightened her more than if she had been in Vienna in the spring of 1938, when Germany “united” Austria by annexing it against the will of its most prominent citizens, mostly Jews like herself. Quite likely, Mailer’s mother saw shocking photographs published in the Brooklyn newspapers. And Mailer, early in ''The Castle in the Forest'', evokes the fading newsreel of this blurred black-and-white humiliation, where he imagined his kin on their knees—using a most diminutive tool to wash away anti-Nazi graffiti: “I remember on the first morning after the Brown Shirts marched into Vienna, that a squad of them—beer-hall types with big bellies—collected a group of old and middle-aged Jews, and put them to work scrubbing the sidewalk with toothbrushes. The Storm Troopers laughed as they watched. Photographs of the event were featured on the front pages of many a newspaper in Europe and America.”

Mailer’s narrator guides the meaning of what he shows in detailed scenes depicting three generations of the Hitler family. The skeletal family tree that spawned Adolph Hitler is fleshed out with more fullness than simple entry into adolescence; Mailer’s silence on the Holocaust makes kitchen table mutterings meaningful. In particular, Mailer explores the father/son relation- {{pg|445|446}} ship of Alois and Adolph to the extent that Alois’ lifespan is completed before Adolph’s life begins in earnest. The penultimate Book (Mailer’s chapters appear as books) is titled “Alois and Adolph”; the father’s concern is to pass on a career direction for his son. Adolph wants to be an artist, but his pictures of buildings, when he puts people in them, show people out of scale to their surroundings, in incorrect proportion to the buildings behind them. To make sure that Hitler would be rejected from art school in Vienna, Dieter induced a most severe migraine to the teacher assigned to assess his entrance portfolio.

Hitler’s father’s, born a bastard first named Alois Schicklgruber, was legitimized as the son of his uncle when the uncle died, leaving his property and surname to Alois Hitler. Alois married Klara Poelzl, his niece, when she was in her twenties, giving sanction to their sexual relationship, which began when she was nine. At the time, the age of consent in Germany and England was nine, yet people whispered.

The narrator, wryly, repeatedly, casually, charmingly explicates the very scenes he creates, irradiating them with insights achieved, seemingly at will, via metaphoric connections between the base and the noble. He shows by the telling of the teller that the most important connection between Mailer’s practice as a novelist and as a nonfiction writer is his utilization of a pseudonym. ''The Armies of the Night'' exemplified his use of the third-person as a stand-in for the first person, and the lesson of entering history via the mind of a novelist might prove useful to future historians and biographers of Hitler. Mailer raises questions that far transcend the issues he exposed in ''The Naked and the Dead''—concerning the fascist aspect of a military hierarchy, where the tyrant is armored, and unreachable.

Mailer has always maintained that the first duty of a novelist was not to write about himself, but about the other self with whom he feels “comfortable inhabiting.” The author of ''Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art'', Ernst Kris, observed, “The absolution from guilt for fantasy is complete if the fantasy one follows is not one’s own.” Mailer’s personas reveal his acting aspirations, and root his experience in theater as a key source in his novel writing. Mailer’s scenic sense is displayed in the block-by-block developments so keenly integrated into ordinary life that good and evil seem tainted with each other. Dieter, who follows Hitler’s father into beekeeping, gives credit to honey as a medium for absorbing a dose of his dark syrup: “We have {{pg|446|447}} among our gifts the power to invest many a substance with a trace of our presence.”

The novel’s Epilogue fast forwards through the rise of the Third Reich, skipping the Holocaust, and returns us to April 1945, forty years after the narrator’s duties attending little Adolph were completed. Germany has just been defeated. Dieter is present at a nearby concentration camp, which has just been liberated, called “The Castle in the Forest” or as the German translation of the novel has it, ''Das Schloss Im Wald''. Mailer’s title is pointedly ironic, since the “castle” is nonexistent, and the “forest” is a patch of barren land.

Dieter has nearly finished his book, and he considers the accumulated resentments that triggered his desire to write the book we are reading. Indeed, the narrator’s talents have been so aptly demonstrated by his success both in Germany and Russia—creating mischief most serious. The Devil has suppressed Dieter in order to take Hitler on as his exclusive client. The explosive situation made me think of the killings of U.S. Postal workers by fired employees. Mailer’s narrator absorbs primal rage, and uses it to fuel and authorize audacious inquiries into human psychology, and make real how blood is thicker than literature.

{{* * *}}

In the novel’s “Epilogue,” the narrator once again addresses his motivation for writing his book: “Can it be that the Maestro, whom I served in a hundred roles while holding on to the pride that I was a field officer in the mighty eminence of Satan, had indeed deluded me? Was it now likely that the Maestro was not Satan, but only one more minion—if at a very high level?” This confusion opens up the possibility, Mailer suggests, that we have been reading “the sardonic insights of one more intermediary.”

When Mailer’s narrator is “shot,” the narrative voice persists in speaking, persuasively, in the ambiguity of history, showing self-doubt about his loyalty. The penultimate sentence of the novel is an ode to the author’s endurance: “I have come so far myself in offering this narration that I can no longer be certain whether I still look for promising clients or search for a loyal friend.”

{{* * *}}

{{pg|447|448}} Mailer makes clear from the restrictions of his consistent choices that the roots of the man are fertilized by the dirt, soil, scraps, shames, shivering fears, which remain unforgettable, whatever disguises the adult fashions for mature identity. In a ''Provincetown Arts'' interview with J. Michael Lennon, following publication of the novel, Mailer said—echoing Wordsworth’s child being “father of the man”—“The man is in the early material.” {{efn|The ''Provincetown Arts'' interview of Lennon/Mailer appeared in Volume 22, 2007 on page 92 under the title “Hitler in My Mind: The Roots of ''The Castle in the Forest'' / An Interview by J. Michael Lennon.”}}

The Hitler clan, its emergence, malignant flowering, and destruction of its illusion of power are absorbed into a balanced purchase upon which the narrator tells his story of the most diabolical of offspring. In Mailer’s density of detail, turbulent with sensations that are recurrently reconsidered in the fresh circumstances of later chapters, the organic connections of the Hitler lineage, so deeply imagined from mere hints in historical sources, will be read by future historians of the Holocaust for new directions in research. Mailer delineates who begat who with the scrupulous accounting found in biblical genealogies, where daily records become Holy Scripture—etched in memory.

In Mailer’s previous novel, ''The Gospel According to the Son'', Satan is smooth, polite, dripping with deviousness in offering to share a meal with Jesus, which He refuses. On parting, Satan asks permission to touch Jesus, and the son of God, accepting the Devil’s embrace, feels a “shudder of knowledge.” He knows He has been altered by this encounter and that knowledge of evil has lodged in his being.

The novel ends with Adolph entering the sixteenth year of his life, a confused adolescent. The conversation with the Jewish American psychiatrist and Dieter serves to isolate the bitter end point, embellishing the period with the ultimate defense against the futility of war: sardonic irony. As Paul Fussell showed in ''The Great War and Modern Memory'', irony became a mode of remembrance for events too terrible to recall without a divergent refraction of consciousness. Hitler remains Hitler, a mystery, and remains “unexplained”—to refer to Ron Rosenbaum’s book ''Explaining Hitler'', which so influenced Mailer to think of Hitler free of some definitive human flaw as the cause of the Holocaust. Rather, evil is a concept, not a person. The “I” of the novel is an imaginary force opposed to God, and its forces are mustered within a hierarchical system offering the military apparatus that insulates the tyrant’s power.

Mailer does not try to explain Hitler’s evil as a consequence of incest, his deformed testicles, or the brutal beatings of his father. Evil instead becomes {{pg|448|449}} fragmented into the dazzle patterns of camouflage, so the formal outline of the enemy is broken up and integrated with the background. Throughout, every event is measured for spiritual cost, calculated against future cost— weighing, balancing, comparing, assessing, and debating the fine equilibrium that is upset when games of random chance are played with loaded dice. The narrator ponders the natural division of human gender into male and female, and the random divisions offer a lesson in Mailer’s notion of “divine economy,” functioning as a kind of invisible hand regulating the free market of good and evil by analyzing the equation between risk and gain.

Mailer created an uncanny narrator who is also an active character; his protagonist, Dieter, at will, has the power to switch the narrative point of view so that antagonist and protagonist may appear as the other. In scene after scene, the reader witnesses sharp refractions that resonate with connections between sensations in the body and thoughts in a shared consciousness. In ''Castle'', the battle is between three players: God, the Devil, and each individual human being. Each possesses equal, if divergent, powers. The novel’s nodal point is positioned midway between three points of a triangle, and Mailer must have thought at least once about the CIA’s method of “triangulation” for sounding out the truth—taking the lies of three spies and finding the element of truth equidistant from each liar.

Speaking with a German journalist following publication of the novel, Mailer, a converted atheist many years ago, said just before he died, “Our existence on earth is much easier to explain if we use a creator.” This is what I call a “utilitarian” theory of religion.{{efn|www.digitaljournal.com/AgingMailerRecognizesGod.}} Here is a revision of the paragraph, paraphrased without a quotation:

Speaking with German journalists following publication of the novel, Mailer reflected on how his early atheism made it very difficult for him to explain how we came out of nothing. Existence was easier to understand if a creator existed. This is what I call a “utilitarian” theory of religion.

Let us close with a connection with Freud, the German thinker who charted individual evolution from infantile anality, through the lessons of the mouth in eating and speaking, to genital maturity. Mailer told his assistant, Dwayne Raymond, that he wanted the archway depicted on the book cover to be “symbolic for the birth canal. I know this absolutely,” he said, “because I sat with him while he did the actual color drawings, and these drawings—and he said it bluntly—were pictures of a vagina.” The stone arch that is pictured, however, is more labyrinth than labia. It was taken from a {{pg|449|450}} composite of the arches of a church and a school familiar to Hitler—arches that Hitler, and many others, passed through into darkness. “Darkness is large,” Mailer said in his introduction to a book of Provincetown photographs taken at night in low light with long exposures, allowing the camera to see what is invisible to the human eye in low light. In darkness, we cannot see color because the rods in our retinas can only see in black and white, and in low light they function more effectively than the cones that see color so well in daylight.

Freud considered religious thinking to be primitive—and that our conscious understandings would replace a dwindling mysticism. He predicted in one of his last books, ''The Future of an Illusion'', “Where id was, there shall ego go.” Mailer’s ego was enlarged by his confrontation with amoral impulses, the cause of so much human misery and so much damage. Irony seems always to be associated with injury: Octavio Paz said, “Irony is the wound through which analogy bleeds to death.”

Would this be why the banality of evil must be lacquered with irony—evincing the antique aspect of memory, which is essential for our belated understandings?
=== Notes ===
{{notelist}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Imagining Evil:The Sardonic Narrator of Mailer’s Last Novel}}
[[Category:Book Reviews (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norris Church Mailer: An Artist from Arkansas

2025-04-28T14:39:11Z

Grlucas: Removed banner. Tweaks.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
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{{BookReview
| title = A Ticket to the Circus
| author = Norris Church Mailer
| location= New York
| pub = Random House, Inc.
| date = 2010
| pages = 432
| type = Hardback
| price = 27.95
| note =
| first = John
| last = Bowers
| link = https://amzn.to/4jxLhZR
| url = http://prmlr.us/mr04bow
}}
{{dc|dc=W|}}hen you pick up this marvelous book and read its first pages, you feel you may be eavesdropping on more than you should, like finding someone’s private journal that’s been hidden away in a drawer. Shortly thereafter, you’ve forgotten eavesdropping, and find yourself in something more like a novel, a real page-turner, no holds barred. When you’ve finished you know you’ve read something that’s really something else again. Norris Church Mailer—or Barbara Davis or Barbara Norris as she was known before Norman Mailer stepped into the picture—stands tall and unbridled, an artist at the top of her game.

Life did not begin with Norris upon meeting Mailer. In fact, what has made her who she is, as well as having given her the temperament and ability of an artist, comes from Arkansas. In the now familiar story of her showing the famous novelist her first attempt at fiction, he said, “It’s not as bad as I thought it would be.” She is tough, whether by means of a hard scrabble Arkansas upbringing or by DNA, and she withdrew the pages from his hands and didn’t show him anything else until the galleys of her first novel, ''Windchill Summer'', appeared on the doorstep. He started in with corrections, for he was, by all accounts, a fine editor and instructor in writing and couldn’t stop his pencil moving once pages came before him, but she was having none of it. “It is ''my'' book,” she told him.{{pg|514|515}}

There were fights over many things; there was lovemaking that began in D.H. Lawrence fashion on the first evening she met him in Arkansas and continued on until frailty and illness closed the blinds but never dampened the warmth between them; and there were domestic moments in which the delicate-seeming, softly spoken girl took on the burden of holding a sprawling, diverse Mailer brood together in Brooklyn and Provincetown. But I get ahead of myself. Norris grew up a Baptist in Arkansas, believing and fearing the wrath of the Almighty if she went astray and sinned. She was submerged under water when baptized at 11 and took “Jesus Christ as her personal Savior,” as we say down there. (Full Disclosure: I was submerged myself in Tennessee.) Religion has had a lasting effect on her. Her febrile imagination conjured up terrifying vistas of a burning continuous hell that awaited one who saw a movie on the Sabbath or used the Lord’s name in vain.

Her inventive mind in this regard was one of the first indications of later interest, and ability, in creative ventures—such as this memoir. She is busily inventing things from the beginning, imagining outcomes, one of the first orders of business for a writer. What was she thinking when faced with moving to Brooklyn, taking up life with the Mailer and his clan and lifestyle? She simply did it. She has that quality of damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. She made her first trip on an airplane to meet him for a rendezvous in Chicago when she was living in Arkansas. And she confesses—I guess that’s the word—that she had never said the word “fuck” out loud until Mailer brought it forth. What a combination they became: the author who used “fug” in his first novel for “fuck” and Norris that couldn’t say the word until he came along. Even today, with all the excuses for blowing her top, and there have been many, Norris has trouble swearing.

And she has gone after what she wanted, gritting her teeth, and jumping ahead. When she was three her mother entered her in a Little Miss Little Rock contest and her dramatic flair did not end with her winning the prize on stage. She wouldn’t leave. When a woman in a purple dress and high heels, the MC of the event, tried to take her by the hand and lead her off, Norris wouldn’t go. She had has a taste of the spotlight ever since. Her strong, silent and somewhat shy father had to come on stage and chase her down. She does not like to be left behind and unnoticed and is a natural mimic—a quality found in most actors. When the Baptist preacher was once ranting and raving at the pulpit, she writes, she ran up as a tot and began mimicking his hand gestures so that her father again had to race up and retrieve her.{{pg|515|516}}

To not go unnoticed, to act on impulse when the main chance arrives, to see that some situations are untenable and to flee from them no matter what others might think or even what her better judgment might say are constant occurrences in her life. She married Larry Norris whom she met in high school and is not shy about telling us the details of that early romance, which was typical of that Southern place and time. She lost her virginity at seventeen, presumably in the backseat, and writes about thinking, “Is that IT? I felt like I had gotten distracted for a moment and missed it.” They got better at it, married, and she followed him to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the wife of an army officer. It turned out to be a bad situation. Not that he was a bad guy, but she felt hemmed in and restricted. She had a very brief affair (Norris opens the door to her life but never sensationally or ever for shock value), regrets it, and goes back to making do with Larry. Just before he shipped out for Vietnam she becomes pregnant and her son Matthew becomes an all important figure in her life. Larry only sees pictures of him. When he returns from Vietnam and they set up a life together, things begin to inexorably fall apart. He teaches physics in high school and later sells insurance that puts him on the road a lot. She teaches art. And she now writes, “It was during this time, when I was all by myself, exhausted from lack of sleep and harried from working, taking care of the baby and dealing with the minutiae of life, when a little voice in my ear whispers, telling me I had missed the parade.”

Not quite yet. The big parade came to town when Norman Mailer arrived to visit an old Army buddy, Francis Irby Gwaltney, called “Fig” by intimates, who was the prototype for the Southerner Wilson in The ''Naked and the Dead''. By that time Norris was divorced from her husband Larry and was making ends meet as a single mom by teaching art in high school while hanging out with a small literary circle that read ''The New Yorker'' and, in Norris’ words, “considered ourselves to be intellectuals.” Gwaltney was part of the team and had himself written a memoir called ''Idols'' and ''Axle Grease'' that Norris illustrated. The stars were now aligning themselves for a cataclysmic event in Norris and Mailer’s lives. Norris inveigled her way into a party Gwaltney was throwing for his old Army buddy, and the narrative itself should best be left with Norris. She writes, “His clear blue eyes lit up when he saw me. He had broad shoulders, a rather large head (presumably to hold all those brains) with ears that stuck out like Clark Gable’s, and he was chesty,{{pg|516|517}} but not fat, like a sturdy small horse. (I once drew him as a centaur, which delighted him.) He didn’t look old at all. Nor the least bit fatherly.”

The party continued, with many opportunities for both to call it a night, but neither would. It would not be over until it was over. Norris fought being left out and others taking the famous author away. Understandably and naturally, Mailer fought through party chatter and social protocol—torpedoes be damned!—and ended up taking Norris home. He was not one to miss the main chance either. Her account of their entwining finally on the floor of her living room has comic elements, with Norris receiving rug burns on her back and neither fully out of their clothes, but also the drama of much, much more to follow that neither recognized at the time. She pulls no punches and she leaves nothing out. Coming to Gwaltney’s party, Norris had brought a copy of Mailer’s book ''Marilyn'' for him to inscribe but thought better of it after their intimacy on the floor. Later, when she moved to Brooklyn to be with him, he signed it and wrote,
<blockquote>

To Barbara

Because I knew when I wrote this book that someone I had
not yet met would read it and be with me. Hey, Baby, do you know how I love Barbara Davis and Norris Church?
Norman, Feb ’76</blockquote>

Norris and Mailer have the same birthday, almost down to the hour, and they became entwined in more ways than one. He was instrumental in her final name changes that began some time before as Barbara Davis, became Barbara Norris when she married her first husband, and then after she and Mailer got together turned into Norris Church (he liked the sound of it) and finally in later years into Norris Church Mailer. The changes clock her progression though life where Norris has proven to be her own person, someone who sticks to her guns, not ultimately malleable. She can’t be bullied around. It is ironic that Mailer liked being a director. It figured in his fantasy life and in reality. (He directed movies, one of which of course was ''Maidstone'' in which Rip Torn went famously off-script and struck him over the head with a hammer.)

So they began their acquaintance with almost immediate sex and went on from there. “Through the years,” she writes, “no matter the circumstances of our passions and rages, our boredoms, angers, and betrayals large and {{pg|517|518}} small, sex was the cord that bound us together; it was the thick wire woven from thousands of shared experiences that never broke, indeed was hardly frayed and only got stronger, no matter how the bonds of marriage were tested. Even in the worst times we had many years later, when we almost separated—somehow, inexplicably, the familiarity of our bodies putting salve on the wounds we had inflicted during the day, until over time the warring ended and the love remained . . .”

And up’s and down’s they certainly had in Norris’ chronicle. When she came to New York at his behest to take up residency she expected . . . what? She writes, “Norman had been regaling me with descriptions of the magnificent apartment he had there (it sounded like the Taj Mahal), with its soaring glass skylight, the view of the skyline of lower Manhattan, the harbor and the Statue of Liberty . . .” Her description of what she found shows a journalist’s (or novelist’s) eye for detail—among others: a climbing rope and ship’s ladder that led to a little room over the living room. Ladders everywhere. One went up to a sort of crow’s nest that you finally had to walk to across a naked plank, stretched over an abyss. The Taj Mahal was a mess. “The place looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in many months,” she writes. “Many.”

Norris set to work. She cleaned and scrubbed and put things in order, proving she is at home with making a home a home. She immediately bonded with Fanny, Mailer’s mother, and Barbara, his sister. They had seen wives and girlfriends come and go, so perhaps they were used to the drill. There were seven children to consider, ex-wives to contend with, and learning the byways and subtleties of the imposing Big City. After all, she had been raised as a small town Arkansas girl. She wasn’t worried about it. Neither was Mailer. He thought, in Norris’s estimation, that he was about to inherit an Eliza Doolittle whom he was going to mold into a star. They did make the rounds of parties where she glittered with her flaming hair and tall lithe body and soft intelligent voice. Norris did get to mingle and size up those of celebrity status. But she remained who she was. No one changed the Arkansas girl whose mother opened a hair salon in their car port to bring in money. No one fundamentally changed her. Modeling jobs came her way because of her looks and grace. She painted, something she had always been good at back home where she taught art. She wrote novels without help or correction from the master. (She did collaborate on three film scripts with him.) She even acted in soap operas and appeared as Zelda Fitzgerald in an {{pg|518|519}} ensemble that included George Plimpton as Scott and Mailer as Hemingway, reading from the letters of those notables. She was Dona Ana in ''Don Juan in Hell'' (Mailer’s idea) with Gore Vidal as the Devil (big applause), Mailer as Don Juan and good friend Mike Lennon as the Commodore. (The book is filled with delightful anecdotes about such events.) She gave as much as she got. I believe she would have done very well by herself, thank you, if Mailer had never come along. But it was a match made by the gods, complete with thunder and lightning.

For awhile they did seem to have everything. They even had a fine son, John Buffalo, to cement their lives. But increasingly there were trips that Mailer took, never quite explained. There were charge card bills for restaurants and hotels in question. Strange women came up to him when they were out, acting a little too familiar for comfort. Norris woke up finally to the fact that the leopard had not changed his spots. Mailer was carrying on. Not with just one person but all over the place. She found a cache of letters and notes and pictures in a drawer that Mailer had, either subconsciously or on purpose, set her up to find. Maybe he was weary of his endless deceptions, wanting to be caught and stopped. Maybe. After much prodding and discomfort he began confessing. And then comes a most unusual turn of events, which some might find amusing. Norris may have thought she wanted a full confession and then they could go on, but I’m sure she didn’t realize how much detail and accounts of the past would follow. You can give her high marks for a sense of humor in the telling. She couldn’t get him to stop. They might be in a taxi cab, and he would confess to yet another. A high point was his introducing her to “the woman in Chicago,” someone he had had a long-term affair with. She had expected a vixen, a ''femme fatal''. She met a woman his age if not older, weighing at least 250 pounds. What was going on? Norris felt sorry for her. And Mailer said, when confronted with what one might imagine, to what was found, that sometimes he needed to be the good- looking one. You can’t forget that line.

No matter the pain and fireworks they remained in love. They made peace. It’s hard to imagine Mailer, at heart a family man, letting go of what he had found. Norris is a survivor and wouldn’t give up. And then the ravages of age and the body’s lack of endurance struck home. Mailer begins a slow but inevitable decline, using two canes, going through operations, getting exercise by slowly walking the deck of their home in Provincetown. And just as it seems the couple had taken a crippling blow, Norris suffers cruel {{pg|519|520}} cancer just as Mailer begins his descent. She gives a full account of its treachery. She undergoes chemo, she has surgery and more surgery, and at the last operation the family was told that there was a 99 percent chance of non-survival. At the end of an eight-hour surgery, she found a note on her pillow when she woke from her son John that read, “Mom, you’re the 1 percent!”

She outlived Mailer. His death is told about in a brief but highly effective way. His son Stephen was with him at in the hospital room, sleeping on a fold-out cot, when monitoring machines started going off around four in the morning. Stephen called for help, but before it arrived, Mailer sat up, eyes wide open . . . then, “. . . he looked away, toward the distance. His mouth spread in a huge smile, and his eyes were alive with excitement, as if he were seeing something amazing. Then he was gone.”

Read the book and pivotal events—those that made the papers, those that were meaningful but before now private and guarded—unfold without shame or apology. She is simply seeking the truth about one of the great love affairs of our time that fought against the odds of its ever happening. And while we see it documented by anecdotes and insights we also read about, for instance, Jack Henry Abbott coming into their lives and its aftermath. We find the smallest of gems that crop up unexpectedly but come with a wallop. I’m thinking of her account of Gore Vidal (the Devil) flying in to appear in ''Don Juan in Hell'' with them in Provincetown. He brought along only “a small duffel bag of the sort cosmetic companies give away with purchases of perfume and [when he turned in for the night], he brought out a framed photograph of himself and his parents taken when he was about nine. He looked at it for a moment and lovingly set it on the bedside table in a gesture that brought tears to my eyes.” It almost brought them to mine.

You can look at ''A Ticket to the Circus'' as Norris’ last will and testament to their union. You can also imagine, if you’re like me, Mailer gazing on from somewhere, a pencil in hand, making marks, but without doubt approving of the bravery and talent that made this book possible.

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norris Church Mailer: An Artist from Arkansas}}
[[Category:Book Reviews (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Battles for Regard, Writerly and Otherwise

2025-04-28T14:31:31Z

Grlucas: Corrections.

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{{Byline|last=Hays|first=Peter|abstract=Hemingway was Mailer’s Oedipal father, the elder to look up, to imitate, and to destroy. No one ever accused Mailer of lockjaw, but did he not also campaign to become the personality of his time as writer, political commentator, candidate for office, and—that role he mocks Hemingway’s—it was not sparse—but his style as a self-campaigner certainly outdid his model. In that regard, he was a champ.|url=http://prmlr.us/mr04hay}}
{{dc|dc=H|emingway was Mailer’s Oedipal father}} the elder to look up to, to imitate, and to destroy. In college, I think in 1959 or thereabouts, I read in ''Esquire'' a piece by Norman Mailer in which he saw himself climbing into the ring with Hemingway as the two battled for the championship of writing. I didn’t know at the time that Mailer was responding to an interview Hemingway had given Lillian Ross for the ''New Yorker'': “I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. I’ve fought two draws with Mr. Stendhal, and I think I had the edge in the last one. But nobody’s going to get me in the ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I’m crazy or I keep getting better.”{{sfn |Ross |1961 |p=35}} I have browsed through ''Advertisements for Myself'' and ''The Time of Our Time'' to read that ''Esquire'' piece again, but it has been reprinted, I couldn’t find it.

Mailer, like Hemingway, was a boxing aficionado and a scrappy character, so the image of climbing into the ring with a perceived champion is not unusual, in fact, and Mailer uses a boxing analogy in describing hoe hw sent an inscribed copy of ''The Deer Park'' to Hemingway hoping to receive praise for a jacket blurb, only to have the book returned unopened. Mailer, in reaction, thought of boxer Carmen Basilio, taking a hard punch and almost going down, where he could have rested for an eight-count, instead staying up and ultimately knocking out his opponent. When asked later why he didn’t go down and take the count, Basilio answered, “I didn’t want to start any bad habits”—he had never been knocked down before. After the book to Hemingway was returned, Mailer’s “pride collapsed into powder and [he] sent off inscribed copies to Graham Greene, Cyril Connolly, Philip Rahv, and a dozen others whom I no longer remembered.” he says of the incident, “I must have carried the memory as a silent shame which helped to push me further and {{pg|286|287}} deeper into the next half year of bold assertions, half-done work, unbalanced heroics, and an odd notoriety of my own choice.”{{sfn |Mailer |1998|pp=208-09}}

Mailer’s work is rife with references to Hemingway. “In my sophomore year I wrote a great many stories which were influenced by Ernest Hemingway.”{{sfn |Mailer |1959 |title=Advertisements for Myself |p=27}} What is ostensibly a collection of articles, novel segments, and confessions in ''The Time of Our Times'' starts with an excerpt from his review of Morley Callaghan’s ''That Summer in Paris'' focusing on a boxing match in which Callaghan, a smaller, lighter man than his opponent, knocked Hemingway down, something Mailer also wanted to do, at least figuratively.{{sfn |Mailer |1998|pp=3-4}} ''Advertisements for Myself'' begins with passages like these: {{quote| Every American writer who takes himself to be both major and ''macho'' must sooner or later give a ''faena'' which borrows from the self-love of a Hemingway style....I have come finally to have a great sympathy for The Master’s irrepressible tantrum that he is the champion writer of this time, and of all time, and that if anyone can pin Tolstoy, it is Ernest H.{{sfn |Mailer |1959|p=19}}}}

Yet mailer on the next page undercuts this bestowing of laurels by saying that Hemingway “has not written anything which would bother an eight-year-old or one’s grandmother, and yet his reputation is firm.{{sfn |Mailer |1959|p=20}} Many grandmothers were disturbed by ''The Sun Also Rises'' and ''A Farewell to Arms'', but perhaps Mailer’s grandmother was more liberal than most in the first half of the twentieth century; Hemingway’s mother declared ''The Sun Also Rises'' one of the filthiest books of the year.” mailer feels that for Hemingway “the best tactic to hide the lockjaw of his shirking genius was to become the personality of our time.”{{sfn |Mailer |1959|p=20}} No one ever accused Mailer of lockjaw, but did he not also campaign to become the personality of his time as writer, political commentator, candidate for office, and—that role he mocks Hemingway for—celebrity? His style as a mature writer was not Hemingway’s—it was not sparse—but his style as a self-campaigner certainly outdid his model. In that regard, he was a champ.

==Citations==
{{reflist|20em}}

==Works Cited==
{{Refbegin|indent=1}}
*{{cite book| last= Mailer |first= Norman |date= 1959|title=Advertisements for Myself |url= |location= New York |publisher= G. P. Putnam’s Sons|pages= |ref=harv}}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date= 1998|title=The Time of Our Time |url= |location= New York |publisher= Random House|pages= |ref=harv}}
*{{cite book |last= Ross |first= Lillian|date=1961 |title=Portrait of Hemingway|url= |location= New York |publisher= Simon and Schuster |ref=harv}}
{{Refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Battles for Regard, Writerly and Otherwise}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Contradictory Syntheses: Norman Mailer’s Left Conservatism and the Problematic of “Totalitarianism”

2025-04-26T13:13:47Z

Grlucas: Small fixes.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{MR05}}
{{Byline |last=Mantzaris |first=Alexandros |abstract=An examination of Mailer’s seemingly paradoxical position of “Left Conservatism” that may have its basis in certain mechanisms contained within the problematic concept of “totalitarianism.” |url=https://grlu.us/mr05man}}
{{dc|dc=N}}'''ORMAN MAILER’S SEEMINGLY PARADOXICAL POSITION''' of “Left Conservatism” may have its basis in certain mechanisms contained within the problematic concept of “totalitarianism.” I suggest that there are two aspects to the broader problematic of totalitarianism. The first aspect has to do with what we could refer to as the historical phenomenon of totalitarianism. This phenomenon is represented by certain political regimes and/or types of sociopolitical organizations called totalitarian, to which are attributed a number of shared characteristics such as rule by a single party, an official ideology, and a monopoly of mass communications. From Mailer’s slightly different perspective, such totalitarian regimes are thought of as suppressing the past, suppressing myth, and imposing a cowardly conformity on their subjects. Here, in short, we find the view of “a system” exhibiting certain characteristics. There is also, however, another facet to the totalitarian problematic having to do with the discourse of totalitarianism itself. From this slightly diverging angle one would observe that the discourse of totalitarianism is one whose very logic confuses political “sides” and therefore destabilizes “standard” political antagonisms. What we have here is a convergence of political opposites, the plasticity of political/ideological oppositions, and a profound ideological ambivalence.{{pg|337|338}}
Not everyone would readily accept the central thesis of totalitarianism’s theorists, namely that the former USSR and Nazi Germany can be put in the same category. And, naturally, even fewer would accept that American democratic capitalism can itself be implicated in such a problematic category—yet, of course, that is what people like Mailer never tired of arguing.

Now, when Mailer critics discuss totalitarianism they usually refer to what I called the “phenomenon” of totalitarianism—that is, to a “system” with certain characteristics. Although there is much to be said in this area, I believe it is equally productive to approach totalitarianism as a discourse exhibiting certain paradoxical properties. In what sense is it helpful, then, to think of totalitarianism not just as a system but in the way I am suggesting—as a discourse perpetuating the political confusion that produces it in the first place? First of all, the view of totalitarianism as political confusion allows us to confirm that Mailer’s Left Conservatism does not surface for the first time in ''The Armies of the Night'', although it is there the term first appears, nor does it properly belong to Mailer’s 1960s work only. Left Conservatism, in other words, is not a later stage in Mailer’s ideological development. It is there from the start, in the uneasy relationship of the author of ''The Naked and the Dead'' to that book’s most fascinating characters, Cummings and Croft, both of whom are fascists.

Critics have discussed this tension, starting with ''The Naked and the Dead'' as well as its development in Mailer’s later works, in terms that are primarily moral, philosophical, aesthetic. Joseph Wenke, for example, has argued in his highly interesting study:
<blockquote>[I]t is clear that until Mailer was able to write “The White Negro,” totalitarianism was a particularly intimidating and intimate enemy of his art. In addition to representing an external political threat, it presented itself to Mailer as an immediate ''aesthetic'' problem that insinuated itself into the very creation of his first three novels.{{sfn|Wenke|1987|p=8}}(emphasis mine)
</blockquote>
The problem Wenke refers to is, precisely, the profound appeal that characters such as Croft and Cummings held for Mailer even as he was placing them on the side of the “heavies.” And, in general, I think it is fair to say that this tension has been mostly discussed in terms similar to Wenke’s. Indeed I sometimes have the sense that the political field has to be preserved intact in {{pg|338|339}} such critical efforts, as a sort of stable ground from which Mailer’s course can then be observed and appraised—so that, for example, in his opening to the violent (a)morality of Croft, Mailer can be said to be moving “to the Right.” This approach is somewhat problematic for, in my view, the problem or paradox here is first of all political in nature. Moral and other considerations follow. That is, it seems to me wrong to try and retain the political as a stable reference point, which can then help us explain aesthetic problems and/or moral ambiguities, because the origin of the ambiguity lies with politics and ideology.

The argument, then, is that when one is working within the framework of the discourse on totalitarianism, one is bound to activate a host of paradoxical political/ideological effects (or, perhaps, side-effects), which are conducive to the development of ambivalent and problematic stances such as Left Conservatism. There are effects we could discuss. To avoid too protracted an analysis, however, I have isolated two, of which I would like to say a little more in this essay. So, to recapitulate, totalitarianism is a discourse which ultimately functions to undermine standard political oppositions and which, therefore, causes great political and ideological confusion. When working within the framework of this discourse one is bound to become implicated in a number of paradoxes, such as (1) the force one sets in opposition to totalitarianism (that is to a totalitarian “system") often turns out to be itself totalitarian or potentially totalitarian; (2) within the context of a specific political/ideological antagonism, ''opposition'' to may finally be indistinguishable from ''support'' for whatever it is one is ostensibly opposing. Or, perhaps even more paradoxically, one’s political ends may be better served by supporting one’s political opponent: the best way of effectively opposing one’s opponents may finally be to support them.

With totalitarianism ''qua'' political confusion as our guide, then, we can attempt to tackle some of the salient curiosities in the development of Mailer’s ideology, which seem to me to have been often met with a sort of embarrassed silence. One such very interesting curiosity was already noted by Diana Trilling in her seminal, early essay on Mailer’s work:
<blockquote>[H]ad Mailer been of their period [i.e., that of D.H. Lawrence and W.B.Yeats] instead of ours, he would have similarly avoided the predicament of presenting us with a hero not easily distinguishable from his named political enemy. He would have been</blockquote>{{pg|339|340}}<blockquote>able to evade the political consequences of consigning the future of civilization to a personal authority morally identical with the dark reaction from which it is supposed to rescue us. Or, to put the matter in even cruder terms, he would not have exposed himself to our ridicule for offering us a God who is a fascist. {{sfn|Trilling|1971|p=127}}</blockquote>
I have not read many critics trying to follow the lead offered by Trilling here and to explain, if Mailer’s God is indeed “a fascist,” how we might be able to justify such a rather unexpected reversal? Yet there are places in Mailer’s work where this ''political'' exchange with fascism is more than obvious. The following example I take from “The White Negro,” where we are told:
<blockquote>[I]t is possible, since the hipster lives with his hatred, that many of them are the material for an élite of storm troopers ready to follow the first truly magnetic leader whose view of mass murder is phrased in a language which reaches their emotions.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=355}} </blockquote>
The first thing to note is that the very terms used by Mailer ("storm troopers,” “magnetic leader,” “mass murder”) take us beyond the field of morality and even aesthetics and points us clearly in the direction of organized politics. And I think that the way, finally, to explain such ironies is precisely with reference to the first paradox I spoke about. Namely, the idea that when one works within the totalitarian discourse, the force one posits as a counterweight to the dreaded totalitarian system will often turn out to be itself totalitarian
or potentially totalitarian.

The work of Georges Sorel (1847–1922), a French theorist of anarcho-syndicalism, is important for the proper understanding of our second paradox. ''Réflexions sur la Violence'', his best-known work to which I will refer, was published in 1908. For the sake of brevity I would not like to go into the details of what I hold to be Sorel’s own “Left Conservatism.” Instead I have chosen a few quotations, which will give an idea of the basis for the comparison to Mailer. The first comes from an essay on Sorel, written by Isaiah Berlin:

<blockquote>Sorel remains, as he was in his lifetime, unclassified; claimed and repudiated both by the right and by the left. . . . He appeared to</blockquote> {{pg|340|341}} <blockquote>have no fixed position. His critics often accused him of pursuing an erratic course.{{sfn|Berlin|1979|pp=296, 297}} </blockquote>

I think that both the lack of political “fixity” but also, all the more so in fact, the idea of an interstitial position between “the right and the left” clearly points us in the direction of Left Conservatism. The second extract comes from the English author and painter Wyndham Lewis, according to whom

<blockquote>Georges Sorel is the key to all contemporary political thought. Sorel is, or was, a highly unstable and equivocal figure. He seems composed of a crowd of warring personalities, sometimes one being in the ascendent [sic], sometimes another, and which in any case he has not been able, or has not cared, to control.{{sfn|Lewis|1989|p=119}} </blockquote>

When I first read the above what instantly came to my mind was Mailer’s description of his own personality in ''The Armies of the Night'', where we read:

<blockquote>
[T]he architecture of [Mailer’s] personality bore resemblance to some provincial cathedral which warring orders of the church might have designed separately over several centuries, the particular cathedral falling into the hands of one architect, then his enemy.{{sfn|Mailer|1968|p=28}} </blockquote>

Clearly, the two descriptions are nearly identical. Sorel’s “warring personalities” find their near-perfect equivalent in the “warring orders” of the church of Mailer’s personality. And I hope it is clear how the volatility of both personalities might be relevant to constructs such as Left Conservatism. Beyond the obvious resemblance suggested by the above extracts, it is possible to argue that Mailer often appears to share with Sorel a marked hostility towards what we perhaps could call social democracy but might be better off defining more carefully as social compromise, social peace and what Mailer has called politics as property.{{efn|Mailer discusses politics as property in Part Two, Chapter Six, of ''Miami and the Siege of Chicago''.}}

In her discussion of “In the Red Light,”{{efn|Mailer’s essay is included in ''Cannibals and Christians.''}} Jean Radford notes that while characterizing the support for Goldwater in rather negative terms, “Mailer is able to admit his own excitement at the thought of Goldwater’s victory.”{{sfn|Radford|1975|p=69}} She attributes this, in part, to what she calls Mailer’s “own ver-{{pg|341|342}}sion of ''‘politique du pire''{{' "}} (and with this idea of a ''politique du pire'' we enter the heart of our second paradox). “Johnson” she writes “will only blur the reality of America’s conflicts whereas Goldwater will polarize America and out of that polarization some hope for the revolution might come.”{{sfn|Radford|1975|pp=69-70}} What is noteworthy here is the preference for an energetic, violent opposition, the prospect of which is better embodied, for Mailer, in the Goldwater candidacy. A variation on this motif is the idea from the ''Presidential Papers''{{efn|See the “Prefatory Paper” entitled “Heroes and Leaders.”}} that for the physical body as well as the body politic, an “acute” disease is preferable to a “faceless” one. According to Sorel, as he explains his own notion of ''politique du pire'', the success of a Marxian “catastrophic” revolution—his ideal—requires that the capitalist system be functioning properly up to the moment of revolt. In turn, this proper function demands an openly predatory middle class brutally and unapologetically exploiting a proletariat, which in response becomes progressively more militant. Thus, Sorel writes that the revolutionary doctrine

<blockquote>
will evidently be inapplicable if the middle class and the proletariat do not oppose each other implacably, with all the forces at their disposal; the more ardently capitalist the middle class is, the more the proletariat is full of a warlike spirit and confident of its revolutionary strength, the more certain will be the success of the proletarian movement.{{sfn|Sorel|1941|p=86}} </blockquote>

One of the more interesting elements in Sorel’s theory is that capitalism’s progress towards its self-dissolution appears as a sort of “unconscious” historical process:

<blockquote>
It might . . . be said that capitalism plays a part analogous to that attributed by [Eduard von] Hartmann to the Unconscious in nature, since it prepares the coming of social reforms which it did not intend to produce.{{sfn|Sorel|1941|p=85}}</blockquote>

Now, I don’t think that the “Unconscious” Sorel has in mind here is quite the same as the Freudian unconscious. In fact, I might as well admit that I may be “lost in translation” since Sorel obviously uses a French translation of a German term which T. E. Hulme, the British translator of ''Reflection'', renders as “Unconscious.” In any case, I think that for the Mailer critic this idea{{pg|342|343}}of an unconscious, natural process that is somehow undermined by social peace and compromise is a very interesting one indeed. So for Sorel any adulteration
of the implacable antagonism between the middle and working classes acts as a disruption of an unconscious development:

<blockquote>
If . . . the middle class, led astray by the ''chatter'' of the preachers of ethics and sociology . . . seek to correct the ''abuses'' of economics, and wish to break with the barbarism of their predecessors, then one part of the forces which were to further the development of capitalism is employed in hindering it, an arbitrary and irrational element is introduced, and the future of the world becomes completely indeterminate.{{sfn|Sorel|1941|p=87}} </blockquote>

Sorel refers to the state resulting from such “irrationality” as “decadent” and “degenerate,” and thus we have another clear parallel with Mailer’s idea of “the plague,” as in both cases we observe an attenuation of fundamental and essential conflicts.

My own extrapolation from Sorel’s idea is as follows. Someone acting in such a context and with such an understanding of how things work, he offers: would they not possibly come to believe that (please remember our second paradox) the best strategy of attaining their goals might be propping up the enemy? And is exactly this not an important part of Mailer’s strategy in the whole Goldwater affair and beyond? I am referring to all those ideas running through his 1960s work, about restoring a true Conservatism to its lost potency, so that a vital and drastic confrontation with the Left can be ensured. What is, perhaps, the best example of the paradoxical positions resulting from such an equally paradoxical attitude can be found in Mailer’s speech at the debate with William Buckley, Jr. There, what we might call a “freedom-loving” brand of Conservatism is pitted against a “Totalitarian” one and the Cold War itself is denounced as a sort of senseless distraction from another war that would be “welcome”: “the war which has meaning, that great and mortal debate between rebel and conservative where each would argue the other is an agent of the Devil.”{{sfn|Mailer|1976|pp=187-8}}

Sorel’s own solution for reinforcing the essential antagonism between the middle and working classes is the employment of proletarian violence. The social peacemakers’ advances, we are told, must be met with “black ingratitude” and blows. The paradox here is that such violence will prevent more{{pg|343|344}}virulent and abhorrent violence on a grander scale. For a revolution erupting in the midst of capitalist decadence would, according to Sorel, lead either to a regression to barbarism and/or anarchy, or to “the dictatorship of the proletariat.” The latter represents Sorel’s worst nightmare, since by this term he understands a revolution led by his unconscionable opponents, the “parliamentary”
Socialists, and that revolution would be destined to repeat the worst excesses of the French Revolution.

Thus we are brought to the final resemblance between Mailer and Sorel, the idea that a form of limited violence can work to prevent what may be properly called “totalitarian” violence, which is organized violence on a massive scale employing the resources of the State. In fact, Sorel goes so far as to propose that, to avoid misunderstandings, we call all violence of this second type “force” and retain the term “violence” for all oppositional (notably, of course, proletarian) violent acts:

<blockquote>
Sometimes the terms ''force'' and ''violence'' are used in speaking of acts of authority, sometimes in speaking of acts of revolt . . . I think it would be better to adopt a terminology which would give rise to no ambiguity, and that the term ''violence'' should be employed only for acts of revolt; we should say, therefore, that the object of force is to impose a certain social order in which the minority governs, while violence tends to the destruction of that order. The middle class have used force since the beginning of modern times, while the proletariat now reacts against the middle class and against the State by violence.{{sfn|Sorel|1941|p=195}}
</blockquote>

This distinction between “force” and “violence” is one Mailer essentially shared with Sorel.

Let us, briefly, recapitulate our main points. Totalitarianism can be approached not only as “a system” but also as a discourse whose logic confuses political sides. A thinker operating within the framework of this discourse is bound, by dint of its logic, to get entangled within a certain political paradoxology, which is conducive to the formulation of highly idiosyncratic positions such as Mailer’s “Left Conservatism.” Indeed our central preoccupation throughout has been with the question, “How is a Left Conservative produced?” In response to this question we proposed a principle and highlighted what might initially appear as a certain conceptual “mech-{{pg|344|345}}anism.” The principle is that opposition to totalitarianism will often turn out to be itself, ''de facto'', totalitarian or potentially totalitarian. Between the two opposed “totalitarianisms,” then, the distinction between Left and Right will tend to be attenuated if not erased. The “mechanism” we termed, with the help of Jean Radford’s old but still very interesting study on Mailer, the ''politique du pire''.

The ''politique du pire'', being a policy (and hence a mechanism), could be initially approached in tactical or strategic terms as the idea that the tactical aggravation of oppression, exploitation, conflict (but therefore also the preservation in good shape of one’s opponent) will bring a strategic goal of revolution even closer. However, on closer inspection it turns out that, in the case of both Mailer and Sorel, whatever tactical or strategic deliberations might there be, the “mechanism” also actually conceals a principle. In Mailer’s characteristic terms, acute, inflammatory diseases are healthier than lingering, silent ones. The metaphor points to a rather complex economy of violence. We dealt with one of its facets, the opposition of subjective to objective violence. Placated once, subjective, visible, symptomatic violence feeds, through accumulation, into objective or better still, in our case, “totalitarian” violence. However, the two principles here interlock. The bearer of liberated subjective violence, the hipster, is himself potentially amenable to the call of a “magnetic leader” with visions of “mass murder.” We are still in the cycle of “totalitarianism.”

=== Notes ===
{{notelist}}

===Citations===
{{Reflist}}

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=1|20em}}
* {{cite book |last=Berlin |first=Isaiah |chapter=Georges Sorel |date=1979 |title=Against the Current |location=London |publisher=Hogarth Press |pages=296-332 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lewis |first=Wyndham |date=1989 |title=The Art of Being Ruled. |location=1926. Santa Rosa |publisher=Black Sparrow Press |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1968 |title=The Armies of the Night. |location=New York |publisher=Signet Books. |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1969 |chapter=In the Red Light |title=Cannibals and Christians |location=London |publisher=Sphere Books |pages=20-65 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1969 |title=Miami and the Siege of Chicago |location=Harmondsworth |publisher=Penguin. |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1976 |title=The Presidential Papers |location=London |publisher=Panther. |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1959 |chapter=The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster |title=Advertisements for Myself |location=New York |publisher=G. P. Putnam’s Sons |pages=337-358 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Radford |first=Jean |date=1975 |title=Norman Mailer: A Critical Study |location=London |publisher=Macmillan |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Sorel |first=Georges |date=1941 |title=Reflections On Violence. |location=Trans. T.E. Hulme. New York |publisher=Peter Smith |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Trilling |first=Diana |chapter=The Moral Radicalism of Norman Mailer |title=Norman Mailer: The Man and His Work |editor=Robert Lucid |location=Boston |publisher=Little, Brown & Co. |date=1971 |pages=108-36 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Wenke |first=Joseph |date=1987 |title=Mailer’s America |location=Hanover |publisher=University Press of New England |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Contradictory Syntheses: Norman Mailer’s Left Conservatism and the Problematic of “Totalitarianism"}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

User talk:Grlucas

2025-04-25T20:15:38Z

Grlucas: /* Further Remediation */

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/From Here to Eternity and The Naked and the Dead: Premiere to Eternity?

2025-04-25T20:10:17Z

Grlucas: I'm not sure how much of the original text has been changed. We may have to delete and begin again.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style=”font-size:22px;”>{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>''From Here to Eternity'' and ''The Naked and the Dead'': Premiere to Eternity?}}
{{Working}}
{{MR05}}
{{byline|last=Hicks|first=Alexander |abstract=A review of ''From Here To Eternity'' and ''The Naked and The Dead''. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr05hic}}
{{cquote|The novelist deals with personality, with characters wearing their personae or social masks. He needs the framework of a stable society, and many of our best novelists have been conventional to the verge of fussiness. The romancer deals with individuality, with characters in vacuo idealized by Revery. However conservative he may be, something nihilistic and untamable will likely break out of his pages.{{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}} }}

{{cquote|The epic requires as its object the occurrence of an action, which must be expressed in the breadth of its circumstances and relations as a rich event connected with the total world of a nation and epoch.{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=11}} }}

{{dc|dc=J|ames Jones was a born novelist}}, and Norman Mailer was a born writer. This distinction holds across the two authors’ life work. I illustrate this distinction here for only the authors’ first published novels, ''The Naked and the Dead'' and ''From Here to Eternity''. However, these illustrations help assess the quality of these two books and each author’s career.{{pg|318|319}}
==Two Types of Fiction==
===''From Here to Eternity''===
In the classical taxonomic terms of Northrop Frye, From Here to Eternity is very much what Frye means by a ‘novel.’ Its characters do indeed wear “their personae or social masks.”{{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}} Robert E. Lee Prewitt is very much a Private First Class, Milton Anthony Warden a Sergeant, and Ms. Karen Holmes a housewife. (They are vivid and memorable, yet seldom capitalize much on eccentrics as Mark such well-remembered Dickens characters as ''David Copperfield’s'' Mr. Macawber or ''Martin Chuzzlewit’s'' Seth Pecksniff.) The book’s stable societal framework is the U.S. Army just preceding World War II. Right at ''Eternity’s'' outset, we are given the novelistic focus on a character in a social context:<blockquote>When he finished packing, he walked out onto the third-floor porch of the barracks, brushing the dust from his hands. He was a very neat and deceptively slim young man in summer khakis that were still fresh early in the morning.

He leaned his elbows on the porch edge and stood looking down through the screen at the familiar scene of the barracks square laid out below, with the tiers of porches dark in the face of the three-story concrete barracks fronting the square. He felt a half-familiar affection for this vantage point that he was leaving.

Below him, under the blows of the February Hawaiian sun, the quadrangle gasped defenselessly like an exhausted fighter. Through the heat haze and the thin mid-morning film of the parched red dust, a muted orchestra of sounds emerged: the clankings of steel-wheeled carts bouncing over brick, the slappings of oiled leather sling straps, the shuffling beat of scorched shoe soles, and the hoarse expletives of irritated noncoms.

Somewhere along the line, he thought, these things have become your heritage. You are multiplied by each sound that you hear. And you cannot deny them, without denying with them the purpose of your own existence. Yet now, he told himself, you are denying them, by renouncing the place that they have given you.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=3}}</blockquote>{{pg|319|320}}
By the end of Chapter Two, we know of the principal protagonist, Prewitt, whose place in the Company he is leaving, and we know something about the Kentucky mountains from which he hails. Within a few more chapters, Prewitt is deeply engaged in his new world of Company G: the stern but fatherly Warden, the jokester’s friend Pfc. Maggio, company commander Holmes, and the numerous sharply drawn men who will “soljer” and chat and play cards with Prewitt and try to force him to box for the Company or almost make him wish he had, including Anderson, Bloom, Chaote, Kowalski, Leva, Mazzioli, Preem, and Stark.

The dialogue is masterful. Physical and social action clearly is evoked by concrete description and adept use of the empathetic first-person indirect, a vivid and seamlessly shifting point of view on the action and its social circumstance. If there is a mode of writing other than Frye’s “novel” that is aptly evoked by ''Eternity'', it is Frye’s “drama” in which the author hides from the audience and their direct experience.{{sfn|Frye|1957|p=239}} Characters jump off the page, as in this early exchange between Prewitt and Maggio:
<blockquote>“If I had knew,” he said to Prewitt, whose bunk was two beds from his own in Chief Choate’s squad, “if I had only knew what this man’s Army had been like. Of all the people in this outfit, they give that vacant Pfc to Bloom. Because he is a punchie.”

”What did you expect, Angelo?” Prew grinned.

“He aint even a good soljer, mind you,” Maggio said bitterly. “He’s ony just a punchie. I’m only out of ree-croot drill a month and I’m a better soljer than Bloom is.”

“Soljerin aint what does it.”

“But it ought a be. You wait, man. If I ever get out of this Army, you just wait. Draft or no draft, they’ll never get me back.”

“Balls,” Prew grinned. “You got all the makins of a thirty year
man. I can see it on you a block away.”

“Dont say that,” Maggio said, violently. “I mean it. I like you,
but I dont like even you that much. Thirty year man! Not me, buddy. If I’m goin to be a valet, yard man, and general handyman for some fuckin officer, I’m goin to get paid for it, see?”

“You’ll re-enlist,” Prew said.</blockquote>{{pg|320|321}}<blockquote>“I’ll re-enlist,” Maggio said chanting the old bugle call parody, “in a pig’s asshole. If anybody should of had that rating, man, you should of had it. You’re the best soljer in this outfit for my dough. By a hunert million miles.”{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=127}}</blockquote>

Dramatic conflict arises with great naturalness and force from the well-etched milieu:

<blockquote>Andy was dealing when the saloon doors opened and Pfc Bloom came in, pushing the door back so hard it banged against the wall and the swung back and forth squeaking loudly. Pfc Bloom advanced on the men around the blanket with a heavy, meaty confidence grinning and shaking his flat kinky head, so big the tremendous shoulders seemed to fill the door.
“Quiet, jerk,” Maggio said. “You want the CQ up here and break up the game?”

“To hell with the CQ,” Bloom said,in his customary loud vice. “And you too, you little Wop.”

A transformation went over Maggio. He stood up and walked around the blanket, up to the huge Bloom who towered over him.

“Listen,” he said in a contorted voice. “I’m particular who calls me Wop. I aint big and tough, and I aint one of Dynamite’s third rate punchies. But I’m still Maggio to you. I wont mess with you. I work you over, I’ll do it with a chair or a knife.” He stared up at Bloom, his thin face twisted, his eyes blazing.

“Oh yeah?” Bloom said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Maggio said sarcastically. Bloom took a step to- ward him and he leaned his head forward pugnaciously on the thin bony shoulders, and there was the sudden attentive silence that always precedes a fight.

“Lay off, Bloom,” Prew said, surprised at the clear loudness of his voice in the silence. “Come on and sit down, Angelo. Five up to you.”

“I call,” Maggio said without looking around. “Take off, you bum,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away. Bloom laughed after him self-confidently and nastily.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=137}}</blockquote>{{pg|321|322}}Though the book does not appear to aspire to any allegorical significance beyond easily generalizable but hardly unusual outsider-insider, self-society, subordinate-superordinate tensions central to its dramatic construction, its typical “dramatic-novelistic” mode of expression incisively and elaborately illustrates insights into the relation of the individual to society within the specifically military hierarchal orders. ''Eternity'' rises eloquently to nice ironies of social aspiration and class, war, and peace, as in the book’s final pages on the status distortions of Lerene’s recollections of Prewitt’s patriotism and war. Take Karen Holmes and her son on the latter as they leave Honolulu Harbor:

<blockquote>From this far out, if you did not already know it was there you couldnt have seen it.

Behind her, the five boys had swelled to seven and had given up being shuffleboards and taken to shooting at each other with cocked thumbs and explosive “Bohww!”s from behind corners and stanchions.

She took the six flower leis off over her head and dropped them over the side. This was as good a place to drop them over as any. Diamond head, Koko Head, Makapuu Head. Perhaps Koko Head was the best place, really. The six leis fell together and the wind blew them back against the side of the ship and out of sight and she did not see them light on the water.

“Mother,” her son said from behind her. “I’m hungry. When do we eat on this old boat?”

“Pretty soon now,” she said.

“Mother, do you think the war will last long enough so I can graduate from the Point and be in it? Jerry Wilcox said it wouldnt.”

“No,” she said, “I dont think it’ll last that long.”

“Well, gee whiz, mother,” her son said, “I want to be in it.”

“Well, cheer up,” Karen said, “and dont let it worry you. You
may miss this one, but you’ll be just the right age for the next one.”

“You really think so, mother?” her son said anxiously.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=858}}</blockquote>

The dramatic arch of the multi-stranded narrative is strong and clear. Prewitt’s refusal to box for the company, Maggio’s mounting resistance to the{{pg|322|323}} abuse of military power and class structures, and Warden’s bold consummation of his desire for Karen Holmes provide parallel disequilibria that trigger a narrative of beleaguered and in Prewitt and Maggio’s cases, doomed quests for “soljer” autonomy within a hierarchical social order. These three central narratives cascade outward, rippling across the others: Maggio’s rebellion is intensified by Prewitt’s ‘treatment’ by Holmes and the Company Boxers, and Maggio’s destruction in the Stockade deepens Prewitt’s rebelliousness. Ironic parallels between the Prewitt-Lorene affair and the Warden-Holmes affair cap the book’s conclusion aboard the liner on which Karen Holmes and ''Alma ‘Lorene’ Burke'' leave Honolulu shortly following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor and war provide a second parallel wave of disequilibria that concentrate the book’s action, speeding it to the conclusion: the AWOL Prewitt is shot by a Wartime sentry while seeking to return to his company, and the call of war cancels Warden’s committed involvement with Karen Holmes.

If there are jarring notes in ''Eternity'', they are stylistic. They are mainly comprised of faulty diction and idiosyncratic rhetoric that tends to arise when the writing veers off into an authorial voice distanced from specific characters and found within sociologically detailed dramatic situations. I address instances of the “bad” writing that has tended to conspire against the book’s chances for immortality, especially after eventually falling under the shadow of extensively negative reviews reviling Jones’s style that ''Some Came Running'' cast.

===''The Naked and the Dead''===
In the terms set out by Frye on the novel and romance, Mailer is as much an author of romances as of novels. Many characteristic portions of Mailer’s fiction express the subjectivity of the “psychological archetype” and “[radiate] a glow of subjective intensity.”{{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}} This tendency in Mailer’s writing is perhaps most intensely expressed in the first-person narration of ''An American Dream’s'' Steve Rojack and The Executioner’s Song’s polyphony of consciousnesses. (Song is perhaps more a socially wide-ranging chronicle of snatches of consciousness rather than action scenes.) Although ''Naked'' is hardly a romance, by the ascent of Mt. Anaka, Croft becomes a “psychological archetype” who “radiates a glow of subjective intensity.”{{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}} Indeed, with Croft, “something nihilistic and untamable” seems, in Frye’s words, “to keep break-{{pg|323|324}}ing out of [Mailer’s] pages” as would occur in much subsequent writing by Mailer.{{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}} However, a novelistic romancer, even as a fiction writer, will not suffice in Mailer. His work resonates not only as novel and romance but also as confession (close to the tenor of O’Shaughnessy’s tale) and anatomy or “Mannipean satire” (with Mailer himself in ''The Armies of the Night'' and with the Presidential contenders of Mailer’s presidential campaign chronicles).

Still, not even evocation of the full range of Frye’s four fictive modes will suffice to categorize much of Mailer’s work. In particular, The Naked and the Dead evokes Moretti’s reference to the appearance of literary “one-off cases, oddities, anomalies” in his discussion of that variant of the high modernist fiction he terms “the modern epic” in his 1996 ''The Modern Epic''. If the original epic can be boiled down rather conventionally into a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation, the “modern epic” is a variation of the epic in which the heroic is downplayed and the expression of the “total world of a nation and epoch” extends to the “supranational” sphere, in which we encounter a somewhat incongruous ungainly mix of modes of expression—not only the very novelistic accounts of exchanges among the tale’s principals but the confessional ardor of Ishmael’s voice when he accounts his high spirits, the cataloging of seamen’s conversation during watches, the lessons in cytology, the pseudo-Shakespearean soliloquies of Ahab along on the forecastle.{{sfn|Meyer|2005|p=2128}}{{sfn|Moretti|1996|pp=11-14}} With the Ahab-like ardor of Croft ascending Mt. Anaka, the social and linguistic cataloging of social types and vernaculars in Time Machine and Chow Line segments, and the epic qualities of the book’s framing and charting, and detailed depiction of the Anopopei campaign and its combat actions; and the fundamental novelistic interactions among the principals, each with members of his immediate sphere—Cummings, Hearn, and Croft, each with his circle of underlings—''The Naked and the Dead'' fits the template of the “modern epic” quite well.

Although ''Naked'' has no individual hero—Croft is arguably an antihero— the action of the Army on Anopopei might be considered heroic. For example, the book begins with a statement about the invading force—the memorable “Nobody could sleep . . . all over the ship, all through the convoy, there was a knowledge that in a few hours some of them were going to{{pg|324|325}} be dead”—and it ends with a description of the “mop up” or “successful” campaign.{{sfn|Meyer|2005}}{{sfn|Moretti|1996}}

Further, ''Naked''’s use of its Time Machine segments reaches out toward the “expression” of the “total world of a nation and epoch.”{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=11}} These devices democratically apply the model of Dos Passos’s elite biographic profiles of great Americans in the ''U.S.A.'' to the description of the American “every man.”

In place of ''U.S.A.''’s Jack Reed and TR, aviators like the Wright Brothers, lovers like Rudolph Valentino, financiers like Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan, we get Hispanic Texans like Julio Martinez; Texan and Virgin- ian rednecks Sam Croft and Woodrow Wilson; Montana miner and hobo Red Velsen; working-class Bostonian Irishman Will Gallagher and working-class Jewish Brooklynite Joey Goldstein; small-town Northeastern/Midwestern middle-class William Brown; Northeastern/Midwestern, upper-class, Harvard-educated left intellectual Robert Hearn; and Northeastern/Midwestern, upper-class, West Point-educated Far Right intellectual General Cummings.

Indeed, ''Naked''’s use of its Time Machine segments extends the ''U.S.A.''’s encyclopedia of American social types and speech during the second and third decades of the twentieth century to the third and early fourth decades of the century, for the Time Machine profiles deal with the biographies that highlight the preponderantly 1930s and early 1940s adolescence and youth of ''Naked''’s cast on its principal 1944-ish stage.

''Naked''’s allegorical structure also contributes to the book’s “expression” of a “total world of a nation and epoch.”{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=11}} As an allegory, The Naked and the Dead is dystopian. It is, in part, a dystopia of fascistic foreboding expressed both in terms of General Cumming’s highbrow aspirations of a domestically authoritarian and internationally imperialistic United States and in terms of Sergeant Croft’s thuggish service for Cummings (i.e., his role in the elimination of the annoying Lieutenant Hearn for Cummings).

However, it articulates a more nuanced vision than the sometimes noted dystopian X-ray of fascist undercurrent at War and a possible fascistic post-war. It also voices the vision of the unexpected military victory that the hum-drum and luck Major Dalleson led right under General Cummings’s nose—a triumph of competence and good luck that is a harbinger less of fascist totalitarianism than of managerialism and centrist liberalism fringed by Cold War hysteria of the Truman and Eisenhower eras. Mailer closes off not with some extension of Cummings’s subtly maneuvered elimination of the intellectually annoying and faintly insubordinate Liberal Lieutenant Hearn.

{{pg|325|326}}
Instead, he leaves us with Major Dalleson captivated by the USO poster and PR charm of the emerging, somewhat demilitarized managerial age, thinking with more innocence than is imaginable for Cummings, “He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co-ordinate grid system laid over it.”{{sfn|Moretti|1996}}

==Style, Construction, and Assessment==
===''From Here to Eternity''===
Jones has been criticized for bad writing. The main site of this criticism and defenses against it is in writing on ''Some Came Running''. However, as we shall see, these criticisms had precursors in responses to ''From Here to Eternity''.{{sfn|Garret|1984|p=100}} Writing on ''Some Came Running'', Edmund Fuller wrote, “[I]f you like bad grammar...shoddy and befuddled philosophy, ''Some Came Running'' is your book,” and Time that “Choctaw rather than English would appear to be [Jones’s] first language.”{{sfn|Carter|1998|p=38}} And, J. Donald Adams attributed Jones with having a “fatuous pride in being illiterate.”{{sfn|Carter|1998|p=38}}

On ''Eternity’s'' literary quality, Burgess{{sfn|Burgess|1984}} wrote the following in ''The Caine Mutiny'' section of his 99 Novels: “[Mutiny] stands somewhere between Mailer’s ''The Naked and the Dead'' . . . and James Jones’s ''From Here to Eternity''. It has some literary distinction, far more than Jones’s, much less than Mailer’s.”{{sfn|Carter|1998|p=56}}

Similarly, I recall a 1960s episode of ''The David Susskind Show'' in which Gore Vidal dismissed Jones’s book for bad writing after praising Fred Zin-Neumann’s film ''Eternity''. Although I am both a Jones and a Bloom fan, I was not surprised when I realized that Jones was entirely unmentioned in the extensive critical works of the stylistically finicky Harold Bloom.

Defenders of Jones’s style cast light on its positive and negative criticism. For example, Tom Carson writes, “[A]t its crowded, vernacular best [the prose] does just what he wanted to do, involve you in the events, and put you inside the characters’ heads with striking veracity and conviction.”{{sfn|Carson|1984|p=19}} George Garret writes that “Jones, as he wrote ''Running'', was involved in an experiment with language, a kind of discovery . . . he calls it working with ‘colloquial forms’ by which he means not merely the free and easy use of the living, spoken American language on dialogue or first-person narration but an attempt to carry it into the narrative itself, into third-person narration.”{{sfn|Carson|1984|p=116}} These defenses focus on that aspect of Jones’s writing that his critics seem to stress as his weakest attribute: his writing style.{{pg|326|327}}
One concentration of stylistic criticism seems to focus on Jones’s attempts to put readers “inside the characters’ heads.”{{sfn|Carson|1984|p=19}} This mainly consists of the use of the first-person indirect and free indirect, in which movement between a third-person mimicry of a character’s consciousness approaching stream of consciousness and authorial comment on characters’ consciousness or simple third person occurs, for Jones seldom lapses into the first person in ‘third person’ fictions like ''Eternity'' and ''Running''. This second paragraph of the book’s first page, already quoted above, illustrates the sort of writing:

<blockquote>Through the heat haze and the thin mid-morning film of the parched red dust came up a muted orchestra of sounds: the clankings of steel wheeled carts bouncing over the brick, the slapping of oiled leather slingstraps.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=3}}</blockquote>

So does the third paragraph of ''Eternity’s'' opening:

<blockquote>Somewhere along the line, he thought, these things have become your heritage. You are multiplied by each sound that you hear. And you cannot deny them without denying with them the purpose of your own existence. Yet now, he told himself, you are denying them by denying the place they have given you.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=3}}</blockquote>

A second concentration of stylistic criticism refers to instances of straightforward third-person narration, a voice mainly confined to the tellingly italsized introductory pages to “Book Four: The Stockade.”

Examples of the first sort of faulted writing mainly occur when Jones gages in extended attempts at first-person indirect and free indirect, and his language grows either too arcane to ring true as a plausible voice of the character overheard or too oddly vernacular to work as a shift into authorial voice. Even writing in a tone ostensibly close to a character, Jones may move into an oddly eccentric rhetoric that manages to violate the standards of verisimilitude in the mimicry of a character’s use of language required of the first-person indirect or the standards of good authorial rhetoric, or both standards at once. An example of a double violation arises in the early pages of “Book Four: The Stockade” where Jones describes Prewitt’s thoughts or feelings regarding “a great conflict of fear” that “lay rises flapping from the depth {{pg|327|328}}like a giant manta ray, looming larger and bigger, looming huge, up out of the green depths that you can look down into through a water glass and see the anchor cable dwindling in a long arch down into invisibility, up from far below that even, flapping the two wing fins of choice and ego caught square in the middle.”{{sfn|Jones|1951|pp=410-411}} This refers to fears that Prewitt thinks his unthinking candor precipitates in the minds of others (in this case fears of homosexuality in the mind of Maggio).

Examples of the second sort of blemished writing arise in “Book Four: The Stockade” when we shift into an authorial voice far from that dramatic mode in which the book’s style approximates a dramatic mode in which the audience experiences content directly. In the straight-out italics with which “The Stockade” opens, Jones writes, “''He was held in confinement at the Stockade as a general prisoner while he waited for trial''.”{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=405}} Clearly, “awaited” is the appropriate word. Later, still writing in a straight-forward third-person narrator (or omniscient narrator) voice, Jones describes the “many officers, officers’ wives and officers’ children” near Honolulu’s “tennis courts, golf course, and bridle paths as all are looking very tanned and sportive.”{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=409}} Clearly, “sporty” is the appropriate word.

In defense of Jones’s prose, Garret refers to innovations with “colloquial forms” by Faulkner and O’Hara, and Carter extends this line of defense with a few brief evocations (e.g., of Bellow and Updike).{{sfn|Garret|1984|p=116}}{{sfn|Carter|1998|p=39}} However, I do not find these lines of defense persuasive. Where I see no lapse in an author’s use of the first-person and free indirect (e.g., for O’Hara, Faulkner, and Bellow), the defense does not seem worth extended comment in the time and space available. (I think that Faulkner, O’Hara, and Bellow employ idiomatic English more adeptly in using the free indirect).

I see such a lapse when Updike lapses into language too literary (e.g., too metaphorically ornate) to credibly reflect a character’s consciousness, which, compared to the stylistically masterful Updike, seems inappropriate, despite Updike’s lapses. Although I see some dubious use of idiomatic language in straightforward third-person narration divorced from the first-person indirect and free indirect in the work of William Faulkner, the comparison again seems generally inappropriate (i.e., too much a matter of an idiosyncratic syntax), as well as rather too complex for this effort.

The digression of the pros and cons of Jones’s possible stylistic shortcomings, where they turn up in Jones’s writing, seems less relevant to the assessment {{pg|328|329}}of that writing—''Eternity'', in particular—and seems less important than my defense of Jones. This focuses on how infrequently they turn up and how peripheral they are when they do turn up—most especially in ''From Here to Eternity''. In brief, the instances of poor writing that Jones’s stylistic critics have targeted tend to address occasional divergences from Jones’s best and most characteristic writing. This is a “transparent” mode of writing focused on dialogue backed by incisive descriptions of action and setting backed up by preponderantly adept excursions into the first-person indirect and divorced—mostly divorced—from overt authorial voice.

That mode of writing resembles Frye’s dramatic mode in which the author is hidden from the audience, and the audience “experiences content directly.”{{sfn|Frye|1957|p=229}}

This mode provides almost all of the words of ''From Here to Eternity'' and ''Whistle''. It provides enough of Some Came Running to constitute nearly all of Jones’s 1958 Signet abridgment of Running. It perhaps does not apply well to ''The Thin Red Line'' because, in that novel, Jones is far more involved in using the free indirect, in which he shifts between dialogue and physical description. The first-person-son-indirect variant of stream of consciousness jumps so frequently and swiftly from consciousness to consciousness to virtually create a collective consciousness of ''Thin Red Line’s'' GIs.

''From Here to Eternity'' can only receive glancing blows from the criticisms of Jones’s writing for that book because these are largely irrelevant to most of the book’s writing. The same can be said for ''The Thin Red Line'' and ''Whistle''. ''Some Came Running'' may be another story. (For convenience, I ignore all of Jones’s books, but only the four that were mentioned.) On the one hand, the power of its underlying narrative, documentary scope and cogency, and rich characterization seems to compare to that of ''From Here to Eternity''. (Here we have aspects of Jones’s creativity perhaps even more effectively expressed by Minnelli’s 1958 film than by Zinnemann’s excellent 1953 one.) Moreover, Jones scholars have claimed with great zeal thematic and spiritual merits for the voluminous stretches of writing in ''Running'' that do not conform to the model of transparent writing and drama-like novelistic presentation described here for ''Running''. Alas, with ''Running'', critics of Jones’s style have a large target. Perhaps champions of Jones might devise defenses for his literary style—say via elaboration of Garret’s claim that what looks awkward about the style of ''Running'' has an unappreciated idiomatic grace. However, such a defense seems to me no more than sketched.{{pg|329|330}}
===''The Naked and the Dead''===
Some critics found the structure of ''The Naked and the Dead'' baggy.{{efn|Dickstein|2005}} refers to Jones’s ''The Thin Red Line'' as “a tighter, more disciplined rejoinder to The Naked and the Dead” and charges Mailer with filling in his characters’ backgrounds “clumsily.”}} In particular, they have charged that its narrative is encumbered and diffused by the Time Machine profiles of principal characters and by a late usurpation of the protagonist’s role by Sergeant Croft. Here, I dispute these criticisms partly because they are put in a new, more accurate light that is more favorable to ''Naked'' when this is considered an instance of Moretti’s “modern epic.” Regarding the sometimes imputed ungainliness of the Time Machine segments, critics have overlooked the function of the Time Machine segments—not as a plot element in a well-structured novelistic narrative, but as a kind of post-Crash extension of the 1910-1930 sociological and linguistic profile of the U.S.A. provided by the social disparate cast of Dos Passos’s ''U.S.A.'' In doing this, they fail to judge ''Naked'' as a “modern epic” with stress on “a summation of a social and cultural totality” and as no simple traditional war novel.{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=11}}

Further, critics have tended to overlook the sheer propulsive vigor of ''Naked''’s narrative, which belies technical claims against this narrative’s construction.

Regarding the coherence of ''Naked'', this is quite remarkable considering the book’s social reach as a social chronicle, political allegory, and combat narrative. Suppose some of the book’s coherence rests on traditional nov- elastic foundations. In that case, some derive from the book’s ambitious modernist (i.e., modernist epic) reach for the expression of a capacious social world. The central cumulating dramas of the book’s Anopopei narrative are key to this coherence. To my mind, four interlocking “dramatic substructures” to the Anopopei narrative cohere into one visionary drama. One drama consists of the ''top-down fascistic reach'' of Cummings’s creation of the patrol as an attempted solution to his failures to either effectively assert the dominance of his authoritarian intellectual vision about the left-liberal Hearn or to advance his high career aspirations via his direction of the battle for Anopopei.

The second consists of the ''bottom-up fascistic reach'' of Croft’s attempted assertion of his will to power over Hearn by maneuvering his death and over his squad by pitting it against the symbolic and practical challenge of Mt Anaka. The third consists of the ''heroically solidaristic al-truism'' (and ''resistance'') entailed by Goldstein and Ridges’ attempted assertion of soldier solidarity and group survival in the face of Croft’s assertion of his will to power. The fourth and final drama consists of the ''managerial ascendance'' of Dalleson’s competently assisted usurpation of immediate pragmatic {{pg|330|331}}military success on Anopopei due to a nicely Tolstoyan combination of managerial competence and sheer chance.

''Naked''’s narrative elements cumulate well. The Cummings narrative ends powerfully with the death of Hearn and the trumping of Cummings’s Mt. Anaka strategy by Dalleson’s sea strategy. The Croft story ends with powerful irony with the failure of the Mt. Anaka expedition, especially in the wake of the boldness of the Hearn offing and the strength shown by Croft in the initial attempt at the crossing. The heroic tale of Goldstein and Ridges serves as a nice dramatic and thematic counterpoint to the high and low fascist authoritarianism of Cummings and Croft and the softer, friendlier managerial authoritarianism of Dalleson. The Dalleson tale resolves itself and all the others with the resolution of fascistic and humanistic strains of narrative in the triumph of a managerial competence marked by some mediocrity and much good luck. The range of narrative strands—and their wrap-up with the Dalleson strand—offset the somewhat disproportionate force of the Croft strand, at least as we finish reading, if not necessarily in longer-term memory.

If ''Naked'' allegory helps provide a strong focus, so does the integrative cumulative force of the book’s narrative. This is not merely some incoherent—or coherent—near apotheosis of Croft’s vivid psychopathy but a symmetrical dystopia of fascist foreboding high (as with Cummings) and low (as with Croft). Moreover, it is not merely the often noted dystopian vision of fascist undercurrent at War and possible fascist post-war as well that is conceived of as a harbinger of the dangers and restraints of an age of Eisenhower, managerialism, and centrist liberalism, surface success, and contentment and underlying antagonisms as one can imagine.

The social-documentary scope of ''Naked''’s Time Machines segments and the reach and focus of its allegory fits Moretti’s model of the “modern epic” with its aspirations toward the expression of the “whole breadth” of “the total world of a nation and epoch.”{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=3}}

This modernistic epic character of ''Naked'' vitiates much of the force of arguments against ''Naked'' as a loosely constructed attempt at a traditional novel. Within the context of a ‘modern epic’, ''Naked''’s Time Machines segments and allegorical anatomy function as social visions with literary standing in their own right. That they take little or nothing from the effectiveness of ''Naked''’s more conventional narrative and novelistic pleasures only enhances ''Naked'' as a multifaceted modern epic as much as the novelistic character of{{pg|331|332}} ''Eternity'' is consistent with the type of writing that Jones does best (and does almost exclusively in his first fiction). ''Naked''’s range of literary performances is consistent with the book’s genre, variegated skills, and modes of Mailer’s writing.

This is not to say that the conceptualization of ''Naked'' as a modern epic provides any defense of criticisms of ''Naked''’s use of language in a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph literary style. Much of Mailer’s style shows the limitations of its reliance on a simple combination of dialogue, transparent physical description of the speakers and their settings, and the use of first-person indirect (after the models of James T. Farrell’s ''Studs Lonegan'' and Tolstoy’s ''War and Peace'' and ''Anna Karenina'').{{efn|The atmosphere of ''The Naked and the Dead'', the overspirit, is Tolstoyan; the rococo comes out of Dos Passos; the fundamental slogging style from Farrell, and the occasional overrich descriptions from Wolfe,” said Mailer to interviewer Peter {{harvtxt|Manso|1985}}.}}

However, I would argue that this style is very serviceable for expressing the characters and character interactions at the center of much of the book. The characters are memorable, with several—at least Hearn, Cummings, and Croft— drawn with depth and dynamism. For example, we see Hearn’s intellectual confidence with Cummings and insecurity with “the men” of his platoon; we see Cummings both as aloof intellectual and commander, as schemer maneuvering Hearn into the dangerous patrol, and as the deflated figure who must acknowledge Dalleson’s credit as victor of the Anopopei campaign; and we see Croft as not just a hard and capable commander of men but as one in the throes of a mythic conflict with Mt. Anaka that resonates with Ahab’s quest for ''Moby Dick''.

More generally, lesser characters like Martinez and Goldstein show development, and the dialogue and accounts of soldiering ring forcefully true. Indeed, the physical action of men in battle with the Japanese and with na- ture is often eloquent. For example, the opening rises to the level of tolstoy in his epic descriptive mode on Napoleon’s Russian campaign. Here it is: “Nobody could sleep. When the morning came, assault craft would be low- ered and a first wave of troops would ride through the surf and charge ashore on the beach of Anapopei. All over the ship, all through the convoy, there was a knowledge that in a few hours some of them were going to be dead.”{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=3}} The description of a storm hitting base camp is especially memorable:

<blockquote>The wind tore through the bivouac area like a great scythe, slashing the palm fronds from the coconut trees, blasting the rain before it. As they looked, they saw a tent jerk upward from its</blockquote>{{pg|332|333}} <blockquote>mooring, steam away in the wind, flapping like a terrified bird...
A tremendous gust of wind bellied under the tent blew it out like a balloon, and then the ridgepole snapped, tearing a rent in the poncho. The tent fell upon the four men like a wet sheet . . . . “Where are you?” he shouted, and then the folds of the tent filled out again like a sail, ripped loose altogether, and went eddying and twisting through the air . . . . All the tents were down in the bivouac area, and here and there a soldier would go skittering through the mud, staggering from the force of the wind with the odd jerking motions of a man walking in a motion picture when the film is unwinding too rapidly.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|pp=86-88}}</blockquote>

The descriptions of the platoon’s frequent physical exhaustion achieve a visceral force:

<blockquote>Their ears filled with the quick, frenetic rustling of insects and animals, the thin screeching rage of mosquitoes, and the raucous babbling of monkeys and parakeets . . . . Slowly, inevitably, the men felt the water soak through the greased waterproofing of their shoes and slosh up to their knees whenever they had to wade through a deeper portion of the stream.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=398}}</blockquote>

Those descriptions of the platoon on patrol winding through the Kunai grass formed a pictorial beauty that would become one of Walsh’s chief inspirations in his film version of ''The Naked and the Dead''.

Turning to the stylistic merits of the Time Machine segments—and not just their proclaimed obtrusiveness as excessively flashy, overly documented, philosophically deterministic baggage for an effective war novel and campaign narrative—critics have been unperceptive. They have also dismissed the Time Machine segments as overly derivative—as too closely modelled after Dos Passos’s telegraphed biographies of national elites in the ''U.S.A.'' However, in making this criticism, critics have overlooked how Mailer’s use of the Time Machine devices follows Pound’s modernist injunction to “make it new.” In particular, they have missed how thoroughly democratic and sometimes playful Mailer’s Time Machines are.{{pg|333|334}}
In contrast with Dos Passos’s use of his profiles to telegraph the life of important national figures in shaping the world, where he situates his cast of rather everyday fictional characters, Mailer’s Time Machine bios file numerous faces of ’everyman.’ They do so via transferring Dos Passos’s elite-oriented device to a popular subject matter. As Mailer writes in the first Time Machine, which profiles Julio Martinez, “Mexican boys also breathe the American Fables, also want to be heroes, aviators, lovers, financiers.”{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=55}} This is to say that they also want to be figures like those of the ''U.S.A.'' biographers, heroes like Jack Reed and TR, aviators like the Wright Brothers, lovers like Rudolph Valentino, and financiers like Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan. They have also failed to notice such playful touches as we find in Mailer’s Woodrow Wilson Time Machine episode.

This evokes Dos Passos’s Meester Veelson biography of President Woodrow Wilson in ''The 42nd Parallel'' in more than title. At the outset of his profile of the white-trash Wilson, Mailer presents him in “''a pair of round, silver-rimmed glasses''” reminiscent of those that appeared on the patrician Southern President in the photograph.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=326}}

In addition, Mailer’s prose sometimes attains a roiling power and dignity, most especially in its “overspirit” mode, using its use or near use of the “heroic” line: “Ahead, ahead, ahead, ahead, moving” catches the cadence of this pentameter, splendidly detailed for Mailer’s writings by Christopher Ricks. For example, “The moon was out, limning the deck housings.”{{sfn|Ricks|2008|p=10}} Returning to Mailer on the movement of that 77mm artillery piece, we have a final phrase that begins with the heroic line:

<blockquote>Once or twice, a flare filtered a wan and delicate bluish light over them, the light almost lost in the dense foliage through which it had to pass. In the brief moment it lasted, they were caught at their guns in classic straining motions with the form and beauty of a frieze. The water and the dark slime of the trail twice blackened their uniforms. Moreover, the light shone on them instantly, and their faces stood out, white and contorted. Even the guns had a slender articulated beauty like an insect reared back on its wire haunches. Then darkness swirled about them again, and they ground the guns forward mindlessly, a line of ants dragging their burden back to their hole.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=116}}</blockquote> {{pg|334|335}} <blockquote>That is, we have, with some intriguing mix of heroic irony, Mailer’s dignification of the routine derided as the “heroic” beat of “a line of ants dragging their burden back”{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=116}}</blockquote>

Neither ''The Naked and the Dead'' nor ''From Here to Eternity'' is remarkable for such stylistic innovation or sustained eloquence as we find, say, in ''The Sun Also Rises'', ''The Sound and the Fury'', ''Invisible Man'', A''ugie Marsh'', or ''Pale Fire''. Each, however, is masterful in realizing its basic fictional design. ''From Here to Eternity'' dramatizes a social milieu unexcelled in American writing. ''The Naked and the Dead'' provides a vision of the U.S.A. combat in the Pacific theater of World War II and during the preceding decade, plus a look into the future. Stylistically, ''From Here to Eternity'' frequently attains the peculiar eloquence of great drama in which the audience witnesses intense action directly. ''The Naked and the Dead'' rises intermittently to a level of stylistic eloquence above and beyond the call of its particular fictional duty.

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

==Citations==
{{Reflist}}

==Work Cited==
{{refbegin|20em|indent=yes}}
* {{cite book |last=Burgess |first=Anthony |url= |title=99 Novels: The Best English Novels Since 1939 |publisher=New York: Summit |year=1984 |isbn= |location= |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Carson |first=Tom |url= |title=”The Hell with Literature: James Jones’s Unvarnished Truths” |date=28 September 1984 |publisher=Village Voice Literary Supplement |isbn= |edition=1st |location= |pages=18-20 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Carter |first=Steven R. |url= |title=James Jones: An American Literary Orientalist Master |date= |publisher=United States: U of Illinois P |year=1998 |isbn= |location= |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |url= |title=Leopards in the Temple: The Transformation of American Fiction, 1945-1970 |publisher=Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP |year=2005 |isbn= |location= |pages=25 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |author=Frye |first=Northrop |url= |title=Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. |publisher=Princeton: Princeton UP |year=1957 |isbn= |location= |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Frye |first=Northrop |title=The Four Forms of Prose Fiction |url= |journal= Hudson Review |volume= 2 |issue= 4 |pages=582-598 |date=1950 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Garret |first=George P.|title=James Jones |date=1984 |publisher=New York: Harcourt |isbn= |edition= |location= |pages=100 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Jones |first=James |url= |title=From Here to Eternity |publisher=New York: Scribner |year=1951 |isbn= |location= ||pages=3-858|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |url= |title=The Naked and the Dead |date= |publisher=New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston|isbn= |location= |publication-date=1948 |pages=86-88|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Manso |first=Peter |url= |title=Mailer: His Life and Times |publisher=New York: Simon |isbn= |location= |publication-date=1985 |pages=|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Meyer |first=Michael |url= |title=The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing |publisher=Boston: Bedford |year=2005 |isbn= |location= |pages= 2128|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Moretti |first=Franco |title=Modern Epic: The World System from Goethe to Garcia Marquez |date=1996 |publisher=London: Verso |isbn= |location= |pages=11-14|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Ricks |first=Christopher |title=”Mailers Rhythm” The Norman Mailer Society Conference |isbn= |edition=Keynote Speaker |location=Provincetown, MA |publication-date=2008|pages=10|ref=harv }}
{{refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:From Here to Eternity and The Naked and the Dead: Premiere to Eternity?}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/From Here to Eternity and The Naked and the Dead: Premiere to Eternity?

2025-04-25T12:50:40Z

Grlucas: Added banner back.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style=”font-size:22px;”>{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>''From Here to Eternity'' and ''The Naked and the Dead'': Premiere to Eternity?}}
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{{byline|last=Hicks|first=Alexander |abstract=A review of ''From Here To Eternity'' and ''The Naked and The Dead''. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr05hic}}
{{cquote|The novelist deals with personality, with characters wearing their personae or social masks. He needs the framework of a stable society, and many of our best novelists have been conventional to the verge of fussiness. The romancer deals with individuality, with characters in vacuo idealized by Revery. However conservative he may be, something nihilistic and untamable will likely break out of his pages.|author=Northrop Frye|source=''The Four Forms of Prose Fiction''{{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}}}}

{{cquote|The epic requires as its object the occurrence of an action, which must be expressed in the breadth of its circumstances and relations as a rich event connected with the total world of a nation and epoch.|author=Franco Moretti|source=''Modern Epic:The World System from Goethe to Garcia Marquez''{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=11}}}}

{{dc|dc=J|ames Jones was a born novelist}}, and Norman Mailer was a born writer. This distinction holds across the two authors’ life work. I illustrate this distinction here for only the authors’ first published novels, ''The Naked and the Dead'' and ''From Here to Eternity''. However, these illustrations help assess the quality of these two books and each author’s career.{{pg|318|319}}
==Two Types of Fiction==
===''From Here to Eternity''===
In the classical taxonomic terms of Northrop Frye, From Here to Eternity is very much what Frye means by a ‘novel.’ Its characters do indeed wear “their personae or social masks.”{{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}} Robert E. Lee Prewitt is very much a Private First Class, Milton Anthony Warden a Sergeant, and Ms. Karen Holmes a housewife. (They are vivid and memorable, yet seldom capitalize much on eccentrics as Mark such well-remembered Dickens characters as ''David Copperfield’s'' Mr. Macawber or ''Martin Chuzzlewit’s'' Seth Pecksniff.) The book’s stable societal framework is the U.S. Army just preceding World War II. Right at ''Eternity’s'' outset, we are given the novelistic focus on a character in a social context:<blockquote>When he finished packing, he walked out onto the third-floor porch of the barracks, brushing the dust from his hands. He was a very neat and deceptively slim young man in summer khakis that were still fresh early in the morning.

He leaned his elbows on the porch edge and stood looking down through the screen at the familiar scene of the barracks square laid out below, with the tiers of porches dark in the face of the three-story concrete barracks fronting the square. He felt a half-familiar affection for this vantage point that he was leaving.

Below him, under the blows of the February Hawaiian sun, the quadrangle gasped defenselessly like an exhausted fighter. Through the heat haze and the thin mid-morning film of the parched red dust, a muted orchestra of sounds emerged: the clankings of steel-wheeled carts bouncing over brick, the slappings of oiled leather sling straps, the shuffling beat of scorched shoe soles, and the hoarse expletives of irritated noncoms.

Somewhere along the line, he thought, these things have become your heritage. You are multiplied by each sound that you hear. And you cannot deny them, without denying with them the purpose of your own existence. Yet now, he told himself, you are denying them, by renouncing the place that they have given you.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=3}}</blockquote>{{pg|319|320}}
By the end of Chapter Two, we know of the principal protagonist, Prewitt, whose place in the Company he is leaving, and we know something about the Kentucky mountains from which he hails. Within a few more chapters, Prewitt is deeply engaged in his new world of Company G: the stern but fatherly Warden, the jokester’s friend Pfc. Maggio, company commander Holmes, and the numerous sharply drawn men who will “soljer” and chat and play cards with Prewitt and try to force him to box for the Company or almost make him wish he had, including Anderson, Bloom, Chaote, Kowalski, Leva, Mazzioli, Preem, and Stark.

The dialogue is masterful. Physical and social action is evoked by concrete description and adept use of the empathetic first-person indirect, a vivid and seamlessly shifting point of view on the action and its social circumstance. If there is a mode of writing other than Frye’s ‘novel’ that is aptly evoked by ''Eternity'', it is Frye’s ‘drama’ in which the author hides from the audience and their direct experience.{{sfn|Frye|1957|p=239}} Characters jump off the page, as in this early exchange between Prewitt and Maggio:

<blockquote>“If I had knew,” he said to Prewitt, whose bunk was two beds from his own in Chief Choate’s squad, “if I had only knew what this man’s Army had been like. Of all the people in this outfit, they give that vacant Pfc to Bloom. Because he is a punchie.”

”What did you expect, Angelo?” Prew grinned.

“He aint even a good soljer, mind you,” Maggio said bitterly. “He’s ony just a punchie. I’m only out of ree-croot drill a month and I’m a better soljer than Bloom is.”

“Soljerin aint what does it.”

“But it ought a be. You wait, man. If I ever get out of this Army, you just wait. Draft or no draft, they’ll never get me back.”

“Balls,” Prew grinned. “You got all the makins of a thirty year
man. I can see it on you a block away.”

“Dont say that,” Maggio said, violently. “I mean it. I like you,
but I dont like even you that much. Thirty year man! Not me, buddy. If I’m goin to be a valet, yard man, and general handyman for some fuckin officer, I’m goin to get paid for it, see?”

“You’ll re-enlist,” Prew said.</blockquote>{{pg|320|321}}<blockquote>“I’ll re-enlist,” Maggio said chanting the old bugle call parody, “in a pig’s asshole. If anybody should of had that rating, man, you should of had it. You’re the best soljer in this outfit for my dough. By a hunert million miles.”{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=127}}</blockquote>

Dramatic conflict arises with great naturalness and force from the well-etched milieu:

<blockquote>Andy was dealing when the saloon doors opened and Pfc Bloom came in, pushing the door back so hard it banged against the wall and the swung back and forth squeaking loudly. Pfc Bloom advanced on the men around the blanket with a heavy, meaty confidence grinning and shaking his flat kinky head, so big the tremendous shoulders seemed to fill the door.
“Quiet, jerk,” Maggio said. “You want the CQ up here and break up the game?”

“To hell with the CQ,” Bloom said,in his customary loud vice. “And you too, you little Wop.”

A transformation went over Maggio. He stood up and walked around the blanket, up to the huge Bloom who towered over him.

“Listen,” he said in a contorted voice. “I’m particular who calls me Wop. I aint big and tough, and I aint one of Dynamite’s third rate punchies. But I’m still Maggio to you. I wont mess with you. I work you over, I’ll do it with a chair or a knife.” He stared up at Bloom, his thin face twisted, his eyes blazing.

“Oh yeah?” Bloom said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Maggio said sarcastically. Bloom took a step to- ward him and he leaned his head forward pugnaciously on the thin bony shoulders, and there was the sudden attentive silence that always precedes a fight.

“Lay off, Bloom,” Prew said, surprised at the clear loudness of his voice in the silence. “Come on and sit down, Angelo. Five up to you.”

“I call,” Maggio said without looking around. “Take off, you bum,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away. Bloom laughed after him self-confidently and nastily.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=137}}</blockquote>{{pg|321|322}}Though the book does not appear to aspire to any allegorical significance beyond easily generalizable but hardly unusual outsider-insider, self-society, subordinate-superordinate tensions central to its dramatic construction, its typical “dramatic-novelistic” mode of expression incisively and elaborately illustrates insights into the relation of the individual to society within the specifically military hierarchal orders. ''Eternity'' rises eloquently to nice ironies of social aspiration and class, war, and peace, as in the book’s final pages on the status distortions of Lerene’s recollections of Prewitt’s patriotism and war. Take Karen Holmes and her son on the latter as they leave Honolulu Harbor:

<blockquote>From this far out, if you did not already know it was there you couldnt have seen it.

Behind her, the five boys had swelled to seven and had given up being shuffleboards and taken to shooting at each other with cocked thumbs and explosive “Bohww!”s from behind corners and stanchions.

She took the six flower leis off over her head and dropped them over the side. This was as good a place to drop them over as any. Diamond head, Koko Head, Makapuu Head. Perhaps Koko Head was the best place, really. The six leis fell together and the wind blew them back against the side of the ship and out of sight and she did not see them light on the water.

“Mother,” her son said from behind her. “I’m hungry. When do we eat on this old boat?”

“Pretty soon now,” she said.

“Mother, do you think the war will last long enough so I can graduate from the Point and be in it? Jerry Wilcox said it wouldnt.”

“No,” she said, “I dont think it’ll last that long.”

“Well, gee whiz, mother,” her son said, “I want to be in it.”

“Well, cheer up,” Karen said, “and dont let it worry you. You
may miss this one, but you’ll be just the right age for the next one.”

“You really think so, mother?” her son said anxiously.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=858}}</blockquote>

The dramatic arch of the multi-stranded narrative is strong and clear. Prewitt’s refusal to box for the company, Maggio’s mounting resistance to the{{pg|322|323}} abuse of military power and class structures, and Warden’s bold consummation of his desire for Karen Holmes provide parallel disequilibria that trigger a narrative of beleaguered and in Prewitt and Maggio’s cases, doomed quests for “soljer” autonomy within a hierarchical social order. These three central narratives cascade outward, rippling across the others: Maggio’s rebellion is intensified by Prewitt’s ‘treatment’ by Holmes and the Company Boxers, and Maggio’s destruction in the Stockade deepens Prewitt’s rebelliousness. Ironic parallels between the Prewitt-Lorene affair and the Warden-Holmes affair cap the book’s conclusion aboard the liner on which Karen Holmes and ''Alma ‘Lorene’ Burke'' leave Honolulu shortly following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor and war provide a second parallel wave of disequilibria that concentrate the book’s action, speeding it to the conclusion: the AWOL Prewitt is shot by a Wartime sentry while seeking to return to his company, and the call of war cancels Warden’s committed involvement with Karen Holmes.

If there are jarring notes in ''Eternity'', they are stylistic. They are mainly comprised of faulty diction and idiosyncratic rhetoric that tends to arise when the writing veers off into an authorial voice distanced from specific characters and found within sociologically detailed dramatic situations. I address instances of the “bad” writing that has tended to conspire against the book’s chances for immortality, especially after eventually falling under the shadow of extensively negative reviews reviling Jones’s style that ''Some Came Running'' cast.

===''The Naked and the Dead''===
In the terms set out by Frye on the novel and romance, Mailer is as much an author of romances as of novels. Many characteristic portions of Mailer’s fiction express the subjectivity of the “psychological archetype” and “[radiate] a glow of subjective intensity.”{{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}} This tendency in Mailer’s writing is perhaps most intensely expressed in the first-person narration of ''An American Dream’s'' Steve Rojack and The Executioner’s Song’s polyphony of consciousnesses. (Song is perhaps more a socially wide-ranging chronicle of snatches of consciousness rather than action scenes.) Although ''Naked'' is hardly a romance, by the ascent of Mt. Anaka, Croft becomes a “psychological archetype” who “radiates a glow of subjective intensity.”{{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}} Indeed, with Croft, “something nihilistic and untamable” seems, in Frye’s words, “to keep break-{{pg|323|324}}ing out of [Mailer’s] pages” as would occur in much subsequent writing by Mailer.{{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}} However, a novelistic romancer, even as a fiction writer, will not suffice in Mailer. His work resonates not only as novel and romance but also as confession (close to the tenor of O’Shaughnessy’s tale) and anatomy or “Mannipean satire” (with Mailer himself in ''The Armies of the Night'' and with the Presidential contenders of Mailer’s presidential campaign chronicles).

Still, not even evocation of the full range of Frye’s four fictive modes will suffice to categorize much of Mailer’s work. In particular, The Naked and the Dead evokes Moretti’s reference to the appearance of literary “one-off cases, oddities, anomalies” in his discussion of that variant of the high modernist fiction he terms “the modern epic” in his 1996 ''The Modern Epic''. If the original epic can be boiled down rather conventionally into a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation, the “modern epic” is a variation of the epic in which the heroic is downplayed and the expression of the “total world of a nation and epoch” extends to the “supranational” sphere, in which we encounter a somewhat incongruous ungainly mix of modes of expression—not only the very novelistic accounts of exchanges among the tale’s principals but the confessional ardor of Ishmael’s voice when he accounts his high spirits, the cataloging of seamen’s conversation during watches, the lessons in cytology, the pseudo-Shakespearean soliloquies of Ahab along on the forecastle.{{sfn|Meyer|2005|p=2128}}{{sfn|Moretti|1996|pp=11-14}} With the Ahab-like ardor of Croft ascending Mt. Anaka, the social and linguistic cataloging of social types and vernaculars in Time Machine and Chow Line segments, and the epic qualities of the book’s framing and charting, and detailed depiction of the Anopopei campaign and its combat actions; and the fundamental novelistic interactions among the principals, each with members of his immediate sphere—Cummings, Hearn, and Croft, each with his circle of underlings—''The Naked and the Dead'' fits the template of the “modern epic” quite well.

Although ''Naked'' has no individual hero—Croft is arguably an antihero— the action of the Army on Anopopei might be considered heroic. For example, the book begins with a statement about the invading force—the memorable “Nobody could sleep . . . all over the ship, all through the convoy, there was a knowledge that in a few hours some of them were going to{{pg|324|325}} be dead”—and it ends with a description of the “mop up” or “successful” campaign.{{sfn|Meyer|2005}}{{sfn|Moretti|1996}}

Further, ''Naked''’s use of its Time Machine segments reaches out toward the “expression” of the “total world of a nation and epoch.”{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=11}} These devices democratically apply the model of Dos Passos’s elite biographic profiles of great Americans in the ''U.S.A.'' to the description of the American “every man.”

In place of ''U.S.A.''’s Jack Reed and TR, aviators like the Wright Brothers, lovers like Rudolph Valentino, financiers like Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan, we get Hispanic Texans like Julio Martinez; Texan and Virgin- ian rednecks Sam Croft and Woodrow Wilson; Montana miner and hobo Red Velsen; working-class Bostonian Irishman Will Gallagher and working-class Jewish Brooklynite Joey Goldstein; small-town Northeastern/Midwestern middle-class William Brown; Northeastern/Midwestern, upper-class, Harvard-educated left intellectual Robert Hearn; and Northeastern/Midwestern, upper-class, West Point-educated Far Right intellectual General Cummings.

Indeed, ''Naked''’s use of its Time Machine segments extends the ''U.S.A.''’s encyclopedia of American social types and speech during the second and third decades of the twentieth century to the third and early fourth decades of the century, for the Time Machine profiles deal with the biographies that highlight the preponderantly 1930s and early 1940s adolescence and youth of ''Naked''’s cast on its principal 1944-ish stage.

''Naked''’s allegorical structure also contributes to the book’s “expression” of a “total world of a nation and epoch.”{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=11}} As an allegory, The Naked and the Dead is dystopian. It is, in part, a dystopia of fascistic foreboding expressed both in terms of General Cumming’s highbrow aspirations of a domestically authoritarian and internationally imperialistic United States and in terms of Sergeant Croft’s thuggish service for Cummings (i.e., his role in the elimination of the annoying Lieutenant Hearn for Cummings).

However, it articulates a more nuanced vision than the sometimes noted dystopian X-ray of fascist undercurrent at War and a possible fascistic post-war. It also voices the vision of the unexpected military victory that the hum-drum and luck Major Dalleson led right under General Cummings’s nose—a triumph of competence and good luck that is a harbinger less of fascist totalitarianism than of managerialism and centrist liberalism fringed by Cold War hysteria of the Truman and Eisenhower eras. Mailer closes off not with some extension of Cummings’s subtly maneuvered elimination of the intellectually annoying and faintly insubordinate Liberal Lieutenant Hearn.

{{pg|325|326}}
Instead, he leaves us with Major Dalleson captivated by the USO poster and PR charm of the emerging, somewhat demilitarized managerial age, thinking with more innocence than is imaginable for Cummings, “He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co-ordinate grid system laid over it.”{{sfn|Moretti|1996}}

==Style, Construction, and Assessment==
===''From Here to Eternity''===
Jones has been criticized for bad writing. The main site of this criticism and defenses against it is in writing on ''Some Came Running''. However, as we shall see, these criticisms had precursors in responses to ''From Here to Eternity''.{{sfn|Garret|1984|p=100}} Writing on ''Some Came Running'', Edmund Fuller wrote, “[I]f you like bad grammar...shoddy and befuddled philosophy, ''Some Came Running'' is your book,” and Time that “Choctaw rather than English would appear to be [Jones’s] first language.”{{sfn|Carter|1998|p=38}} And, J. Donald Adams attributed Jones with having a “fatuous pride in being illiterate.”{{sfn|Carter|1998|p=38}}

On ''Eternity’s'' literary quality, Burgess{{sfn|Burgess|1984}} wrote the following in ''The Caine Mutiny'' section of his 99 Novels: “[Mutiny] stands somewhere between Mailer’s ''The Naked and the Dead'' . . . and James Jones’s ''From Here to Eternity''. It has some literary distinction, far more than Jones’s, much less than Mailer’s.”{{sfn|Carter|1998|p=56}}

Similarly, I recall a 1960s episode of ''The David Susskind Show'' in which Gore Vidal dismissed Jones’s book for bad writing after praising Fred Zin-Neumann’s film ''Eternity''. Although I am both a Jones and a Bloom fan, I was not surprised when I realized that Jones was entirely unmentioned in the extensive critical works of the stylistically finicky Harold Bloom.

Defenders of Jones’s style cast light on its positive and negative criticism. For example, Tom Carson writes, “[A]t its crowded, vernacular best [the prose] does just what he wanted to do, involve you in the events, and put you inside the characters’ heads with striking veracity and conviction.”{{sfn|Carson|1984|p=19}} George Garret writes that “Jones, as he wrote ''Running'', was involved in an experiment with language, a kind of discovery . . . he calls it working with ‘colloquial forms’ by which he means not merely the free and easy use of the living, spoken American language on dialogue or first-person narration but an attempt to carry it into the narrative itself, into third-person narration.”{{sfn|Carson|1984|p=116}} These defenses focus on that aspect of Jones’s writing that his critics seem to stress as his weakest attribute: his writing style.{{pg|326|327}}
One concentration of stylistic criticism seems to focus on Jones’s attempts to put readers “inside the characters’ heads.”{{sfn|Carson|1984|p=19}} This mainly consists of the use of the first-person indirect and free indirect, in which movement between a third-person mimicry of a character’s consciousness approaching stream of consciousness and authorial comment on characters’ consciousness or simple third person occurs, for Jones seldom lapses into the first person in ‘third person’ fictions like ''Eternity'' and ''Running''. This second paragraph of the book’s first page, already quoted above, illustrates the sort of writing:

<blockquote>Through the heat haze and the thin mid-morning film of the parched red dust came up a muted orchestra of sounds: the clankings of steel wheeled carts bouncing over the brick, the slapping of oiled leather slingstraps.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=3}}</blockquote>

So does the third paragraph of ''Eternity’s'' opening:

<blockquote>Somewhere along the line, he thought, these things have become your heritage. You are multiplied by each sound that you hear. And you cannot deny them without denying with them the purpose of your own existence. Yet now, he told himself, you are denying them by denying the place they have given you.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=3}}</blockquote>

A second concentration of stylistic criticism refers to instances of straightforward third-person narration, a voice mainly confined to the tellingly italsized introductory pages to “Book Four: The Stockade.”

Examples of the first sort of faulted writing mainly occur when Jones gages in extended attempts at first-person indirect and free indirect, and his language grows either too arcane to ring true as a plausible voice of the character overheard or too oddly vernacular to work as a shift into authorial voice. Even writing in a tone ostensibly close to a character, Jones may move into an oddly eccentric rhetoric that manages to violate the standards of verisimilitude in the mimicry of a character’s use of language required of the first-person indirect or the standards of good authorial rhetoric, or both standards at once. An example of a double violation arises in the early pages of “Book Four: The Stockade” where Jones describes Prewitt’s thoughts or feelings regarding “a great conflict of fear” that “lay rises flapping from the depth {{pg|327|328}}like a giant manta ray, looming larger and bigger, looming huge, up out of the green depths that you can look down into through a water glass and see the anchor cable dwindling in a long arch down into invisibility, up from far below that even, flapping the two wing fins of choice and ego caught square in the middle.”{{sfn|Jones|1951|pp=410-411}} This refers to fears that Prewitt thinks his unthinking candor precipitates in the minds of others (in this case fears of homosexuality in the mind of Maggio).

Examples of the second sort of blemished writing arise in “Book Four: The Stockade” when we shift into an authorial voice far from that dramatic mode in which the book’s style approximates a dramatic mode in which the audience experiences content directly. In the straight-out italics with which “The Stockade” opens, Jones writes, “''He was held in confinement at the Stockade as a general prisoner while he waited for trial''.”{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=405}} Clearly, “awaited” is the appropriate word. Later, still writing in a straight-forward third-person narrator (or omniscient narrator) voice, Jones describes the “many officers, officers’ wives and officers’ children” near Honolulu’s “tennis courts, golf course, and bridle paths as all are looking very tanned and sportive.”{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=409}} Clearly, “sporty” is the appropriate word.

In defense of Jones’s prose, Garret refers to innovations with “colloquial forms” by Faulkner and O’Hara, and Carter extends this line of defense with a few brief evocations (e.g., of Bellow and Updike).{{sfn|Garret|1984|p=116}}{{sfn|Carter|1998|p=39}} However, I do not find these lines of defense persuasive. Where I see no lapse in an author’s use of the first-person and free indirect (e.g., for O’Hara, Faulkner, and Bellow), the defense does not seem worth extended comment in the time and space available. (I think that Faulkner, O’Hara, and Bellow employ idiomatic English more adeptly in using the free indirect).

I see such a lapse when Updike lapses into language too literary (e.g., too metaphorically ornate) to credibly reflect a character’s consciousness, which, compared to the stylistically masterful Updike, seems inappropriate, despite Updike’s lapses. Although I see some dubious use of idiomatic language in straightforward third-person narration divorced from the first-person indirect and free indirect in the work of William Faulkner, the comparison again seems generally inappropriate (i.e., too much a matter of an idiosyncratic syntax), as well as rather too complex for this effort.

The digression of the pros and cons of Jones’s possible stylistic shortcomings, where they turn up in Jones’s writing, seems less relevant to the assessment {{pg|328|329}}of that writing—''Eternity'', in particular—and seems less important than my defense of Jones. This focuses on how infrequently they turn up and how peripheral they are when they do turn up—most especially in ''From Here to Eternity''. In brief, the instances of poor writing that Jones’s stylistic critics have targeted tend to address occasional divergences from Jones’s best and most characteristic writing. This is a “transparent” mode of writing focused on dialogue backed by incisive descriptions of action and setting backed up by preponderantly adept excursions into the first-person indirect and divorced—mostly divorced—from overt authorial voice.

That mode of writing resembles Frye’s dramatic mode in which the author is hidden from the audience, and the audience “experiences content directly.”{{sfn|Frye|1957|p=229}}

This mode provides almost all of the words of ''From Here to Eternity'' and ''Whistle''. It provides enough of Some Came Running to constitute nearly all of Jones’s 1958 Signet abridgment of Running. It perhaps does not apply well to ''The Thin Red Line'' because, in that novel, Jones is far more involved in using the free indirect, in which he shifts between dialogue and physical description. The first-person-son-indirect variant of stream of consciousness jumps so frequently and swiftly from consciousness to consciousness to virtually create a collective consciousness of ''Thin Red Line’s'' GIs.

''From Here to Eternity'' can only receive glancing blows from the criticisms of Jones’s writing for that book because these are largely irrelevant to most of the book’s writing. The same can be said for ''The Thin Red Line'' and ''Whistle''. ''Some Came Running'' may be another story. (For convenience, I ignore all of Jones’s books, but only the four that were mentioned.) On the one hand, the power of its underlying narrative, documentary scope and cogency, and rich characterization seems to compare to that of ''From Here to Eternity''. (Here we have aspects of Jones’s creativity perhaps even more effectively expressed by Minnelli’s 1958 film than by Zinnemann’s excellent 1953 one.) Moreover, Jones scholars have claimed with great zeal thematic and spiritual merits for the voluminous stretches of writing in ''Running'' that do not conform to the model of transparent writing and drama-like novelistic presentation described here for ''Running''. Alas, with ''Running'', critics of Jones’s style have a large target. Perhaps champions of Jones might devise defenses for his literary style—say via elaboration of Garret’s claim that what looks awkward about the style of ''Running'' has an unappreciated idiomatic grace. However, such a defense seems to me no more than sketched.{{pg|329|330}}
===''The Naked and the Dead''===
Some critics found the structure of ''The Naked and the Dead'' baggy.{{efn|Dickstein|2005}} refers to Jones’s ''The Thin Red Line'' as “a tighter, more disciplined rejoinder to The Naked and the Dead” and charges Mailer with filling in his characters’ backgrounds “clumsily.”}} In particular, they have charged that its narrative is encumbered and diffused by the Time Machine profiles of principal characters and by a late usurpation of the protagonist’s role by Sergeant Croft. Here, I dispute these criticisms partly because they are put in a new, more accurate light that is more favorable to ''Naked'' when this is considered an instance of Moretti’s “modern epic.” Regarding the sometimes imputed ungainliness of the Time Machine segments, critics have overlooked the function of the Time Machine segments—not as a plot element in a well-structured novelistic narrative, but as a kind of post-Crash extension of the 1910-1930 sociological and linguistic profile of the U.S.A. provided by the social disparate cast of Dos Passos’s ''U.S.A.'' In doing this, they fail to judge ''Naked'' as a “modern epic” with stress on “a summation of a social and cultural totality” and as no simple traditional war novel.{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=11}}

Further, critics have tended to overlook the sheer propulsive vigor of ''Naked''’s narrative, which belies technical claims against this narrative’s construction.

Regarding the coherence of ''Naked'', this is quite remarkable considering the book’s social reach as a social chronicle, political allegory, and combat narrative. Suppose some of the book’s coherence rests on traditional nov- elastic foundations. In that case, some derive from the book’s ambitious modernist (i.e., modernist epic) reach for the expression of a capacious social world. The central cumulating dramas of the book’s Anopopei narrative are key to this coherence. To my mind, four interlocking “dramatic substructures” to the Anopopei narrative cohere into one visionary drama. One drama consists of the ''top-down fascistic reach'' of Cummings’s creation of the patrol as an attempted solution to his failures to either effectively assert the dominance of his authoritarian intellectual vision about the left-liberal Hearn or to advance his high career aspirations via his direction of the battle for Anopopei.

The second consists of the ''bottom-up fascistic reach'' of Croft’s attempted assertion of his will to power over Hearn by maneuvering his death and over his squad by pitting it against the symbolic and practical challenge of Mt Anaka. The third consists of the ''heroically solidaristic al-truism'' (and ''resistance'') entailed by Goldstein and Ridges’ attempted assertion of soldier solidarity and group survival in the face of Croft’s assertion of his will to power. The fourth and final drama consists of the ''managerial ascendance'' of Dalleson’s competently assisted usurpation of immediate pragmatic {{pg|330|331}}military success on Anopopei due to a nicely Tolstoyan combination of managerial competence and sheer chance.

''Naked''’s narrative elements cumulate well. The Cummings narrative ends powerfully with the death of Hearn and the trumping of Cummings’s Mt. Anaka strategy by Dalleson’s sea strategy. The Croft story ends with powerful irony with the failure of the Mt. Anaka expedition, especially in the wake of the boldness of the Hearn offing and the strength shown by Croft in the initial attempt at the crossing. The heroic tale of Goldstein and Ridges serves as a nice dramatic and thematic counterpoint to the high and low fascist authoritarianism of Cummings and Croft and the softer, friendlier managerial authoritarianism of Dalleson. The Dalleson tale resolves itself and all the others with the resolution of fascistic and humanistic strains of narrative in the triumph of a managerial competence marked by some mediocrity and much good luck. The range of narrative strands—and their wrap-up with the Dalleson strand—offset the somewhat disproportionate force of the Croft strand, at least as we finish reading, if not necessarily in longer-term memory.

If ''Naked'' allegory helps provide a strong focus, so does the integrative cumulative force of the book’s narrative. This is not merely some incoherent—or coherent—near apotheosis of Croft’s vivid psychopathy but a symmetrical dystopia of fascist foreboding high (as with Cummings) and low (as with Croft). Moreover, it is not merely the often noted dystopian vision of fascist undercurrent at War and possible fascist post-war as well that is conceived of as a harbinger of the dangers and restraints of an age of Eisenhower, managerialism, and centrist liberalism, surface success, and contentment and underlying antagonisms as one can imagine.

The social-documentary scope of ''Naked''’s Time Machines segments and the reach and focus of its allegory fits Moretti’s model of the “modern epic” with its aspirations toward the expression of the “whole breadth” of “the total world of a nation and epoch.”{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=3}}

This modernistic epic character of ''Naked'' vitiates much of the force of arguments against ''Naked'' as a loosely constructed attempt at a traditional novel. Within the context of a ‘modern epic’, ''Naked''’s Time Machines segments and allegorical anatomy function as social visions with literary standing in their own right. That they take little or nothing from the effectiveness of ''Naked''’s more conventional narrative and novelistic pleasures only enhances ''Naked'' as a multifaceted modern epic as much as the novelistic character of{{pg|331|332}} ''Eternity'' is consistent with the type of writing that Jones does best (and does almost exclusively in his first fiction). ''Naked''’s range of literary performances is consistent with the book’s genre, variegated skills, and modes of Mailer’s writing.

This is not to say that the conceptualization of ''Naked'' as a modern epic provides any defense of criticisms of ''Naked''’s use of language in a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph literary style. Much of Mailer’s style shows the limitations of its reliance on a simple combination of dialogue, transparent physical description of the speakers and their settings, and the use of first-person indirect (after the models of James T. Farrell’s ''Studs Lonegan'' and Tolstoy’s ''War and Peace'' and ''Anna Karenina'').{{efn|The atmosphere of ''The Naked and the Dead'', the overspirit, is Tolstoyan; the rococo comes out of Dos Passos; the fundamental slogging style from Farrell, and the occasional overrich descriptions from Wolfe,” said Mailer to interviewer Peter {{harvtxt|Manso|1985}}.}}

However, I would argue that this style is very serviceable for expressing the characters and character interactions at the center of much of the book. The characters are memorable, with several—at least Hearn, Cummings, and Croft— drawn with depth and dynamism. For example, we see Hearn’s intellectual confidence with Cummings and insecurity with “the men” of his platoon; we see Cummings both as aloof intellectual and commander, as schemer maneuvering Hearn into the dangerous patrol, and as the deflated figure who must acknowledge Dalleson’s credit as victor of the Anopopei campaign; and we see Croft as not just a hard and capable commander of men but as one in the throes of a mythic conflict with Mt. Anaka that resonates with Ahab’s quest for ''Moby Dick''.

More generally, lesser characters like Martinez and Goldstein show development, and the dialogue and accounts of soldiering ring forcefully true. Indeed, the physical action of men in battle with the Japanese and with na- ture is often eloquent. For example, the opening rises to the level of tolstoy in his epic descriptive mode on Napoleon’s Russian campaign. Here it is: “Nobody could sleep. When the morning came, assault craft would be low- ered and a first wave of troops would ride through the surf and charge ashore on the beach of Anapopei. All over the ship, all through the convoy, there was a knowledge that in a few hours some of them were going to be dead.”{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=3}} The description of a storm hitting base camp is especially memorable:

<blockquote>The wind tore through the bivouac area like a great scythe, slashing the palm fronds from the coconut trees, blasting the rain before it. As they looked, they saw a tent jerk upward from its</blockquote>{{pg|332|333}} <blockquote>mooring, steam away in the wind, flapping like a terrified bird...
A tremendous gust of wind bellied under the tent blew it out like a balloon, and then the ridgepole snapped, tearing a rent in the poncho. The tent fell upon the four men like a wet sheet . . . . “Where are you?” he shouted, and then the folds of the tent filled out again like a sail, ripped loose altogether, and went eddying and twisting through the air . . . . All the tents were down in the bivouac area, and here and there a soldier would go skittering through the mud, staggering from the force of the wind with the odd jerking motions of a man walking in a motion picture when the film is unwinding too rapidly.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|pp=86-88}}</blockquote>

The descriptions of the platoon’s frequent physical exhaustion achieve a visceral force:

<blockquote>Their ears filled with the quick, frenetic rustling of insects and animals, the thin screeching rage of mosquitoes, and the raucous babbling of monkeys and parakeets . . . . Slowly, inevitably, the men felt the water soak through the greased waterproofing of their shoes and slosh up to their knees whenever they had to wade through a deeper portion of the stream.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=398}}</blockquote>

Those descriptions of the platoon on patrol winding through the Kunai grass formed a pictorial beauty that would become one of Walsh’s chief inspirations in his film version of ''The Naked and the Dead''.

Turning to the stylistic merits of the Time Machine segments—and not just their proclaimed obtrusiveness as excessively flashy, overly documented, philosophically deterministic baggage for an effective war novel and campaign narrative—critics have been unperceptive. They have also dismissed the Time Machine segments as overly derivative—as too closely modelled after Dos Passos’s telegraphed biographies of national elites in the ''U.S.A.'' However, in making this criticism, critics have overlooked how Mailer’s use of the Time Machine devices follows Pound’s modernist injunction to “make it new.” In particular, they have missed how thoroughly democratic and sometimes playful Mailer’s Time Machines are.{{pg|333|334}}
In contrast with Dos Passos’s use of his profiles to telegraph the life of important national figures in shaping the world, where he situates his cast of rather everyday fictional characters, Mailer’s Time Machine bios file numerous faces of ’everyman.’ They do so via transferring Dos Passos’s elite-oriented device to a popular subject matter. As Mailer writes in the first Time Machine, which profiles Julio Martinez, “Mexican boys also breathe the American Fables, also want to be heroes, aviators, lovers, financiers.”{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=55}} This is to say that they also want to be figures like those of the ''U.S.A.'' biographers, heroes like Jack Reed and TR, aviators like the Wright Brothers, lovers like Rudolph Valentino, and financiers like Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan. They have also failed to notice such playful touches as we find in Mailer’s Woodrow Wilson Time Machine episode.

This evokes Dos Passos’s Meester Veelson biography of President Woodrow Wilson in ''The 42nd Parallel'' in more than title. At the outset of his profile of the white-trash Wilson, Mailer presents him in “''a pair of round, silver-rimmed glasses''” reminiscent of those that appeared on the patrician Southern President in the photograph.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=326}}

In addition, Mailer’s prose sometimes attains a roiling power and dignity, most especially in its “overspirit” mode, using its use or near use of the “heroic” line: “Ahead, ahead, ahead, ahead, moving” catches the cadence of this pentameter, splendidly detailed for Mailer’s writings by Christopher Ricks. For example, “The moon was out, limning the deck housings.”{{sfn|Ricks|2008|p=10}} Returning to Mailer on the movement of that 77mm artillery piece, we have a final phrase that begins with the heroic line:

<blockquote>Once or twice, a flare filtered a wan and delicate bluish light over them, the light almost lost in the dense foliage through which it had to pass. In the brief moment it lasted, they were caught at their guns in classic straining motions with the form and beauty of a frieze. The water and the dark slime of the trail twice blackened their uniforms. Moreover, the light shone on them instantly, and their faces stood out, white and contorted. Even the guns had a slender articulated beauty like an insect reared back on its wire haunches. Then darkness swirled about them again, and they ground the guns forward mindlessly, a line of ants dragging their burden back to their hole.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=116}}</blockquote> {{pg|334|335}} <blockquote>That is, we have, with some intriguing mix of heroic irony, Mailer’s dignification of the routine derided as the “heroic” beat of “a line of ants dragging their burden back”{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=116}}</blockquote>

Neither ''The Naked and the Dead'' nor ''From Here to Eternity'' is remarkable for such stylistic innovation or sustained eloquence as we find, say, in ''The Sun Also Rises'', ''The Sound and the Fury'', ''Invisible Man'', A''ugie Marsh'', or ''Pale Fire''. Each, however, is masterful in realizing its basic fictional design. ''From Here to Eternity'' dramatizes a social milieu unexcelled in American writing. ''The Naked and the Dead'' provides a vision of the U.S.A. combat in the Pacific theater of World War II and during the preceding decade, plus a look into the future. Stylistically, ''From Here to Eternity'' frequently attains the peculiar eloquence of great drama in which the audience witnesses intense action directly. ''The Naked and the Dead'' rises intermittently to a level of stylistic eloquence above and beyond the call of its particular fictional duty.

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

==Citations==
{{Reflist}}

==Work Cited==
{{refbegin|20em|indent=yes}}
* {{cite book |last=Burgess |first=Anthony |url= |title=99 Novels: The Best English Novels Since 1939 |publisher=New York: Summit |year=1984 |isbn= |location= |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Carson |first=Tom |url= |title=”The Hell with Literature: James Jones’s Unvarnished Truths” |date=28 September 1984 |publisher=Village Voice Literary Supplement |isbn= |edition=1st |location= |pages=18-20 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Carter |first=Steven R. |url= |title=James Jones: An American Literary Orientalist Master |date= |publisher=United States: U of Illinois P |year=1998 |isbn= |location= |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |url= |title=Leopards in the Temple: The Transformation of American Fiction, 1945-1970 |publisher=Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP |year=2005 |isbn= |location= |pages=25 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |author=Frye |first=Northrop |url= |title=Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. |publisher=Princeton: Princeton UP |year=1957 |isbn= |location= |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Frye |first=Northrop |title=The Four Forms of Prose Fiction |url= |journal= Hudson Review |volume= 2 |issue= 4 |pages=582-598 |date=1950 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Garret |first=George P.|title=James Jones |date=1984 |publisher=New York: Harcourt |isbn= |edition= |location= |pages=100 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Jones |first=James |url= |title=From Here to Eternity |publisher=New York: Scribner |year=1951 |isbn= |location= ||pages=3-858|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |url= |title=The Naked and the Dead |date= |publisher=New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston|isbn= |location= |publication-date=1948 |pages=86-88|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Manso |first=Peter |url= |title=Mailer: His Life and Times |publisher=New York: Simon |isbn= |location= |publication-date=1985 |pages=|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Meyer |first=Michael |url= |title=The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing |publisher=Boston: Bedford |year=2005 |isbn= |location= |pages= 2128|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Moretti |first=Franco |title=Modern Epic: The World System from Goethe to Garcia Marquez |date=1996 |publisher=London: Verso |isbn= |location= |pages=11-14|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Ricks |first=Christopher |title=”Mailers Rhythm” The Norman Mailer Society Conference |isbn= |edition=Keynote Speaker |location=Provincetown, MA |publication-date=2008|pages=10|ref=harv }}
{{refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:From Here to Eternity and The Naked and the Dead: Premiere to Eternity?}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/From Here to Eternity and The Naked and the Dead: Premiere to Eternity?

2025-04-25T12:50:21Z

Grlucas: Save. Fixes: page numbers, paragraphs, words changed from original text (!). More must be done.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style=”font-size:22px;”>{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>''From Here to Eternity'' and ''The Naked and the Dead'': Premiere to Eternity?}}
{{MR05}}
{{byline|last=Hicks|first=Alexander |abstract=A review of ''From Here To Eternity'' and ''The Naked and The Dead''. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr05hic}}
{{cquote|The novelist deals with personality, with characters wearing their personae or social masks. He needs the framework of a stable society, and many of our best novelists have been conventional to the verge of fussiness. The romancer deals with individuality, with characters in vacuo idealized by Revery. However conservative he may be, something nihilistic and untamable will likely break out of his pages.|author=Northrop Frye|source=''The Four Forms of Prose Fiction''{{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}}}}

{{cquote|The epic requires as its object the occurrence of an action, which must be expressed in the breadth of its circumstances and relations as a rich event connected with the total world of a nation and epoch.|author=Franco Moretti|source=''Modern Epic:The World System from Goethe to Garcia Marquez''{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=11}}}}

{{dc|dc=J|ames Jones was a born novelist}}, and Norman Mailer was a born writer. This distinction holds across the two authors’ life work. I illustrate this distinction here for only the authors’ first published novels, ''The Naked and the Dead'' and ''From Here to Eternity''. However, these illustrations help assess the quality of these two books and each author’s career.{{pg|318|319}}
==Two Types of Fiction==
===''From Here to Eternity''===
In the classical taxonomic terms of Northrop Frye, From Here to Eternity is very much what Frye means by a ‘novel.’ Its characters do indeed wear “their personae or social masks.”{{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}} Robert E. Lee Prewitt is very much a Private First Class, Milton Anthony Warden a Sergeant, and Ms. Karen Holmes a housewife. (They are vivid and memorable, yet seldom capitalize much on eccentrics as Mark such well-remembered Dickens characters as ''David Copperfield’s'' Mr. Macawber or ''Martin Chuzzlewit’s'' Seth Pecksniff.) The book’s stable societal framework is the U.S. Army just preceding World War II. Right at ''Eternity’s'' outset, we are given the novelistic focus on a character in a social context:<blockquote>When he finished packing, he walked out onto the third-floor porch of the barracks, brushing the dust from his hands. He was a very neat and deceptively slim young man in summer khakis that were still fresh early in the morning.

He leaned his elbows on the porch edge and stood looking down through the screen at the familiar scene of the barracks square laid out below, with the tiers of porches dark in the face of the three-story concrete barracks fronting the square. He felt a half-familiar affection for this vantage point that he was leaving.

Below him, under the blows of the February Hawaiian sun, the quadrangle gasped defenselessly like an exhausted fighter. Through the heat haze and the thin mid-morning film of the parched red dust, a muted orchestra of sounds emerged: the clankings of steel-wheeled carts bouncing over brick, the slappings of oiled leather sling straps, the shuffling beat of scorched shoe soles, and the hoarse expletives of irritated noncoms.

Somewhere along the line, he thought, these things have become your heritage. You are multiplied by each sound that you hear. And you cannot deny them, without denying with them the purpose of your own existence. Yet now, he told himself, you are denying them, by renouncing the place that they have given you.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=3}}</blockquote>{{pg|319|320}}
By the end of Chapter Two, we know of the principal protagonist, Prewitt, whose place in the Company he is leaving, and we know something about the Kentucky mountains from which he hails. Within a few more chapters, Prewitt is deeply engaged in his new world of Company G: the stern but fatherly Warden, the jokester’s friend Pfc. Maggio, company commander Holmes, and the numerous sharply drawn men who will “soljer” and chat and play cards with Prewitt and try to force him to box for the Company or almost make him wish he had, including Anderson, Bloom, Chaote, Kowalski, Leva, Mazzioli, Preem, and Stark.

The dialogue is masterful. Physical and social action is evoked by concrete description and adept use of the empathetic first-person indirect, a vivid and seamlessly shifting point of view on the action and its social circumstance. If there is a mode of writing other than Frye’s ‘novel’ that is aptly evoked by ''Eternity'', it is Frye’s ‘drama’ in which the author hides from the audience and their direct experience.{{sfn|Frye|1957|p=239}} Characters jump off the page, as in this early exchange between Prewitt and Maggio:

<blockquote>“If I had knew,” he said to Prewitt, whose bunk was two beds from his own in Chief Choate’s squad, “if I had only knew what this man’s Army had been like. Of all the people in this outfit, they give that vacant Pfc to Bloom. Because he is a punchie.”

”What did you expect, Angelo?” Prew grinned.

“He aint even a good soljer, mind you,” Maggio said bitterly. “He’s ony just a punchie. I’m only out of ree-croot drill a month and I’m a better soljer than Bloom is.”

“Soljerin aint what does it.”

“But it ought a be. You wait, man. If I ever get out of this Army, you just wait. Draft or no draft, they’ll never get me back.”

“Balls,” Prew grinned. “You got all the makins of a thirty year
man. I can see it on you a block away.”

“Dont say that,” Maggio said, violently. “I mean it. I like you,
but I dont like even you that much. Thirty year man! Not me, buddy. If I’m goin to be a valet, yard man, and general handyman for some fuckin officer, I’m goin to get paid for it, see?”

“You’ll re-enlist,” Prew said.</blockquote>{{pg|320|321}}<blockquote>“I’ll re-enlist,” Maggio said chanting the old bugle call parody, “in a pig’s asshole. If anybody should of had that rating, man, you should of had it. You’re the best soljer in this outfit for my dough. By a hunert million miles.”{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=127}}</blockquote>

Dramatic conflict arises with great naturalness and force from the well-etched milieu:

<blockquote>Andy was dealing when the saloon doors opened and Pfc Bloom came in, pushing the door back so hard it banged against the wall and the swung back and forth squeaking loudly. Pfc Bloom advanced on the men around the blanket with a heavy, meaty confidence grinning and shaking his flat kinky head, so big the tremendous shoulders seemed to fill the door.
“Quiet, jerk,” Maggio said. “You want the CQ up here and break up the game?”

“To hell with the CQ,” Bloom said,in his customary loud vice. “And you too, you little Wop.”

A transformation went over Maggio. He stood up and walked around the blanket, up to the huge Bloom who towered over him.

“Listen,” he said in a contorted voice. “I’m particular who calls me Wop. I aint big and tough, and I aint one of Dynamite’s third rate punchies. But I’m still Maggio to you. I wont mess with you. I work you over, I’ll do it with a chair or a knife.” He stared up at Bloom, his thin face twisted, his eyes blazing.

“Oh yeah?” Bloom said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Maggio said sarcastically. Bloom took a step to- ward him and he leaned his head forward pugnaciously on the thin bony shoulders, and there was the sudden attentive silence that always precedes a fight.

“Lay off, Bloom,” Prew said, surprised at the clear loudness of his voice in the silence. “Come on and sit down, Angelo. Five up to you.”

“I call,” Maggio said without looking around. “Take off, you bum,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away. Bloom laughed after him self-confidently and nastily.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=137}}</blockquote>{{pg|321|322}}Though the book does not appear to aspire to any allegorical significance beyond easily generalizable but hardly unusual outsider-insider, self-society, subordinate-superordinate tensions central to its dramatic construction, its typical “dramatic-novelistic” mode of expression incisively and elaborately illustrates insights into the relation of the individual to society within the specifically military hierarchal orders. ''Eternity'' rises eloquently to nice ironies of social aspiration and class, war, and peace, as in the book’s final pages on the status distortions of Lerene’s recollections of Prewitt’s patriotism and war. Take Karen Holmes and her son on the latter as they leave Honolulu Harbor:

<blockquote>From this far out, if you did not already know it was there you couldnt have seen it.

Behind her, the five boys had swelled to seven and had given up being shuffleboards and taken to shooting at each other with cocked thumbs and explosive “Bohww!”s from behind corners and stanchions.

She took the six flower leis off over her head and dropped them over the side. This was as good a place to drop them over as any. Diamond head, Koko Head, Makapuu Head. Perhaps Koko Head was the best place, really. The six leis fell together and the wind blew them back against the side of the ship and out of sight and she did not see them light on the water.

“Mother,” her son said from behind her. “I’m hungry. When do we eat on this old boat?”

“Pretty soon now,” she said.

“Mother, do you think the war will last long enough so I can graduate from the Point and be in it? Jerry Wilcox said it wouldnt.”

“No,” she said, “I dont think it’ll last that long.”

“Well, gee whiz, mother,” her son said, “I want to be in it.”

“Well, cheer up,” Karen said, “and dont let it worry you. You
may miss this one, but you’ll be just the right age for the next one.”

“You really think so, mother?” her son said anxiously.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=858}}</blockquote>

The dramatic arch of the multi-stranded narrative is strong and clear. Prewitt’s refusal to box for the company, Maggio’s mounting resistance to the{{pg|322|323}} abuse of military power and class structures, and Warden’s bold consummation of his desire for Karen Holmes provide parallel disequilibria that trigger a narrative of beleaguered and in Prewitt and Maggio’s cases, doomed quests for “soljer” autonomy within a hierarchical social order. These three central narratives cascade outward, rippling across the others: Maggio’s rebellion is intensified by Prewitt’s ‘treatment’ by Holmes and the Company Boxers, and Maggio’s destruction in the Stockade deepens Prewitt’s rebelliousness. Ironic parallels between the Prewitt-Lorene affair and the Warden-Holmes affair cap the book’s conclusion aboard the liner on which Karen Holmes and ''Alma ‘Lorene’ Burke'' leave Honolulu shortly following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor and war provide a second parallel wave of disequilibria that concentrate the book’s action, speeding it to the conclusion: the AWOL Prewitt is shot by a Wartime sentry while seeking to return to his company, and the call of war cancels Warden’s committed involvement with Karen Holmes.

If there are jarring notes in ''Eternity'', they are stylistic. They are mainly comprised of faulty diction and idiosyncratic rhetoric that tends to arise when the writing veers off into an authorial voice distanced from specific characters and found within sociologically detailed dramatic situations. I address instances of the “bad” writing that has tended to conspire against the book’s chances for immortality, especially after eventually falling under the shadow of extensively negative reviews reviling Jones’s style that ''Some Came Running'' cast.

===''The Naked and the Dead''===
In the terms set out by Frye on the novel and romance, Mailer is as much an author of romances as of novels. Many characteristic portions of Mailer’s fiction express the subjectivity of the “psychological archetype” and “[radiate] a glow of subjective intensity.”{{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}} This tendency in Mailer’s writing is perhaps most intensely expressed in the first-person narration of ''An American Dream’s'' Steve Rojack and The Executioner’s Song’s polyphony of consciousnesses. (Song is perhaps more a socially wide-ranging chronicle of snatches of consciousness rather than action scenes.) Although ''Naked'' is hardly a romance, by the ascent of Mt. Anaka, Croft becomes a “psychological archetype” who “radiates a glow of subjective intensity.”{{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}} Indeed, with Croft, “something nihilistic and untamable” seems, in Frye’s words, “to keep break-{{pg|323|324}}ing out of [Mailer’s] pages” as would occur in much subsequent writing by Mailer.{{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}} However, a novelistic romancer, even as a fiction writer, will not suffice in Mailer. His work resonates not only as novel and romance but also as confession (close to the tenor of O’Shaughnessy’s tale) and anatomy or “Mannipean satire” (with Mailer himself in ''The Armies of the Night'' and with the Presidential contenders of Mailer’s presidential campaign chronicles).

Still, not even evocation of the full range of Frye’s four fictive modes will suffice to categorize much of Mailer’s work. In particular, The Naked and the Dead evokes Moretti’s reference to the appearance of literary “one-off cases, oddities, anomalies” in his discussion of that variant of the high modernist fiction he terms “the modern epic” in his 1996 ''The Modern Epic''. If the original epic can be boiled down rather conventionally into a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation, the “modern epic” is a variation of the epic in which the heroic is downplayed and the expression of the “total world of a nation and epoch” extends to the “supranational” sphere, in which we encounter a somewhat incongruous ungainly mix of modes of expression—not only the very novelistic accounts of exchanges among the tale’s principals but the confessional ardor of Ishmael’s voice when he accounts his high spirits, the cataloging of seamen’s conversation during watches, the lessons in cytology, the pseudo-Shakespearean soliloquies of Ahab along on the forecastle.{{sfn|Meyer|2005|p=2128}}{{sfn|Moretti|1996|pp=11-14}} With the Ahab-like ardor of Croft ascending Mt. Anaka, the social and linguistic cataloging of social types and vernaculars in Time Machine and Chow Line segments, and the epic qualities of the book’s framing and charting, and detailed depiction of the Anopopei campaign and its combat actions; and the fundamental novelistic interactions among the principals, each with members of his immediate sphere—Cummings, Hearn, and Croft, each with his circle of underlings—''The Naked and the Dead'' fits the template of the “modern epic” quite well.

Although ''Naked'' has no individual hero—Croft is arguably an antihero— the action of the Army on Anopopei might be considered heroic. For example, the book begins with a statement about the invading force—the memorable “Nobody could sleep . . . all over the ship, all through the convoy, there was a knowledge that in a few hours some of them were going to{{pg|324|325}} be dead”—and it ends with a description of the “mop up” or “successful” campaign.{{sfn|Meyer|2005}}{{sfn|Moretti|1996}}

Further, ''Naked''’s use of its Time Machine segments reaches out toward the “expression” of the “total world of a nation and epoch.”{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=11}} These devices democratically apply the model of Dos Passos’s elite biographic profiles of great Americans in the ''U.S.A.'' to the description of the American “every man.”

In place of ''U.S.A.''’s Jack Reed and TR, aviators like the Wright Brothers, lovers like Rudolph Valentino, financiers like Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan, we get Hispanic Texans like Julio Martinez; Texan and Virgin- ian rednecks Sam Croft and Woodrow Wilson; Montana miner and hobo Red Velsen; working-class Bostonian Irishman Will Gallagher and working-class Jewish Brooklynite Joey Goldstein; small-town Northeastern/Midwestern middle-class William Brown; Northeastern/Midwestern, upper-class, Harvard-educated left intellectual Robert Hearn; and Northeastern/Midwestern, upper-class, West Point-educated Far Right intellectual General Cummings.

Indeed, ''Naked''’s use of its Time Machine segments extends the ''U.S.A.''’s encyclopedia of American social types and speech during the second and third decades of the twentieth century to the third and early fourth decades of the century, for the Time Machine profiles deal with the biographies that highlight the preponderantly 1930s and early 1940s adolescence and youth of ''Naked''’s cast on its principal 1944-ish stage.

''Naked''’s allegorical structure also contributes to the book’s “expression” of a “total world of a nation and epoch.”{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=11}} As an allegory, The Naked and the Dead is dystopian. It is, in part, a dystopia of fascistic foreboding expressed both in terms of General Cumming’s highbrow aspirations of a domestically authoritarian and internationally imperialistic United States and in terms of Sergeant Croft’s thuggish service for Cummings (i.e., his role in the elimination of the annoying Lieutenant Hearn for Cummings).

However, it articulates a more nuanced vision than the sometimes noted dystopian X-ray of fascist undercurrent at War and a possible fascistic post-war. It also voices the vision of the unexpected military victory that the hum-drum and luck Major Dalleson led right under General Cummings’s nose—a triumph of competence and good luck that is a harbinger less of fascist totalitarianism than of managerialism and centrist liberalism fringed by Cold War hysteria of the Truman and Eisenhower eras. Mailer closes off not with some extension of Cummings’s subtly maneuvered elimination of the intellectually annoying and faintly insubordinate Liberal Lieutenant Hearn.

{{pg|325|326}}
Instead, he leaves us with Major Dalleson captivated by the USO poster and PR charm of the emerging, somewhat demilitarized managerial age, thinking with more innocence than is imaginable for Cummings, “He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co-ordinate grid system laid over it.”{{sfn|Moretti|1996}}

==Style, Construction, and Assessment==
===''From Here to Eternity''===
Jones has been criticized for bad writing. The main site of this criticism and defenses against it is in writing on ''Some Came Running''. However, as we shall see, these criticisms had precursors in responses to ''From Here to Eternity''.{{sfn|Garret|1984|p=100}} Writing on ''Some Came Running'', Edmund Fuller wrote, “[I]f you like bad grammar...shoddy and befuddled philosophy, ''Some Came Running'' is your book,” and Time that “Choctaw rather than English would appear to be [Jones’s] first language.”{{sfn|Carter|1998|p=38}} And, J. Donald Adams attributed Jones with having a “fatuous pride in being illiterate.”{{sfn|Carter|1998|p=38}}

On ''Eternity’s'' literary quality, Burgess{{sfn|Burgess|1984}} wrote the following in ''The Caine Mutiny'' section of his 99 Novels: “[Mutiny] stands somewhere between Mailer’s ''The Naked and the Dead'' . . . and James Jones’s ''From Here to Eternity''. It has some literary distinction, far more than Jones’s, much less than Mailer’s.”{{sfn|Carter|1998|p=56}}

Similarly, I recall a 1960s episode of ''The David Susskind Show'' in which Gore Vidal dismissed Jones’s book for bad writing after praising Fred Zin-Neumann’s film ''Eternity''. Although I am both a Jones and a Bloom fan, I was not surprised when I realized that Jones was entirely unmentioned in the extensive critical works of the stylistically finicky Harold Bloom.

Defenders of Jones’s style cast light on its positive and negative criticism. For example, Tom Carson writes, “[A]t its crowded, vernacular best [the prose] does just what he wanted to do, involve you in the events, and put you inside the characters’ heads with striking veracity and conviction.”{{sfn|Carson|1984|p=19}} George Garret writes that “Jones, as he wrote ''Running'', was involved in an experiment with language, a kind of discovery . . . he calls it working with ‘colloquial forms’ by which he means not merely the free and easy use of the living, spoken American language on dialogue or first-person narration but an attempt to carry it into the narrative itself, into third-person narration.”{{sfn|Carson|1984|p=116}} These defenses focus on that aspect of Jones’s writing that his critics seem to stress as his weakest attribute: his writing style.{{pg|326|327}}
One concentration of stylistic criticism seems to focus on Jones’s attempts to put readers “inside the characters’ heads.”{{sfn|Carson|1984|p=19}} This mainly consists of the use of the first-person indirect and free indirect, in which movement between a third-person mimicry of a character’s consciousness approaching stream of consciousness and authorial comment on characters’ consciousness or simple third person occurs, for Jones seldom lapses into the first person in ‘third person’ fictions like ''Eternity'' and ''Running''. This second paragraph of the book’s first page, already quoted above, illustrates the sort of writing:

<blockquote>Through the heat haze and the thin mid-morning film of the parched red dust came up a muted orchestra of sounds: the clankings of steel wheeled carts bouncing over the brick, the slapping of oiled leather slingstraps.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=3}}</blockquote>

So does the third paragraph of ''Eternity’s'' opening:

<blockquote>Somewhere along the line, he thought, these things have become your heritage. You are multiplied by each sound that you hear. And you cannot deny them without denying with them the purpose of your own existence. Yet now, he told himself, you are denying them by denying the place they have given you.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=3}}</blockquote>

A second concentration of stylistic criticism refers to instances of straightforward third-person narration, a voice mainly confined to the tellingly italsized introductory pages to “Book Four: The Stockade.”

Examples of the first sort of faulted writing mainly occur when Jones gages in extended attempts at first-person indirect and free indirect, and his language grows either too arcane to ring true as a plausible voice of the character overheard or too oddly vernacular to work as a shift into authorial voice. Even writing in a tone ostensibly close to a character, Jones may move into an oddly eccentric rhetoric that manages to violate the standards of verisimilitude in the mimicry of a character’s use of language required of the first-person indirect or the standards of good authorial rhetoric, or both standards at once. An example of a double violation arises in the early pages of “Book Four: The Stockade” where Jones describes Prewitt’s thoughts or feelings regarding “a great conflict of fear” that “lay rises flapping from the depth {{pg|327|328}}like a giant manta ray, looming larger and bigger, looming huge, up out of the green depths that you can look down into through a water glass and see the anchor cable dwindling in a long arch down into invisibility, up from far below that even, flapping the two wing fins of choice and ego caught square in the middle.”{{sfn|Jones|1951|pp=410-411}} This refers to fears that Prewitt thinks his unthinking candor precipitates in the minds of others (in this case fears of homosexuality in the mind of Maggio).

Examples of the second sort of blemished writing arise in “Book Four: The Stockade” when we shift into an authorial voice far from that dramatic mode in which the book’s style approximates a dramatic mode in which the audience experiences content directly. In the straight-out italics with which “The Stockade” opens, Jones writes, “''He was held in confinement at the Stockade as a general prisoner while he waited for trial''.”{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=405}} Clearly, “awaited” is the appropriate word. Later, still writing in a straight-forward third-person narrator (or omniscient narrator) voice, Jones describes the “many officers, officers’ wives and officers’ children” near Honolulu’s “tennis courts, golf course, and bridle paths as all are looking very tanned and sportive.”{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=409}} Clearly, “sporty” is the appropriate word.

In defense of Jones’s prose, Garret refers to innovations with “colloquial forms” by Faulkner and O’Hara, and Carter extends this line of defense with a few brief evocations (e.g., of Bellow and Updike).{{sfn|Garret|1984|p=116}}{{sfn|Carter|1998|p=39}} However, I do not find these lines of defense persuasive. Where I see no lapse in an author’s use of the first-person and free indirect (e.g., for O’Hara, Faulkner, and Bellow), the defense does not seem worth extended comment in the time and space available. (I think that Faulkner, O’Hara, and Bellow employ idiomatic English more adeptly in using the free indirect).

I see such a lapse when Updike lapses into language too literary (e.g., too metaphorically ornate) to credibly reflect a character’s consciousness, which, compared to the stylistically masterful Updike, seems inappropriate, despite Updike’s lapses. Although I see some dubious use of idiomatic language in straightforward third-person narration divorced from the first-person indirect and free indirect in the work of William Faulkner, the comparison again seems generally inappropriate (i.e., too much a matter of an idiosyncratic syntax), as well as rather too complex for this effort.

The digression of the pros and cons of Jones’s possible stylistic shortcomings, where they turn up in Jones’s writing, seems less relevant to the assessment {{pg|328|329}}of that writing—''Eternity'', in particular—and seems less important than my defense of Jones. This focuses on how infrequently they turn up and how peripheral they are when they do turn up—most especially in ''From Here to Eternity''. In brief, the instances of poor writing that Jones’s stylistic critics have targeted tend to address occasional divergences from Jones’s best and most characteristic writing. This is a “transparent” mode of writing focused on dialogue backed by incisive descriptions of action and setting backed up by preponderantly adept excursions into the first-person indirect and divorced—mostly divorced—from overt authorial voice.

That mode of writing resembles Frye’s dramatic mode in which the author is hidden from the audience, and the audience “experiences content directly.”{{sfn|Frye|1957|p=229}}

This mode provides almost all of the words of ''From Here to Eternity'' and ''Whistle''. It provides enough of Some Came Running to constitute nearly all of Jones’s 1958 Signet abridgment of Running. It perhaps does not apply well to ''The Thin Red Line'' because, in that novel, Jones is far more involved in using the free indirect, in which he shifts between dialogue and physical description. The first-person-son-indirect variant of stream of consciousness jumps so frequently and swiftly from consciousness to consciousness to virtually create a collective consciousness of ''Thin Red Line’s'' GIs.

''From Here to Eternity'' can only receive glancing blows from the criticisms of Jones’s writing for that book because these are largely irrelevant to most of the book’s writing. The same can be said for ''The Thin Red Line'' and ''Whistle''. ''Some Came Running'' may be another story. (For convenience, I ignore all of Jones’s books, but only the four that were mentioned.) On the one hand, the power of its underlying narrative, documentary scope and cogency, and rich characterization seems to compare to that of ''From Here to Eternity''. (Here we have aspects of Jones’s creativity perhaps even more effectively expressed by Minnelli’s 1958 film than by Zinnemann’s excellent 1953 one.) Moreover, Jones scholars have claimed with great zeal thematic and spiritual merits for the voluminous stretches of writing in ''Running'' that do not conform to the model of transparent writing and drama-like novelistic presentation described here for ''Running''. Alas, with ''Running'', critics of Jones’s style have a large target. Perhaps champions of Jones might devise defenses for his literary style—say via elaboration of Garret’s claim that what looks awkward about the style of ''Running'' has an unappreciated idiomatic grace. However, such a defense seems to me no more than sketched.{{pg|329|330}}
===''The Naked and the Dead''===
Some critics found the structure of ''The Naked and the Dead'' baggy.{{efn|Dickstein|2005}} refers to Jones’s ''The Thin Red Line'' as “a tighter, more disciplined rejoinder to The Naked and the Dead” and charges Mailer with filling in his characters’ backgrounds “clumsily.”}} In particular, they have charged that its narrative is encumbered and diffused by the Time Machine profiles of principal characters and by a late usurpation of the protagonist’s role by Sergeant Croft. Here, I dispute these criticisms partly because they are put in a new, more accurate light that is more favorable to ''Naked'' when this is considered an instance of Moretti’s “modern epic.” Regarding the sometimes imputed ungainliness of the Time Machine segments, critics have overlooked the function of the Time Machine segments—not as a plot element in a well-structured novelistic narrative, but as a kind of post-Crash extension of the 1910-1930 sociological and linguistic profile of the U.S.A. provided by the social disparate cast of Dos Passos’s ''U.S.A.'' In doing this, they fail to judge ''Naked'' as a “modern epic” with stress on “a summation of a social and cultural totality” and as no simple traditional war novel.{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=11}}

Further, critics have tended to overlook the sheer propulsive vigor of ''Naked''’s narrative, which belies technical claims against this narrative’s construction.

Regarding the coherence of ''Naked'', this is quite remarkable considering the book’s social reach as a social chronicle, political allegory, and combat narrative. Suppose some of the book’s coherence rests on traditional nov- elastic foundations. In that case, some derive from the book’s ambitious modernist (i.e., modernist epic) reach for the expression of a capacious social world. The central cumulating dramas of the book’s Anopopei narrative are key to this coherence. To my mind, four interlocking “dramatic substructures” to the Anopopei narrative cohere into one visionary drama. One drama consists of the ''top-down fascistic reach'' of Cummings’s creation of the patrol as an attempted solution to his failures to either effectively assert the dominance of his authoritarian intellectual vision about the left-liberal Hearn or to advance his high career aspirations via his direction of the battle for Anopopei.

The second consists of the ''bottom-up fascistic reach'' of Croft’s attempted assertion of his will to power over Hearn by maneuvering his death and over his squad by pitting it against the symbolic and practical challenge of Mt Anaka. The third consists of the ''heroically solidaristic al-truism'' (and ''resistance'') entailed by Goldstein and Ridges’ attempted assertion of soldier solidarity and group survival in the face of Croft’s assertion of his will to power. The fourth and final drama consists of the ''managerial ascendance'' of Dalleson’s competently assisted usurpation of immediate pragmatic {{pg|330|331}}military success on Anopopei due to a nicely Tolstoyan combination of managerial competence and sheer chance.

''Naked''’s narrative elements cumulate well. The Cummings narrative ends powerfully with the death of Hearn and the trumping of Cummings’s Mt. Anaka strategy by Dalleson’s sea strategy. The Croft story ends with powerful irony with the failure of the Mt. Anaka expedition, especially in the wake of the boldness of the Hearn offing and the strength shown by Croft in the initial attempt at the crossing. The heroic tale of Goldstein and Ridges serves as a nice dramatic and thematic counterpoint to the high and low fascist authoritarianism of Cummings and Croft and the softer, friendlier managerial authoritarianism of Dalleson. The Dalleson tale resolves itself and all the others with the resolution of fascistic and humanistic strains of narrative in the triumph of a managerial competence marked by some mediocrity and much good luck. The range of narrative strands—and their wrap-up with the Dalleson strand—offset the somewhat disproportionate force of the Croft strand, at least as we finish reading, if not necessarily in longer-term memory.

If ''Naked'' allegory helps provide a strong focus, so does the integrative cumulative force of the book’s narrative. This is not merely some incoherent—or coherent—near apotheosis of Croft’s vivid psychopathy but a symmetrical dystopia of fascist foreboding high (as with Cummings) and low (as with Croft). Moreover, it is not merely the often noted dystopian vision of fascist undercurrent at War and possible fascist post-war as well that is conceived of as a harbinger of the dangers and restraints of an age of Eisenhower, managerialism, and centrist liberalism, surface success, and contentment and underlying antagonisms as one can imagine.

The social-documentary scope of ''Naked''’s Time Machines segments and the reach and focus of its allegory fits Moretti’s model of the “modern epic” with its aspirations toward the expression of the “whole breadth” of “the total world of a nation and epoch.”{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=3}}

This modernistic epic character of ''Naked'' vitiates much of the force of arguments against ''Naked'' as a loosely constructed attempt at a traditional novel. Within the context of a ‘modern epic’, ''Naked''’s Time Machines segments and allegorical anatomy function as social visions with literary standing in their own right. That they take little or nothing from the effectiveness of ''Naked''’s more conventional narrative and novelistic pleasures only enhances ''Naked'' as a multifaceted modern epic as much as the novelistic character of{{pg|331|332}} ''Eternity'' is consistent with the type of writing that Jones does best (and does almost exclusively in his first fiction). ''Naked''’s range of literary performances is consistent with the book’s genre, variegated skills, and modes of Mailer’s writing.

This is not to say that the conceptualization of ''Naked'' as a modern epic provides any defense of criticisms of ''Naked''’s use of language in a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph literary style. Much of Mailer’s style shows the limitations of its reliance on a simple combination of dialogue, transparent physical description of the speakers and their settings, and the use of first-person indirect (after the models of James T. Farrell’s ''Studs Lonegan'' and Tolstoy’s ''War and Peace'' and ''Anna Karenina'').{{efn|The atmosphere of ''The Naked and the Dead'', the overspirit, is Tolstoyan; the rococo comes out of Dos Passos; the fundamental slogging style from Farrell, and the occasional overrich descriptions from Wolfe,” said Mailer to interviewer Peter {{harvtxt|Manso|1985}}.}}

However, I would argue that this style is very serviceable for expressing the characters and character interactions at the center of much of the book. The characters are memorable, with several—at least Hearn, Cummings, and Croft— drawn with depth and dynamism. For example, we see Hearn’s intellectual confidence with Cummings and insecurity with “the men” of his platoon; we see Cummings both as aloof intellectual and commander, as schemer maneuvering Hearn into the dangerous patrol, and as the deflated figure who must acknowledge Dalleson’s credit as victor of the Anopopei campaign; and we see Croft as not just a hard and capable commander of men but as one in the throes of a mythic conflict with Mt. Anaka that resonates with Ahab’s quest for ''Moby Dick''.

More generally, lesser characters like Martinez and Goldstein show development, and the dialogue and accounts of soldiering ring forcefully true. Indeed, the physical action of men in battle with the Japanese and with na- ture is often eloquent. For example, the opening rises to the level of tolstoy in his epic descriptive mode on Napoleon’s Russian campaign. Here it is: “Nobody could sleep. When the morning came, assault craft would be low- ered and a first wave of troops would ride through the surf and charge ashore on the beach of Anapopei. All over the ship, all through the convoy, there was a knowledge that in a few hours some of them were going to be dead.”{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=3}} The description of a storm hitting base camp is especially memorable:

<blockquote>The wind tore through the bivouac area like a great scythe, slashing the palm fronds from the coconut trees, blasting the rain before it. As they looked, they saw a tent jerk upward from its</blockquote>{{pg|332|333}} <blockquote>mooring, steam away in the wind, flapping like a terrified bird...
A tremendous gust of wind bellied under the tent blew it out like a balloon, and then the ridgepole snapped, tearing a rent in the poncho. The tent fell upon the four men like a wet sheet . . . . “Where are you?” he shouted, and then the folds of the tent filled out again like a sail, ripped loose altogether, and went eddying and twisting through the air . . . . All the tents were down in the bivouac area, and here and there a soldier would go skittering through the mud, staggering from the force of the wind with the odd jerking motions of a man walking in a motion picture when the film is unwinding too rapidly.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|pp=86-88}}</blockquote>

The descriptions of the platoon’s frequent physical exhaustion achieve a visceral force:

<blockquote>Their ears filled with the quick, frenetic rustling of insects and animals, the thin screeching rage of mosquitoes, and the raucous babbling of monkeys and parakeets . . . . Slowly, inevitably, the men felt the water soak through the greased waterproofing of their shoes and slosh up to their knees whenever they had to wade through a deeper portion of the stream.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=398}}</blockquote>

Those descriptions of the platoon on patrol winding through the Kunai grass formed a pictorial beauty that would become one of Walsh’s chief inspirations in his film version of ''The Naked and the Dead''.

Turning to the stylistic merits of the Time Machine segments—and not just their proclaimed obtrusiveness as excessively flashy, overly documented, philosophically deterministic baggage for an effective war novel and campaign narrative—critics have been unperceptive. They have also dismissed the Time Machine segments as overly derivative—as too closely modelled after Dos Passos’s telegraphed biographies of national elites in the ''U.S.A.'' However, in making this criticism, critics have overlooked how Mailer’s use of the Time Machine devices follows Pound’s modernist injunction to “make it new.” In particular, they have missed how thoroughly democratic and sometimes playful Mailer’s Time Machines are.{{pg|333|334}}
In contrast with Dos Passos’s use of his profiles to telegraph the life of important national figures in shaping the world, where he situates his cast of rather everyday fictional characters, Mailer’s Time Machine bios file numerous faces of ’everyman.’ They do so via transferring Dos Passos’s elite-oriented device to a popular subject matter. As Mailer writes in the first Time Machine, which profiles Julio Martinez, “Mexican boys also breathe the American Fables, also want to be heroes, aviators, lovers, financiers.”{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=55}} This is to say that they also want to be figures like those of the ''U.S.A.'' biographers, heroes like Jack Reed and TR, aviators like the Wright Brothers, lovers like Rudolph Valentino, and financiers like Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan. They have also failed to notice such playful touches as we find in Mailer’s Woodrow Wilson Time Machine episode.

This evokes Dos Passos’s Meester Veelson biography of President Woodrow Wilson in ''The 42nd Parallel'' in more than title. At the outset of his profile of the white-trash Wilson, Mailer presents him in “''a pair of round, silver-rimmed glasses''” reminiscent of those that appeared on the patrician Southern President in the photograph.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=326}}

In addition, Mailer’s prose sometimes attains a roiling power and dignity, most especially in its “overspirit” mode, using its use or near use of the “heroic” line: “Ahead, ahead, ahead, ahead, moving” catches the cadence of this pentameter, splendidly detailed for Mailer’s writings by Christopher Ricks. For example, “The moon was out, limning the deck housings.”{{sfn|Ricks|2008|p=10}} Returning to Mailer on the movement of that 77mm artillery piece, we have a final phrase that begins with the heroic line:

<blockquote>Once or twice, a flare filtered a wan and delicate bluish light over them, the light almost lost in the dense foliage through which it had to pass. In the brief moment it lasted, they were caught at their guns in classic straining motions with the form and beauty of a frieze. The water and the dark slime of the trail twice blackened their uniforms. Moreover, the light shone on them instantly, and their faces stood out, white and contorted. Even the guns had a slender articulated beauty like an insect reared back on its wire haunches. Then darkness swirled about them again, and they ground the guns forward mindlessly, a line of ants dragging their burden back to their hole.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=116}}</blockquote> {{pg|334|335}} <blockquote>That is, we have, with some intriguing mix of heroic irony, Mailer’s dignification of the routine derided as the “heroic” beat of “a line of ants dragging their burden back”{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=116}}</blockquote>

Neither ''The Naked and the Dead'' nor ''From Here to Eternity'' is remarkable for such stylistic innovation or sustained eloquence as we find, say, in ''The Sun Also Rises'', ''The Sound and the Fury'', ''Invisible Man'', A''ugie Marsh'', or ''Pale Fire''. Each, however, is masterful in realizing its basic fictional design. ''From Here to Eternity'' dramatizes a social milieu unexcelled in American writing. ''The Naked and the Dead'' provides a vision of the U.S.A. combat in the Pacific theater of World War II and during the preceding decade, plus a look into the future. Stylistically, ''From Here to Eternity'' frequently attains the peculiar eloquence of great drama in which the audience witnesses intense action directly. ''The Naked and the Dead'' rises intermittently to a level of stylistic eloquence above and beyond the call of its particular fictional duty.

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

==Citations==
{{Reflist}}

==Work Cited==
{{refbegin|20em|indent=yes}}
* {{cite book |last=Burgess |first=Anthony |url= |title=99 Novels: The Best English Novels Since 1939 |publisher=New York: Summit |year=1984 |isbn= |location= |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Carson |first=Tom |url= |title=”The Hell with Literature: James Jones’s Unvarnished Truths” |date=28 September 1984 |publisher=Village Voice Literary Supplement |isbn= |edition=1st |location= |pages=18-20 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Carter |first=Steven R. |url= |title=James Jones: An American Literary Orientalist Master |date= |publisher=United States: U of Illinois P |year=1998 |isbn= |location= |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |url= |title=Leopards in the Temple: The Transformation of American Fiction, 1945-1970 |publisher=Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP |year=2005 |isbn= |location= |pages=25 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |author=Frye |first=Northrop |url= |title=Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. |publisher=Princeton: Princeton UP |year=1957 |isbn= |location= |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Frye |first=Northrop |title=The Four Forms of Prose Fiction |url= |journal= Hudson Review |volume= 2 |issue= 4 |pages=582-598 |date=1950 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Garret |first=George P.|title=James Jones |date=1984 |publisher=New York: Harcourt |isbn= |edition= |location= |pages=100 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Jones |first=James |url= |title=From Here to Eternity |publisher=New York: Scribner |year=1951 |isbn= |location= ||pages=3-858|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |url= |title=The Naked and the Dead |date= |publisher=New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston|isbn= |location= |publication-date=1948 |pages=86-88|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Manso |first=Peter |url= |title=Mailer: His Life and Times |publisher=New York: Simon |isbn= |location= |publication-date=1985 |pages=|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Meyer |first=Michael |url= |title=The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing |publisher=Boston: Bedford |year=2005 |isbn= |location= |pages= 2128|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Moretti |first=Franco |title=Modern Epic: The World System from Goethe to Garcia Marquez |date=1996 |publisher=London: Verso |isbn= |location= |pages=11-14|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Ricks |first=Christopher |title=”Mailers Rhythm” The Norman Mailer Society Conference |isbn= |edition=Keynote Speaker |location=Provincetown, MA |publication-date=2008|pages=10|ref=harv }}
{{refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:From Here to Eternity and The Naked and the Dead: Premiere to Eternity?}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/The Devil's Party: Reading and Wreaking Vengeance in The Castle in the Forest

2025-04-25T12:35:39Z

Grlucas: Fixed notes’ citations and sources.

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{{Byline|last=Peczenik|first=Fannie|abstract=A close reading of the importance of place in Mailer’s last novel. |note=I wish to thank Elemer Boreczky, Gloria Erlich, and Carol Holmes for their comments on this essay. [Author’s note. —Ed.] |url=http://prmlr.us/mr05pec}}
{{cquote|You don’t know what it is to have six million of your people killed when there are only twelve million of them on earth. You don’t know the profound and fundamental stunting of existence that got into the blood cells of every Jew after Hitler had done his work.|author={{NM}} |source= Letter to Jack Abbott, 18 April 1979{{sfn|Mailer|2009}}}}

{{dc|dc=W|hen I heard that Mailer had written}} a fictional biography of Hitler, I made up my mind not to read it. The idea was offensive. At this late date, the life of Adolf Hitler did not merit another examination, least of all in a novel, which would entail an imaginative engagement with the Führer’s private fears, desires, hopes, and dreams. Who wanted to spend time in close communion with that repellent psyche? Not I. Born in post-war Vienna to parents who were Holocaust survivors from Poland, I could say that I had already shared far too much of my life with Hitler.

Distaste is one thing, curiosity another. And I was just curious enough about ''Castle in the Forest'' to read J. M. Coetzee’s essay in the ''New York Review''. A review seemed like a good compromise: appraisal and analysis instead of direct contact. But as it turned out, Coetzee made such a strong argument for the seriousness of the enterprise that I reconsidered my opinion. The novel might have some merit after all. Yet I was in no hurry to read it. Months passed, and then one early spring day, as my husband and I were {{pg|304|305}}strolling through a bookstore, he picked a copy of ''Castle in the Forest'' off a shelf. “Here,” he said, “I’ll get this for you. It’s a Purim gift.”

This autobiographical vignette serves a purpose: there was uncanny pre- science in linking Purim to ''Castle in the Forest''. The holiday celebrates the salvation of the Persian Jews in the Fifth Century BCE from a plot by Haman, the king’s evil advisor, to have the entire community slaughtered. The Book of Esther tells how, with the help of her kinsman Mordechai, she uses her wits and her beauty to foil Haman’s plans. By the king’s decree, victors and victims undergo a swift reversal of fortune. Haman’s plot recoils back on him and he ends up on the very same gallows he had prepared for Mordechai. Meanwhile, the Jews of the realm, permitted to arm themselves, attack and kill Haman’s followers. For the Jews, sorrow is turned to joy and a day of mourning to a festival.

The only boisterous holiday in the Hebrew calendar, Purim is not unlike Carnival in using masks and costumes and giving license to rowdy behavior. That the history of the Jews is replete with other plots against them that do not end so well does not diminish the festivity of Purim; perhaps it only increases it. Through the feasting and merrymaking, the retribution against Haman is reenacted as mockery. Most Americans in urban areas are probably familiar with the special Purim pastries, poppy seed or fruit-filled triangular tarts called ''hamantaschen'', Haman’s pockets, made popular by Eastern European Jewish immigrants. In the synagogue, the holiday is celebrated by a public reading of the Scroll (Megillah) of Esther, during which the congregation deploys noisemakers (called ''greggers'' in Yiddish) to drown out the name of Haman whenever it is said aloud in the reading of the text. As the Hebrew curse has it, Haman’s name is blotted out —
except to denote pastry. Among Ashkenazi Jews, the festivities traditionally included a ''Purim-shpil'', a folk play based on the Purim story or contemporary subjects.{{efn|For a study of the reception of a Purim-shpil performed in the aftermath of World War II, see {{harvtxt|Aronowicz|2008}}. For a general discussion of the Yiddish folk dramas performed at Purim, see {{harvtxt|Kirshenblatt-Gimblett|1980}} and {{harvtxt|Purim-Shpil|2007}}.}} Crossing genre borders, I now propose to read ''Castle'' as a type of Purim entertainment, a ''shpil'' in long prose narrative form that carries the heavy burden of invoking not a catastrophe averted but a catastrophe perpetrated.

First, a disclaimer is in order. ''Castle'' can be read in the context of the retributive charivari of Purim without exaggerating the novel’s Jewish dimensions or Mailer’s engagement with Judaism.{{efn|For various and valuable insights into Mailer’s role as a Jewish writer, see {{harvtxt|Bernstein|2007}}, {{harvtxt|Cappell|2007}}, and {{harvtxt|Siegel|2007}}.}} In fact, it is instructive to consider ''Castle'' in the light of a very different tradition, what one might call the ''locus classicus'' of retributive justice in Western literature, Canto 28 of Dante’s ''Inferno''. There the pilgrim-poet encounters Bertran de Born who, {{pg|305|306}}having severed filial ties between a father and son, is condemned to carry his own severed head. Holding the head by the hair and swinging it like a lantern, Bertran offers a gloss on his gruesome condition: “''Così s’osserva in me lo contrapasso''” (In me you may observe fit punishment).{{efn|Dante {{harvtxt|Alighieri|2000|p=142}}. For explication and sources, see the commentary to 28. {{harvtxt|Hollander|n.d.|p=142}}, ''Princeton Dante Project''.}} While scholars disagree on the extent to which the penal code of hell is based the principle of ''contrapasso'', it clearly underlies the punishment of Ugolino and Ruggieri in Canto 33.{{efn|For a comprehensive summary of the issues involved in determining whether all the condemned souls receive condign punishment, see {{harvtxt|Armour|2000}}.}} Recounting how in life he and his sons were imprisoned by Ruggieri and left to starve, Ugolino implies that hunger drove him to cannibalize his children. So now in hell he is condemned to gnaw forever on the head of Ruggieri; the punishment is superbly efficient, at once echoing the crime and exacting vengeance for it. Dante’s ''contrapasso'', his vision of the precise and punctilious infernal justice of retribution, informs the ''Purim-shpil'' extravagance of ''Castle''. Mailer’s close examination of Hitler’s life—the bibliography appended to the novel is extensive—puts mockery in the service of strict accounting, the measure for measure of condign punishment.

For fifty years he had been waiting to write about Hitler, Mailer said in an interview.{{sfn|Mailer|Lennon|2007}} During that time, as the Third Reich has been examined and reexamined and incorporated into popular culture, Hitler has become, for the general population, more a figure of speech than a historical reality. The psychic havoc (Mailer’s term in ''Advertisements for Myself'') caused by the Second World War has morphed into cliché with the concomitant psychic pall, and the condition extends well beyond the Jewish community. So as the historical Hitler dominated most of Europe and caused the deaths of millions, the figurative Hitler still has the power to thwart discourse—mention his name and it kills the conversation.{{efn|For a concise exposition of still unanswered questions about Hitler’s regime, see {{harvtxt|Lukacs|2010}} especially 86–108.}} And in the bleak confusion and bold incompetence of American political life at the beginning of the twenty-first century, that name was invoked with alarming frequency (deployed, curiously enough, by both ends of the political spectrum).

Taking on the trope of Hitler, the aging Mailer returns to the prophetic mode of his younger self, who believed his vocation lay in becoming “''consecutively more disruptive, more dangerous, and more powerful.''”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=22}} He remains a disruptive writer, making his readers uncomfortable. But ever the great experimentalist of the narrative voice, he chooses now to speak with the mellow cadences of folktale, telling how ''das Waldschloss'', the castle in the forest, came to be where there was neither cas-{{pg|306|307}}tle nor forest, but only the adamantine irony of inmates from Berlin imprisoned in a concentration camp where there had once been a potato field. We do not learn about this ''Waldschloss'' until the end of the novel, when we have already passed through the other adamantine irony of a tale told to avenge crimes committed more than sixty years before. The long delay has its advantage. As we know from an old adage invoked in Mailer’s ''Harlot’s Ghost'': “OSS working undercover in Italy, 1943, did encounter the following piece of Sicilian wisdom: ‘Revenge is a dish that people of taste eat cold.’”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=813}} The time is ripe for low temperature retribution.

Mailer’s instrument of revenge is the novel’s first person narrator, the gregarious, ingratiating, and ambitious devil, incarnated as Dieter the S.S. Officer (renamed D.T. during his residence in America—but of that sojourn we are told very little), who played a leading role in fostering, encouraging, and fashioning Hitler. While his boss, the Evil One, or Maestro, has turned his attention to modern technology, Dieter takes the opportunity to avenge a demotion by betraying the covert demonic organization that employed him and reveal how a boy born to an obscure Austrian peasant family became his most famous client. Barbara Probst Solomon has noted that, deliberately or not, in ''The Castle in the Forest'' Mailer “has turned the tables on Hitler. Hitler’s demonic portrait of the Jews, his obsession with their bloodlines, their presumed inherited characteristics, had to be ingested from sources close to him. And Mailer hunts down Adi’s family with the same obsessiveness and belief in inherited characteristics that Hitler did to the Jews.”{{sfn|Solomon|2007|p=225}} Going far beyond subjecting the Hitler family to intense scrutiny, Mailer has contrived to give them an antagonistic writer of an unauthorized biography, a Kitty Kelley gone wild, or—the temptation to say this is irresistible—the biographer from hell. And so Dieter is.

Even earnest biographers run the risk of appropriating the lives of their subjects. For Dieter appropriation is the goal, as we learn from his teasing discussion of the narrative’s genre: “It is more than a memoir and certainly has to be most curious as a biography since it is as privileged as a novel.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=79}} He may argue against the common belief that demonic possession is total but he can also boast of his mastery of the subject: “I live with the confidence that I am in a position to understand Adolf. For the fact is that I know him. I must repeat. I know him top to bottom.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=9}} On the basis of his successful cultivation of Hitler as a client of the Maestro, Dieter rose through the ranks of the infernal hierarchy, and in telling the story afterwards, the de-{{pg|307|308}}moted (can we call him fallen?) devil is not about to give up his rights to the life of a celebrity. Hitler is still Dieter’s intellectual property, one might say, but the vengeance is only incidentally his. Primarily it is ours.

Dieter’s knowledge of his client is indeed extensive. He generously offers readers copious data accessible only to devils (and novelists) about Hitler’s incestuous genealogy, odious conception, and bullied and bullying childhood. He takes pains to describe the workings of infernal plots and ploys to intervene in human life. Yet nothing about the information he imparts tells us why Hitler turned out as he did—why a dysfunctional family, nasty sibling rivalry, and a failed beekeeping venture, unpleasant as they are, should lead to dictatorship, world war, and genocide. For not providing an explanation for Hitler’s evil, Mailer was criticized by some reviewers (Gross, for example).{{sfn|Gross|2007|pp=59+}} They missed the point, I believe. Such criticism presupposes that ''Castle'' should have offered the kind of catharsis-through-information that one finds in murder mysteries. Yet if we knew what caused Hitler to do what he did, would his deeds suddenly become less horrific?{{efn|For an interesting perspective on the impossibility of establishing causal relations in ''Castle'' and elsewhere, see {{harvtxt|Fleming|2008}}.}} It is worth noting that even in ''The Executioner’s Song'', where Mailer is dealing with a mundane criminal, there is also no catharsis-through-information. We wait for Gary Gilmore to explain his motive, to say why he murdered the two men he robbed. But he never does.

As though anticipating the objections of his critics, Mailer has Dieter tease us with details whose later historical echo is unmistakable. Relating how Alois Hitler’s beekeeping mentor, der Alte, set fire to one of his hives, Dieter casually mentions that the young Adi happened to be present but takes care to describe the boy’s sadistic excitement: “His toes tingled, his heart shook in its chamber, he did not know whether to scream or to roar with laughter.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=263}} Since der Alte burns the hive in obedience to instructions sent to him in a dream by the very same Dieter and the boy likewise has been instructed by dream to be at the old man’s farm, can we conclude that this is a formative moment? The devil demurs with a shrug. He had just come back from creating mayhem in Russia, he tells us, and he was not up to the task of dealing with the mind of this particular six-year old (the six-year old who interests us more than the entire Russian royal family). If we were expecting to derive some intellectual or emotional satisfaction from that proffered datum about the young Hitler’s fascination with fiery death and mass slaughter, we are disappointed. Dieter denies us the pleasure.

A balder instance is the large ''Hakenkreuz'' carved into the gate of the {{pg|308|309}}monastery school the young Adi attends. At this point the swastika is not yet an abhorrent political symbol; it is merely the coat of arms of an Abbot von Hagen who may have enjoyed the punning allusion to his name. The gate is the scene of an episode in which the nine-year-old Hitler, caught smoking by one of his teachers who happens to be an important client of the infernal powers, has a chance to hone his skills in manipulation and gives up the idea of becoming a priest. Yet as soon as Dieter brings the tantalizing description of the school archway to our attention, he warns us against rushing to conclusions: “Not too much, I hasten to add, should be made of this. Von Hagen’s swastika was subtly carved, and so offered no striking suggestion of the phalanxes yet to march beneath that symbol. Nonetheless, there it was, a crooked cross.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|pp=341-42}} The carving is and is not significant; it does and does not foreshadow the goose-stepping hordes.

Although Dieter has a pronounced impish edge, he does not dangle provocative details before his readers merely to amuse himself at their expense. Ambiguity comes with the secret agent’s territory. The nature of his work requires him to move from one blind stratagem to another, rely on sources of varying credibility, and grasp the opportunities that come with occasional bits of good luck. The outcome is always unpredictable and always obscure; cause and effect are blurred.

The infernal organization to which Dieter belongs is, after all, a literary descendant of the CIA in ''Harlot’s Ghost'', and it is instructive to remember Harry Hubbard’s limited knowledge about the Company (as the agents call their organization) and its manifold machinations against its ostensible enemy, the KGB. Applying the same kind of intellectual limitations to his private life, Hubbard remains unaware of the state of his own floundering marriage. Wandering for decades in a maze of disguises, disinformation, cryptonyms, letters, messages, and fragments of poetry, he finally tries to extricate himself by writing a memoir in two disjointed manuscripts, Alpha and Omega (the other twenty-two letters of the Greek alphabet coming between them, it is unlikely the two parts will ever fit together). Hubbard’s hapless ignorance is institution-wide. Hugh Montague may be the master of literary cryptograms, but his monologue after the Kennedy assassination reveals (in a moment of black humor) his true ignorance as he tries to cover his tracks without knowing precisely where his tracks are. His desperate self-vindication is worthy of one of Robert Browning’s soliloquizing madmen. Always more vulnerable than his superior, Harry even worries that {{pg|309|310}}through the convoluted webs of intrigue he has set in motion, he himself might ultimately be culpable.{{efn|For the “radical indeterminacy” of ''Harlot’s Ghost'', see {{harvtxt|Anshen|2008|p=457}}.}}

A supernatural veneer is, evidently, no protection against the ethos of ignorance inherent in covert agencies. Dieter is better informed than Harry only in that, Socratically, he knows how little he knows, admitting (while still status conscious): “I am about as much endowed beyond an accomplished scholar as he in turn is more knowledgeable than a clod from a poorly endowed school.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=236}} To the agent who must traverse the murky terrain of the human mind, that academic advantage counts for very little. And, again, like his human counterpart, Dieter is deliberately kept ignorant by his employer: “In truth, I do not know much about hell. I am not even certain it exists. The Maestro has kept us, after all, in enclaves. We are not supposed to know what we do not need to know.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=385}} Dieter must entertain the possibility that the Maestro is not even the Devil himself, but merely another one of the many infernal bureaucrats. Compartmentalization keeps the agents wandering in the labyrinth of their assigned enclaves.

Dieter is, then, no better than a CIA agent at charting his own success or foreseeing the future course of history (and perhaps the Maestro and his archenemy, the Dummkopf, are also limited in this respect). After the young Adi helps his father gas a hive of sick bees, the boy is sent a dream etching in which he is given an assignment to count the dead insects. Laying them out in rows, he takes pride in counting four thousand dead before the dream is interrupted. But again Dieter adds a caveat against hasty conclusions and reiterates the uncertainty of the outcome:
<blockquote>Here, I would warn the reader not to make too much of the gassing nor the body count. It is not to be understood as the unique cause of all that came later. For a dream-etching... leaves but a dot upon your psyche, a footprint to anticipate a future sequence of development that may or may not come to pass in future decades. Most dream-etchings are not unlike the abandoned foundations one can see on the outskirts of Third World cities. Left to molder for lack of further funds, they lie there, excavations on a scraggly field.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=201}}</blockquote>
As spies plant information and pay informants, so devils etch dreams, but not all of their schemes come to fruition. {{pg|310|311}}
Christopher Ricks has noted that in the descriptions of Alois Hitler’s attempts to become a beekeeper “there are glimpses of something that might have been other, a world of which one would not have had to despair.”{{sfn|Ricks|2007|p=208}} The beehives are a vision not only of a naturally thriving world but of a communal life otherwise unavailable to the Hitler family. Beyond Alois’s visits to the local tavern and, later, an occasional ''Bürgerabend'', there is only hearth and home, subject to frequent changes of address. One might be able to consider the beekeeping episodes as a kind of counterplot (as Geoffrey Hartman called that sense of an omnipresent divine providence protecting creation in ''Paradise Lost'', especially those redemptive images embedded in the pastoral similes in Books I and II) if, in the shadow of the Waldschloss, one could imagine good coming out of evil. But no, there is neither divine providence nor protection in this castle in this forest, even within the confines of a figure of speech.

If there is a counterplot in ''Castle'', it tends toward retribution, not redemption. By modeling the structure of the Maestro’s infernal organization on the CIA of ''Harlot’s Ghost'', Mailer has assured that Hitler will be denied centrality in his own life story. He will be groomed, honed, tricked out for whatever task his handler deems necessary; he will be scrupulously manipulated; but personally he will matter not at all. It is consistent with the nature of Dieter’s work that he should resist calling any episode in little Adi’s life formative. Intelligence work is like that—uncertain and inconclusive. Dieter’s caveats may give us, painfully, a glimpse of another world, one in which his schemes failed, but in our world, where they succeeded, the absence of formative experiences works towards the progressive diminution of Hitler. Very simply, if fashioning the Führer required hard demonic labor, then we can smile sarcastically along with Dieter as he listens to Himmler expound on Hitler’s superhuman Will and Vision and the rest of the pseudo- political, pseudo-philosophical notions dear to Nazi hearts. Superhuman Will and Vision? Dieter must think the mortals fools. Does Himmler have any idea how many demon-hours (evidently the infernal clocks are not set by eternity) were required to make all those dream etchings (and some of them went nowhere) in Hitler’s brain?

In that light, the coronation of Czar Nicholas II in Book VIII becomes a necessary detour away from rural Austria rather than a digression from Hitler’s biography. In St. Petersburg and at Khodynskoe, the Maestro’s agents are preparing the way for the Bolshevik Revolution and ultimately Stalin, {{pg|311|312}}and one need not indulge in alternative history to see how Hitler’s career depends on their success. The eastern assignment is evidently so important to the demonic designs that it boosts Dieter’s career: “I can vouch that the eight months I lived in Russia from late 1895 to the early summer of 1896 became a prominent element in my development as a high devil.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=213}} But—more diminution—as the reader well knows, Dieter’s Russian strategy also leads to the entry of the Red Army into Berlin and Hitler’s suicide and fiery end.

The diminution of Hitler does not depend solely on future events. In his capacity as biographer from hell, Dieter works against his subject from the beginning, cutting Hitler down to size even as he narrates his life story. Narcissistic and reflexively competitive, Dieter does not gladly share the spotlight with his young charge and his contempt is palpable. (We already know from ''Harlot’s Ghost'' that it is de rigueur for intelligence agents to despise the clients they cultivate.) “I, too, am a protagonist,”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=213}} Dieter is quick to remind us. He presents his client as a boy devoid of any admirable qualities, except a talent for war games, the skill that damns him by bringing him to the attention of the Evil One. Otherwise Adi is an unappealing, fearful egotist enamored of power and brute force. Moreover, he suffers from that traditional affliction of the Evil One’s clients, a sulphurous smell. Every so often, Dieter reminds us that the little boy stinks; it is a gratuitous detail, mean and petty, but also funny. Adi is eventually shown to be completely loathsome in his jealousy (possibly murderous—Dieter hedges his bet here) towards his younger brother, the angelic Edmund whose death almost brings a smattering of human emotion to the demon. Compared with Adi, even Alois Senior and Junior, despite their crude appetites, cruelty, and violence, seem recognizably human.

If he demurs on the formative experiences in Adi’s life, Dieter is considerably less reluctant to disclose the requisite personality traits he nurtures in him. He begins by feeding the boy’s vanity, feeding it so well that every incident in his harsh, claustrophobic life is measured by an increase or decrease in his quantity of self-esteem. A stepbrother runs away from home, a brother dies, and Adi is chiefly concerned with his place in the family hierarchy, delighting when he becomes, first, the eldest son, then the only son. Through dreams, Dieter ensures that his young charge believes he has a special destiny, a belief completely contradicted by daytime evidence. The woozy nationalism of the late nineteenth century is seductive and, before long, the {{pg|312|313}}boy links his desperate and defiant sense of personal destiny to that of the ''Volk''. Following an adolescent outburst against both the prevailing prudery and his own sexual disgust, the young Hitler reads Treitschke in a school text and becomes mesmerized by a hyperbolic passage about the mystery and majesty of the German people. He barely understands the words but he is certain they are true. At this juncture, Dieter points menacingly toward the future: “We devils have known for a long time that a mediocre mind, once devoted to one mystical idea, can obtain a mental confidence well beyond its normal potential.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=447}} This is a contemptuous assessment from a biographer who thoroughly knows his subject—and a depressing thought, but true.

To complement his self-induced grandiosity, the young Hitler is schooled by Dieter in the fine art of data selection. When he receives failing grades at the Realschule, the boy convinces himself—with help from his handler—that his failure is actually a sign of intellectual superiority. In a compensatory fantasy, he envisions himself as a schoolteacher giving a lecture on the secret of true learning: “Do not try to remember all the facts of every historical event.... Most of the facts you have memorized are no better than debris which contradict other facts. So you will be in a state of confusion.... Select only those facts which clarify the issues.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=419}} This skill will obviously prove useful in Hitler’s later career. It is, incidentally, worth noting that here Mailer has slyly summarized a basic tool of bad governance, popular with a great many leaders besides Hitler. (One would very much like to know where D.T., the American incarnation of the narrating devil who was once Dieter, would have directed his attention on this side of the Atlantic. But those episodes belong to a subsequent volume that Mailer did not live to write.)

By the time of the ''Realschule'' failures, Dieter has already used Adi’s twin obsessions with primogeniture and patriarchy to prepare him for the apotheosis of data selection—a lifetime of mendacity. (Curiously enough, although he was once reviled by feminists, in ''The Castle in the Forest'' Mailer offers a stunningly cold dissection of patriarchy and its discontents.) When Alois Senior savagely attacks his eldest son, Dieter deploys his infernal machinations to make the terrified little Adi believe that he himself was the victim, and Hitler spends the rest of his life believing that his father almost beat him to death. Through the false memory, Dieter lays the groundwork for an entire edifice of lies: “this fiction would enable me to develop Adi’s future incapacity to tell the truth. By the time his political career began, he was in command of an artwork of lies elaborate enough to support his smallest {{pg|313|314}}need. He could shave the truth by a hair or subvert it altogether.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=316}} If it were any man but Hitler, the pathos of a bogus Oedipal struggle (a hated stepbrother acting as surrogate to confront the vengeful father where three roads meet) would merit pity.

Or, there would be pity, if the narrator were someone other than Dieter. Although he is an immensely entertaining story-teller, he ''is'' a devil, cut off from the full range of human experience, his emotional vocabulary accurate only when expressing combative, competitive egotism. It is useful here to remember how one of Dieter’s literary ancestors, Milton’s Satan, becomes so distracted by Eve’s beauty that for a moment he loses his hate and envy and stands there, abstracted from his usual evil, “Stupidly good.”{{sfn|Milton|1957|p=465}} Dumb passivity is as close as Satan gets to understanding Eden and prelapsarian experience; the local animals and even the plants have richer emotional lives than he does. For his part, Dieter is well-acquainted with envy, self-pity, ambition, lust, physical pain and pleasure. But compassion, longing, sorrow, remorse and love are unfamiliar to him, except in a reductive sense: “we do look for the lowest common denominator to any truth.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=99}}

Dieter’s truncated psyche gets him (that is, his S.S. officer incarnation) killed in the Waldschloss. As he tells it, the Jewish psychiatrist who interrogates him is upset by the pestilential effluvia and the shouts of the liberated prisoners and seeks out Dieter’s company because they are both high-ranking officers. Dieter must have engaged in some extremely obtuse data selection because he has egregiously misjudged the situation. The American has just encountered immeasurably greater horrors than a few bad smells and as a Jew is probably taking the horrors personally. But empathy is so alien to Dieter that he makes the fatal mistake of pretending to be conscience-stricken. (An argument could be made that Dieter is clueless here because he has been wearing the S.S. uniform for so long that even the vestigial sensibilities of a demon have atrophied.) The sense that Dieter gets what he deserves is inescapable.

At that moment, we are abruptly reminded that Dieter is not an impartial narrator nor a reliable one, and we have been of (and at) the devil’s party, amusing ourselves as we watch the heartless education of a wretched little boy in the arts of lying and self-deception. In 1940, in ''The Great Dictator'', Charlie Chaplin imagined Hitler subsumed by a double, an anonymous Jewish barber. What Chaplin began before Hitler was fully yet the murderer he would be-{{pg|314|315}} come, Mailer completes after the fact. Hitler is subsumed by his biographer, the slick Dieter, good at schmoozing and imprinting his own image on his clients. Significantly, Dieter appropriates the soul of the young Hitler without temptation, without the flattery and bogus promises of wealth, power, knowledge, or beautiful women that are the stock-in-trade ploy of the devil. It is possible a temptation scene might have figured in a later episode in a subsequent volume, but that is idle speculation. In the novel as we have it, Dieter so overshadows his client that he effectively blots him out.

As we know from Aristotle, history merely tells us what happened, poetry what might have happened. There is reason to believe (or hope) that if what might have happened is well told enough, the way we perceive what happened changes. Isn’t Napoleon’s invasion of Russia forever defined by Tolstoy and World War I by Hemingway? Then there is a chance—the odds unknown—that some years hence, the popular view of Hitler will be shaped by Mailer’s novel. Hitler, the man of millennial urges who dominated the twentieth-century, reduced to a powerless stick figure—that would be exemplary ''contrapasso'', retributive justice meted out by literature, as though ''The Castle'' were a ''roman à clef'', albeit one written to redress historical rather than private grievances.

Meanwhile, for the present, does the novel-cum-''Purim-shpil'' change anything? If Mailer was correct in his letter to Jack Henry Abbot and my existence was stunted by Hitler, am I less stunted for having read ''Castle in the Forest''?

I resort to another autobiographical vignette.

Some months after my husband gave me ''Castle'' as a Purim gift, we were in a bookstore again, but not, as before, in a strip mall in Pittsburgh. This time we were in a shop near the chic Kärtnerstrasse, close to the street where I was born in Vienna. I had recently had a landmark birthday and it was my husband’s idea that we celebrate it there. After a lifetime of ambivalence about my natal city, I had hesitated. But since he had never really seen Vienna and it has the reputation of being one of the most livable cities in the world, I agreed to go.

On a table, among the new selections, was a stack of books entitled ''Das Schloss im Wald''. I picked up one of the books, thumbed through it, handed it to my husband. We exchanged sly glances. For my purposes, the timing of the German translation of ''The Castle in the Forest'' couldn’t have been more fortuitous.

A clerk was watching us. He had that wonderfully welcoming face that so {{pg|315|316}}many young Austrians have but I thought his expression implied more—a chance, perhaps, to discuss the new book with a couple of Americans.

The possibility of a literary chat was intriguing. Austria was late in addressing its Nazi past, but when it finally did, it undertook the work with commendable seriousness. I had just been to see the inverted blank concrete books of the Holocaust memorial on Judenplatz. It was, I thought, a solemn act of piety.

“''Nein, danke'',” I shook my head and smiled at the young clerk. I didn’t need any help.

And I didn’t. I could forgo the chat. On the table in front of me I had everything I wanted. The desire for retribution is atavistic, unattractive, and yet undeniable. For the Austrians, concrete books, unwritten and unreadable, made a fit monument. But ''Das Schloss im Wald'', Mailer’s self-razing biography of Hitler, was fit for me.

Yes, Vienna was one of the most livable cities, as well as one of the prettiest. For the first time, I allowed myself to feel the familiar comfort of a childhood home and it was sweet, like ''hamantaschen''.

=== Notes ===
{{notelist}}

===Citations===
{{reflist|15em}}

===Works Cited===
{{refbegin|30em|indent=yes}}
* {{cite book |last=Alighieri |first=Dante |date=2000 |title=Inferno |translator1-first=Robert |translator1-last=Hollander |translator2-last=Hollander |translator2-first=Jean |location=New York |publisher=Doubleday |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Anshen |first=David |title=The New Politics of Form in ''Harlot's Ghost'' |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=2 |issue=1 |date=2008 |pages=452-73 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Armour |first=Peter |date=2000 |chapter=Dante's ''Contrapasso'': Contexts and Texts |title=Italian Studies |volume=55 |pages=1-20 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Aronowicz |first=Annette |title=''Homens Mapole:'' Hope in the Immediate Postwar Period|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/article/241585|journal=Jewish Quarterly Review |volume=98 |issue=3 |date=2008 |publisher=Project Muse |pages=355-88 |access-date=2010-06-22 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Bernstein |first=Mashey |title=In a Different Way, Norman Mailer Was a Deeply Jewish Writer |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/194676510/533257E80CD3408CPQ/1?sourcetype=Magazines |journal=Deep South Jewish Voice |volume=18 |issue=1 |date=Dec 2007 |publisher=ProQuest |pages=100–101 |access-date=2009-03-03 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Cappell |first=Ezra |date=Nov 2007 |title=Norman Mailer: A Man of Letters Inspired by the People of the Book |url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/norman-mailer-man-letters-inspired-people-book/docview/367855341/se-2 |work=Forward |volume=16 |location= |publisher=ProQuest |page=A1 |access-date=2009-03-03 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Coetzee |first=J. M. |date=February 15, 2007 |title=Portrait of the Monster as a Young Artist |magazine=New York Review of Books |volume=54 |issue=2 |pages=8–11 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Fleming |first=James R. |title='But Where is the Castle?':The Function of Modernist Allegory in Norman Mailer's ''The Castle in the Forest'' |url= |journal=EAPSU Online |volume=5 |date=Fall 2008 |pages=143–55 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Gross |first=John |date=2007 |title=‘Young Adolf.’ Rev. of ''The Castle in the Forest.'' |url=https://www.commentary.org/articles/john-gross/the-castle-in-the-forest-by-norman-mailer/ |magazine=Commentary |volume=123 |issue=3 |location=Expanded Academic ASAP |page=59+ |access-date=2010-04-23 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Hartman |first=Geoffrey |title=Milton's Counterplot |journal=ELH |volume=28 |issue=1 |date=1958 |pages=1-12 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite web |url=https://etcweb.princeton.edu/ |title=Princeton Dante Project |last1=Hollander |first=Robert |date=n.d. |access-date=2010-02-25 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Kirshenblatt-Gimblett |first=Barbara |date=1980 |title=Contraband: Performance, Text and Analysis of a ''Purim-shpil'' |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/i247940 |journal=Drama Review |volume=24 |issue=3 |publisher= |pages=5-16 |doi= |access-date=2009-01-17 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lukacs |first=John |date=2010 |title=The Legacy of the Second World War |location=New Haven |publisher=Yale University Press |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1959 |title=Advertisements for Myself |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1991 |title=Harlot’s Ghost |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }}
* {{cite web |title=Interview by Michael Lennon |url=https://www.bookreporter.com/authors/au-mailer-norman.asp |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |last2=Lennon |first2=Michael |date=February 23, 2007 |website=Bookreporter.com |publisher= |access-date=2009-03-03 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |title=Norman Mailer: Letters to Jack Abbott |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/03/12/norman-mailer-letters-to-jack-abbott/ |journal=New York Review of Books ||volume=56 |issue=4 |date=March 12, 2009 |pages= |access-date=2010-08-07 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Milton |first=John |date=1957 |title=Paradise Lost. Complete Poems and Major Prose |editor-last1=Hughes |editor-first1=Merritt |location=New York |publisher=Odyssey Press |pages=173–469 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite encyclopedia |date=2007 |title=Purim-Shpil |encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia Judaica |edition=2nd |ref= {{harvid|Purim-Shpil|2007}} }}
* {{cite journal |last=Ricks |first=Christopher |title=The Devil Only Knows |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=206–214 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Siegel |first=Lee |date=21 Jan 2007 |title=Maestro of the Human Ego. Rev. of ''The Castle in the Forest'', by Norman Mailer |url= https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/books/review/Siegel.t.html |work=New York Times |publisher=New York Times |access-date=2010-04-22 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Solomon |first=Barbara Probst |title=Mailer’s Choice |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=223–28 |ref=harv }}
{{refend}}

{{Review|state=expanded}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Devil's Party: Reading and Wreaking Vengence in ''The Castle in the Forrest'', The}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Cluster Seeds and the Mailer Legacy

2025-04-25T12:10:24Z

Grlucas: Fix.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{MR05}}
{{Byline|last=Kaufmann|first=Donald L.|abstract=Mailer is placed within the American literary tradition as a direct descendent of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Naturalism. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr05kau}}
{{dc|dc=T|he Mailer “seeds” stirred}}, as the Twentieth Century dawned and American literature soared. The last century would climax in the late 1920s, and achieve its final “coming of age,” now superior to its English and European counterparts, soon to be the new superpower’s final word.

An early starting line indicator in the history of literary legacy—the birth of Ernest Hemingway in 1899. As an unknown expatriate in early 1920s Paris, America’s future “Papa” was, probably, its first to orbit into international literary recognition and power. Meanwhile, on the home grounds, Walt Whitman, in 1892, died.

In his monumental '' Leaves of Grass'', nine editions in total, Walt Whitman became the archetypal American Idealized Poet, the lover of the Universe, and the singular Bard of Selfhood, Freedom and Democracy, with a Vision
of a Potential Utopian America. All his fresh idiomatic verse showered down in future generations of writers and shaped their artistic, cultural and political beliefs, mostly “Leftist,” or “Liberal” or “Progressive” or any other relevant “ism.”

Whitman died amid minimal “cult” media (no Mark Twain sensational funeral). Whitman’s legacy was powerful and sometimes underground, but
clearly many contemporary and later writers were inseminated with Whitman “seeds.” And Norman Mailer was one of those who had more than his share. For the Mailer scholar, legacy quotient is based more on his authorial singularity and less on the common characteristics of his generation of
contemporary writers. Whitman’s death announced that the nineteenth-century American Realism of Howells and James had ended. In its wings {{pg|280|281}}was formed the new Literary Naturalism that might be called the “dynamic male quintet.”

These five new literary figures—Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, and the lesser writer, Richard Harding Davis, a power-packed Quintet—personified the Mailer “seed womb” that gave rise
to the man from Brooklyn and his subsequent place on the international literary scene.

The new literary generation, post-Civil War Realism, was Naturalism, a French import, and its chief spokesman was Emile Zola (1840-1902), author and activist, with a postmortem solution to the cultural ashes of the Darwinian era in which “revealed religion” had suffered a downward slide. In its place loomed Scientism and its cousin, Technology, which was clearly related to Industrialism. The spirit of objectivity was ushered in and the arts were forced to adapt to this new cultural reality. Thus, there could be no more significant aesthetic apartheid. Zola insisted on a remedial “cultural marriage.” The new union was a merging of arts and sciences.

Zola published his 1800 manifesto, ''The Experimental Novel'', in which he
advocated that writers (and other artists) imitate the scientific method and,
experimentally, return to nature, follow natural laws, and apply a somewhat
strict theory and practice. Thus, a writer must observe and record and interpret less and be more objective—underplaying figurative and melodramatic prose. This perspective was primarily theoretical, but in practice resulted in hardcore realism that still included some romantic excess (exactly what Mailer subsequently achieved in his Naturalistic WWII novel, ''The Naked and the Dead'').

British philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) transformed the more abstract biological Darwinism into a more practical cultural context, more
ethical and sociological. Historians dubbed this “Social Darwinism.” This movement ushered in a new empirical arena, characterized by such stark phrases as “struggle for existence” and “survival of the fittest,” “Laissez Faire,” and “Progress.”

There were new literary directions in the air. The two new dominant thematic “isms” were Scientism and Humanism, often hybridized. Homo sapiens existed in a materialistic and deterministic universe, manipulated by outside forces. Behavior thus was subject to two prime conditioning factors. What Zola called “psycho-chemical laws” became translated as “heredity”
(later as DNA). What Zola called the “milieu” became “environmental,” and{{pg|281|282}}its focus was the social sciences. Humans thus were biological pawns or social ciphers with limited free will. Thus evolved a literary sensibility that emphasized a character’s external and not inner world.

Literary Naturalism offered new vistas, now Americanized, less dogmatic, and more pliable. There was a setting shift from the genteel upper and middle class to the “submerged tenth” or social bottom. The new prevailing mood was sordid, shocking, and depressing. There was new urban blight, factories and slums, along with their agrarian equivalent, the vanishing Jeffersonian farmer.

Darwin is well known for his depictions of “atavism” or reversion to degradation or monstrosity, or earlier primal roots. In 1914, Edgar Rice Burroughs published, ''Tarzan and the Apes''. Earlier, in 1897, Bram Stoker wrote
''Dracula'', a series of written letters, published on the eve of the “movies,” and
the coming erosion of the nineteenth-century’s power of the printed word. As for lycanthropy, Frank Norris (the American Naturalist writer, except for Dreiser, with the most Mailer “seeds”) wrote ''Vandover and the Brute'', a kind of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ''Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'' (1886) novel. Instead of “monster,” literary critics then preferred the phrase “brute,” a creature of minimal intelligence, incompetent in the struggle for existence, and psychology and literature textbooks called such characters grotesques.

There was further new “ism” fallout, a host of new taboo-breakers—a Darwin-Spencer focus on basic human needs: sex, hunger, survival skills, which meant more stark violence, force against force—that is, animalistic human survival. The American language was not spared. Its brainchild was the modern documentary. This new prose was steeped in objectivity. Furthermore, as writing aped the sciences, it relied on basic research and copious details. Some candor and frankness was welcomed, but not the overtly rhetorical and figurative.

The once-puritanical American vernacular finally had loosened its tongue. Taboo cultural matters, such as physical bodily functions, especially sex, and its verbal offspring, profanity and depravity, were unleashed—at first slowly, but soon an avalanche of expletives poured out until the popular arts seemed awash with four-lettered realities. All of the above, collectively, was the cultural legacy of literary Naturalism. The first Naturalist novel, Stephen Crane’s ''Maggie: A Girl of the Streets'' (1893), modernized the literary scene. The twenty-two-year-old Crane and his shocking book ignited an overnight youth takeover of American letters and became the avant-{{pg|282|283}}garde. At the forefront was the young male quintet, whose collective canons would transform earlier cherished literature, while they themselves were short-lived—quite literally premature deaths, except for Theodore Dreiser who survived just three years shy of ''The Naked and the Dead''.

Mailer was born in 1923 when Naturalism was in its prime—illustrated by its 1925 masterpieces, ''An American Tragedy'' and ''The Great Gatsby''. Of these powerful works, the pre-kindergarten Mailer would hardly be aware. But who knows? Maybe Mailer’s literary DNA twitched and he could sense a change in times.

Stephen Crane (1871–1900) started out as a newspaperman writing the “Bowery Sketches,” which resulted, at age twenty-one, in ''Maggie''. Its focus was slums and prostitution. This first Naturalist work shocked the country. It appeared in yellow covers, a tiny printing (at Crane’s own expense) with a self-protecting pseudonym, Johnston Smith (the two most frequently used names in the New York telephone book). Crane’s second opus was ''The Red Badge of Courage'' (1895), written from scratch with no actual war experience—and yet the first modern psychological treatment of war. This book remained his masterpiece and, like Mailer, Crane was a literary star in his mid-twenties. Thereafter, Crane fell in love with violence. He turned daredevil foreign war correspondent, in search of any available warfare moment, to foreshadow Hemingway and Mailer. Crane was America’s first modern “Bad Boy Writer.” Later critics dubbed him the “Poetic Naturalist.” In raw content, his prose did have a veneer of tough fact. And he was a Zolaesque technician with a concern for form and economy. His diction remained compact, energetic, and provocative. Crane also wrote highly competent short fiction and stark verse. Crane’s work evolved into literary impressionism, with an accent on tone and mood, rather than on theme, plot, and character. The result was prose that was no longer logical and orderly, a drift toward the non-rational, amoral, and pre-speech—all of these qualities a very early preview of today’s postmodernism.

The Western canon posthumously embraced Crane’s work, and he became a classic American. A veteran Mailer legacy quotient watcher might easily recast Crane’s treatment into a transplanted 1960s Mailer scenario. Yet, obviously, Crane’s most notable disciple was Hemingway, especially their similar lifestyles. But an obsessive Crane-Hemingway-Mailer’s thread, probably diminished rather than enhanced Mailer legacy quotient. As for the{{pg|283|284}}Crane-Mailer connection, its most positive legacy quotient factor was, despite writing in widely diverse times, each writer’s singularity.

Another figure of singularity was Frank Norris (1870–1902). His literary DNA hinted as much, as did his Chicago affluent environment: his father, a successful jeweler; his mother, a teacher and actress; and their son, being taught the arts in Paris where he fell in love with medieval fantasy and chivalry. At age fifteen, Norris moved to San Francisco and entered the University of California, where he excelled in writing and football and fell under Zola’s spell. Later, he fondly called himself, the “Boy Zola.” When his parents divorced, he lost most of his inheritance (over a million dollars). But he persevered and, obeying Zola, he studied San Francisco’s “social bottom,” then went off to Harvard to study writing. He covered the Boer War as a newspaper man, then to Cuba and the Spanish-American War and, later, more domesticated, be became an editor-reader at Doubleday publishers, where he helped shepherd into print Theodore Dreiser’s historic Naturalist novel, ''Sister Carrie''. Norris’s own canon, like Crane’s, was brief, but intense. From the outset, Norris’s literary trademark was sensationalism. Two subsequent novels, his second, ''Moran of the Lady Letty'', and his fourth, ''Blix'', were, at best, pulp melodramas. Norris struck gold in his controversial, ''McTeague'' (1899). Compared with Crane’s slim yellow-wrapped ''Maggie'', Norris’s opus became America’s first major thematic Naturalist novel. Its protagonist, McTeague, was the Darwinian Adam or the “brute within” but with a heart of gold. He was sluggish, unambitious, easily pacified, a massive slow-witted, blonde-mustached dentist with enormous hands who pulled out teeth with his bare hands, saddled with a mismatched grotesque wife, Trina Sieppe. She was afflicted, literally enslaved with both “avarice” and “sensuality.” Such primal “greed,” both racial and ethnic, was rooted in her Swiss peasant blood, which impelled her to take her money to bed where she, psychotically, “made love” with it. Her husband disapproved and the marriage turned violent.

The novel’s supporting cast were the people of Polk Street, a slice of San Francisco’s social bottom, rundown and stinky, full of racial-ethnic degenerates who grossly overate and exhibited other unseemly behavior. The novel’s denouement occurred in Death Valley, where hero and villain perished with “thirsty” operatics. Such mega-sensationalism was a natural scenario for, some say, the greatest silent film, entitled ''Greed'', directed by Erich{{pg|284|285}}von Stroheim, who shot on location in Death Valley. The final director’s cut was forty-two reels and was shown once in nine-and-a-half hours.

After ''McTeague'', Norris embarked on his short final phase and his first enterprise was a trilogy, ''The Epic of Wheat'', and its first novel was ''The Octopus: A Story of California'' (1901), which was panoramic serious fiction, and well written. Its mammoth theme was economic determinism, or man in the grip of uncontrollable forces. The two powers in conflict were the railroads, backed by urban bankers and industrialists, mostly state-wide and national, versus Californian wheat farmers, both rich and poor yet still powerful.

The octopus in the title figuratively refers to humankind’s kinship with those entangling crushing primordial forces in Nature, opposed by human instinct. Yet this 1901 novel was well wrought. Critics and readers marveled at Norris’s unlimited literary potential. The second novel, ''The Pit'' (“The Chicago Story”), was published posthumously in 1903 and it focused on the production of wheat. The scene shifted from the vast agrarian to the cramped urban scene and its “survival of the fittest.” The title referred to Chicago’s Board of Trade and the plot hinged on cutthroat attempts to corner the wheat market. Curtis Jadwin, an impassioned capitalist and a leading trade speculator, tests his Darwinian-Spencerian skills, both economically and romantically. Indeed, much of the novel is devoted to Jadwin’s marital woes. The novel’s ending threatens to be an absolute tragedy when the Wheat Market crashes, which breaks Jadwin’s monopoly and erases his assets—all caused by natural forces (in this instance, unforeseen heavy wheat production in the far West). The third and final volume, ''The Wolf'', dealt with the consumption of wheat in France, a novel which remained unfinished and unpublished.

But literary quotient analysts pondered “Boy Zola’s” marvelous literary excesses. His concept of Nature as Force and Energy, plus his “isms,” plus ideological characters such as the Neitzchean Superman and even a Superwoman (see ''Moran and the Lady Letty''), plus his anti-intellectual prose (and more elegant English), plus his atmospheric neo-primitivism and operatic techniques—all contributed to his status. Norris, indeed, was an outstanding stylist. His prose style was an odd hybrid, part documentary and part “purple prose.” His tonal effects were multiplex—word packets of solemn messages in slapstick wrappings. But what most separated him from this
first wave of American Naturalists was his becoming this movement’s great-{{pg|285|286}}est symbolist, akin to the twentieth-century-enshrined Melville. The Norris canon, posthumously, struck a strong prenatal Mailer connection with Norris’s aesthetics in ''The Responsibilities of a Novelist'' (1903). There, Norris discussed three groups of novels: (a) of “plot” (of telling); (b) of “character” (of showing); and (c) (his preference), of “theme” (of proving)—the message novel. Norris also interpreted Naturalism as a new form of Romance and compared it as it differed from the earlier Realism of Howells and James. But what fascinated Mailer observers was Norris’s theorizing about his and America’s future. Thus, late in his life, Norris emerged as a “big thinker.”

The once “Boy Zola” called for the American Novel, a “romance of force,” and its template, man’s “animal nature” transformed into a neo-epic, and its rhetoric would resemble a lifelike “symphony of energy,” a vast “orchestration of force.” Its narrative would focus on the human struggle for food, sex, shelter, and other earthly basic or more sublime abstractions such as power, wisdom, and justice.

What Norris was doing was making Naturalism and nationalism synonymous, and, in doing so, was previewing the literary gospel of America as the Twentieth Century’s “global superpower.” Norris, as seer, had prefigured the first Mailer seed storm. Mailer, either by reading or osmosis, would ingest the Norris message and he would make the most of the philosophic “Boy Zola.” Yes, of these five literary revolutionaries—Crane, Norris, London, Davis, and Dreiser—Norris remained the best bet for becoming Mailer’s earliest literary “blood brother.”

At the opposite pole of minimalism, in 1900, Theodore Dreiser’s Mailer influence was limited to his landmark Naturalist novel, ''Sister Carrie''. Unlike the other four writers with their strikingly early deaths, Dreiser survived until 1945, on the eve of Mailer’s first draft of ''The Naked and the Dead''. Consequently, the more salient Dreiser-Mailer connection occurred after Dreiser’s two female-centered novels, ''Sister Carrie'' (1900) and ''Jennie Gerhardt'' (1911). Dreiser’s first novel was an instant failure, with few sales and the barest recognition. For a decade, a stricken Dreiser did not publish. In 1900, in the midst of a literary arch-masculine “ism,” Dreiser introduced Naturalism’s first three-dimensional female protagonist in a highly readable novel. Concurrent heroines, such as Crane’s slum-girl, ''Maggie'', and Norris’s
Viking Superwoman, ''Moran'', were either lab “case studies” or wild male fantasies. But Caroline Meeber (sister Carrie) came off the page as a real new{{pg|286|287}}woman in a new real environment. A potential twentieth-century bestseller, instead, got snuffed out and Dreiser, readerless, had vanished.

Consequently, when Crane and Norris died, their muscle-bound canons boomed on, until Dreiser’s new female reality, after a decade hiatus, resurfaced about 1925, American literature’s banner year. Earlier, after ''Jennie Gerhardt'' (a sentimental ''Carrie''), Dreiser shifted into more familiar Zola-Norris territory with his “Trilogy of Desire,” capped by his masterpiece, ''An American Tragedy'', published in 1925, as was another iconic novel, ''The Great Gatsby''. Those avid female readers of the Jazz Age Flappers also quickly assimilated ''Sister Carrie'' and were fascinated by how its heroine ended. Carrie, now a generic “sister,” had rebelled and survived, socially unpunished, emotionally unscathed, except for seemingly natural bemusement. Dreiser’s underlined theme was that females’ recourse to instinct or intuition immunized them
from emotional tragedy. The 1920s vamps, of course, read Carrie’s “victory” as a call for the “new women” to go into a cultural free fall.

The fourth member of the “modern” literary Quintet was Richard Harding Davis (1864–1916), an odd fit with his literary peers, a media darling of his times, and thus an essential link from Twain and London to later media masters, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Mailer. Davis was a leading journalist, a globetrotting, derring-do reporter of wars, such as the Greek-Turkish War, the Spanish-American War, the Boer War, and World War I. Yet he was prolific, his prose was pedestrian, and he “could spin a yarn.” His short stories, eleven volumes, numbering over eighty stories, were factually crafted, vivid, and exciting, with flashes of local color. His fiction had global settings, was highly theatrical with sensational plots, fast-paced with typed characters, and not exactly “serious” fiction. He wrote twenty-five plays. His novels were outlandishly romantic and superficial. His most representative novel was the author’s self-image, ''A Soldier of Fortune'' (1897). Davis was known as the Beau
Brummel, or dandy-dressed, of the American press. Then, he was the ideal male—tall, handsome, tough but debonair, at ease at showy wars, in proper salons, and risqué beds—and he was blessed with a manly code of good manners (faint echoes of the later Hemingway hero).

Davis, instead, became a media-created American male hero, to be emulated and revered.

But the “other” Davis, the literary careerist, was radically different, more like the high-risk lifestyles of Crane and London. On news assignments, Davis actually tempted death. The press loved his go-for-broke front line{{pg|287|288}}antics. He called the Spanish-American War “splendid fun” and took part in the Battle of San Juan Hill, and made Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders famous. Davis became the newspapers’ darling. He had continuous access to elite personages from presidents to kings and queens, even the underworld.

All this fame peaked at about age twenty-six and turned into high financial rewards as Davis began to reshape both American history and journalistic fiction. Upon the heels of the 1890 U.S. Census announcing the Closing of the Frontier, Crane toured the West, and rechristened the Wild West, the “Mild West” (see “The Blue Hotel”). Davis went out West, pressed the flesh with sportive cowboys, Texas Rangers, and even Mexican murderers. He temporarily revived the myth of the Wild West, a preview of the coming power of celebrity journalists and other media hounds to temporarily remake history.

Davis also had “splendid fun” with the literary urban crime genre. In his story collection, ''Van Bibber and Others'' (1892), he introduced his new upper-class hero, Courtland Van Bibber, of rich Dutch ancestry, the moneyed young clubman and eternal playboy, the public consummate law-abider who, by night (like today’s comic books’ caped crime-stoppers), descended to the underworld, disguised, to save maidens and right wrongs. Such was the clever packaging of Robin Hood, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and Andrew Carnegie, who gave away $350 million dollars and called it, “The Gospel of Wealth.” “Van Bibber’s” ultimate tone was not seriousness, but amusement. Davis’s fiction with media accompaniment had turned American literature into banal comic grand opera.

If Mailer, during the decades of building his canon, ever pondered such quaint cultural and literary goings-on, he probably both winced and smiled at seeing a virtual repeat of those big-media shows, obvious only during Paine’s two brief stints, and the more prolonged follow-ups by Emerson and Twain. Mailer also probably noted (with Hemingway’s melodramatic demise on his mind) that Davis died naturally in 1916, the same year as Jack London’s more mysterious death, and how Jack (call me “Wolf”), in a much shorter lifespan, and whose one-decade career, attracted intense glaring media legacy quotient that threatened to eclipse Mark Twain.

The fifth and final Naturalist was Jack London (1876–1916). His early demise was foreshadowed by a storybook life, which read like a boyish yet mannish fantasy. He was born in the slums of San Francisco—illegitimate{{pg|288|289}}London’s early life—waterfront Oakland poverty and an eighth-grade education—was spent reading Kipling, Marx, Spenser, and Nietzsche.(Later, at age twenty-one, on his 1897 Yukon arctic-trek, he brought ''The Origin of Species'', ''Paradise Lost'', and read and reread ''Moby-Dick''.)

London, at age thirteen, became an oyster pirate, purchasing a sloop in San Francisco Bay. At age fifteen he drank heavily and had a mistress. At age seventeen he sailed for seven months in the Pacific. Still seventeen, London won a newspaper prize for an account of a typhoon off Japan. He then returned to Oakland for one more high school year and, in 1896, at age twenty, he spent one semester in college, where he joined a radical wing of the Socialist Party as an activist speaker. He was occasionally jailed.

In 1898, after time in the Klondike, he returned to Oakland to begin serious writing. What followed was a short but brutal ordeal (he called himself a “work beast”). There were a sea of rejections, dramatized in his later autobiographical novel, ''Martin Eden'', and, in 1900, his breakthrough happened—nine collected stories, ''The Son of the Wolf'', and sudden national fame. Like Mailer, London achieved substantial notoriety in his mid-twenties. Yet the London corpus of work, incredibly large for its sixteen-year span, was a mix
of throwaway pulp, but also some excellent writing, and thus a mixed career.

America’s natural topographical frontier was rapidly fading after the U.S. Census declared the frontier officially closed. President Teddy Roosevelt embodied the “strenuous life” and London was its chief literary embodiment. The boy “oyster pirate” turned into a frontier strong man, a primitive adventurer who sniffed out new raw settings. There was the Klondike near-Arctic wilderness, then the bottomless South Seas, and onto the “submerged tenth” of London slums and the San Francisco waterfront. Interestingly, by Mailer’s time, the pristine frontier was truly closed shut.

London’s lifestyle also turned him into a literary pioneer. Destined to become a serious writer, he nonetheless gave birth to enhanced he-man ''Argosy'' stories and other pulp magazines, and he also toughened up the sudsy Horatio Alger (how-to-succeed) Dime Novels, with a new dose of rugged individualism. Unlike his compatriot Quintet, his canon had heavy pulp content but it was muscular and moving, peopled at times with (successful) abysmal brutes. London’s tone, however, was excessively melodramatic, sentimental, and outlandish at times.

London’s Naturalism, at its most exotic, took place in the Klondike-Arc-{{pg|289|290}}tic—”Seward’s Folly,” or Russia’s “white elephant gift”—that later turned into an icy golden U.S. forty-ninth state. This mammoth chunk of the near-Arctic was then mostly uncharted literary territory when London arrived with his gold pan, ink pen, and well-thumbed ''Moby-Dick''. He wrote about the awesome setting, people, and animals, especially the primal dog family. ''The Call of the Wild'' (1903) and its reverse-sequel ''White Fang'' (1906), two novels with dogs as makeshift protagonists, made London the first such American writer whose canon featured serious fiction that deeply probed canine consciousness. And these probings were not only high quality experiments. They are also high canon content. London’s two canine heroes—Buck and White Fang—could be likened to Kurtz and Marlowe in Conrad’s ''Heart of Darkness'', with canines substituting for humans in white Arctic America. Such dog destiny also played well in the Darwinian-Spenserian context—that is, atavism or species reversion, with Buck from domestic farm dog to wolf, and, White Fang, the opposite, from wolf to subjugated dog. After studying these two canine creations, London critics either approved or snidely remarked that London could fictionalize dogs better than people.

The Mailer canon, despite its chic “now” surface, also co-existed as a primordial descent, an American version of Jung’s racial memory, as if America had its own mythic dream life, the American as civilized animal at zero-primitive—as if Mailer were retelling London’s atavistic tale of Buck and White Fang, now transformed into the “now” human condition, with infused American superpower angst. And so the Mailer canon, periodically, would lurch into Jungian night-mythos, such as America’s primordial racism in the celebrated essay, “The White Negro,”—or (with a global canon in the Mailer mind), why not switch from the customary Greek-Roman American roots and lurch back to ''Ancient Evenings'' in Egypt, more at home with magic rather than logic? And the Mailer canon was laced with primitive ornaments, such as Mailer’s—and his American Dream murderer, Rojack’s—lust for smell, Homo sapiens’ most primitive sense. Long live Buck and White Fang, and note how the positive legacy quotient light turns a dark green.

London’s addiction to socialism was Americanized, less revolutionary, and more akin to the Progressive Movement. But his core beliefs, nonetheless, were fervent. At age eighteen, to protest the 1893 “Panic’s” unemployment, London joined Kell’s “March on Washington” (early intimations of Mailer’s “March on the Pentagon”). At age twenty, London formally joined the Socialist Party. Immediately, his canon turned socio-political didactic.{{pg|290|291|}}
He wrote two Socialist treatises, ''War of the Classes'' and ''The Human Drift''. Zola’s “social bottom” now obsessed him. With his recently acquired fame, he traveled to England and did a “live” documentary treatment of London slum life, a shocker about sweat dens and garbage eating in ''The People of the Abyss'' (1903). This volume was the first of later social exposés, including ''John Barleycorn'' (1913), an autobiographical memoir, a polemic in support of the Prohibitionist Movement, his prose still highly readable and self-revealing. Soon, his hard drinking would cause serious health problems.

London’s cultural and political radicalism shaped his fiction. In his 1913, ''The Valley of the Moon'', the hero and family, victimized by urban plutocrats, escape to idyllic Agrarianism. The title refers to a California utopian community, a haven from dreaded Capitalism. There the hero and wife return to the “land” and await their son’s birth, a cultural and literary scenario recognized as neo-primitivism.

The more apocalyptic aspects of the classic Marxist class struggle are the centerpieces of London’s ''The Iron Heel''. It was truly omniscient, structured as a fragmentary historic document, told through a diary (1912-32) of several decades of Capitalistic persecution. Titanic class warfare was being waged between Plutocrats and the Masses, the latter’s only hope of a Socialist Utopia. Such was not to be, at least in 1932, when the diary stopped. But readers were informed that after three hundred years of a dystopian nightmare, only then could blessed collectivism be restored and advanced into Utopian Socialism. Such was the tonal dichotomy of a famous writer who introduced to Literary Naturalism very readable and, yet, high quality Marxist ABCs. This radical political fallout prefigured what the 1930s “proletarian literature” and, later, would foreshadow Mailer’s political odyssey from an early flirtation with Henry Wallace’s tepid US communism and his gradual shift into a somewhat ambiguous, self-proclaimed “left-conservative.”

With his breakthrough ''Son of the Wolf'', London was hailed as the “American Kipling,” a counterpart to England’s incredibly popular manly author, well known for his plain style. This development resulted in highly profitable, reader-friendly prose. It sported clear images—that is, a skilled blend of concrete sense details plus a smoothing flowing story or plot and catchy, moderate tonal passion and sincerity. Such was the formulaic prose that brought Kipling both fame and wealth.

In both the London and Mailer canons, there is a medley of thematic, tonal, and mood crossover effects. For example, London’s 1905 novel, ''The''{{pg|291|292}}''Game'', featured a prizefighter—a Mailer fixation. And there was a plentitude of Maileresque thematic clouds, filled with metaphysical power preoccupations, hovering above one of London’s best novels, ''The Sea Wolf'' (1906), famed for its Nietzschean captain of the “Ghost,” a sealing schooner. Within Wolf Larson, London had transplanted the atavistic dog formula, the “Buck-half,” on to a human seafaring environment, with its demonic antagonist. London said that his anti-hero symbolized “an attack on the superman philosophy.” As for this novel’s legacy, scholars have called Wolf Larson the “Zolaesque Captain Ahab of literary Naturalism.”

London emulated Crane, Norris, and Davis, and turned into a gutsy, flashy war correspondent, covering the Russo-Japanese War and other headline chaos. He copied Twain, and embarked on a lecture tour, both street-side among the proletariat and among eggheads at Yale and Harvard. The Klondike man, as ever, was a work beast, and now, also a spend beast. He reconditioned a great house called “Beauty Ranch”—1,500 acres, 100 employees, and at $3,000 per month a luxury mecca for worldwide guests, high and low. While this opulence was at a proliferated cost, still there was financial success. For example, the serialization of ''The Sea Wolf'' earned $4,100, and made the novel a bestseller. During this period, London earned about $75,000 a year, but was always about $200,000 in debt, yet he still wrote about 1,000 words per day. And his fluid, inner circle friends, employees, and strangers, milked and robbed him blind, not unlike the fate of some of today’s celebrities.

In 1911 there was a new wave of fame and success, and in 1913, London unveiled “Wolf House,” a magnificent dream castle built in one year, of solid stone, and a cost of about $100,000. Soon after construction it was destroyed by fire, probably arson. London’s luck had turned. The work beast wrote about ten hours per day to keep financially afloat. His body gave way. Those prolonged global cruises had brought him multiple tropical physical ailments and his overall health collapsed.

London became a breathing medical alert, a sick man beset with headaches, rheumatism, dysentery, painful kidney or renal nephritis, and excess weight from overeating and heavy drinking. And there were mental maladies. He mourned the loss of an infant child. He also suffered from spousal problems—a passive and jealous wife, which only intensified London’s melancholic yearnings for the glorious past. He was despondent over what he saw as declining sales and fame. Now, toward the end, he became disillusioned with Socialism, and dropped pacifism and turned hawkish, a{{pg|292|293}}supporter of World War I against Germany. He died in 1916, apparently from uremia or a stroke or heart failure or (some whispered) suicide, but his strong legacy lived on.

The postmortem legendary London impact was impressive. In less than two decades, the work beast’s canon could boast about more than two hundred short stories, twenty novels, three plays, and over four hundred nonfiction pieces and some sizeable pulp junk. London admitted that he was “more business man” than writer. His mammoth Darwinian-Spenserian struggle to achieve success was powerfully rendered in his “personal” novel, ''Martin Eden''.

London’s powerful legacy factor was also enhanced and sustained by American literature’s breakthrough into a global presence. In 1991, the International Copyright Law was initiated. No more foreign “pirated” editions. Instead, both international and American literary and artistic works could be copyrighted, and from there into a wide-open global market. This copyright bonanza, coupled with America’s Twain-fed fascination with plain prose, instantly made London America’s most translated writer. Indeed, his work was translated into more than eighty languages. In a more radical political context, London’s fame subsided in his home country, but elsewhere it soared, especially in the young Communist Russia, and resulted in four “complete editions,” in the old USSR. London was enshrined as America’s foremost International Author.

In London’s day, when the media was still somewhat primitive, he had become a complex celebrity. On one level, he was the new flashy literary globalist. On a personal level, he concocted an idiosyncratic multiple myth of himself, as if he were living simultaneous lives—the radical politico, the mythic Naturalist, the risky adventurer, the conspicuous consumer. And all of his front page literary agency was nurtured, clearly, by authorial megalomania. London loved being called “Wolf.” Thusly, he signed his letters and book inscriptions, and his bookplate featured an engraved picture of a wolf’s head. So in this earlier America with its quaint media, a virtual one-man show was about to exit.

On the brink of the Twentieth Century, with its media ready to go heads-on with electronics, American literature had a threesome, a trio of virtual one-man celebrity shows (Twain, London, and Davis) but only Twain would prevail with the highest legacy quotient standard. All of this notoriety was because of one book, ''Huckleberry Finn'', then as now, America’s most singu-{{pg|293|294}}

lar, quintessential book. With this media-enshrined novel, Twain had touched his (and his country’s) mother tongue’s central nerve. Now it was exit time for London, Davis, and all earlier American writers. At the Nineteenth Century’s closing, if there were to be only one man and one book standing it would be Twain and ''Huck''.

Those who question Mailer’s legacy quotient might ponder this question: Will Mailer and his literary contemporaries survive such stringent legacy quotient guidelines, previews of future “cuts.” Davis is an automatic no-show, too minor and ephemeral. Crane seems pinpointed with Hemingway and, thus, a Mailer dead-end. And Dreiser, who would live on into Mailer’s own time, must be considered as a potential Mailer legacy/literacy “Godfather.”

The Norris-Mailer connection, indeed, was vital, and mostly from Norris’s twin literary trademarks—bigness and sensationalism, especially in his more abstract prophetic stance (not found in the London canon) in his “Responsibilities of the Novelist,” the lead essay in a posthumous (1903) collection. There, Norris pontificated on a cosmic-global level, on the upward march of American literature, symbolizing the fulfillment of Western civilization’s destiny. All of this would seem to be strong academic “meat” for a heavy thinker like Mailer. In a “nuts and bolts” more practical America, the London canon remained the best media package and best rejoinder to the legacy of Mark Twain. Yes, the London career and canon were robust with survival knowledge about the nature of authorial megalomania and media response. It all came down to control. And who had it, the writer or media?

Let us consider the life and works of Jack London and their connection to Mailer. During the heady days of literary Naturalism and its Quintet, London was the one writer who came the closest to controlling the media of his time. London was his own star performer and he played quite well for two short decades joining those few select icons (Twain, Hemingway, Fitzgerald) who are still universally recognized and respected. “Wolf” London survives today in the U.S. and overseas. His legacy quotient is well earned.

A century or more in the future, will Norman Mailer be among such august literary artists? Already there are some early positive signs for the future, those budding literary quotient seeds. For example, in their shared trait of literary megalomania, Mailer’s mode, unlike London’s, was expressed only secondarily through his character, personality, and career—but primarily through his protean canon. Big-theme writers tend to impress “Ivory Tower”{{pg|294|295}} canon academicians. As for being the combative media writer, Mailer, both in the ring and on the page, was a singular battler with the media, and a controller and survivor. These qualities will play an important role in determining the Mailer Legacy.

{{Review}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cluster Seeds and the Mailer Legacy}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

Talk:The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011

2025-04-25T12:00:47Z

Grlucas:

===Article Assignments, Vol. 5===
You will need to request an article and user name for {{PM}}. You may click the link to your article below to begin your edits. Status indicators in the ? column: {{tick}} = complete (ready for final edits and banner removal); {{yellow tick}} = in process; {{cross}} = not started.

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="width: 100%;"
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! Author !! Article !! Editor !! ?
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| Mailer, M. || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Overexposed: My First Taste of Filmmaking|My First Taste of Filmmaking]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
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| Rhodes || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Reinventing a New Wheel: The Films of Norman Mailer|The Films of Norman Mailer]] || [[User:TPoole]] || {{tick}}
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| Cohen || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness: Norman Mailer’s Voice in Wild 90 and Beyond the Law|Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness]] || [[User:Daddy D]] || {{tick}}
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| Mitchell || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Norman Mailer: Playboy Magazine Heavyweight|''Playboy'' Magazine Heavyweight]] || [[User:NrmMGA5108]] || {{tick}}
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| Gladstein || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Piling On: Norman Mailer’s Utilization of Marilyn Monroe|Piling On]] || [[User:MerAtticus]] || {{tick}}
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| Kaufmann || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Cluster Seeds and the Mailer Legacy|Cluster Seeds and the Mailer Legacy]] || [[User:ADavis]] || {{tick}}
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| Spinks || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Situating Hemingway: Mailer, Style, Ethics|Situating Hemingway]] || [[User:Cbrow34]] || {{tick}}
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| Peczenik || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/The Devil's Party: Reading and Wreaking Vengeance in The Castle in the Forest|The Devil's Party]] || [[User:Maggiemrogers]] || {{tick}}
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| Hicks || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/From Here to Eternity and The Naked and the Dead: Premiere to Eternity?|''From Here to Eternity'' and ''The Naked and the Dead'']] || [[User:THarrell]] || {{tick}}
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| Mantzaris || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Contradictory Syntheses: Norman Mailer’s Left Conservatism and the Problematic of “Totalitarianism”|Contradictory Syntheses]] || [[User:JKilchenmann]] || {{tick}}
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| Sermeus || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Norman Mailer's Mythmaking in An American Dream and “The White Negro”|Norman Mailer's Mythmaking]] || [[User:Erhernandez]] || {{tick}}
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| Borkowski || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/A Tear Shed into a Cup of Sorrows|A Tear Shed into a Cup of Sorrows]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
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| Moreland || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Hemingway and Women at the Front: Blowing Bridges in The Fifth Column, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Other Works|Hemingway and Women at the Front]] || [[User:LogansPop22]] || {{yellow tick}}
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| Yirinec || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/The Conception of Irreversibility: Hannah Arendt and Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”|The Conception of Irreversibility]] || [[User:JHadaway]] || {{tick}}
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| Toback || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Norman Mailer Today|Norman Mailer Today]] || [[User:Kamyers]] || {{tick}}
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| Chandarlapaty || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Through the Lens of the Beatniks: Norman Mailer and Modern American Man’s Quest for Self-Realization|Through the Lens of the Beatniks]] || [[User:Maggiemrogers]] || {{tick}}
|}

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness: Norman Mailer’s Voice in Wild 90 and Beyond the Law

2025-04-25T11:59:15Z

Grlucas: Fix.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness: Norman Mailer’s Voice in ''Wild 90'' and ''Beyond the Law''}}
{{MR05}}
{{Byline |last=Cohen |first=Sarah Jo |abstract=A discussion of Mailer’s career, interrelating Mailer’s ethnicity with his corpus of work, with special attention to his cinematic work. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr05coh }}
{{dc|dc=N|orman Mailer’s sizable FBI file begins with his voice.}} The 165 pages of Mailer’s 171-page file available to the public cover fifteen years of observation and surveillance, and includes materials ranging from endless notes tracking Mailer’s passport applications and international travel, to FBI agents’ reviews of Miami and the Siege of Chicago (with meticulous notes about each mention of the FBI), and even a letter from a high school teacher asking J. Edgar Hoover for permission to teach ''The Naked and the Dead.''{{efn|In a letter dated March 18, 1964, also included in Mailer’s file, Hoover wrote back telling the teacher that this request was beyond his area of jurisdiction because the FBI “neither makes evaluations nor draws conclusions as to the character of integrity of any organization, publication, or individual,” and because Hoover has made it a habit “not to comment on any material not prepared by the FBI.”}} The file begins, however, with a clipping from ''The Washington Post'', a June 6, 1962, George Sokolsky column called “These Days,” that moved J. Edgar Hoover to leave a note for his staff reading, “Let me have memo on Mailer.”{{sfn|FBI|1962–1975}} Sokolsky’s article responds to an ''Esquire'' piece Mailer wrote about then first lady Jackie Kennedy that describes Mrs. Kennedy’s voice as “a quiet parody of the sort of voice one hears on the radio late at night, dropped softly into the ear by girls who sell soft mattresses, depilatories, or creams to brighten the skin.”{{sfn|Sokolsky|1962|loc=A15}} Sokolsky takes offense at Mailer’s mockery of Mrs. Kennedy and scrutiny of her voice, responding, “[A] person’s voice is what it is. I never heard Norman Mailer’s voice but whatever the Lord gave him, baritone or tenor, soprano or bass, it is what it is, and he can thank the good Lord that he does not suffer from cerebral palsy or some such thing.”{{sfn|Sokolsky|1962|loc=A15}} Mailer’s voice, however, much like his persona, is not at all God-given and never “is what it is.” Rather, Mailer’s {{pg|183|184}} voice is a deliberate construction pieced together from bits of others’ voices in order to mask the adenoidal voice of his childhood.

Mailer reflects briefly upon his voice in his chronicle of the October 1967 March on the Pentagon, ''The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History'', written in the third person with himself as its main character. Part IV of ''Armies'' begins with an apology from Mailer for bringing the story of the March on the Pentagon to a climax and then launching into a diversion about his relationship to film and the cameras following him through the melee of the march. Mailer writes of his relationship to film: “he had on screen in this first documentary a fatal taint, a last remaining speck of the one personality he found absolutely insupportable—the nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn. Something in his adenoids gave it away—he had the softness of a man early accustomed to mother-love.”{{sfn|Mailer|1968a|p=152}} For Mailer, the paradoxical experience of seeing his voice undermines the masculinities he works to materialize in his career as a writer and public intellectual, which he goes on to enumerate: “warrior, presumptive general, ex-political candidate, embattled aging enfant terrible of the literary world, wise father of six children, radical intellectual, existential philosopher, hard-working author, champion of obscenity, husband of four battling sweet wives, amiable bar drinker, and much exaggerated street fighter, party giver, hostess insulter.” As a result of feeling outed on film as a “nice Jewish boy,” “accustomed to mother love,” our presumptive general and champion of obscenity vows to “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself.”{{sfn|Mailer|1968a|p=152}}

The problem of Mailer’s voice is intimately connected with both sexuality and masculinity. The adenoids, after all, are located in the nose, a stereotypical marker of Jewish otherness and degeneracy. We do not need Sander Gilman to tell us, although he does in the chapter of ''The Jew’s Body'' entitled “The Jewish Nose,” that the Jewish nose is the locus of redirected anxiety about the Jewish penis—both are body parts that develop and take shape at puberty—the latter of which is a threat to national purity through its potential to increase the Jewish population. The adenoidal voice signals a kind of impotence for Mailer, revealing him as accustomed to mother love, and functions as “the acoustic mirror in which the male subject hears all the repudiated elements of his infantile babble.”{{sfn|Silverman|1988|p=81}} The infantile babble here, the mother tongue of the mother’s voice, is Yiddish.{{efn|Mary V. {{harvtxt|Dearborn|1999|p=14}} writes that Mailer picked up Yiddish at home from his parents, “enough so that many years later, in Germany, he was able to ask for directions in this language and be understood.”}} Kaja Silverman writes that the voice of the mother resonates in the male subject and that “the male subject frequently ‘refines’ his ‘own’ voice by projecting onto the {{pg|184|185}} mother’s voice all that is unassimilable to the paternal position.”{{sfn|Silverman|1988|p=81}} Mailer is a case study in this relationship to the maternal voice; when Mailer first sees himself on film, he hears the adenoidal, Jewish, maternal voice within himself. Because the paternal position Mailer strives to create is distinctly not Jewish, or at least one that allies itself with Jewishness without performing it, the mother’s voice becomes unassimilable (or in his words, “unsupportable”) to his identity. Thus, while Mailer asserts that he will “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself,” he returns to film as both actor and director in order to refine his voice by expunging its maternal layers.

Norman Mailer’s film career, often dismissed as vulgar and/or irrelevant, was short but intense; he directed four films, two of which were released in 1968, ''Wild 90'' and ''Beyond the Law'', one in 1970, ''Maidstone'', and, after a long break, ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' was released in 1987.{{efn|Mailer was also featured in several documentaries during these years, including Dick Fontaine’s ''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?'' (1968) and ''Norman Mailer vs. Fun City U.S.A.'' (1970); the former is a filmic companion to ''Armies'', documenting Mailer’s actions during the March on the Pentagon, and the latter produces a record of Mailer’s 1969 New York City mayoral campaign. Mailer was also documented in Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s ''Town Bloody Hall'', a film of the 1971 debate between Mailer and Germaine Greer about women’s liberation at Town Hall in New York City.}} Mailer’s first three films were largely influenced by John Cassavetes, although Mailer predictably argues that his mastery of what he calls “existential acting” makes him a much better filmmaker than Cassavetes.{{sfn|Mailer|2006|}} In his essay, “Some Dirt in the Talk,” Mailer defines existential acting by addressing each of the terms that comprise the phrase. He notes that existentialism and acting exist at two opposite “poles,” writing, ''“If existentialism is ultimately concerned with the attractions of the unknown, acting is one of the surviving rituals of invocation, repetition, and ceremony—of propitiation to the gods.”''{{sfn|Mailer|1972b|p=104}}{{efn|It is quite possible that Mailer is thinking in part of Kenneth Anger here, the word “invocation” invoking Anger’s ''Invocation of My Demon Brother'' (1969), as well as the ritual and ceremony of highly-stylized films like ''Kustom Kar Kommandos'' (1965) and ''Scorpio Rising'' (1964). Incidentally, in the Boulenger interview, a copy of Anger’s book ''Hollywood Babylon'' can be see on the bookshelf over Mailer’s shoulder, almost like a cartoon devil egging him on.}} His theory of existential acting, then, strives to collapse these two poles, freeing acting from repetition and ceremony, and liberating his actors (and himself) from the propitiation of the gods. Existential acting, he argues, works because in our daily lives we always pretend, lie, and act, and works by more effectively representing the chaos and “complexity of our century” than mainstream Hollywood cinema.{{sfn|Mailer|1972b|pp=90,108}} Unsurprisingly, from the man who gave us the genre-bending history as novel/novel as history, the true life novel, and the novel biography,{{efn|''The Armies of the Night'', ''The Executioner’s Song'', and ''Marilyn'', respectively.}} existential acting collapses the cinema and the outside world, documentary and fiction, acting and existentialism, and masculinity and performance, the last of which Mailer explicitly connects, writing: “There is hardly a guy alive who is not an actor to the hilt—for the simplest of reasons. He cannot be tough all the time...[s]o he acts to fill the gaps.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972b|pp=90-1}} Thus, armed with the theory and methodology of existential acting, Mailer returns to the cinema as a filmmaker for the same reason he considers turning away from it after his{{pg|185|186}}

experience in the above passage: at the same time the camera exposes one’s frailties and the identities one attempts to disguise; it bolsters the masquerade of masculinity by imprinting its performance in celluloid. The same voice that undermines Mailer’s masculinity becomes his primary means of constructing it.

In his first documentary Mailer sees “something in his adenoids” in a moment of slippage that renders the aural a visual prop. The experience of seeing his voice disrupts Mailer’s viewing experience by first troubling the traditional assumption that film is a visual medium and then forcing Mailer to confront himself as both image and sound. Mladen Dolar provides a means of understanding the revolutionary and revelatory potential of sound, in the form of the voice, in relation to both identity and film, as he writes:

<blockquote>[T]he visible world presents relative stability, permanence, distinctiveness, and a location at a distance, the audible presents fluidity, passing, a certain inchoate, amorphous character and a lack of distance. The voice is elusive, always changing, becoming, elapsing, with unclear contours, as opposed to the relative permanence, solidity, durability of the seen.{{sfn|Dolar|2006|p=79}}</blockquote>

Here the visible is associated with stability, permanence, and distinctiveness—terms that are crucial to our understanding of cinema, but that mirror the ways we come to understand ourselves as selves. In film, the visible is assumed to guarantee presence, an assumption that stems from, among other things, the historical and philosophical privileging of the visual as a primary quality, and the problem of the voiceovers and voice-offs of sound film—which are often disembodied, absent, and coming from beyond the grave or before birth. Because the visual has historically been the privileged epistemological order through which we understand both film and identity, by focusing on sound, which is dynamic and playful, we can begin to dismantle both identity and film.{{efn|At this point in time, there is, of course, a well-established tradition of discussing sound and the voice on film—Pascal Bonitzer’s “The Silences of the Voice” (1975), Christian Metz’s “Aural Objects” (1980), Mary Anne Doane’s “The Voice in the Cinema” (1982), Michel Chion’s ''The Voice in Cinema'' (1982), and Silverman’s ''Acoustic Mirror'' (1988), just to name a few. It seems important for our purposes, however, to rehash the stakes of this discussion, especially in relation to deconstructing/reconstructing/constructing Mailer’s masculinity.}} As Mailer sees his voice, witnessing his insides (in the form of his adenoids) undermining his outsides, the visual and audible come together, undoing the binary oppositions between seeing and hearing, insides and outsides.

Dolar contrasts the visible to the audible, arguing that the latter is associated with a lack of distance, a lack of distance perhaps best embodied by the uterine envelope created by the mother’s voice. This lack of distance with{{pg|186|187}}

regard to the sound of the voice stems from the fact that the voice is simultaneously sent and delivered, thus folding back on itself and troubling the boundaries between self and other. This lack of distance is also precisely what Mailer experiences when he sees himself in his first documentary, at once spoken and heard. While Christian Metz dismisses seeing oneself on screen as an impossibility,{{efn|In ''Imaginary Signifier'', {{harvtxt|Metz|1982|p=45}} writes that “there is one thing and one thing only that is never reflected in [the screen]: the spectator’s own body.”}} feminist film theory calls attention to the discomfort that comes from not being granted the distance that the visible demands. In “Film and the Masquerade,” Mary Anne Doane argues that the female spectator goes largely untheorized because the historical “imbrication of the cinematic image and the representation of the woman” leaves her too close to the image.{{sfn|Doane|1981|p=76}} Doane theorizes that in order to achieve the distance necessary to watch and appreciate film, female spectators assume a metaphorical feminine mask, which “in flaunting femininity, holds it at a distance.”{{sfn|Doane|1981|p=81}} Doane then briefly considers why men do not have to masquerade as more masculine spectators, writing, “The very fact that we can speak of a woman ‘using’ her sex or ‘using’ her body for particular gains is highly significant—it is not that a man cannot use his body in this way but that he doesn’t have to.”{{sfn|Doane|1981|p=82}}

But using his body for particular gains is precisely what Mailer does, as exemplified in Diane Arbus’s 1963 photograph of Mailer. If, as Mailer quipped, “Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like giving a hand grenade to a baby,” this hand grenade caught an image that exemplifies how Mailer flaunts his masculinity by holding it at a distance.{{sfn|Hagberg|2008|p=211}} In this photograph, we see Mailer is in his standard three-piece suit, sprawled out in a writerly looking high-backed chair. His right hand looks as though clasping an invisible cigarette, or pen, or as if gesturing to emphasize a point. His forehead is wrinkled in thought, and his blue eyes glow even in black and white. While his clothing, his chair, his furrowed brow, and his mouth, slightly agape in apparent mid-sentence, add up to an image we would expect of a great writer, his posture suggests otherwise; immediately, our attention is drawn to Mailer’s crotch. Thus, this image reveals both Mailer’s efforts to underscore his masculinity, placing his crotch front and center, and the vulnerability of this masculinity—in this moment, we wouldn’t need a grenade to cause Mailer a great deal of pain; a swift kick would suffice. The simultaneous power and vulnerability of Mailer’s crotch underscores his efforts to use the visibility of his body to counteract the invisibility of his voice, and his{{pg|187|188}}

hidden adenoids. We see Mailer engaged in a manly masquerade, as his proximity to the image allows him to manipulate it.

So male spectators need to masquerade as well—especially male spectators who find themselves closer to the image than they would like. The Jewish male is one such figure, as a result of a history of anti-Semitic visual representations of Jews in both scientific and popular media. Sander Gilman argues that such visual representations are internalized by contemporary Jewish-American writers, registering most prominently in repeated anxiety about sounding too Jewish.{{sfn|Gilman|1991|pp=10-37}} Mailer’s anxiety about his adenoids is decisively Jewish, both because the adenoids are located in the nose and because they give the Jewish voice its stereotypical nasal quality. Mailer’s attempt to work through this anxiety in his films is twofold. First, he gets on the other side of the camera in order to see rather than be seen, and when he is seen (as actor), it is under his own direction. Second, Mailer employs his voice in order to intervene, destabilize, and distance himself from the power of the image.

''Wild 90'', as it repeatedly calls attention to issues of seeing and visibility, provides the best examples of Mailer’s effort to seize control of his visual representation in order to produce a record of his masculinity. Mailer accomplishes this task not only by “writing,”{{efn|The word “writing” is in quotes in this sentence because while Mailer is given credit for writing the film, for example on the ''Internet Movie Database'', existential acting relies on improvisation and thus has no script, per se.}} editing, and directing the film, but also, by playing a boxer in league with mafiosi, who have the police under their control. In this film the Maf Boys, three men who spend the film holed up in a Brooklyn warehouse, watch over the New York Police Department, a position emphasized by their location many stories above the city street. The NYPD, however, asserts that the Maf Boys would not have lived past thirteen had the Irish and Jewish cops not been watching out for them—so a network of interlaced looks, and interlaced ethnicities, emerges. But perhaps the most striking look is Mailer’s own. As a character known as “the Prince,” Mailer is perpetually at the mirror, greasing up his hair and combing out its kinky curls. This position is crucial to Mailer’s management of his visual representation: from the mirror, much as in his position as director, Mailer can see both himself and the actors behind him; he can also control his image, making sure his mane and signature sneer are exactly as he wants them to appear. The metaphorical significance of Mailer’s mirror scenes almost goes without saying—at these times we are treated to moments of silence rare in his film (or writing, or political) career in which Mailer uses the visuality of film to construct and maintain the visibility of identity, to reg-{{pg|188|189}}

ister his transformation here from nice Jewish boy to badass boxer. Despite this love affair with his image, Mailer shatters the filmic mirror when, at the conclusion of ''Wild 90'', the Prince demands to speak to the audience, breaking the fourth wall, and informing the audience that the CIA{{efn|{{harvtxt|Mailer|1991|p=61}} had a strong distaste for the CIA, an organization that he saw as the paragon of both surveillance culture and WASP culture. Mailer’s 1300-plus-page novel ''Harlot’s Ghost'' provides an extended though indirect glimpse into his dislike for the CIA and is almost agonizing to read because its narrator, Harry Hubbard, is a boring, WASPy, CIA agent. It’s also worth noting that Hubbard refers to the one Jewish agent in the CIA, Reed Arnold Rosen, as “adenoidal.”}} is watching all of us. He then goes on to tell us, in his garbled, drunken voice that his favorite author is Norman Mailer—presumably, because he is both his creator and a substantial part of his self.

Mailer’s appearance, particularly in the mirror scenes of ''Wild 90'', is crucial to his efforts to make masculinity and unmake Jewishness, two concepts at odds because of the internalization of a long history of popular representations and stereotypes of the weak Jew. While Mailer combats this weakness in part through his tough guy exterior—carefully cultivated through hard-drinking, hard-talking, and hard-fighting in an effort to make himself out as a latter-day Hemingway—Mailer’s voice registers this construction as well. In the notes taken during my first screenings of ''Beyond the Law'' and ''Wild 90'', I repeatedly try to describe the voice of the characters he portrays. In my notes on ''Beyond the Law'', I wrote that the poor sound quality of the film combines with Mailer’s voice to create the effect of almost incomprehensible yelling from Lt. Francis Xavier Pope for an hour and twenty-four minutes. My notes on Mailer’s gangster voice as the Prince of ''Wild 90'' remark that his accent makes him sound like a cross between Marlon Brando and Fred Flintstone with marbles in his mouth. In my second viewing, I crossed out this assessment and wrote that he sounded more like Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion from the ''Wizard of Oz''. I am not alone in trying to describe Mailer’s voice. Michael Mewshaw describes Mailer’s voice as “the Irish brogue of a whiskey priest” coming from the body of a man who “looked about as threatening as a teddy bear”{{sfn|Mewshaw|2002|p=14}}, and Jane O’Reilly notes that “words rumble and bubble and jump out, in a variety of accents: New York, faintly southern, all g’s dropped (as in ‘Ah’m talkin’) when he is particularly shy.”{{sfn|O'Reilly|1974|p=198}} {{efn|Salman {{harvtxt|Rushdie|1992|p=48}} describes Bert Lahr’s lion voice is strikingly similar words, “all elongated vowel sounds (''Put ’emuuuuuuuup''),” and the Cowardly Lion’s personality as one that sounds a lot like Mailer’s: “transparent bravado and huge, operatic, tail-tugging, blubbing terror.”}} More recently, in an article about the New York Mailer retrospective, A.O. Scott describes Mailer’s voice as a “rapid, forceful stream of half-baked nostrums and brilliant ''aperçus'' delivered in that inimitable accent, an audible palimpsest of Mr. Mailer’s Brooklyn childhood, his Ivy League education and his World War II combat service in an Army unit composed mainly of Texans and Southerners.”

All of this is to say that the voices of Mailer’s characters (including the character “Norman Mailer,” who becomes a formal entity in ''The Armies of''{{pg|189|190}}

''the Night'', but who was roaming the streets of America and Europe at least since the publication of ''The Naked and the Dead'') are a response to the anxiety of sounding too Jewish. The adenoidal voice Mailer hears in his first documentary, the unsure voice of the Brooklyn Jew, transforms into a cacophony of accents—Southern, Irish, Italian, Brooklyn—which together make Mailer’s voice the voice of immigrant America. Paul Breines writes that discursive constructions of Jewish weakness arise from and refer to the rootlessness of the Diaspora.{{sfn|Breines|1990|p=195}} For Breines, tough Jewishness is a performance on the part of secular Jews that is largely associated with Zionism, and its creation first of tough Jewish pioneers, and then, after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, of tough Israeli soldiers.{{sfn|Breines|1990|p=195}} Mailer, however, described his relationship to Judaism in this way: “I am a Jew out of loyalty to the underdog. I would never say I was not a Jew, but I took no strength from the fact.{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|p=14}} With this in mind, Mailer’s voice is a tough Jewish voice, but one that revises Breines’ toughness by drawing strength from a composite of immigrant voices, rooted, if at all, in American soil rather than Israeli. Mailer brings these immigrant voices together to construct a hybrid masculinity that is not only part white Negro and part tough Jew, but that is also comprised of Italian-American, Irish-American, Southern, and Texan parts, among others. Thus, Mailer simultaneously makes and unmakes Jewish masculinity by borrowing from other masculinities in the process of making himself into a palimpsest.

Mailer’s essay, “The White Negro,” is the site most often returned to in order to discuss his contribution to the theories of tough Jewish discourse and of masculinity.{{efn|See {{harvtxt|Levine|2003}} and Damon. {{harvtxt|Damon|2000|p=149}} pithily writes that “The White Negro” “claims to be about how the white man envies the Black man’s sexuality and thus tries to emulate his style, but [its] subtext is about how the Jewish man envies and wants to emulate the gentile man’s sexuality, but can’t say so.”}} This essay, which argues that the hipster’s existential, psychopathic masculinity is particularly well-suited for the Cold War political climate, is infamous not only because it espouses Reichian connections between sex and violence, but also because it argues that “the Negro,” who “relinquish[es] the pleasures of the mind for the more obligatory pleasures of the body,” provides a model for how to live violently and sexually.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=341}} Both because of and despite its racist enlistment of African-American men, Mailer’s essay celebrates and identifies with black masculinity as a means of embracing otherness without admitting Jewishness. With its repeated references to the figure of “the psychopath,” who “murders—if he has the courage,” however, Mailer’s essay is also about criminality, which is a crucial source of his on-screen tough Jewish persona.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=347}} While this persona borrows its style and hipness from African Americans, it{{pg|190|191}}

almost literally ventriloquizes through the voices of Irish Americans and Italian Americans, particularly those of Hollywood cops and crooks.

Forging a criminal enterprise, and/or performing criminal masculinity, is a traditional means of assimilation for immigrant populations in America, which for the second wave of European immigrants begins with the Irish in the 1850s and is then passed on to Italian and Jewish immigrants two generations later.{{efn|A classic example appears in Sergio Leone’s Jewish gangster film, ''Once Upon a Time in America''—which stars the perpetually ethnicity-crossing Robert De Niro and for which Mailer flew to Rome 1976 in to work on the screenplay ({{harvnb|Mewshaw|2002|p=14}}). For a recent example, see Stern’s ''The Frozen Rabbi'', a comic whirlwind tour through the history of American Jewry that follows one family from the Russian Pale to Memphis, Tennessee, with a stop in New York, where one family member, Ruby “Kid” Karp, becomes a notorious gangster.}} While criminality provided immigrant gangsters with increased notoriety and power, immigrant groups who became police officers saw a similar rise in status—and much like criminals, in part because it was hoped that they could infiltrate the criminal scenes of their brethren, it was the Irish who were cops first, followed by Italians and Jews.{{sfn|Fried|1993|p=xv}} While this history suggests discrete ethnic groups who cross paths but not cultures, cinematic representations of the outlaw capitalism of mobsters often star Jewish immigrants in the role of Italian immigrants and thus demonstrate ethnic crossings similar to those in Mailer’s films. The results register in the voice; in ''Little Caesar''{{sfn|Caesar|1931}} Edward G. Robinson, né Emanuel Goldenberg, stars as the adenoidal Cesar Enrico Bandello, and in ''Scarface'',{{sfn|Hawks|1932}} Paul Muni, né Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund, stars as Antonio Camonte whose Italian accent has a near Yiddish lilt.

In a 1965 letter to William F. Buckley, a man whose mid-century faux British accent made his voice almost as strange and remarkable as Mailer’s{{efn|{{harvtxt|Buckley|2005}} is also both WASPy and a former CIA agent.}} Mailer hands the crown of “most hated man in American life” over to Buckley. The letter responds to Buckley’s recent speech before the Holy Name Society, an annual gathering of Catholic police officers, in which Buckley criticized the news media for overemphasizing police brutality during the recent civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama.{{sfn|Tanenhaus|2005|}} When the ''Herald Tribune'' and civil rights activists caught wind of these remarks, and the rumors that the assembled police officers laughed and applauded upon hearing them, a media frenzy ensued which elicited a letter from Mailer, weighing in on Buckley’s speech by clarifying his own relationship to the boys in blue:

<blockquote>I’m not the cop-hater I’m reputed to be, and in fact police fascinate me. But this is because I think their natures are very complex, not simple at all, and what I would object to ...is that you made a one-for-one correspondence between the need to maintain law and order and the nature of the men who would main- {{pg|191|192}} tain it. The policeman has I think an extraordinarily tortured psyche. He is perhaps more tortured than the criminal.{{sfn|Mailer|2008|p=8}}</blockquote>

Perhaps as a result of their tortured psyches, Mailer repeatedly turns to cops and crooks as the focus of and source of conflict in his oeuvre. For Mailer, cops are men in power who are repeatedly outwitted by clever, hypermasculine, criminals: think Stephen Rojack and Gary Gilmore, the respective heroes of ''An American Dream'' and ''The Executioner’s Song'', who commit numerous crimes in single volumes, and the Norman Mailer of ''The Armies of the Night'', arrested by U.S. Marshalls for crossing a police line at the Pentagon. There is also the Norman Mailer who stabbed his second wife, and the one who nearly lost an eye after fighting a group of hoodlums who insinuated that his dog was a “faggot.”{{sfn|Hitchens|2007|}} Mailer, as his art and life suggest, sees the tension between cops and criminals as one that is inside of everyone. In a discussion of ''Beyond the Law'' in an interview with Gilles Boulenger, Mailer reveals that the film “had a notion at the core of it that worked—which is that everybody has a cop or a criminal in them” and that, “when you put people together—one playing a cop and one playing a crook—you get the dynamism that comes from the fact that every cop in real life has a potential criminal in him and every criminal in real life, or almost every criminal in real life, has a potential cop within their soul.”{{sfn|Mailer|2006|}}

Mailer sees the conflict between cops and crooks as one that inhabits the film set as well. In “A Course on Film-Making,” he describes cameramen and union grips, who “usually dress like cops off duty and are built like cops (with the same heavy meat in the shoulders, same bellies oiled in beer), which is not surprising for they are also in surveillance upon a criminal activity: people are forging emotions under bright lights… [l]ike cops they see through every fake move and hardly care.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972a|p=133}} Here the crew, who are equated with cops, are set up in opposition to the actors whom they put under surveillance and, more indirectly, to the director, who for Mailer is always an outlaw resisting the tyranny of the image, striving to disrupt the conventions of polite cinema through a refusal to use a script, and insisting upon including as much verbal and auditory obscenity as humanly possible. Thus, even when Mailer plays a cop in ''Beyond the Law'', this portrayal becomes an effort similar to that of the director whose film tramples upon respectability. Mailer’s Lieutenant Pope inhabits the body of the cop in order{{pg|192|193}} to mock him and to illustrate a psyche more tortured than that of the criminal.

In ''Beyond the Law'', as Mailer takes on the role of a cop, anxieties about Jewishness, being seen, and the voice come together. ''Beyond the Law'' tells the story of one night in a police precinct in which a number of criminals are interrogated, ranging from a motorcycle gang, to a man who murdered his wife with an axe, to the members of a sadomasochistic whipping club. The film takes us back and forth between the precinct, where we see the cops in action, and a bar, where we see the cops off-duty, having drinks. Toward the film’s conclusion, these spaces intersect as Lieutenant Pope brings one of the women from the whipping club, a stunning Syrian woman named Lee Ray Rogers, to the bar. Rogers’ tripartite name, cobbled together from pieces of Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray,{{efn|The name also refers to Republican luminary and soon to be Nixon Administration Secretary of State William P. Rogers, who would go on to negotiate an Arab-Israeli peace treaty in 1973.}} suggests that she too will be an assassin of sorts, or at least that she will bring the little death of orgasm to Lieutenant Pope. Just before Rogers arrives, Pope (Mailer’s Irish-American cop, whose rank and name suggest that he is only slightly less than the Bishop of Rome) and Mickey Berk (Mickey Knox’s Jewish-American cop, feminized through a last name that is cockney rhyming slang for cunt),{{efn|See also entry for “Berk” on ''London Slang.com: “Rhyming Slang'', short for ‘Berkshire Hunt’, meaning ‘cunt’. Most people go around calling people ‘berks’ for years not realizing that it is slang for one of the strongest swear words in the English language.”}} have a heart to heart in the men’s room in which Pope remarks, “I used to have no respect for the Jewish cops until the Israelis showed the Arabs where to go. And then I said to myself, maybe Berk has more than even I thought.” Pope then mutters under his breath for a couple of minutes, and quietly says to himself, “The Irish never won a war."

Once Rogers arrives, Pope asks the other officers to leave them alone. An intimate conversation follows, during which the two imagine an S&M scene and Pope refers to his penis as “the avenger.” A difficult to obtain “blue” version of the film exists in which we presumably see Pope’s avenger in action. For our purposes, however, it is even more striking to see him ''voicing'' his potency and sexuality, while Mailer’s voice revealed him as soft in his first documentary, Pope tells us here that he is hard. Pope expresses the ethnic crossing that facilitates his hardness in this conversation as well, as he tells Rogers, “You bring out the Italian in me.” Ultimately, Pope’s blonde wife arrives at the bar, cramping his style, and commands him to end this conversation. Thus the film concludes with Pope at the nexus of several ethnicities: pitted against an Arab dominatrix and an emasculating ''shiksa'', the Irish Pope arms himself with an Italian libido, and metaphorically whips out his{{pg|193|194}}

avenger in the name of both the Jews, who showed the Arabs where to go, and the Irish who never won a war.

In “A Course in Filmmaking,” Mailer argues that after the advent of sound, film started to mimic theater, and that the work of film should be to get away from this mimicry in order to accomplish things that can only be accomplished on film. As films that are uniquely filmic, Mailer gives the example of ''The Maltese Falcon'', but also of the Marx Brothers’ films, in which the brothers “stampeded over every line of a script and tore off in enough directions to leave concepts fluttering like ticker tape on the mysterious nature of the movie art.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972a|p=129}} The Marx brothers are important ancestors in Mailer’s filmic genealogy, in part because they too are Jews who remix ethnicity on film, as Chico becomes Italian and Zeppo becomes the brothers’ WASPy foil. And like Mailer’s films, much of the chaos and anarchy that unfurls in the Marx Brothers’ films stems from sound, in the form of elaborate musical numbers, Groucho’s wordplay, Chico’s Italian accent and piano playing, Harpo’s horn-honking, and even his silence. For both the Marx Brothers and Mailer, the work of cinema is to unravel itself, to make and unmake a universe in the same space, to challenge conventions. Where the Marx brothers wreak havoc, for example, upon the university in ''Horse feathers'', and upon dictatorship in ''Duck Soup'', Mailer wreaks havoc upon language and good taste as he attempts to create the film with the most “repetitive pervasive obscenity of any film ever made” with ''Wild, 90'' and upon both his own voice and the human eardrum with the perpetual yelling of Lt. Pope in ''Beyond the Law''. Mailer even tells us, “''Wild 90'' seems close to nothing so much as the Marx Brothers doing improvisations on ''Little Caesar'' with the addition of a free run of obscenity equal to ''Naked Lunch'' or ''Why Are We in Vietnam?''”{{sfn|Mailer|1972b|p=90}} It is as though Mailer sees ''Wild 90'' as an almost unimaginable supplement to the Marx Brothers’ oeuvre—a vision of what their tough Jewish contribution to cinema would look like had they ever assumed the roles of mafiosi.

In Mailer’s universe, the borders between Mailer and his characters are always fragile. He tells us in the Boulenger interview that in the making of ''Beyond the Law'' he would torture the actors playing the crooks, who were all friends of his, by interrogating them about things they had done in their real lives.{{efn|The best example of this existential interrogation occurs as Mailer’s Lieutenant Pope interrogates Peter Rosoff, whom {{harvtxt|Mailer|2006}} asserts was a closeted homosexual, accusing him of soliciting sex in a subway men’s room.}} In his writing and his introductory remarks included on the French DVDs of his films, Mailer repeatedly tells us that the goal of existential acting is to create a fictional documentary.{{sfn|Mailer|2006|}} Here is an ex-{{pg|195|196}}

ample, taken from his discussion of the successes and failures of ''cinéma vérité'' in “A Course on Filmmaking”: “It was as if there was a law that a person could not be himself in front of a camera unless he pretended to be someone other than himself. By that logic, ''cinéma vérité'' would work if it photographed a performer in the midst of his performance.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972a|p=147}} Mailer’s films elaborate upon his ideas about existential filmmaking: it is only in the act of performing as a character (Lieutenant Pope) that the actor reveals himself (Norman Mailer). Pope/Mailer’s sarcastic comment about not respecting the Jews until they showed the Arabs their military might is a line almost directly out of Breines’ ''Tough Jews'', or vice versa, Pope/Mailer’s comment is part of the discourse surrounding the 1968 war that inspired ''Tough Jews''. Either way, with this line, Mailer introduces himself into the lineage of tough Jews but with his own spin. When Pope tells us that Lee Ray Rogers brings out the Italian in him, he speaks for Mailer as well. Because Jewish masculinity for Mailer is always borrowed from and channeled through other ethnic masculinities, Pope’s words are as good as Mailer’s saying that Rogers brings out the Jew in him, and Mailer’s (via Pope’s) tough Jew is always already fighting, whether he is pushing Arabs out of Palestine or fighting to defend his dog’s honor. Thus, much as Mailer helped to unmake cinema as he made it, Mailer makes Jewishness as he unmakes it—masculinity unravels as the film does the same, moving from real to reel.

== Notes ==
{{notelist}}

==Citations==
{{Reflist}}

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=1|20em}}
* {{cite book |last=Breines |first=Paul |date=1990 |title=Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewry |url= |location=New York |publisher=Basic Books |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Buckley |first=William F. |date=2005 |title=Who Did What? |url= |magazine=National Review |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite AV media |people=Clifton, Elmer and Mervyn LeRoy (Director). Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Glenda Farrell, William Collier, Jr., Sidney Blackmer (Performers) |last= |first= |date=1931 |title=Little Caesar |url= |trans-title= |format= |work=|type=DVD |language= |location= |publisher=Warner Bros. |ref={{SfnRef|Caesar|1931}} }}
* {{cite journal |last=Damon |first=Maria |title=Triangulated Desire and Tactical Silences in the Beat Hipscape: Bob Kaufman and Others |url= |journal=College Literature |volume=27 |issue=1 |date=Winter 2000 |pages=139-157 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary V. |date=1999 |title=Mailer: A Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Doane |first=Mary Anne |date=1981 |title=Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator |url= |journal=Screen |volume=23 |publisher= |pages=74-87 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dolar |first=Mladen |date=2006 |title=A Voice and Nothing More |url= |location=Cambridge |publisher= MIT P |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite AV media |last=Fontaine |first=Dick |date=1970 |title=Norman Mailer vs. Fun City U.S.A. |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite AV media |last=Fonatine |first=Dick |author-mask=1 |date=1968 |title=Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up? |url= |trans-title= |format= |work= |type=Film |language= |location= |publisher= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Fried |first=Albert |date=1993 |title=The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America |url= |location=New York |publisher=Columbia UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Gilman |first=Sander |date=1991 |title=The Jewish Voice: Chicken Soup or the Penalties of Sounding too Jewish |url= |magazine= |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hagberg |first=Gary |date=2008 |title=Art and Ethical Criticism |url= |location=Malden, MA |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite AV media| last = Hawks| first = Howard| title = Scarface| date = 1932| type = Film| ref = harv}}
* {{cite magazine |last=Hitchens |first=Christopher |date=2007 |title=Remembering the Pint-Size Jewish Fireplug |url= |magazine=Slate |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Levine |first=Andrea |title=The Jewish White Negro: Norman Mailer’s Racialized Bodies |url= |journal=MELUS |volume=28 |issue=2 |date=2003 |pages=59-81 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1968a |title=The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History |url= |location=New York |publisher= New American Library |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite AV media |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1968b |title=Beyond the Law |url= |work= |location=Supreme Mix Productions |type=Film |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |chapter=A Course in Film-Making |url= |title=Existential Errands |date=1972a |pages=123-168 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1|date=1991 |title=Harlot’s Ghost |url= |location= |publisher=Random House |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |authormask=1 |first=Norman |date=2008 |title=In the Ring: Grappling with the Twentieth Century |url= |magazine=The New Yorker |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite interview |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |subject-link= |interviewer=Gilles Boulenger |title=Personnel et Confidentiel |work= |date={{date|2006}} |publisher=Cinémalta |location=DVD |url= |access-date= |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1|chapter=Some Dirt in the Talk |url= |title=Existential Errands |date=1972b |pages=89-123 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |authormask=1|first=Norman |date=1959 |chapter=The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster. |url= |title=Advertisements for Myself |pages=337-358 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite AV media |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1968 |title=Wild 90 |url= |trans-title= |format= |work= |type=Film |language= |location= |publisher=Supreme Mix Productions |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Metz |first=Christian |date=1982 |title=Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema |url= |location=Bloomington |publisher=Indiana UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mewshaw |first=Michael |title=Vidal and Mailer |url= |journal=South Central Review |volume=19 |issue=1 |date=2002 |pages=4-14 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=O'Reilly |first=Jane |date=1974 |chapter=Diary of a Mailer Trailer |url= |title=Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up? |pages=195-215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite AV media |last=Pennebaker |first=D. A. |date=1979 |title=''Town Bloody Hall.'' |url= |work= |location=Pennebaker Hegedus Films |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rushdie |first=Salman |date=1992 |title=The Wizard of Oz |url= |location=London |publisher=BFI |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Scott |first=A. O. |date=2007 |title=Norman Mailer Unbound and On Film: Revisiting His Bigger-Than-Life-Selves |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/20/movies/20norm.html |magazine=The New York Times |pages= |access-date=2025-04-20 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Silverman |first=Kaja |date=1988 |title=The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and the Cinema |url= |location=Bloomington |publisher=Indiana UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Sokolsky |first=George E. |date=1962 |title=These Days: The First Lady |url= |magazine=The Washington Post |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Stern |first=Steve |date=2010 |title=''The Frozen Rabbi'' |url= |location=Chapel Hill |publisher=Algonquin P |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Stevens |first=Joe |date=2008 |title=The FBI’s-Year Campaign to Ferret Out Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=The Washington Post |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Tanenhaus |first=Sam |date=2005 |title=The Buckley Effect |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/02/magazine/the-buckley-effect.html |magazine=New York Times |location=A15 |access-date=2025-04-20 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite report |author=United States Federal Bureau of Investigation |date=1962–1975 |title=Memo to Staff |work=File on Norman Kingsley Mailer |publisher=Federal Bureau of Investigation |ref={{SfnRef|FBI|1962–1975}} }}
{{Refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness: Norman Mailer’s Voice in Wild 90 and Beyond the Law}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness: Norman Mailer’s Voice in Wild 90 and Beyond the Law

2025-04-25T11:57:47Z

Grlucas: Quick fix.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness: Norman Mailer’s Voice in ''Wild 90'' and ''Beyond the Law''}}
{{MR05}}
{{Byline |last=Cohen |first=Sarah Jo |abstract=A discussion of Mailer’s career, interrelating Mailer’s ethnicity with his corpus of work, with special attention to his cinematic work. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr05coh }}
{{dc|dc=N|orman Mailer’s sizable FBI file begins with his voice.}} The 165 pages of Mailer’s 171-page file available to the public cover fifteen years of observation and surveillance, and includes materials ranging from endless notes tracking Mailer’s passport applications and international travel, to FBI agents’ reviews of Miami and the Siege of Chicago (with meticulous notes about each mention of the FBI), and even a letter from a high school teacher asking J. Edgar Hoover for permission to teach ''The Naked and the Dead.''{{efn|In a letter dated March 18, 1964, also included in Mailer’s file, Hoover wrote back telling the teacher that this request was beyond his area of jurisdiction because the FBI “neither makes evaluations nor draws conclusions as to the character of integrity of any organization, publication, or individual,” and because Hoover has made it a habit “not to comment on any material not prepared by the FBI.”}} The file begins, however, with a clipping from ''The Washington Post'', a June 6, 1962, George Sokolsky column called “These Days,” that moved J. Edgar Hoover to leave a note for his staff reading, “Let me have memo on Mailer.”{{sfn|FBI|1962–1975}} Sokolsky’s article responds to an ''Esquire'' piece Mailer wrote about then first lady Jackie Kennedy that describes Mrs. Kennedy’s voice as “a quiet parody of the sort of voice one hears on the radio late at night, dropped softly into the ear by girls who sell soft mattresses, depilatories, or creams to brighten the skin.”{{sfn|Sokolsky|1962|loc=A15}} Sokolsky takes offense at Mailer’s mockery of Mrs. Kennedy and scrutiny of her voice, responding, “[A] person’s voice is what it is. I never heard Norman Mailer’s voice but whatever the Lord gave him, baritone or tenor, soprano or bass, it is what it is, and he can thank the good Lord that he does not suffer from cerebral palsy or some such thing.”{{sfn|Sokolsky|1962|loc=A15}} Mailer’s voice, however, much like his persona, is not at all God-given and never “is what it is.” Rather, Mailer’s {{pg|183|184}} voice is a deliberate construction pieced together from bits of others’ voices in order to mask the adenoidal voice of his childhood.

Mailer reflects briefly upon his voice in his chronicle of the October 1967 March on the Pentagon, ''The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History'', written in the third person with himself as its main character. Part IV of ''Armies'' begins with an apology from Mailer for bringing the story of the March on the Pentagon to a climax and then launching into a diversion about his relationship to film and the cameras following him through the melee of the march. Mailer writes of his relationship to film: “he had on screen in this first documentary a fatal taint, a last remaining speck of the one personality he found absolutely insupportable—the nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn. Something in his adenoids gave it away—he had the softness of a man early accustomed to mother-love.”{{sfn|Mailer|1968a|p=152}} For Mailer, the paradoxical experience of seeing his voice undermines the masculinities he works to materialize in his career as a writer and public intellectual, which he goes on to enumerate: “warrior, presumptive general, ex-political candidate, embattled aging enfant terrible of the literary world, wise father of six children, radical intellectual, existential philosopher, hard-working author, champion of obscenity, husband of four battling sweet wives, amiable bar drinker, and much exaggerated street fighter, party giver, hostess insulter.” As a result of feeling outed on film as a “nice Jewish boy,” “accustomed to mother love,” our presumptive general and champion of obscenity vows to “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself.”{{sfn|Mailer|1968a|p=152}}

The problem of Mailer’s voice is intimately connected with both sexuality and masculinity. The adenoids, after all, are located in the nose, a stereotypical marker of Jewish otherness and degeneracy. We do not need Sander Gilman to tell us, although he does in the chapter of ''The Jew’s Body'' entitled “The Jewish Nose,” that the Jewish nose is the locus of redirected anxiety about the Jewish penis—both are body parts that develop and take shape at puberty—the latter of which is a threat to national purity through its potential to increase the Jewish population. The adenoidal voice signals a kind of impotence for Mailer, revealing him as accustomed to mother love, and functions as “the acoustic mirror in which the male subject hears all the repudiated elements of his infantile babble.”{{sfn|Silverman|1988|p=81}} The infantile babble here, the mother tongue of the mother’s voice, is Yiddish.{{efn|Mary V. {{harvtxt|Dearborn|1999|p=14}} writes that Mailer picked up Yiddish at home from his parents, “enough so that many years later, in Germany, he was able to ask for directions in this language and be understood.”}} Kaja Silverman writes that the voice of the mother resonates in the male subject and that “the male subject frequently ‘refines’ his ‘own’ voice by projecting onto the {{pg|184|185}} mother’s voice all that is unassimilable to the paternal position.”{{sfn|Silverman|1988|p=81}} Mailer is a case study in this relationship to the maternal voice; when Mailer first sees himself on film, he hears the adenoidal, Jewish, maternal voice within himself. Because the paternal position Mailer strives to create is distinctly not Jewish, or at least one that allies itself with Jewishness without performing it, the mother’s voice becomes unassimilable (or in his words, “unsupportable”) to his identity. Thus, while Mailer asserts that he will “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself,” he returns to film as both actor and director in order to refine his voice by expunging its maternal layers.

Norman Mailer’s film career, often dismissed as vulgar and/or irrelevant, was short but intense; he directed four films, two of which were released in 1968, ''Wild 90'' and ''Beyond the Law'', one in 1970, ''Maidstone'', and, after a long break, ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' was released in 1987.{{efn|Mailer was also featured in several documentaries during these years, including Dick Fontaine’s ''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?'' (1968) and ''Norman Mailer vs. Fun City U.S.A.'' (1970); the former is a filmic companion to ''Armies'', documenting Mailer’s actions during the March on the Pentagon, and the latter produces a record of Mailer’s 1969 New York City mayoral campaign. Mailer was also documented in Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s ''Town Bloody Hall'', a film of the 1971 debate between Mailer and Germaine Greer about women’s liberation at Town Hall in New York City.}} Mailer’s first three films were largely influenced by John Cassavetes, although Mailer predictably argues that his mastery of what he calls “existential acting” makes him a much better filmmaker than Cassavetes.{{sfn|Mailer|2006|}} In his essay, “Some Dirt in the Talk,” Mailer defines existential acting by addressing each of the terms that comprise the phrase. He notes that existentialism and acting exist at two opposite “poles,” writing, ''“If existentialism is ultimately concerned with the attractions of the unknown, acting is one of the surviving rituals of invocation, repetition, and ceremony—of propitiation to the gods.”''{{sfn|Mailer|1972b|p=104}}{{efn|It is quite possible that Mailer is thinking in part of Kenneth Anger here, the word “invocation” invoking Anger’s ''Invocation of My Demon Brother'' (1969), as well as the ritual and ceremony of highly-stylized films like ''Kustom Kar Kommandos'' (1965) and ''Scorpio Rising'' (1964). Incidentally, in the Boulenger interview, a copy of Anger’s book ''Hollywood Babylon'' can be see on the bookshelf over Mailer’s shoulder, almost like a cartoon devil egging him on.}} His theory of existential acting, then, strives to collapse these two poles, freeing acting from repetition and ceremony, and liberating his actors (and himself) from the propitiation of the gods. Existential acting, he argues, works because in our daily lives we always pretend, lie, and act, and works by more effectively representing the chaos and “complexity of our century” than mainstream Hollywood cinema.{{sfn|Mailer|1972b|pp=90,108}} Unsurprisingly, from the man who gave us the genre-bending history as novel/novel as history, the true life novel, and the novel biography,{{efn|''The Armies of the Night'', ''The Executioner’s Song'', and ''Marilyn'', respectively.}} existential acting collapses the cinema and the outside world, documentary and fiction, acting and existentialism, and masculinity and performance, the last of which Mailer explicitly connects, writing: “There is hardly a guy alive who is not an actor to the hilt—for the simplest of reasons. He cannot be tough all the time...[s]o he acts to fill the gaps.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972b|pp=90-1}} Thus, armed with the theory and methodology of existential acting, Mailer returns to the cinema as a filmmaker for the same reason he considers turning away from it after his{{pg|185|186}}

experience in the above passage: at the same time the camera exposes one’s frailties and the identities one attempts to disguise; it bolsters the masquerade of masculinity by imprinting its performance in celluloid. The same voice that undermines Mailer’s masculinity becomes his primary means of constructing it.

In his first documentary Mailer sees “something in his adenoids” in a moment of slippage that renders the aural a visual prop. The experience of seeing his voice disrupts Mailer’s viewing experience by first troubling the traditional assumption that film is a visual medium and then forcing Mailer to confront himself as both image and sound. Mladen Dolar provides a means of understanding the revolutionary and revelatory potential of sound, in the form of the voice, in relation to both identity and film, as he writes:

<blockquote>[T]he visible world presents relative stability, permanence, distinctiveness, and a location at a distance, the audible presents fluidity, passing, a certain inchoate, amorphous character and a lack of distance. The voice is elusive, always changing, becoming, elapsing, with unclear contours, as opposed to the relative permanence, solidity, durability of the seen.{{sfn|Dolar|2006|p=79}}</blockquote>

Here the visible is associated with stability, permanence, and distinctiveness—terms that are crucial to our understanding of cinema, but that mirror the ways we come to understand ourselves as selves. In film, the visible is assumed to guarantee presence, an assumption that stems from, among other things, the historical and philosophical privileging of the visual as a primary quality, and the problem of the voiceovers and voice-offs of sound film—which are often disembodied, absent, and coming from beyond the grave or before birth. Because the visual has historically been the privileged epistemological order through which we understand both film and identity, by focusing on sound, which is dynamic and playful, we can begin to dismantle both identity and film.{{efn|At this point in time, there is, of course, a well-established tradition of discussing sound and the voice on film—Pascal Bonitzer’s “The Silences of the Voice” (1975), Christian Metz’s “Aural Objects” (1980), Mary Anne Doane’s “The Voice in the Cinema” (1982), Michel Chion’s ''The Voice in Cinema'' (1982), and Silverman’s ''Acoustic Mirror'' (1988), just to name a few. It seems important for our purposes, however, to rehash the stakes of this discussion, especially in relation to deconstructing/reconstructing/constructing Mailer’s masculinity.}} As Mailer sees his voice, witnessing his insides (in the form of his adenoids) undermining his outsides, the visual and audible come together, undoing the binary oppositions between seeing and hearing, insides and outsides.

Dolar contrasts the visible to the audible, arguing that the latter is associated with a lack of distance, a lack of distance perhaps best embodied by the uterine envelope created by the mother’s voice. This lack of distance with{{pg|186|187}}

regard to the sound of the voice stems from the fact that the voice is simultaneously sent and delivered, thus folding back on itself and troubling the boundaries between self and other. This lack of distance is also precisely what Mailer experiences when he sees himself in his first documentary, at once spoken and heard. While Christian Metz dismisses seeing oneself on screen as an impossibility,{{efn|In ''Imaginary Signifier'', {{harvtxt|Metz|1982|p=45}} writes that “there is one thing and one thing only that is never reflected in [the screen]: the spectator’s own body.”}} feminist film theory calls attention to the discomfort that comes from not being granted the distance that the visible demands. In “Film and the Masquerade,” Mary Anne Doane argues that the female spectator goes largely untheorized because the historical “imbrication of the cinematic image and the representation of the woman” leaves her too close to the image.{{sfn|Doane|1981|p=76}} Doane theorizes that in order to achieve the distance necessary to watch and appreciate film, female spectators assume a metaphorical feminine mask, which “in flaunting femininity, holds it at a distance.”{{sfn|Doane|1981|p=81}} Doane then briefly considers why men do not have to masquerade as more masculine spectators, writing, “The very fact that we can speak of a woman ‘using’ her sex or ‘using’ her body for particular gains is highly significant—it is not that a man cannot use his body in this way but that he doesn’t have to.”{{sfn|Doane|1981|p=82}}

But using his body for particular gains is precisely what Mailer does, as exemplified in Diane Arbus’s 1963 photograph of Mailer. If, as Mailer quipped, “Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like giving a hand grenade to a baby,” this hand grenade caught an image that exemplifies how Mailer flaunts his masculinity by holding it at a distance.{{sfn|Hagberg|2008|p=211}} In this photograph, we see Mailer is in his standard three-piece suit, sprawled out in a writerly looking high-backed chair. His right hand looks as though clasping an invisible cigarette, or pen, or as if gesturing to emphasize a point. His forehead is wrinkled in thought, and his blue eyes glow even in black and white. While his clothing, his chair, his furrowed brow, and his mouth, slightly agape in apparent mid-sentence, add up to an image we would expect of a great writer, his posture suggests otherwise; immediately, our attention is drawn to Mailer’s crotch. Thus, this image reveals both Mailer’s efforts to underscore his masculinity, placing his crotch front and center, and the vulnerability of this masculinity—in this moment, we wouldn’t need a grenade to cause Mailer a great deal of pain; a swift kick would suffice. The simultaneous power and vulnerability of Mailer’s crotch underscores his efforts to use the visibility of his body to counteract the invisibility of his voice, and his{{pg|187|188}}

hidden adenoids. We see Mailer engaged in a manly masquerade, as his proximity to the image allows him to manipulate it.

So male spectators need to masquerade as well—especially male spectators who find themselves closer to the image than they would like. The Jewish male is one such figure, as a result of a history of anti-Semitic visual representations of Jews in both scientific and popular media. Sander Gilman argues that such visual representations are internalized by contemporary Jewish-American writers, registering most prominently in repeated anxiety about sounding too Jewish.{{sfn|Gilman|1991|pp=10-37}} Mailer’s anxiety about his adenoids is decisively Jewish, both because the adenoids are located in the nose and because they give the Jewish voice its stereotypical nasal quality. Mailer’s attempt to work through this anxiety in his films is twofold. First, he gets on the other side of the camera in order to see rather than be seen, and when he is seen (as actor), it is under his own direction. Second, Mailer employs his voice in order to intervene, destabilize, and distance himself from the power of the image.

''Wild 90'', as it repeatedly calls attention to issues of seeing and visibility, provides the best examples of Mailer’s effort to seize control of his visual representation in order to produce a record of his masculinity. Mailer accomplishes this task not only by “writing,”{{efn|The word “writing” is in quotes in this sentence because while Mailer is given credit for writing the film, for example on the ''Internet Movie Database'', existential acting relies on improvisation and thus has no script, per se.}} editing, and directing the film, but also, by playing a boxer in league with mafiosi, who have the police under their control. In this film the Maf Boys, three men who spend the film holed up in a Brooklyn warehouse, watch over the New York Police Department, a position emphasized by their location many stories above the city street. The NYPD, however, asserts that the Maf Boys would not have lived past thirteen had the Irish and Jewish cops not been watching out for them—so a network of interlaced looks, and interlaced ethnicities, emerges. But perhaps the most striking look is Mailer’s own. As a character known as “the Prince,” Mailer is perpetually at the mirror, greasing up his hair and combing out its kinky curls. This position is crucial to Mailer’s management of his visual representation: from the mirror, much as in his position as director, Mailer can see both himself and the actors behind him; he can also control his image, making sure his mane and signature sneer are exactly as he wants them to appear. The metaphorical significance of Mailer’s mirror scenes almost goes without saying—at these times we are treated to moments of silence rare in his film (or writing, or political) career in which Mailer uses the visuality of film to construct and maintain the visibility of identity, to reg-{{pg|188|189}}

ister his transformation here from nice Jewish boy to badass boxer. Despite this love affair with his image, Mailer shatters the filmic mirror when, at the conclusion of ''Wild 90'', the Prince demands to speak to the audience, breaking the fourth wall, and informing the audience that the CIA{{efn|{{harvtxt|Mailer|1991|p=61}} had a strong distaste for the CIA, an organization that he saw as the paragon of both surveillance culture and WASP culture. Mailer’s 1300-plus-page novel ''Harlot’s Ghost'' provides an extended though indirect glimpse into his dislike for the CIA and is almost agonizing to read because its narrator, Harry Hubbard, is a boring, WASPy, CIA agent. It’s also worth noting that Hubbard refers to the one Jewish agent in the CIA, Reed Arnold Rosen, as “adenoidal.”}} is watching all of us. He then goes on to tell us, in his garbled, drunken voice that his favorite author is Norman Mailer—presumably, because he is both his creator and a substantial part of his self.

Mailer’s appearance, particularly in the mirror scenes of ''Wild 90'', is crucial to his efforts to make masculinity and unmake Jewishness, two concepts at odds because of the internalization of a long history of popular representations and stereotypes of the weak Jew. While Mailer combats this weakness in part through his tough guy exterior—carefully cultivated through hard-drinking, hard-talking, and hard-fighting in an effort to make himself out as a latter-day Hemingway—Mailer’s voice registers this construction as well. In the notes taken during my first screenings of ''Beyond the Law'' and ''Wild 90'', I repeatedly try to describe the voice of the characters he portrays. In my notes on ''Beyond the Law'', I wrote that the poor sound quality of the film combines with Mailer’s voice to create the effect of almost incomprehensible yelling from Lt. Francis Xavier Pope for an hour and twenty-four minutes. My notes on Mailer’s gangster voice as the Prince of ''Wild 90'' remark that his accent makes him sound like a cross between Marlon Brando and Fred Flintstone with marbles in his mouth. In my second viewing, I crossed out this assessment and wrote that he sounded more like Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion from the ''Wizard of Oz''. I am not alone in trying to describe Mailer’s voice. Michael Mewshaw describes Mailer’s voice as “the Irish brogue of a whiskey priest” coming from the body of a man who “looked about as threatening as a teddy bear”{{sfn|Mewshaw|2002|p=14}}, and Jane O’Reilly notes that “words rumble and bubble and jump out, in a variety of accents: New York, faintly southern, all g’s dropped (as in ‘Ah’m talkin’) when he is particularly shy.”{{sfn|O'Reilly|1974|p=198}} {{efn|Salman {{harvtxt|Rushdie|1992|p=48}} describes Bert Lahr’s lion voice is strikingly similar words, “all elongated vowel sounds (''Put ’emuuuuuuuup''),” and the Cowardly Lion’s personality as one that sounds a lot like Mailer’s: “transparent bravado and huge, operatic, tail-tugging, blubbing terror.”}} More recently, in an article about the New York Mailer retrospective, A.O. Scott describes Mailer’s voice as a “rapid, forceful stream of half-baked nostrums and brilliant ''aperçus'' delivered in that inimitable accent, an audible palimpsest of Mr. Mailer’s Brooklyn childhood, his Ivy League education and his World War II combat service in an Army unit composed mainly of Texans and Southerners.”

All of this is to say that the voices of Mailer’s characters (including the character “Norman Mailer,” who becomes a formal entity in ''The Armies of''{{pg|189|190}}

''the Night'', but who was roaming the streets of America and Europe at least since the publication of ''The Naked and the Dead'') are a response to the anxiety of sounding too Jewish. The adenoidal voice Mailer hears in his first documentary, the unsure voice of the Brooklyn Jew, transforms into a cacophony of accents—Southern, Irish, Italian, Brooklyn—which together make Mailer’s voice the voice of immigrant America. Paul Breines writes that discursive constructions of Jewish weakness arise from and refer to the rootlessness of the Diaspora.{{sfn|Breines|1990|p=195}} For Breines, tough Jewishness is a performance on the part of secular Jews that is largely associated with Zionism, and its creation first of tough Jewish pioneers, and then, after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, of tough Israeli soldiers.{{sfn|Breines|1990|p=195}} Mailer, however, described his relationship to Judaism in this way: “I am a Jew out of loyalty to the underdog. I would never say I was not a Jew, but I took no strength from the fact.{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|p=14}} With this in mind, Mailer’s voice is a tough Jewish voice, but one that revises Breines’ toughness by drawing strength from a composite of immigrant voices, rooted, if at all, in American soil rather than Israeli. Mailer brings these immigrant voices together to construct a hybrid masculinity that is not only part white Negro and part tough Jew, but that is also comprised of Italian-American, Irish-American, Southern, and Texan parts, among others. Thus, Mailer simultaneously makes and unmakes Jewish masculinity by borrowing from other masculinities in the process of making himself into a palimpsest.

Mailer’s essay, “The White Negro,” is the site most often returned to in order to discuss his contribution to the theories of tough Jewish discourse and of masculinity.{{efn|See {{harvtxt|Levine|2003}} and Damon. {{harvtxt|Damon|2000|p=149}} pithily writes that “The White Negro” “claims to be about how the white man envies the Black man’s sexuality and thus tries to emulate his style, but [its] subtext is about how the Jewish man envies and wants to emulate the gentile man’s sexuality, but can’t say so.”}} This essay, which argues that the hipster’s existential, psychopathic masculinity is particularly well-suited for the Cold War political climate, is infamous not only because it espouses Reichian connections between sex and violence, but also because it argues that “the Negro,” who “relinquish[es] the pleasures of the mind for the more obligatory pleasures of the body,” provides a model for how to live violently and sexually.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=341}} Both because of and despite its racist enlistment of African-American men, Mailer’s essay celebrates and identifies with black masculinity as a means of embracing otherness without admitting Jewishness. With its repeated references to the figure of “the psychopath,” who “murders—if he has the courage,” however, Mailer’s essay is also about criminality, which is a crucial source of his on-screen tough Jewish persona.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=347}} While this persona borrows its style and hipness from African Americans, it{{pg|190|191}}

almost literally ventriloquizes through the voices of Irish Americans and Italian Americans, particularly those of Hollywood cops and crooks.

Forging a criminal enterprise, and/or performing criminal masculinity, is a traditional means of assimilation for immigrant populations in America, which for the second wave of European immigrants begins with the Irish in the 1850s and is then passed on to Italian and Jewish immigrants two generations later.{{efn|A classic example appears in Sergio Leone’s Jewish gangster film, ''Once Upon a Time in America''—which stars the perpetually ethnicity-crossing Robert De Niro and for which Mailer flew to Rome 1976 in to work on the screenplay ({{harvnb|Mewshaw|2002|p=14}}). For a recent example, see Stern’s ''The Frozen Rabbi'', a comic whirlwind tour through the history of American Jewry that follows one family from the Russian Pale to Memphis, Tennessee, with a stop in New York, where one family member, Ruby “Kid” Karp, becomes a notorious gangster.}} While criminality provided immigrant gangsters with increased notoriety and power, immigrant groups who became police officers saw a similar rise in status—and much like criminals, in part because it was hoped that they could infiltrate the criminal scenes of their brethren, it was the Irish who were cops first, followed by Italians and Jews.{{sfn|Fried|1993|p=xv}} While this history suggests discrete ethnic groups who cross paths but not cultures, cinematic representations of the outlaw capitalism of mobsters often star Jewish immigrants in the role of Italian immigrants and thus demonstrate ethnic crossings similar to those in Mailer’s films. The results register in the voice; in ''Little Caesar''{{sfn|Caesar|1931}} Edward G. Robinson, né Emanuel Goldenberg, stars as the adenoidal Cesar Enrico Bandello, and in ''Scarface'',{{sfn|Hawks|1932}} Paul Muni, né Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund, stars as Antonio Camonte whose Italian accent has a near Yiddish lilt.

In a 1965 letter to William F. {{harvtxt|Buckley|2005}}, a man whose mid-century faux British accent made his voice almost as strange and remarkable as Mailer’s{{efn|Buckley is also both WASPy and a former CIA agent.}} Mailer hands the crown of “most hated man in American life” over to Buckley. The letter responds to Buckley’s recent speech before the Holy Name Society, an annual gathering of Catholic police officers, in which Buckley criticized the news media for overemphasizing police brutality during the recent civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama.{{sfn|Tanenhaus|2005|}} When the ''Herald Tribune'' and civil rights activists caught wind of these remarks, and the rumors that the assembled police officers laughed and applauded upon hearing them, a media frenzy ensued which elicited a letter from Mailer, weighing in on Buckley’s speech by clarifying his own relationship to the boys in blue:

<blockquote>I’m not the cop-hater I’m reputed to be, and in fact police fascinate me. But this is because I think their natures are very complex, not simple at all, and what I would object to ...is that you made a one-for-one correspondence between the need to maintain law and order and the nature of the men who would main- {{pg|191|192}} tain it. The policeman has I think an extraordinarily tortured psyche. He is perhaps more tortured than the criminal.{{sfn|Mailer|2008|p=8}}</blockquote>

Perhaps as a result of their tortured psyches, Mailer repeatedly turns to cops and crooks as the focus of and source of conflict in his oeuvre. For Mailer, cops are men in power who are repeatedly outwitted by clever, hypermasculine, criminals: think Stephen Rojack and Gary Gilmore, the respective heroes of ''An American Dream'' and ''The Executioner’s Song'', who commit numerous crimes in single volumes, and the Norman Mailer of ''The Armies of the Night'', arrested by U.S. Marshalls for crossing a police line at the Pentagon. There is also the Norman Mailer who stabbed his second wife, and the one who nearly lost an eye after fighting a group of hoodlums who insinuated that his dog was a “faggot.”{{sfn|Hitchens|2007|}} Mailer, as his art and life suggest, sees the tension between cops and criminals as one that is inside of everyone. In a discussion of ''Beyond the Law'' in an interview with Gilles Boulenger, Mailer reveals that the film “had a notion at the core of it that worked—which is that everybody has a cop or a criminal in them” and that, “when you put people together—one playing a cop and one playing a crook—you get the dynamism that comes from the fact that every cop in real life has a potential criminal in him and every criminal in real life, or almost every criminal in real life, has a potential cop within their soul.”{{sfn|Mailer|2006|}}

Mailer sees the conflict between cops and crooks as one that inhabits the film set as well. In “A Course on Film-Making,” he describes cameramen and union grips, who “usually dress like cops off duty and are built like cops (with the same heavy meat in the shoulders, same bellies oiled in beer), which is not surprising for they are also in surveillance upon a criminal activity: people are forging emotions under bright lights… [l]ike cops they see through every fake move and hardly care.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972a|p=133}} Here the crew, who are equated with cops, are set up in opposition to the actors whom they put under surveillance and, more indirectly, to the director, who for Mailer is always an outlaw resisting the tyranny of the image, striving to disrupt the conventions of polite cinema through a refusal to use a script, and insisting upon including as much verbal and auditory obscenity as humanly possible. Thus, even when Mailer plays a cop in ''Beyond the Law'', this portrayal becomes an effort similar to that of the director whose film tramples upon respectability. Mailer’s Lieutenant Pope inhabits the body of the cop in order{{pg|192|193}} to mock him and to illustrate a psyche more tortured than that of the criminal.

In ''Beyond the Law'', as Mailer takes on the role of a cop, anxieties about Jewishness, being seen, and the voice come together. ''Beyond the Law'' tells the story of one night in a police precinct in which a number of criminals are interrogated, ranging from a motorcycle gang, to a man who murdered his wife with an axe, to the members of a sadomasochistic whipping club. The film takes us back and forth between the precinct, where we see the cops in action, and a bar, where we see the cops off-duty, having drinks. Toward the film’s conclusion, these spaces intersect as Lieutenant Pope brings one of the women from the whipping club, a stunning Syrian woman named Lee Ray Rogers, to the bar. Rogers’ tripartite name, cobbled together from pieces of Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray,{{efn|The name also refers to Republican luminary and soon to be Nixon Administration Secretary of State William P. Rogers, who would go on to negotiate an Arab-Israeli peace treaty in 1973.}} suggests that she too will be an assassin of sorts, or at least that she will bring the little death of orgasm to Lieutenant Pope. Just before Rogers arrives, Pope (Mailer’s Irish-American cop, whose rank and name suggest that he is only slightly less than the Bishop of Rome) and Mickey Berk (Mickey Knox’s Jewish-American cop, feminized through a last name that is cockney rhyming slang for cunt),{{efn|See also entry for “Berk” on ''London Slang.com: “Rhyming Slang'', short for ‘Berkshire Hunt’, meaning ‘cunt’. Most people go around calling people ‘berks’ for years not realizing that it is slang for one of the strongest swear words in the English language.”}} have a heart to heart in the men’s room in which Pope remarks, “I used to have no respect for the Jewish cops until the Israelis showed the Arabs where to go. And then I said to myself, maybe Berk has more than even I thought.” Pope then mutters under his breath for a couple of minutes, and quietly says to himself, “The Irish never won a war."

Once Rogers arrives, Pope asks the other officers to leave them alone. An intimate conversation follows, during which the two imagine an S&M scene and Pope refers to his penis as “the avenger.” A difficult to obtain “blue” version of the film exists in which we presumably see Pope’s avenger in action. For our purposes, however, it is even more striking to see him ''voicing'' his potency and sexuality, while Mailer’s voice revealed him as soft in his first documentary, Pope tells us here that he is hard. Pope expresses the ethnic crossing that facilitates his hardness in this conversation as well, as he tells Rogers, “You bring out the Italian in me.” Ultimately, Pope’s blonde wife arrives at the bar, cramping his style, and commands him to end this conversation. Thus the film concludes with Pope at the nexus of several ethnicities: pitted against an Arab dominatrix and an emasculating ''shiksa'', the Irish Pope arms himself with an Italian libido, and metaphorically whips out his{{pg|193|194}}

avenger in the name of both the Jews, who showed the Arabs where to go, and the Irish who never won a war.

In “A Course in Filmmaking,” Mailer argues that after the advent of sound, film started to mimic theater, and that the work of film should be to get away from this mimicry in order to accomplish things that can only be accomplished on film. As films that are uniquely filmic, Mailer gives the example of ''The Maltese Falcon'', but also of the Marx Brothers’ films, in which the brothers “stampeded over every line of a script and tore off in enough directions to leave concepts fluttering like ticker tape on the mysterious nature of the movie art.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972a|p=129}} The Marx brothers are important ancestors in Mailer’s filmic genealogy, in part because they too are Jews who remix ethnicity on film, as Chico becomes Italian and Zeppo becomes the brothers’ WASPy foil. And like Mailer’s films, much of the chaos and anarchy that unfurls in the Marx Brothers’ films stems from sound, in the form of elaborate musical numbers, Groucho’s wordplay, Chico’s Italian accent and piano playing, Harpo’s horn-honking, and even his silence. For both the Marx Brothers and Mailer, the work of cinema is to unravel itself, to make and unmake a universe in the same space, to challenge conventions. Where the Marx brothers wreak havoc, for example, upon the university in ''Horse feathers'', and upon dictatorship in ''Duck Soup'', Mailer wreaks havoc upon language and good taste as he attempts to create the film with the most “repetitive pervasive obscenity of any film ever made” with ''Wild, 90'' and upon both his own voice and the human eardrum with the perpetual yelling of Lt. Pope in ''Beyond the Law''. Mailer even tells us, “''Wild 90'' seems close to nothing so much as the Marx Brothers doing improvisations on ''Little Caesar'' with the addition of a free run of obscenity equal to ''Naked Lunch'' or ''Why Are We in Vietnam?''”{{sfn|Mailer|1972b|p=90}} It is as though Mailer sees ''Wild 90'' as an almost unimaginable supplement to the Marx Brothers’ oeuvre—a vision of what their tough Jewish contribution to cinema would look like had they ever assumed the roles of mafiosi.

In Mailer’s universe, the borders between Mailer and his characters are always fragile. He tells us in the Boulenger interview that in the making of ''Beyond the Law'' he would torture the actors playing the crooks, who were all friends of his, by interrogating them about things they had done in their real lives.{{efn|The best example of this existential interrogation occurs as Mailer’s Lieutenant Pope interrogates Peter Rosoff, whom {{harvtxt|Mailer|2006}} asserts was a closeted homosexual, accusing him of soliciting sex in a subway men’s room.}} In his writing and his introductory remarks included on the French DVDs of his films, Mailer repeatedly tells us that the goal of existential acting is to create a fictional documentary.{{sfn|Mailer|2006|}} Here is an ex-{{pg|195|196}}

ample, taken from his discussion of the successes and failures of ''cinéma vérité'' in “A Course on Filmmaking”: “It was as if there was a law that a person could not be himself in front of a camera unless he pretended to be someone other than himself. By that logic, ''cinéma vérité'' would work if it photographed a performer in the midst of his performance.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972a|p=147}} Mailer’s films elaborate upon his ideas about existential filmmaking: it is only in the act of performing as a character (Lieutenant Pope) that the actor reveals himself (Norman Mailer). Pope/Mailer’s sarcastic comment about not respecting the Jews until they showed the Arabs their military might is a line almost directly out of Breines’ ''Tough Jews'', or vice versa, Pope/Mailer’s comment is part of the discourse surrounding the 1968 war that inspired ''Tough Jews''. Either way, with this line, Mailer introduces himself into the lineage of tough Jews but with his own spin. When Pope tells us that Lee Ray Rogers brings out the Italian in him, he speaks for Mailer as well. Because Jewish masculinity for Mailer is always borrowed from and channeled through other ethnic masculinities, Pope’s words are as good as Mailer’s saying that Rogers brings out the Jew in him, and Mailer’s (via Pope’s) tough Jew is always already fighting, whether he is pushing Arabs out of Palestine or fighting to defend his dog’s honor. Thus, much as Mailer helped to unmake cinema as he made it, Mailer makes Jewishness as he unmakes it—masculinity unravels as the film does the same, moving from real to reel.

== Notes ==
{{notelist}}

==Citations==
{{Reflist}}

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=1|20em}}
* {{cite book |last=Breines |first=Paul |date=1990 |title=Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewry |url= |location=New York |publisher=Basic Books |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Buckley |first=William F. |date=2005 |title=Who Did What? |url= |magazine=National Review |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite AV media |people=Clifton, Elmer and Mervyn LeRoy (Director). Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Glenda Farrell, William Collier, Jr., Sidney Blackmer (Performers) |last= |first= |date=1931 |title=Little Caesar |url= |trans-title= |format= |work=|type=DVD |language= |location= |publisher=Warner Bros. |ref={{SfnRef|Caesar|1931}} }}
* {{cite journal |last=Damon |first=Maria |title=Triangulated Desire and Tactical Silences in the Beat Hipscape: Bob Kaufman and Others |url= |journal=College Literature |volume=27 |issue=1 |date=Winter 2000 |pages=139-157 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary V. |date=1999 |title=Mailer: A Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Doane |first=Mary Anne |date=1981 |title=Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator |url= |journal=Screen |volume=23 |publisher= |pages=74-87 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dolar |first=Mladen |date=2006 |title=A Voice and Nothing More |url= |location=Cambridge |publisher= MIT P |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite AV media |last=Fontaine |first=Dick |date=1970 |title=Norman Mailer vs. Fun City U.S.A. |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite AV media |last=Fonatine |first=Dick |author-mask=1 |date=1968 |title=Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up? |url= |trans-title= |format= |work= |type=Film |language= |location= |publisher= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Fried |first=Albert |date=1993 |title=The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America |url= |location=New York |publisher=Columbia UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Gilman |first=Sander |date=1991 |title=The Jewish Voice: Chicken Soup or the Penalties of Sounding too Jewish |url= |magazine= |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hagberg |first=Gary |date=2008 |title=Art and Ethical Criticism |url= |location=Malden, MA |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite AV media| last = Hawks| first = Howard| title = Scarface| date = 1932| type = Film| ref = harv}}
* {{cite magazine |last=Hitchens |first=Christopher |date=2007 |title=Remembering the Pint-Size Jewish Fireplug |url= |magazine=Slate |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Levine |first=Andrea |title=The Jewish White Negro: Norman Mailer’s Racialized Bodies |url= |journal=MELUS |volume=28 |issue=2 |date=2003 |pages=59-81 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1968a |title=The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History |url= |location=New York |publisher= New American Library |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite AV media |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1968b |title=Beyond the Law |url= |work= |location=Supreme Mix Productions |type=Film |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |chapter=A Course in Film-Making |url= |title=Existential Errands |date=1972a |pages=123-168 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1|date=1991 |title=Harlot’s Ghost |url= |location= |publisher=Random House |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |authormask=1 |first=Norman |date=2008 |title=In the Ring: Grappling with the Twentieth Century |url= |magazine=The New Yorker |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite interview |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |subject-link= |interviewer=Gilles Boulenger |title=Personnel et Confidentiel |work= |date={{date|2006}} |publisher=Cinémalta |location=DVD |url= |access-date= |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1|chapter=Some Dirt in the Talk |url= |title=Existential Errands |date=1972b |pages=89-123 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |authormask=1|first=Norman |date=1959 |chapter=The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster. |url= |title=Advertisements for Myself |pages=337-358 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite AV media |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1968 |title=Wild 90 |url= |trans-title= |format= |work= |type=Film |language= |location= |publisher=Supreme Mix Productions |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Metz |first=Christian |date=1982 |title=Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema |url= |location=Bloomington |publisher=Indiana UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mewshaw |first=Michael |title=Vidal and Mailer |url= |journal=South Central Review |volume=19 |issue=1 |date=2002 |pages=4-14 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=O'Reilly |first=Jane |date=1974 |chapter=Diary of a Mailer Trailer |url= |title=Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up? |pages=195-215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite AV media |last=Pennebaker |first=D. A. |date=1979 |title=''Town Bloody Hall.'' |url= |work= |location=Pennebaker Hegedus Films |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rushdie |first=Salman |date=1992 |title=The Wizard of Oz |url= |location=London |publisher=BFI |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Scott |first=A. O. |date=2007 |title=Norman Mailer Unbound and On Film: Revisiting His Bigger-Than-Life-Selves |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/20/movies/20norm.html |magazine=The New York Times |pages= |access-date=2025-04-20 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Silverman |first=Kaja |date=1988 |title=The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and the Cinema |url= |location=Bloomington |publisher=Indiana UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Sokolsky |first=George E. |date=1962 |title=These Days: The First Lady |url= |magazine=The Washington Post |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Stern |first=Steve |date=2010 |title=''The Frozen Rabbi'' |url= |location=Chapel Hill |publisher=Algonquin P |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Stevens |first=Joe |date=2008 |title=The FBI’s-Year Campaign to Ferret Out Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=The Washington Post |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Tanenhaus |first=Sam |date=2005 |title=The Buckley Effect |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/02/magazine/the-buckley-effect.html |magazine=New York Times |location=A15 |access-date=2025-04-20 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite report |author=United States Federal Bureau of Investigation |date=1962–1975 |title=Memo to Staff |work=File on Norman Kingsley Mailer |publisher=Federal Bureau of Investigation |ref={{SfnRef|FBI|1962–1975}} }}
{{Refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness: Norman Mailer’s Voice in Wild 90 and Beyond the Law}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Piling On: Norman Mailer’s Utilization of Marilyn Monroe

2025-04-22T15:21:10Z

Grlucas: Fixes. Still getting an error.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}} }}
{{MR05}}
{{byline|last=Gladstein |first=Mimi Reisel |abstract=An exploration into Mailer’s long-term fascination with Marilyn Monroe. |note=My thanks to the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin for permission to examine the Norman Mailer archives in researching this essay. [Author’s note. —Ed.] |url=http://prmlr.us/mr05gla}}

{{dc|dc=I|n a lengthy, single-spaced, two-and-a-half-page typewritten critique}} of the Actor’s Studio production of ''Strawhead,'' Norman Mailer’s fifth wife, Carol, tasks him with the above observation about this third appropriation of Marilyn Monroe as a focus for his creative endeavors. It is a salient question, something mentioned not only by someone who knew him intimately, but also by critics of the relevant works, ''Marilyn,'' ''Of Women and Their Elegance,'' and ''Strawhead.'' Mailer’s biographers have also noted how beguiled he was with the topic. Robert Merrill calls it “a continuing obsession.”{{sfn|Merrill|1992|p=9}} Barry Leeds introduces his book-length study, ''The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer,'' with a chapter on Mailer and Marilyn, observing in his first sentence that for decades Mailer had been “fascinated with the life and death of Marilyn Monroe,” introducing the similarities between them, and concluding that they were both prisoners of sex.{{sfn|Leeds|2002|p=20}} The issue calls for further exploration of both its enduring allure for Mailer and the unsavory aspects of his handling of his Marilyn mania.

It is hard to know exactly when this “obsession” began. Mailer claimed on a number of occasions that he had never met Marilyn Monroe. Not so, according to Shelley Winters, quoted in the “Hollywood Politics” chapter of Peter Manso’s biography. She contradicts Mailer’s claim that he never met Monroe. According to Winters, they met at a rally for Henry Wallace in{{pg|264|265}} Hollywood in 1948.{{sfn|Manso|1985|p=131}} Both may be right according to their memories. It is possible that in 1948, the woman who would become Marilyn Monroe was still Norma Jeane and displayed little of that incandescent ability to exude sexuality as she projected herself to camera and fans.{{efn| {{harvtxt|Guiles|1984|p=}} spells it “Jeane” in ''Legend: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe,'' as does Leaming in ''Marilyn.'' Mailer spells it “Jean.”}} The as-yet-unknown Norma Jeane may not have made enough of an impression on Mailer for him to remember it. Years later, once he began writing about her, the official story from him and a number of his biographers is that the only place they ever met was in his imagination.{{efn|This holds true for the make-believe trial he created to forestall the criticism of his second Monroe book. When he is asked in an imaginary court scene, answers the Prosecutor’s question about whether he had ever met MM, by saying, “No, but I sat behind her once at Actor’s Studio.” {{harvtxt|Mailer|1980b|p=33}}}} Regardless of whether or not they met briefly in the forties or never met, once Mailer had fastened onto Monroe as a topic for his literary delectation, he had a hard time letting go. In addition, his fervor sometimes led to “piling on” and on occasion “late hits” or “low blows,” to use football and boxing metaphors for Mailer’s literary excesses.

Oddly enough for what became such an enduring interest, the initial impetus to write about Monroe was not Mailer’s.{{efn|I am not unmindful of the earlier references to Monroe or the Marilynesque characters in previous Mailer works, but here I mean Marilyn as the main subject.}} It came as part of a book project for a compilation of photographs of Monroe by famous photographers, principle among them Larry Schiller who had taken nude photographs of the actress in the last days of her life. Others included Milton Greene, Bert Stern, Eve Arnold, and Richard Avedon.{{efn|Milton Greene’s photographs would be featured in Mailer’s second Monroe project {{harvtxt|Mailer|1980a|}}.}} Mailer was a big name writer, whom they contacted to quickly deliver a ten-thousand-word preface for this photography book. However, as is often the case with addictions and/or obsessions, once started, they are difficult to abandon. The Preface was like an aphrodisiac appetizer for Mailer and once begun, the subject so enflamed his phallic pen, that eventually it produced more than ninety thousand words and, in the opinion of the ''New York Times'' reviewer, the “100 photographs...[were] reduced to serving the relatively minor function of illustrating his text.”{{sfn|Lehmann-Haupt|1973|p=27}} And while Marilyn was to serve as Mailer’s muse on three separate occasions, it was this initial foray into the world of America’s legendary sex goddess that first demonstrated Marilyn’s variety of uses for Mailer. In this case, the publication of ''Marilyn'' was professionally valuable in the development of Mailer’s career. Middle-aged, with his career in a “holding pattern,” according to Mary Dearborn, “''Marilyn'' put Norman’s name before the public, where it had not been” for some years.{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|p=324}}

Another possible source for Mailer’s obsession with Monroe could be Mailer’s competitive nature. A number of writers have suggested that his legendary ego might have been wounded by his lack of access to the era’s{{pg|265|266}} consummated sex goddess, as he considered himself the epitome of the macho man. The main men in her life were such that Mailer would want to measure himself against them. Husband number one was not a consideration. Mailer interviewed James Dougherty, but the man and his remembrances are summarily dismissed as possibly unreliable since they are those of a narcotics cop. For Mailer, in terms of possible competition, Dougherty qualifies at best as a neophyte, ignorant of the finer points of the contest. Husbands two and three are another matter. They were both significant figures in their different professions. Mailer, for whom boxing was an actual hobby and metaphorical trope, may have consciously or subconsciously regretted that he never even got the chance to get in the ring with either of these champions.{{efn|Hemingway also used the boxing metaphor, famously evaluating his writing in relation to other writers in terms of staying in the ring with them.}} It was about this time in Mailer’s life that Jose Torres began giving him boxing lessons in exchange for editorial assistance with the book Torres was writing about Muhammed Ali. In a contest with Monroe’s second husband, Mailer is out of his class, division, or league, whichever metaphor works. Joe DiMaggio was a legendary sports hero, an icon of the masculine arena. DiMaggio had reached such mythic status that he was referenced in popular music and in Hemingway’s admired novella, ''The Old Man and The Sea.''{{efn|A Simon and Garfunkel lyric for a song in the Academy Award-nominated film, ''The Graduate,'' positions DiMaggio as a national hero, one whose return the nation longs for: “Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio / A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” Santiago, the heroic fisherman in Hemingway’s ''The Old Man and the Sea,'' tells the boy about “the great DiMaggio.”}} Bouts are not scheduled between boxers who fall in different weight classes and, in the sports league, Mailer would not even try to get in the ring with DiMaggio. Instead, Mailer presents him in an almost complimentary manner, writing that during the years that Monroe was married to DiMaggio, she looked like she was fed on sexual candy.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=102}} In his need to find sufficiently lusty language, Mailer invents the term “fucky” to describe how Monroe looked during the DiMaggio period. He also pays DiMaggio the high compliment of comparing him to Hemingway in terms of eminence in his art, pointing out the “consistent courage” it took to face thousands of fast balls, any of which could kill or cripple him.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=99}} If there is a hero in this “novel,” it would have to be “Jolting Joe.” Mailer credits him with always being there for Marilyn “when she needs him, and is probably her closest friend in the months before she dies.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=95}} A photograph of DiMaggio at Monroe’s funeral is one of the last images in the book and Mailer’s last line reads, “Let us then take our estimate of her worth by the grief on Joe DiMaggio’s face the day of that dread funeral in Westwood west of Hollywood.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=262}}

The competition begins in earnest when Mailer turns to Monroe’s last husband, Arthur Miller. Miller is definitely in Mailer’s class, division,{{pg|266|267}} league: both are literary heavy-weights. Miller was a dominant figure in the intellectual and arts arena. Both ''Death of a Salesman'' and ''The Crucible'' were prominent theatrical vehicles, winning a number of drama awards and becoming mainstays of university and community theatres all over the country. Mailer takes a number of jabs at Miller, labeling him a “failure” as Monroe’s champion in her battles with Olivier in England and a “traitor” because he had written a note about how she embarrassed him, a note that devastated her when she read it.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=167}} As if taking on the role of Marilyn’s champion, Mailer pelts Miller with numerous pejoratives. Among them are “tight,” “tied up” and “abstemious.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=143}} In addition, Mailer tries to land a knockout blow by characterizing Miller in the the sexual arena as “an inhibited householder from Brooklyn.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=167}} In this metaphorically sexual bout, in addition to his below-the-belt punches, Mailer hits Miller with a glancing blow to the head with the assessment that he had “limited lyrical gifts, no capacity for intellectual shock.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=142}} Mailer is sure he could have beat Miller but he never did get in the ring with him because, as he complains, when they lived in close proximity he “waited for the call to visit, which of course never came.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=19}} He admits that a reason for the cut may have been the very fact of his competitive nature and the fact that stealing Marilyn had been his secret ambition. Convinced of his prowess in this arena, he suggests that Miller may have feared creating the opportunity. Of course that meeting with Marilyn never occurred, and as Mailer could not compete with either of these men in a real life ''mano a mano,'' he resorted to his most effective weapon. He created his own access—with his pen.

Returning to the subject of the many uses Mailer made of Monroe, ''Marilyn,'' as I argued in an earlier study, is, among other things, an exercise in creating a masturbatory fantasy about a woman who got away. It is also the initial volley in Mailer’s campaign to possess his subject inside and out, first in his voice as a biographer and then assuming her voice as memoiorist. From the onset of the first project, Mailer expresses his frustration with the time limitations imposed on his fantasy fulfillment. In “An Acknowledgment,” Mailer proclaims his discontent with having to meet a publication deadline.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=257}} This he was able to remedy in the future by creating his own projects, whereby he will be “master of his own domain.” Because of the time checks in this case, he protests that he cannot write a proper biography, which he claims would take at least two years just to amass the materials needed for a suitable job. Therefore, he complains,
{{pg|267|268}}

rather than the biography he desired to write, he has written a “novel biography.” Since he can't do his own original research, he enumerates the other writers whose works he draws on, as well as Norman Rosten’s manuscript for the as-yet-unpublished biography, ''Marilyn—An Untold Story.'' In addition, he cites what he calls “interviews in modest depth.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=259}} In this case, the Mailer braggadocio, his advertisments of himself, may have been uncharacteristically muted. In ''Legend: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe,'' Fred Lawrence Guiles, whose first biography ''Norma Jean'' is one of two cited by Mailer as the main sources for the facts in his book, returns the compliment, when he credits Mailer’s “modest” interview with producing the “most thorough account” of the relationship between Norma Jeane (not yet Marilyn) and André de Dienes, a Hungarian born fashion photographer. A number of the fresh-faced, jeans-clad photographs by Dienes are in the book.

''Marilyn'' was also to serve Mailer as a vita-enhancing publication. Robert Merrill argues for “serious reconsideration” of ''Marilyn'' as he contends that its excellences as a biography have been overlooked and, though one of Mailer’s “minor works,” it still contributes to the overall “imposing output of serious and original works.”{{sfn|Merrill|1992|p=142}}{{sfn|Merrill|1992|p=212}} Carl Rollyson considers it a “significant achievement in American letters with which biographers must reckon.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=261}} Jennifer Bailey reads it as an “unmistakable achievement.”{{sfn|Bailey|1979|p=140}} And, indeed, when one gets beyond the leeringly salacious element, there is much to admire about the book, both as a biography and as a novel. A charming element about it is Mailer’s tone, which is wonderfully self-deflating in places. One such instance is when he acknowledges his peevishness about not being invited to meet Marilyn as he was sure that “no one was so well suited to bring out the best in her.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=20}} Then, in the next line, he concedes that some failed marriages later, he was better equipped to understand that what he was probably responding to at the time was the same thing that some fifty million other men felt as a result of what he calls “the foundation of her art,” which was an ability to “speak to each man as if he were all of male existence available to her.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=20}} He admits that not only would he probably have failed her, but that she might well have “damaged” him. In another instance of uncharacteristically revealing candor, he admits, in a discussion of Monroe’s purported lack of self-assurance about sex, that “we all reveal our innocence about sex in a candid remark.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=75}} This from the writer who had, on occasion, postitioned himself as an “sexpert.” To a certain extent the tension between the macho writer taking lusty virtual possession of his sub-{{pg|268|269}} ject and the self-revelatory hesitations he expresses creates a correspondence between him and Monroe as they both projected a blatant forward sexuality that overlays an undercurrent of vulnerability.

Another service Marilyn/''Marilyn'' performs for Mailer, is facilitating his joys of linguistic excess.{{efn|I do not mean to imply that Mailer’s linguistic virtuosity is sparing in other works, only that this work allows him even more occasion for unmonitored verbal hijinks.}} Given the spectacular and extravagant nature of his subject and her reputation, he allows himself a surfeit of verbal highwire acts. On occasion the result is fun as when he catalogs the list of Monroe’s early Hollywood relationships: “Snively, Schenck, Karger, and Hyde! If she had been a bargirl lookng to sue an ex-lover in a raunchy case, she would have picked her law firm out of the yellow pages with a name like that.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=89}} But at other times his unmonitored metaphors and imagery are definitely in need of a discerning editor.{{efn|My colleague Robert Gunn suggests that Mailer’s prose flaunts a lack of monitoring, that in its “gleefully exhibitionistic (and highly erotic)” display demonstrates “not an absence of artistic control, but rather a deliberate choice to refuse propriety and proportionality.”}} In one jarring instance, he writes of Monroe’s final moments when “the wings of death lay wet feathers across her face.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=86}} “Wet feathers” is a clumsy image whereby to communicate the dark eminence of death. Rather than a sense of awe, what is evoked is annoyance; wet feathers would tickle or make one want to sneeze. Mailer’s choice of metaphor to describe Monroe’s inability to escape her past is to describe her behavior “as sluggish as a dinosaur’s tail.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=126}} This metaphor is equally inept. The image conveyed is awkward rather than apt. Experience that repeats itself “with the breath of a turnip” is another of his odd images (143) Wet feathers, dinosaur tails, and the breath of a turnip—surely a wordsmith like Mailer could do better.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=143}} In his explanation of why the “detritus of the insignificant” films she played in early in her career so damaged any good will she may have accumulated as a young women and led to “retaliations” he descibes as “nihilistic,” Mailer pulls out more over-the-top verbal imagery.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|pp=89-90}} He calls Monroe “a sly leviathan of survival, and, Faust among the Faustians.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=90}} In addition to the lingustic abandon, he also allows himself such salaciously voyeuristic flights of the imagination as an invented dialogue after the discovery by studio executives that their newest sensation had posed in the nude. Mailer excuses himself by pointing out that “a novelist has a right to invent the following dialogue.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=92}} He then devises such questions as cannot help but inflame the imagination: “Did you spread your legs?” “Is your asshole showing?” “Any animals in it with you?” Lest he miss the opportunity to use every profanity he knows, Mailer includes the statement, when trying to describe the divided character of Monroe’s personality, that while she could be an angel, she was also “one hard and calculating{{pg|269|270}} computer of a cold and ambitious cunt” and then underlines his linguistic choice by stating parenthetically “(no other English word is near).”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=97}}{{efn|I am reminded of an old graffiti:“Profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate mother-fucker.” I can think of a number of words that would work as well. I am sure Mailer could too, but he liked to shock and as I argue throughout, he gives himself full license with this topic.}}

The publication of ''Marilyn'' was a boon to Mailer both personally and professionally—and then as a bonus benefit unexpectedly, it serve him as a tool for seduction. In ''A Ticket to the Circus,'' Norris Church Mailer writes of its role in their first encounter and subsequent courtship.In 1975, in anticipation of meeting the famous author, Barbara Norris—her name when they met—brought her copy of the book for him to sign. He did not sign it until February of 1976 when a relationship had already begun. Addressing it to Barbara Mailer he writes, “Because I knew when I wrote this book that someone I had not yet met would read it and be with me.”{{sfn|Mailer|2010|p=89}} The Mailer chutzpah is in full force here.

''Of Women and Their Elegance,'' Mailer’s second appropriation of Marilyn Monroe, came some seven years after the first. Like the first, it is heavily reliant on the visual. Here, however, rather than pictures only of Marilyn, there are pictures of other women and their elegance. The photographs by Milton H. Greene run the gamut from Marlene Dietrich to Grandma Moses. In ''Marilyn,'' Mailer claimed to be writing a “novel biography” and he routinely referenced the biographical works of Maurice Zolotow, Fred Lawrence Guiles, and Norman Rosten, also often citing what he called “factoids.” Here he baldly states in a note before the text that he “does not pretend to offer factual representations.”

Obviously foreseeing much of the kind of criticism that this book would engender, Mailer anticipates his detractors in a make-believe trial published in ''New York'' magazine. Deftly titled “Before the Literary Bar,” besides his own voice he creates the parts of the Prosecutor, the Defense, and The Court. The charge is “criminal literary negligence” and Mailer himself characterizes the work as a “false autobiography” or “an imaginary memoir.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980b|pp=27-8}} The thrust of his main argument about his fast-and-loose treatment of the facts is that what he portrays in the book, “whether factual or not...[could] reasonably have occurred in Miss Monroe’s life” and that they are therefore “aesthetically true” if not literally so.{{sfn|Mailer|1980b|p=34}} Mailer assumes the variety of voices, both pro and con, in an adroit manner, convincingly developing the arguments of his detractors. In some spots he even demonstrates a delightful sense of self-irony. An example is when, after having been instructed numerous times to reply only to the questions asked of him, he has The Court remark, “Maybe Mr. Mailer thinks he is being paid by the word.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980b|p=34}} In another instance he {{pg|270|271}} has The Court assure him, after a question of whether or not he would like it if someone made up facts about him when he is dead, that they “do not wish to rush that occasion.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980b|pp=45-6}}

Mailer’s self-defense in “Before the Literary Bar” is that made-up parts of his fictional autobiography can be justified as having reasonably occurred in Monroe’s life. However, his creation of the Bobby de Peralta character pushes the boundaries of a reader’s willing suspension of disbelief. Mailer claims to have made him up to try to explain the tragic ambiguities in Monroe’s character, attributing them to buried matters in her psyche. He rationalizes that something in her unrecorded years in Hollywood must contain a “psychic cyst” or memories so bad that she could not face them.{{sfn|Mailer|1980b|p=45}}

Mailer’s rationalizations are unconvinicing and this sordid and sensational section of ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' is a prime example of Mailer’s “piling on.” To demonstrate the appropriateness of this football metaphor, at the point in her life at which Mailer claims to need a defining episode, like a downed quarterback, Marilyn’s background of illegitimacy, foster homes, absent father, family insanity, and a remembered attempted strangling in her crib have effectively already left her “sacked.” Any one or any combination of the events of her childhood could more than adequately explain why she would be the unhappy and disturbed person Mailer portrays. Dumping more excrement on her can serve little purpose other than to warrant the author’s desire to give license to his lascivious imagination. The pictures he paints are almost cliché in their pornographic purpose. For Marilyn’s first Hollywood party Mailer evokes rooms of filthy pictures filled with naked people and the imaginary Bobby “naked except for cowboy boots and a Stetson hat,” walking a Doberman named Romulus who tries to get in on the sexual action of the lustful couples.{{sfn|Mailer|1980a|p=130}}

But the party is only the destination point for the heart of this imaginary episode. Traveling to this party, Mailer indulges his fantasy by having Marilyn engage in a brief fling with a fictional “Rod” (the double entendre is almost funny). They ride to the party on his motorcycle, all the while having sexual intercourse at eighty miles an hour. Making the most of his imaginary license, Mailer has Marilyn explain how she had only “to lean up on the handlebars a little, and he was in the proper place, if from behind, my dear. I could have become an addict.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980a|p=129}} The situation only gets more sordid after that.{{efn|Stephan {{harvtxt|Morrow|2008|p=}} writes of Shelley Winters getting up and objecting when he played that scene in ''Strawhead.''}} As if picturing Marilyn as so dissolute that she rides to the party on a motorcycle having sex with the fictional Rod, after which she gives him{{pg|271|272}} a “blow-job” only to spend the night in an orgy with Bobby is not enough, Mailer also gives her murderous inclinations. When the nefarious Bobby suggests they go over and cut his wife’s throat, Mailer’s Marilyn creation responds with “excitement.” The prospect of murder stimulates her to the declaration that “I was nearer to myself than I ever wanted to be.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980a|p=137}} She relishes the idea that "everyone would talk of me," seeing it as "beautiful."{{sfn|Mailer|1980a|pp=137-8}} She acknowledges that she is “ready to commit murder.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980a|p=138}} Murder is so appealing to her that it vanquishes her headache. If Mailer’s excuse for this sensationalism is that he had to create something awful in her past to explain her future bad behavior, his is a sharply flawed argument. In this fictional episode, Mailer’s Marilyn is already so lacking in any moral compass that she goes through all the motions of participating in a murder, only prevented from the act because it turns out that the designated victim is not there. She is willing to commit murder with a man who does not even know her “phone number or my address, or even my last name.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980a|p=142}} Logically, whatever brought her to this morally bankrupt state happened earlier and Mailer’s invention should be flagged by the referee as unnecessary roughness. Two days after this imaginary episode, Mailer adds the information that she had an abortion. Cleverly, in his self-defense before the imaginary literary bar, Mailer has the Prosecutor question him about the factual basis for Bobby de Peralta and the murder plot. He acknowledges that he has none and even allows his Prosecutor creation to describe his actions as “outrageous.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980b|p=40}} And I would add self-indulgent.

Even on his own terms, with himself as judge and jury, Mailer’s defense rings hollow. He claims that without such an episode the reader would be left with a characterization of Marilyn that presents only her “sweet, charming, madcap” side, thereby unable to understand why one so attractive would end so badly. Acknowledging what might have been “a failure of invention,” he concedes that it is difficult “to conceive of one powerful dramatic episode that will substitute satisfactorily for the sum of a thousand smaller episodes.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980b|p=45}} And that is, I would argue, because the thousand smaller episodes are more than sufficient explanation by themselves. Mailer, on the basis of what he calls “general knowledge” about the life of a Hollywood starlet, gives Marilyn the kind of demeaning and humiliating experiences that, along with her genetic and childhood history, could adequately explain her later behavior.{{sfn|Mailer|1980b|p=33}} Mailer had her remember being sent to perform fellatio on three executives in a row, on the half hour, before going to acting class. He even {{pg|272|273}} remarks to the prosecutor’s question about the episode that “the scars” of that period in her life explain why a woman with her “angelic appearance” came to be so difficult to work with and inconsiderate of co-stars, directors and crew. Calling the excerpt “factual” he quotes both Lee Strasberg and Arthur Miller to verify the “call girl” and “chewed and spat out” the quality of Monroe’s early Hollywood days.{{sfn|Mailer|1980b|p=33}}

Mailer’s sly manipulation here is blatantly self-serving in an additional manner. By making this particularly egregious episode Exhibit B in the trial, he can enjoy his imaginary voyeurism again. Not only are the offensive events in the book, but in case the reader of ''New York'' does not buy the book, Mailer has the opportunity to present his self-indulgent imaginings for a different audience—those who might pick up the magazine. He had the prosecution make him read the whole episode to the court as Exhibit B. The titillation quotient is high.

As a sidelight, it can be said that still another use Mailer made of his writing about Marilyn is payback or appreciation to Milton and Amy Greene. Whatever the realities of their behavior in their relationship with Monroe, in both ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' and ''Strawhead,'' Mailer casts them a very positive light and puts complimentary language in Marilyn’s mouth when she speaks of them. Milton Greene’s particular charm is portrayed with Marilyn’s initial reaction at their first meeting: “You’re just a boy.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980b|p=34}} Her expectation, given his fame as a fashion photographer, was for an older man. Mailer also tries to make him appealing in a scruffy kind of way when he has Marilyn describe him as looking like a young John Garfield if Garfield had been chewed a bit a by a toothless lion.{{sfn|Mailer|1980b|p=34}} He is portrayed as the only man who did not take advantage of Marilyn and she blames Arthur Miller for ruining their relationship. Besides the direct compliments, such as when Marilyn tells Amy her eyes are like stars{{sfn|Mailer|1980a|p=28}} and compliments her performance during the Edward R. Murrow interview as “truly scintillating” and done with “real poise” and “real vivacity.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980a|p=126}} Mailer also portrays Amy Greene as a mentor to Marilyn in matters of fashion, introducing her to the fashions of Norman Norell.{{efn|Although Norell’s fashions are given prominence in Mailer’s writing, he is ignored in many of the biographies. An interesting sidelight is that Michelle Obama wore a vintage Norell dress during the 2010 Christmas season.}} Marilyn lauds Amy’s organization down to her color coordination of her underwear with her clothing. Of course, the Greenes are his co-authors in a way as they provided the reminiscences and the photographs that make up the bulk of the book. Milton Greene’s ethics are also presented in a most favorable light when the break-up of of Marilyn Monroe Productions occurs. With the comment, “It was not my idea to make {{pg|273|274}} money on Marilyn Monroe,” Greene explains why he takes only $100,000 for his share when all had expected him to hold out for five times that much. The irony is not lost that Mailer, who ''is'' trying to make money on Marilyn Monroe, chooses this vindication for Greene. One might also say that Mailer uses this opportunity to pay the Greenes back by telling their stories along with Marilyn’s. We learn a lot of their histories and talents. One of the last things Mailer has Marilyn do is recall how beautiful Milton’s photographs are and remember, “Oh, how exquisite he could be.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980a|p=235}}

The reception of ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' was mixed. The exploitive nature of Mailer’s use of Monroe did not go without notice. Although David Marshall considered it a “wonderful treasure,” mainly because of the photographs, he also remarked that Mailer was “squeezing the last dollar out of a woman he never met.” Lawrence Wright’s ''Texas Monthly'' article that explores the connections between fact and fiction, particularly in what is called the “new journalism,” compares Mailer’s ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' unfavorably to ''The Executioner’s Song.'' Wright terms the former “reader abuse” and concludes that Mailer’s depiction of Marilyn is unconvincing as he is “trying to fill the unexplored spaces in her personlaity with his own.”{{sfn|Wright|1981|p=202}} In addition, beyond the critiques of the text of the book, it has the dubious distinction that the 1999 ''Esquire'' Book Awards named ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' as Worst Title.

It took Mailer a few years to get back to “piling on” Marilyn. This time, the medium was theatre. Although ''Strawhead'' is often categorized as a dramatization of ''Of Women and Their Elegance,'' there are a number of variances, probably occasioned by the differences in media and perhaps by Mailer’s desire to emphasize the imaginary truth aspect of his take on Marilyn. Richard Hannum is listed as the co-author of the play. Among the number of drafts housed at the Harry Ransom Center is a bound copy that emphasizes the “staged” quality of the production.{{efn|There are numerous drafts in the {{harvtxt|Mailer|1986|p=}} collection, reflecting pre- and post-production rewrites.}} It begins with the ACTRESS, the DIRECTOR, and the PLAYWRIGHT discussing the issue of whether or not the ACTRESS should take the part and whether she feels up to it. She names her boyfriend, her agent and her consciousness-raising group as reasons not to take the part. In terms of the latter, Mailer’s cognizance of previous feminist reations to his “Marilyn” works may be in play. The ACTRESS names feminist indecision about whether to consider Marilyn a martyr, a victim, or a collaborator with the enemy.

Further removal of the distance between audience and subject is accom-{{pg|274|275}} plished by the way, when the play is ready to begin, the audience watches as the Marilyn character is created. The actress draws a small black mole on her cheek and puts on a blonde wig. In addition, Mailer uses the timeworn theatrical technique of the aside to indicate that the “mirror of her mind” is being reflected to the audience. These he indentifcies as D.A.—Direct Address. There are many occasions for this. Much of the action begins at Marilyn’s dressing table as she remembers. Stage directions call for the “actors who play varying roles in Marilyn Monroe’s life [to] appear...like ‘cat calls.’ They are verbal memories for Marilyn.{{sfn|Mailer|1986|p=1.1}}

Among the changes from text to stage is a different initial setting. Whereas ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' begins with an excerpt from a ''Life'' magazine interview shortly before she died and then moves to a Waldorf Towers suite, all of ''Strawhead'' takes place in Marilyn’s mind. Added sound effects contribute to the wistful and tragic tone of the piece. In a number of scenes there are claps of thunder heard and in one version, “Smile Though Your Heart is Aching” is played at the end of the play as Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chapline walk off together.

Although ''Strawhead'' was never produced on Broadway, it did receive some attention before going “kerflooie” in Mailer’s words.{{sfn|Mailer|1986|p=letter}} In 1983, The American Repertory Theatre at Harvard had a staged reading for alum of Mailer’s spec script. That same year, Provincetown Playhouse also produced a version. Mailer’s sexual obession was blatantly evident in the early script that began with a fantasy interview wherein the Marilyn character gives a blowjob to the Mailer-interviewer character. Shelley Winters had such a negative response that it resulted in a Mailer rewrite. The 1986 Actor’s Studio production was attended by many of Mailer’s friends, some of whom, such as Kitty Carlyle wrote that she found herself “enormously interested.” Less complimentary is a letter from Elia Kazan who diplomatically writes, “Your play is worth more work. You can and should improve it.”

On three occasions, Norman Mailer made use of Marilyn Monroe and I choose my language advisedly. He “used” her shamelessly. In an earlier study, I argue that Mailer, in ''Marilyn,'' creates an auto-erotic fantasy to satisfy his actual inability to consummate a sexual relationship with her. Obviously, the illusion was not fulfilling enough and so he was to attempt satisfaction two more times—again through photograph and text and finally, when those did not suffice, by bodying forth his imaginative vision with live actors in a theatrical production of his script ''Strawhead.''{{efn|Several writers have skirted around the quirky choice of his daughter Kate to play Monroe in the production, noting the Freudian associations. Stephan Morrow comments on the “various and delicious Oedipal” implications, especially during one rehearsal where Mailer demonstrated how he wanted the “blowjob” scene between Marilyn and Rod played. Kate got so disgusted that she refused to go on with the “tabloid bullshit” {{harvtxt|Morrow|2008|p=278}}. }} Barry Leeds has a less cyni-{{pg|275|276}} cal take on the subject of Mailer’s repeated return to the subject. In his biographical study ''The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer,'' he suggests other reasons for Mailer’s repeated return to the subject. Leeds rhapsodizes on what he considers the many similarities between NM and MM. ''Au contraire,'' I would counter, if there is a oneness of the two, I would invoke the Yin/Yang oneness, the oneness of opposites: in this case, I would suggest, the user and the used. However, Mailer’s uses were progressively less effective. ''Marilyn'' was a critical and financial success, ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' less so, and finally, ''Strawhead'' was never published and after a two week run at the Actor’s Studio, it had no further production.

Lest I be accused of piling on Mailer, a few lines about his success in writing in Marilyn’s voice are called for. Among her other attributes, Mailer gives his Marilyn a sensitivity to color, a trait that escapes many male writers who create female characters. She describes the colors of the furniture and walls in her Waldorf Tower apartment, using the word “buff” to describe the walls. Buff is not a word men often use; gradations in color tones are definitely a predominantly feminine bent. ''Strawhead'' also captures the terrible sense of loneliness Marilyn felt by staging her as the only person onstage, all the others being her remembrances. Among the bits printed in ''Fragments'' are the lines “''Alone!!!!! / I am alone''—I am ''always / alone / no matter what.''”{{sfn|Monroe|2010|pg=35}} Unfortunately, he gets little of her poetic side, her fears of aging captured in lines such as those written on hotel stationary in Surrey. “Where his eyes rest with pleasure—I / want to be still be—but time has changes / the hold of that glance. / Alas how will I cope when I am less youthful—.”{{sfn|Monroe|2010|p=119}} Finally, the issue divides itself into two conflicting parts. On the one hand, Mailer cannibalizes Marilyn for his own purposes, be it fantasy, financial, or ego-maniacal. On the other hand, his writing imagination is sometimes so spot-on as to create a viable portrait, first through biography and then autobiography. Michael Glenday also suggests that there is a certain pleasure associated with “encountering not just the memoir, but also the vitality of interaction between Mailer’s imagination and his subject.” {{sfn|Glenday|2008|p=350}} In addition, if the commonplace is that a man can’t write from a woman’s perspective, in ''Of Women And Their Elegance,'' although Mailer’s Marilyn voice is totally fictional and does not fully capture Marilyn, it is certainly a plausible creation.

To date, the obession with Marilyn does not seem to have abated.{{efn|As far back as 1974 the obsession was in full flower. In his biography, Robert F. {{harvtxt|Slatzer|1974|p=}} noted that over forty books had already been written about Monroe. Mailer was not the only famous novelist to write about her. Joyce Carol Oates tried her hand at it in ''Blonde,'' also labeled as a novel, published in 2000. Gloria Steinem is another celebrity biographer.}} Nor is it limited to Mailer. In a 2010 article, Maureen Dowd lists a number of current “Marilyn” projects. One is a biopic starring Naomi Watts, based {{pg|276|277}} ''Blonde,'' the novel by Joyce Carol Oates. Another movie is in the works about the conspiracy theory that Marilyn was murdered and not a suicide. A recent novel in Britain uses the trick of having “Maf” (short for Mafia), the Maltese terrier gifted to her by Frank Sinatra, as narrator. Still another film with Michelle Williams is titled ''My Week With Marilyn''.{{sfn|Dowd|2010|p=18A}} The dress Marilyn wore in the famous subway grate scene of ''The Seven Year Itch'' brought a record $5.6 million at Debbie Reynolds’ movie memorabilia sale in June, 2011. And, finally, a bittersweet footnote about the Marilyn/Mailer connection: A recent ''New York Times'' article about the sale of Mailer’s last home includes a reference to, among other items, a framed original print of Milton Greene’s photograph of Marilyn Monroe. “Mailer’s obsession and the subject of two affectionate books” is the identifying phrase for the picture, one among the many eclectic possessions left when Mailer died. One might conclude that Marilyn was with him to the end.{{efn|My thanks to my colleagues Robert Gunn and Ezra Cappell who read the first draft of this article and made several useful suggestions.}}

== Notes ==
{{notelist|20em}}

==Citations==
{{Reflist|15em}}

==Works Cited==
{{refbegin|indent=1|20em}}
* {{cite book |last=Bailey |first=Jennifer |date=1979 |title=Norman Mailer: Quick-Change Artist |url= |location=London |publisher=Macmillan |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Bengis |first=Ingrid |date=1986 |chapter=Monroe According to Mailer: One Legend Feeds on Another |title=Critical Essays on Norman Mailer |url= |location=Boston |publisher=G. K. Hall & Co. |pages=71-78 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Berger |first=Josephy |title=Norman Mailer’s Electric Life, as Seen Through His Last Home |url= |journal=New York Times |volume= |issue= |date=3 May 2011 |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite letter |last=Carlyle |first=Kitty |recipient=Norman Mailer |subject=Letter to Norman Mailer |location=Norman Mailer Collection, University of Texas-Austin |publisher=Harry Ransom Center Humanities Research Center |date=n.d. |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Marilyn V. |date=1999 |title=Mailer: A Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Dowd |first=Maureen |date=October 24, 2010 |title=Making Ignorance Chic |url= |work=El Paso Inc |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Gladstein |first=Mimi |title=Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman |url=http://prmlr.us/mr04gla |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=4 |issue=1 |date=2010 |pages=288-302 |access-date=2025-04-20 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Glenday |first=Michael K. |title=From Monroe to Picasso: Norman Mailer and the Life-Study |url=https://prmlr.us/mr02gle |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=2 |issue=1 |date=2008 |pages=348-363 |access-date=2025-04-20 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Guiles |first=Fred Lawrence |date=1984 |title=Legend:The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe |url= |location=Lanham, MD |publisher=Scarborough House |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Kazan |first=Elia |date=n.d. |title=Norman Mailer Collection |url= |location=University of Texas-Austin |publisher=Harry Ransom Center Humanities Research Center |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Leeds |first=Barry |date=2002 |title=The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer |url= |location=Bainbridge Island, WA |publisher=Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Lehmann-Haupt |first=Christopher |title=Aquarius on Gemini-I |url= |work=New York Times |date=July 16, 1973 |page=27 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=November 10, 1980b |title=Before the Literary Bar |url= |magazine=New York Magazine |pages=27-46 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=Loren Plotkin |subject=Letter to Loren Plotkin |location=Norman Mailer Collection, University of Texas-Austin |publisher=Harry Ransom Center Humanities Research Center |date={{date|May 7, 1986}} |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1980a |title=Of Women and Their Elegance |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Schuster |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1973 |title=Marilyn |url= |location=New York |publisher=Galahad |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1998 |chapter=The Jewish Princess |title=The Time of Our Time |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages=300-317 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite AV media |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1986 |title=Strawhead |url= |trans-title= |format= |work= |type=Performance |language= |location=New York |publisher=Actor's Studio |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norris Church |date=2010 |title=A Ticket to the Circus |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Manso |first=Peter |date=1985 |title=Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Marshall |first=David |date=2011 |chapter=Rev. of ''Of Women and Their Elegance'', by Norman Mailer |title=Marilyn Monroe and the Camera |url= |location= |publisher= |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Merrill |first=Robert |date=1992 |title=Norman Mailer Revisted |url= |location=New York |publisher=Twayne Publishers |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Monroe |first=Marilyn |date=2010 |title=Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters |url= |location=New York |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Morrow |first=Stephan |title=The Unknown General |url=https://prmlr.us/mr02mor |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=2 |issue=1 |date=2008 |pages=273-297 |access-date=2025-04-20 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rollyson |first=Carl |date=1991 |title=The Lives of Norman Mailer: A Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Paragon House |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Slatzer |first=Robert F. |date=1974 |title=The Life and Curious Death of Marilyn Monroe |url= |location=New York |publisher=Pinnacle Books |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite letter |last=Stevens |first=Carol |recipient=Norman Mailer |subject=Letter to Norman Mailer |location=Norman Mailer Collection, University of Texas-Austin |publisher=Harry Ransom Center Humanities and Research Center |date={{date|January 31, 1986}} |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Wright |first=Lawrence |date=June 1981 |title=Shades of Gray |url= |magazine=Texas Monthly |pages=196-207 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Piling On: Norman Mailer’s Utilization of Marilyn Monroe}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Piling On: Norman Mailer’s Utilization of Marilyn Monroe

2025-04-22T15:03:32Z

Grlucas: /* Works Cited */ Added a missing ref=harv.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}} }}
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{{byline|last=Gladstein |first=Mimi Reisel |abstract=An exploration into Mailer’s long-term fascination with Marilyn Monroe. |note=My thanks to the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin for permission to examine the Norman Mailer archives in researching this essay. [Author’s note. —Ed.] |url=http://prmlr.us/mr05gla}}

{{dc|dc=I|n a lengthy, single-spaced, two-and-a-half-page typewritten critique}} of the Actor’s Studio production of ''Strawhead,'' Norman Mailer’s fifth wife, Carol, tasks him with the above observation about this third appropriation of Marilyn Monroe as a focus for his creative endeavors. It is a salient question, something mentioned not only by someone who knew him intimately, but also by critics of the relevant works, ''Marilyn,'' ''Of Women and Their Elegance,'' and ''Strawhead.'' Mailer’s biographers have also noted how beguiled he was with the topic. Robert Merrill calls it “a continuing obsession.”{{sfn|Merrill|1992|p=9}} Barry Leeds introduces his book-length study, ''The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer,'' with a chapter on Mailer and Marilyn, observing in his first sentence that for decades Mailer had been “fascinated with the life and death of Marilyn Monroe,” introducing the similarities between them, and concluding that they were both prisoners of sex.{{sfn|Leeds|2002|p=20}} The issue calls for further exploration of both its enduring allure for Mailer and the unsavory aspects of his handling of his Marilyn mania.

It is hard to know exactly when this “obsession” began. Mailer claimed on a number of occasions that he had never met Marilyn Monroe. Not so, according to Shelley Winters, quoted in the “Hollywood Politics” chapter of Peter Manso’s biography. She contradicts Mailer’s claim that he never met Monroe. According to Winters, they met at a rally for Henry Wallace in{{pg|264|265}} Hollywood in 1948.{{sfn|Manso|1985|p=131}} Both may be right according to their memories. It is possible that in 1948, the woman who would become Marilyn Monroe was still Norma Jeane and displayed little of that incandescent ability to exude sexuality as she projected herself to camera and fans.{{efn| {{harvtxt|Guiles|1984|p=}} spells it “Jeane” in ''Legend: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe,'' as does Leaming in ''Marilyn.'' Mailer spells it “Jean.”}} The as-yet-unknown Norma Jeane may not have made enough of an impression on Mailer for him to remember it. Years later, once he began writing about her, the official story from him and a number of his biographers is that the only place they ever met was in his imagination.{{efn|This holds true for the make-believe trial he created to forestall the criticism of his second Monroe book. When he is asked in an imaginary court scene, answers the Prosecutor’s question about whether he had ever met MM, by saying, “No, but I sat behind her once at Actor’s Studio.” {{harvtxt|Mailer|1980|p=33}}}} Regardless of whether or not they met briefly in the forties or never met, once Mailer had fastened onto Monroe as a topic for his literary delectation, he had a hard time letting go. In addition, his fervor sometimes led to “piling on” and on occasion “late hits” or “low blows,” to use football and boxing metaphors for Mailer’s literary excesses.

Oddly enough for what became such an enduring interest, the initial impetus to write about Monroe was not Mailer’s.{{efn|I am not unmindful of the earlier references to Monroe or the Marilynesque characters in previous Mailer works, but here I mean Marilyn as the main subject.}} It came as part of a book project for a compilation of photographs of Monroe by famous photographers, principle among them Larry Schiller who had taken nude photographs of the actress in the last days of her life. Others included Milton Greene, Bert Stern, Eve Arnold, and Richard Avedon.{{efn|Milton Greene’s photographs would be featured in {{harvtxt|Mailer|1980|p=}} second Monroe project ''Of Women and Their Elegance.''}} Mailer was a big name writer, whom they contacted to quickly deliver a ten-thousand-word preface for this photography book. However, as is often the case with addictions and/or obsessions, once started, they are difficult to abandon. The Preface was like an aphrodisiac appetizer for Mailer and once begun, the subject so enflamed his phallic pen, that eventually it produced more than ninety thousand words and, in the opinion of the ''New York Times'' reviewer, the “100 photographs...[were] reduced to serving the relatively minor function of illustrating his text.”{{sfn|Lehmann-Haupt|1973|p=27}} And while Marilyn was to serve as Mailer’s muse on three separate occasions, it was this initial foray into the world of America’s legendary sex goddess that first demonstrated Marilyn’s variety of uses for Mailer. In this case, the publication of ''Marilyn'' was professionally valuable in the development of Mailer’s career. Middle-aged, with his career in a “holding pattern,” according to Mary Dearborn, “''Marilyn'' put Norman’s name before the public, where it had not been” for some years.{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|p=324}}

Another possible source for Mailer’s obsession with Monroe could be Mailer’s competitive nature. A number of writers have suggested that his legendary ego might have been wounded by his lack of access to the era’s{{pg|265|266}} consummated sex goddess, as he considered himself the epitome of the macho man. The main men in her life were such that Mailer would want to measure himself against them. Husband number one was not a consideration. Mailer interviewed James Dougherty, but the man and his remembrances are summarily dismissed as possibly unreliable since they are those of a narcotics cop. For Mailer, in terms of possible competition, Dougherty qualifies at best as a neophyte, ignorant of the finer points of the contest. Husbands two and three are another matter. They were both significant figures in their different professions. Mailer, for whom boxing was an actual hobby and metaphorical trope, may have consciously or subconsciously regretted that he never even got the chance to get in the ring with either of these champions.{{efn|Hemingway also used the boxing metaphor, famously evaluating his writing in relation to other writers in terms of staying in the ring with them.}} It was about this time in Mailer’s life that Jose Torres began giving him boxing lessons in exchange for editorial assistance with the book Torres was writing about Muhammed Ali. In a contest with Monroe’s second husband, Mailer is out of his class, division, or league, whichever metaphor works. Joe DiMaggio was a legendary sports hero, an icon of the masculine arena. DiMaggio had reached such mythic status that he was referenced in popular music and in Hemingway’s admired novella, ''The Old Man and The Sea.''{{efn|A Simon and Garfunkel lyric for a song in the Academy Award-nominated film, ''The Graduate,'' positions DiMaggio as a national hero, one whose return the nation longs for: “Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio / A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” Santiago, the heroic fisherman in Hemingway’s ''The Old Man and the Sea,'' tells the boy about “the great DiMaggio.”}} Bouts are not scheduled between boxers who fall in different weight classes and, in the sports league, Mailer would not even try to get in the ring with DiMaggio. Instead, Mailer presents him in an almost complimentary manner, writing that during the years that Monroe was married to DiMaggio, she looked like she was fed on sexual candy.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=102}} In his need to find sufficiently lusty language, Mailer invents the term “fucky” to describe how Monroe looked during the DiMaggio period. He also pays DiMaggio the high compliment of comparing him to Hemingway in terms of eminence in his art, pointing out the “consistent courage” it took to face thousands of fast balls, any of which could kill or cripple him.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=99}} If there is a hero in this “novel,” it would have to be “Jolting Joe.” Mailer credits him with always being there for Marilyn “when she needs him, and is probably her closest friend in the months before she dies.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=95}} A photograph of DiMaggio at Monroe’s funeral is one of the last images in the book and Mailer’s last line reads, “Let us then take our estimate of her worth by the grief on Joe DiMaggio’s face the day of that dread funeral in Westwood west of Hollywood.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=262}}

The competition begins in earnest when Mailer turns to Monroe’s last husband, Arthur Miller. Miller is definitely in Mailer’s class, division,{{pg|266|267}} league: both are literary heavy-weights. Miller was a dominant figure in the intellectual and arts arena. Both ''Death of a Salesman'' and ''The Crucible'' were prominent theatrical vehicles, winning a number of drama awards and becoming mainstays of university and community theatres all over the country. Mailer takes a number of jabs at Miller, labeling him a “failure” as Monroe’s champion in her battles with Olivier in England and a “traitor” because he had written a note about how she embarrassed him, a note that devastated her when she read it.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=167}} As if taking on the role of Marilyn’s champion, Mailer pelts Miller with numerous pejoratives. Among them are “tight,” “tied up” and “abstemious.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=143}} In addition, Mailer tries to land a knockout blow by characterizing Miller in the the sexual arena as “an inhibited householder from Brooklyn.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=167}} In this metaphorically sexual bout, in addition to his below-the-belt punches, Mailer hits Miller with a glancing blow to the head with the assessment that he had “limited lyrical gifts, no capacity for intellectual shock.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=142}} Mailer is sure he could have beat Miller but he never did get in the ring with him because, as he complains, when they lived in close proximity he “waited for the call to visit, which of course never came.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=19}} He admits that a reason for the cut may have been the very fact of his competitive nature and the fact that stealing Marilyn had been his secret ambition. Convinced of his prowess in this arena, he suggests that Miller may have feared creating the opportunity. Of course that meeting with Marilyn never occurred, and as Mailer could not compete with either of these men in a real life ''mano a mano,'' he resorted to his most effective weapon. He created his own access—with his pen.

Returning to the subject of the many uses Mailer made of Monroe, ''Marilyn,'' as I argued in an earlier study, is, among other things, an exercise in creating a masturbatory fantasy about a woman who got away. It is also the initial volley in Mailer’s campaign to possess his subject inside and out, first in his voice as a biographer and then assuming her voice as memoiorist. From the onset of the first project, Mailer expresses his frustration with the time limitations imposed on his fantasy fulfillment. In “An Acknowledgment,” Mailer proclaims his discontent with having to meet a publication deadline.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=257}} This he was able to remedy in the future by creating his own projects, whereby he will be “master of his own domain.” Because of the time checks in this case, he protests that he cannot write a proper biography, which he claims would take at least two years just to amass the materials needed for a suitable job. Therefore, he complains,
{{pg|267|268}}

rather than the biography he desired to write, he has written a “novel biography.” Since he can't do his own original research, he enumerates the other writers whose works he draws on, as well as Norman Rosten’s manuscript for the as-yet-unpublished biography, ''Marilyn—An Untold Story.'' In addition, he cites what he calls “interviews in modest depth.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=259}} In this case, the Mailer braggadocio, his advertisments of himself, may have been uncharacteristically muted. In ''Legend: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe,'' Fred Lawrence Guiles, whose first biography ''Norma Jean'' is one of two cited by Mailer as the main sources for the facts in his book, returns the compliment, when he credits Mailer’s “modest” interview with producing the “most thorough account” of the relationship between Norma Jeane (not yet Marilyn) and André de Dienes, a Hungarian born fashion photographer. A number of the fresh-faced, jeans-clad photographs by Dienes are in the book.

''Marilyn'' was also to serve Mailer as a vita-enhancing publication. Robert Merrill argues for “serious reconsideration” of ''Marilyn'' as he contends that its excellences as a biography have been overlooked and, though one of Mailer’s “minor works,” it still contributes to the overall “imposing output of serious and original works.”{{sfn|Merrill|1992|p=142}}{{sfn|Merrill|1992|p=212}} Carl Rollyson considers it a “significant achievement in American letters with which biographers must reckon.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=261}} Jennifer Bailey reads it as an “unmistakable achievement.”{{sfn|Bailey|1979|p=140}} And, indeed, when one gets beyond the leeringly salacious element, there is much to admire about the book, both as a biography and as a novel. A charming element about it is Mailer’s tone, which is wonderfully self-deflating in places. One such instance is when he acknowledges his peevishness about not being invited to meet Marilyn as he was sure that “no one was so well suited to bring out the best in her.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=20}} Then, in the next line, he concedes that some failed marriages later, he was better equipped to understand that what he was probably responding to at the time was the same thing that some fifty million other men felt as a result of what he calls “the foundation of her art,” which was an ability to “speak to each man as if he were all of male existence available to her.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=20}} He admits that not only would he probably have failed her, but that she might well have “damaged” him. In another instance of uncharacteristically revealing candor, he admits, in a discussion of Monroe’s purported lack of self-assurance about sex, that “we all reveal our innocence about sex in a candid remark.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=75}} This from the writer who had, on occasion, postitioned himself as an “sexpert.” To a certain extent the tension between the macho writer taking lusty virtual possession of his sub-{{pg|268|269}} ject and the self-revelatory hesitations he expresses creates a correspondence between him and Monroe as they both projected a blatant forward sexuality that overlays an undercurrent of vulnerability.

Another service Marilyn/''Marilyn'' performs for Mailer, is facilitating his joys of linguistic excess.{{efn|I do not mean to imply that Mailer’s linguistic virtuosity is sparing in other works, only that this work allows him even more occasion for unmonitored verbal hijinks.}} Given the spectacular and extravagant nature of his subject and her reputation, he allows himself a surfeit of verbal highwire acts. On occasion the result is fun as when he catalogs the list of Monroe’s early Hollywood relationships: “Snively, Schenck, Karger, and Hyde! If she had been a bargirl lookng to sue an ex-lover in a raunchy case, she would have picked her law firm out of the yellow pages with a name like that.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=89}} But at other times his unmonitored metaphors and imagery are definitely in need of a discerning editor.{{efn|My colleague Robert Gunn suggests that Mailer’s prose flaunts a lack of monitoring, that in its “gleefully exhibitionistic (and highly erotic)” display demonstrates “not an absence of artistic control, but rather a deliberate choice to refuse propriety and proportionality.”}} In one jarring instance, he writes of Monroe’s final moments when “the wings of death lay wet feathers across her face.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=86}} “Wet feathers” is a clumsy image whereby to communicate the dark eminence of death. Rather than a sense of awe, what is evoked is annoyance; wet feathers would tickle or make one want to sneeze. Mailer’s choice of metaphor to describe Monroe’s inability to escape her past is to describe her behavior “as sluggish as a dinosaur’s tail.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=126}} This metaphor is equally inept. The image conveyed is awkward rather than apt. Experience that repeats itself “with the breath of a turnip” is another of his odd images (143) Wet feathers, dinosaur tails, and the breath of a turnip—surely a wordsmith like Mailer could do better.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=143}} In his explanation of why the “detritus of the insignificant” films she played in early in her career so damaged any good will she may have accumulated as a young women and led to “retaliations” he descibes as “nihilistic,” Mailer pulls out more over-the-top verbal imagery.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|pp=89-90}} He calls Monroe “a sly leviathan of survival, and, Faust among the Faustians.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=90}} In addition to the lingustic abandon, he also allows himself such salaciously voyeuristic flights of the imagination as an invented dialogue after the discovery by studio executives that their newest sensation had posed in the nude. Mailer excuses himself by pointing out that “a novelist has a right to invent the following dialogue.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=92}} He then devises such questions as cannot help but inflame the imagination: “Did you spread your legs?” “Is your asshole showing?” “Any animals in it with you?” Lest he miss the opportunity to use every profanity he knows, Mailer includes the statement, when trying to describe the divided character of Monroe’s personality, that while she could be an angel, she was also “one hard and calculating{{pg|269|270}} computer of a cold and ambitious cunt” and then underlines his linguistic choice by stating parenthetically “(no other English word is near).”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=97}}{{efn|I am reminded of an old graffiti:“Profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate mother-fucker.” I can think of a number of words that would work as well. I am sure Mailer could too, but he liked to shock and as I argue throughout, he gives himself full license with this topic.}}

The publication of ''Marilyn'' was a boon to Mailer both personally and professionally—and then as a bonus benefit unexpectedly, it serve him as a tool for seduction. In ''A Ticket to the Circus,'' Norris Church Mailer writes of its role in their first encounter and subsequent courtship.In 1975, in anticipation of meeting the famous author, Barbara Norris—her name when they met—brought her copy of the book for him to sign. He did not sign it until February of 1976 when a relationship had already begun. Addressing it to Barbara Mailer he writes, “Because I knew when I wrote this book that someone I had not yet met would read it and be with me.”{{sfn|Mailer|2010|p=89}} The Mailer chutzpah is in full force here.

''Of Women and Their Elegance,'' Mailer’s second appropriation of Marilyn Monroe, came some seven years after the first. Like the first, it is heavily reliant on the visual. Here, however, rather than pictures only of Marilyn, there are pictures of other women and their elegance. The photographs by Milton H. Greene run the gamut from Marlene Dietrich to Grandma Moses. In ''Marilyn,'' Mailer claimed to be writing a “novel biography” and he routinely referenced the biographical works of Maurice Zolotow, Fred Lawrence Guiles, and Norman Rosten, also often citing what he called “factoids.” Here he baldly states in a note before the text that he “does not pretend to offer factual representations.”

Obviously foreseeing much of the kind of criticism that this book would engender, Mailer anticipates his detractors in a make-believe trial published in ''New York'' magazine. Deftly titled “Before the Literary Bar,” besides his own voice he creates the parts of the Prosecutor, the Defense, and The Court. The charge is “criminal literary negligence” and Mailer himself characterizes the work as a “false autobiography” or “an imaginary memoir.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|pp=27-8}} The thrust of his main argument about his fast-and-loose treatment of the facts is that what he portrays in the book, “whether factual or not...[could] reasonably have occurred in Miss Monroe’s life” and that they are therefore “aesthetically true” if not literally so.{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=34}} Mailer assumes the variety of voices, both pro and con, in an adroit manner, convincingly developing the arguments of his detractors. In some spots he even demonstrates a delightful sense of self-irony. An example is when, after having been instructed numerous times to reply only to the questions asked of him, he has The Court remark, “Maybe Mr. Mailer thinks he is being paid by the word.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=34}} In another instance he{{pg|270|271}} has The Court assure him, after a question of whether or not he would like it if someone made up facts about him when he is dead, that they “do not wish to rush that occasion.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|pp=45-6}}

Mailer’s self-defense in “Before the Literary Bar” is that made-up parts of his fictional autobiography can be justified as having reasonably occurred in Monroe’s life. However, his creation of the Bobby de Peralta character pushes the boundaries of a reader’s willing suspension of disbelief. Mailer claims to have made him up to try to explain the tragic ambiguities in Monroe’s character, attributing them to buried matters in her psyche. He rationalizes that something in her unrecorded years in Hollywood must contain a “psychic cyst” or memories so bad that she could not face them.{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=45}}

Mailer’s rationalizations are unconvinicing and this sordid and sensational section of ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' is a prime example of Mailer’s “piling on.” To demonstrate the appropriateness of this football metaphor, at the point in her life at which Mailer claims to need a defining episode, like a downed quarterback, Marilyn’s background of illegitimacy, foster homes, absent father, family insanity, and a remembered attempted strangling in her crib have effectively already left her “sacked.” Any one or any combination of the events of her childhood could more than adequately explain why she would be the unhappy and disturbed person Mailer portrays. Dumping more excrement on her can serve little purpose other than to warrant the author’s desire to give license to his lascivious imagination. The pictures he paints are almost cliché in their pornographic purpose. For Marilyn’s first Hollywood party Mailer evokes rooms of filthy pictures filled with naked people and the imaginary Bobby “naked except for cowboy boots and a Stetson hat,” walking a Doberman named Romulus who tries to get in on the sexual action of the lustful couples.{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=130}}

But the party is only the destination point for the heart of this imaginary episode. Traveling to this party, Mailer indulges his fantasy by having Marilyn engage in a brief fling with a fictional “Rod” (the double entendre is almost funny). They ride to the party on his motorcycle, all the while having sexual intercourse at eighty miles an hour. Making the most of his imaginary license, Mailer has Marilyn explain how she had only “to lean up on the handlebars a little, and he was in the proper place, if from behind, my dear. I could have become an addict.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=129}} The situation only gets more sordid after that.{{efn|Stephan {{harvtxt|Morrow|2008|p=}} writes of Shelley Winters getting up and objecting when he played that scene in ''Strawhead.''}} As if picturing Marilyn as so dissolute that she rides to the party on a motorcycle having sex with the fictional Rod, after which she gives him{{pg|271|272}} a “blow-job” only to spend the night in an orgy with Bobby is not enough, Mailer also gives her murderous inclinations. When the nefarious Bobby suggests they go over and cut his wife’s throat, Mailer’s Marilyn creation responds with “excitement.” The prospect of murder stimulates her to the declaration that “I was nearer to myself than I ever wanted to be.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=137}} She relishes the idea that "everyone would talk of me," seeing it as "beautiful."{{sfn|Mailer|1980|pp=137-8}} She acknowledges that she is “ready to commit murder.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=138}} Murder is so appealing to her that it vanquishes her headache. If Mailer’s excuse for this sensationalism is that he had to create something awful in her past to explain her future bad behavior, his is a sharply flawed argument. In this fictional episode, Mailer’s Marilyn is already so lacking in any moral compass that she goes through all the motions of participating in a murder, only prevented from the act because it turns out that the designated victim is not there. She is willing to commit murder with a man who does not even know her “phone number or my address, or even my last name.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=142}} Logically, whatever brought her to this morally bankrupt state happened earlier and Mailer’s invention should be flagged by the referee as unnecessary roughness. Two days after this imaginary episode, Mailer adds the information that she had an abortion. Cleverly, in his self-defense before the imaginary literary bar, Mailer has the Prosecutor question him about the factual basis for Bobby de Peralta and the murder plot. He acknowledges that he has none and even allows his Prosecutor creation to describe his actions as “outrageous.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=40}} And I would add self-indulgent.

Even on his own terms, with himself as judge and jury, Mailer’s defense rings hollow. He claims that without such an episode the reader would be left with a characterization of Marilyn that presents only her “sweet, charming, madcap” side, thereby unable to understand why one so attractive would end so badly. Acknowledging what might have been “a failure of invention,” he concedes that it is difficult “to conceive of one powerful dramatic episode that will substitute satisfactorily for the sum of a thousand smaller episodes.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=45}} And that is, I would argue, because the thousand smaller episodes are more than sufficient explanation by themselves. Mailer, on the basis of what he calls “general knowledge” about the life of a Hollywood starlet, gives Marilyn the kind of demeaning and humiliating experiences that, along with her genetic and childhood history, could adequately explain her later behavior.{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=33}} Mailer had her remember being sent to perform fellatio on three executives in a row, on the half hour, before going to acting class. He even{{pg|272|273}} remarks to the prosecutor’s question about the episode that “the scars” of that period in her life explain why a woman with her “angelic appearance” came to be so difficult to work with and inconsiderate of co-stars, directors and crew. Calling the excerpt “factual” he quotes both Lee Strasberg and Arthur Miller to verify the “call girl” and “chewed and spat out” the quality of Monroe’s early Hollywood days.{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=33}}

Mailer’s sly manipulation here is blatantly self-serving in an additional manner. By making this particularly egregious episode Exhibit B in the trial, he can enjoy his imaginary voyeurism again. Not only are the offensive events in the book, but in case the reader of ''New York'' does not buy the book, Mailer has the opportunity to present his self-indulgent imaginings for a different audience—those who might pick up the magazine. He had the prosecution make him read the whole episode to the court as Exhibit B. The titillation quotient is high.

As a sidelight, it can be said that still another use Mailer made of his writing about Marilyn is payback or appreciation to Milton and Amy Greene. Whatever the realities of their behavior in their relationship with Monroe, in both ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' and ''Strawhead,'' Mailer casts them a very positive light and puts complimentary language in Marilyn’s mouth when she speaks of them. Milton Greene’s particular charm is portrayed with Marilyn’s initial reaction at their first meeting: “You’re just a boy.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=34}} Her expectation, given his fame as a fashion photographer, was for an older man. Mailer also tries to make him appealing in a scruffy kind of way when he has Marilyn describe him as looking like a young John Garfield if Garfield had been chewed a bit a by a toothless lion.{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=34}} He is portrayed as the only man who did not take advantage of Marilyn and she blames Arthur Miller for ruining their relationship. Besides the direct compliments, such as when Marilyn tells Amy her eyes are like stars and compliments her performance during the Edward R. Murrow interview as “truly scintillating” and done with “real poise” and “real vivacity.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=28}}{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=126}} Mailer also portrays Amy Greene as a mentor to Marilyn in matters of fashion, introducing her to the fashions of Norman Norell.{{efn|Although Norell’s fashions are given prominence in Mailer’s writing, he is ignored in many of the biographies. An interesting sidelight is that Michelle Obama wore a vintage Norell dress during the 2010 Christmas season.}} Marilyn lauds Amy’s organization down to her color coordination of her underwear with her clothing. Of course, the Greenes are his co-authors in a way as they provided the reminiscences and the photographs that make up the bulk of the book. Milton Greene’s ethics are also presented in a most favorable light when the break-up of of Marilyn Monroe Productions occurs. With the comment, “It was not my idea to make{{pg|273|274}} money on Marilyn Monroe,” Greene explains why he takes only $100,000 for his share when all had expected him to hold out for five times that much. The irony is not lost that Mailer, who ''is'' trying to make money on Marilyn Monroe, chooses this vindication for Greene. One might also say that Mailer uses this opportunity to pay the Greenes back by telling their stories along with Marilyn’s. We learn a lot of their histories and talents. One of the last things Mailer has Marilyn do is recall how beautiful Milton’s photographs are and remember, “Oh, how exquisite he could be.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=235}}

The reception of ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' was mixed. The exploitive nature of Mailer’s use of Monroe did not go without notice. Although David Marshall considered it a “wonderful treasure,” mainly because of the photographs, he also remarked that Mailer was “squeezing the last dollar out of a woman he never met.” Lawrence Wright’s ''Texas Monthly'' article that explores the connections between fact and fiction, particularly in what is called the “new journalism,” compares Mailer’s ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' unfavorably to ''The Executioner’s Song.'' Wright terms the former “reader abuse” and concludes that Mailer’s depiction of Marilyn is unconvincing as he is “trying to fill the unexplored spaces in her personlaity with his own.”{{sfn|Wright|1981|p=202}} In addition, beyond the critiques of the text of the book, it has the dubious distinction that the 1999 ''Esquire'' Book Awards named ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' as Worst Title.

It took Mailer a few years to get back to “piling on” Marilyn. This time, the medium was theatre. Although ''Strawhead'' is often categorized as a dramatization of ''Of Women and Their Elegance,'' there are a number of variances, probably occasioned by the differences in media and perhaps by Mailer’s desire to emphasize the imaginary truth aspect of his take on Marilyn. Richard Hannum is listed as the co-author of the play. Among the number of drafts housed at the Harry Ransom Center is a bound copy that emphasizes the “staged” quality of the production.{{efn|There are numerous drafts in the {{harvtxt|Mailer|1986|p=}} collection, reflecting pre- and post-production rewrites.}} It begins with the ACTRESS, the DIRECTOR, and the PLAYWRIGHT discussing the issue of whether or not the ACTRESS should take the part and whether she feels up to it. She names her boyfriend, her agent and her consciousness-raising group as reasons not to take the part. In terms of the latter, Mailer’s cognizance of previous feminist reations to his “Marilyn” works may be in play. The ACTRESS names feminist indecision about whether to consider Marilyn a martyr, a victim, or a collaborator with the enemy.

Further removal of the distance between audience and subject is accom-{{pg|274|275}} plished by the way, when the play is ready to begin, the audience watches as the Marilyn character is created. The actress draws a small black mole on her cheek and puts on a blonde wig. In addition, Mailer uses the timeworn theatrical technique of the aside to indicate that the “mirror of her mind” is being reflected to the audience. These he indentifcies as D.A.—Direct Address. There are many occasions for this. Much of the action begins at Marilyn’s dressing table as she remembers. Stage directions call for the “actors who play varying roles in Marilyn Monroe’s life [to] appear...like ‘cat calls.’ They are verbal memories for Marilyn.{{sfn|Mailer|1986|p=1.1}}

Among the changes from text to stage is a different initial setting. Whereas ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' begins with an excerpt from a ''Life'' magazine interview shortly before she died and then moves to a Waldorf Towers suite, all of ''Strawhead'' takes place in Marilyn’s mind. Added sound effects contribute to the wistful and tragic tone of the piece. In a number of scenes there are claps of thunder heard and in one version, “Smile Though Your Heart is Aching” is played at the end of the play as Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chapline walk off together.

Although ''Strawhead'' was never produced on Broadway, it did receive some attention before going “kerflooie” in Mailer’s words.{{sfn|Mailer|1986|p=letter}} In 1983, The American Repertory Theatre at Harvard had a staged reading for alum of Mailer’s spec script. That same year, Provincetown Playhouse also produced a version. Mailer’s sexual obession was blatantly evident in the early script that began with a fantasy interview wherein the Marilyn character gives a blowjob to the Mailer-interviewer character. Shelley Winters had such a negative response that it resulted in a Mailer rewrite. The 1986 Actor’s Studio production was attended by many of Mailer’s friends, some of whom, such as Kitty Carlyle wrote that she found herself “enormously interested.” Less complimentary is a letter from Elia Kazan who diplomatically writes, “Your play is worth more work. You can and should improve it.”

On three occasions, Norman Mailer made use of Marilyn Monroe and I choose my language advisedly. He “used” her shamelessly. In an earlier study, I argue that Mailer, in ''Marilyn,'' creates an auto-erotic fantasy to satisfy his actual inability to consummate a sexual relationship with her. Obviously, the illusion was not fulfilling enough and so he was to attempt satisfaction two more times—again through photograph and text and finally, when those did not suffice, by bodying forth his imaginative vision with live actors in a theatrical production of his script ''Strawhead.''{{efn|Several writers have skirted around the quirky choice of his daughter Kate to play Monroe in the production, noting the Freudian associations. Stephan Morrow comments on the “various and delicious Oedipal” implications, especially during one rehearsal where Mailer demonstrated how he wanted the “blowjob” scene between Marilyn and Rod played. Kate got so disgusted that she refused to go on with the “tabloid bullshit” {{harvtxt|Morrow|2008|p=278}}. }} Barry Leeds has a less cyni-{{pg|275|276}} cal take on the subject of Mailer’s repeated return to the subject. In his biographical study ''The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer,'' he suggests other reasons for Mailer’s repeated return to the subject. Leeds rhapsodizes on what he considers the many similarities between NM and MM. ''Au contraire,'' I would counter, if there is a oneness of the two, I would invoke the Yin/Yang oneness, the oneness of opposites: in this case, I would suggest, the user and the used. However, Mailer’s uses were progressively less effective. ''Marilyn'' was a critical and financial success, ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' less so, and finally, ''Strawhead'' was never published and after a two week run at the Actor’s Studio, it had no further production.

Lest I be accused of piling on Mailer, a few lines about his success in writing in Marilyn’s voice are called for. Among her other attributes, Mailer gives his Marilyn a sensitivity to color, a trait that escapes many male writers who create female characters. She describes the colors of the furniture and walls in her Waldorf Tower apartment, using the word “buff” to describe the walls. Buff is not a word men often use; gradations in color tones are definitely a predominantly feminine bent. ''Strawhead'' also captures the terrible sense of loneliness Marilyn felt by staging her as the only person onstage, all the others being her remembrances. Among the bits printed in ''Fragments'' are the lines “''Alone!!!!! / I am alone''—I am ''always / alone / no matter what.''”{{sfn|Monroe|2010|pg=35}} Unfortunately, he gets little of her poetic side, her fears of aging captured in lines such as those written on hotel stationary in Surrey. “Where his eyes rest with pleasure—I / want to be still be—but time has changes / the hold of that glance. / Alas how will I cope when I am less youthful—.”{{sfn|Monroe|2010|p=119}} Finally, the issue divides itself into two conflicting parts. On the one hand, Mailer cannibalizes Marilyn for his own purposes, be it fantasy, financial, or ego-maniacal. On the other hand, his writing imagination is sometimes so spot-on as to create a viable portrait, first through biography and then autobiography. Michael Glenday also suggests that there is a certain pleasure associated with “encountering not just the memoir, but also the vitality of interaction between Mailer’s imagination and his subject.” {{sfn|Glenday|2008|p=350}} In addition, if the commonplace is that a man can’t write from a woman’s perspective, in ''Of Women And Their Elegance,'' although Mailer’s Marilyn voice is totally fictional and does not fully capture Marilyn, it is certainly a plausible creation.

To date, the obession with Marilyn does not seem to have abated.{{efn|As far back as 1974 the obsession was in full flower. In his biography, Robert F. {{harvtxt|Slatzer|1974|p=}} noted that over forty books had already been written about Monroe. Mailer was not the only famous novelist to write about her. Joyce Carol Oates tried her hand at it in ''Blonde,'' also labeled as a novel, published in 2000. Gloria Steinem is another celebrity biographer.}} Nor is it limited to Mailer. In a 2010 article, Maureen Dowd lists a number of current “Marilyn” projects. One is a biopic starring Naomi Watts, based {{pg|276|277}} ''Blonde,'' the novel by Joyce Carol Oates. Another movie is in the works about the conspiracy theory that Marilyn was murdered and not a suicide. A recent novel in Britain uses the trick of having “Maf” (short for Mafia), the Maltese terrier gifted to her by Frank Sinatra, as narrator. Still another film with Michelle Williams is titled ''My Week With Marilyn''.{{sfn|Dowd|2010|p=18A}} The dress Marilyn wore in the famous subway grate scene of ''The Seven Year Itch'' brought a record $5.6 million at Debbie Reynolds’ movie memorabilia sale in June, 2011. And, finally, a bittersweet footnote about the Marilyn/Mailer connection: A recent ''New York Times'' article about the sale of Mailer’s last home includes a reference to, among other items, a framed original print of Milton Greene’s photograph of Marilyn Monroe. “Mailer’s obsession and the subject of two affectionate books” is the identifying phrase for the picture, one among the many eclectic possessions left when Mailer died. One might conclude that Marilyn was with him to the end.{{efn|My thanks to my colleagues Robert Gunn and Ezra Cappell who read the first draft of this article and made several useful suggestions.}}

== Notes ==
{{notelist|20em}}

==Citations==
{{Reflist|15em}}

==Works Cited==
{{refbegin|indent=1|20em}}
* {{cite book |last=Bailey |first=Jennifer |date=1979 |title=Norman Mailer: Quick-Change Artist |url= |location=London |publisher=Macmillan |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Bengis |first=Ingrid |date=1986 |chapter=Monroe According to Mailer: One Legend Feeds on Another |title=Critical Essays on Norman Mailer |url= |location=Boston |publisher=G. K. Hall & Co. |pages=71-78 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Berger |first=Josephy |title=Norman Mailer’s Electric Life, as Seen Through His Last Home |url= |journal=New York Times |volume= |issue= |date=3 May 2011 |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite letter |last=Carlyle |first=Kitty |recipient=Norman Mailer |subject=Letter to Norman Mailer |location=Norman Mailer Collection, University of Texas-Austin |publisher=Harry Ransom Center Humanities Research Center |date=n.d. |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Marilyn V. |date=1999 |title=Mailer: A Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Dowd |first=Maureen |date=October 24, 2010 |title=Making Ignorance Chic |url= |work=El Paso Inc |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Gladstein |first=Mimi |title=Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman |url=http://prmlr.us/mr04gla |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=4 |issue=1 |date=2010 |pages=288-302 |access-date=2025-04-20 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Glenday |first=Michael K. |title=From Monroe to Picasso: Norman Mailer and the Life-Study |url=https://prmlr.us/mr02gle |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=2 |issue=1 |date=2008 |pages=348-363 |access-date=2025-04-20 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Guiles |first=Fred Lawrence |date=1984 |title=Legend:The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe |url= |location=Lanham, MD |publisher=Scarborough House |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Kazan |first=Elia |date=n.d. |title=Norman Mailer Collection |url= |location=University of Texas-Austin |publisher=Harry Ransom Center Humanities Research Center |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Leeds |first=Barry |date=2002 |title=The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer |url= |location=Bainbridge Island, WA |publisher=Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Lehmann-Haupt |first=Christopher |title=Aquarius on Gemini-I |url= |work=New York Times |date=July 16, 1973 |page=27 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=November 10, 1980 |title=Before the Literary Bar |url= |magazine=New York Magazine |pages=27-46 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=Loren Plotkin |subject=Letter to Loren Plotkin |location=Norman Mailer Collection, University of Texas-Austin |publisher=Harry Ransom Center Humanities Research Center |date={{date|May 7, 1986}} |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1980a |title=Of Women and Their Elegance |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Schuster |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1973 |title=Marilyn |url= |location=New York |publisher=Galahad |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1998 |chapter=The Jewish Princess |title=The Time of Our Time |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages=300-317 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite AV media |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1986 |title=Strawhead |url= |trans-title= |format= |work= |type=Performance |language= |location=New York |publisher=Actor's Studio |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norris Church |date=2010 |title=A Ticket to the Circus |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Manso |first=Peter |date=1985 |title=Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Marshall |first=David |date=2011 |chapter=Rev. of ''Of Women and Their Elegance'', by Norman Mailer |title=Marilyn Monroe and the Camera |url= |location= |publisher= |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Merrill |first=Robert |date=1992 |title=Norman Mailer Revisted |url= |location=New York |publisher=Twayne Publishers |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Monroe |first=Marilyn |date=2010 |title=Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters |url= |location=New York |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Morrow |first=Stephan |title=The Unknown General |url=https://prmlr.us/mr02mor |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=2 |issue=1 |date=2008 |pages=273-297 |access-date=2025-04-20 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rollyson |first=Carl |date=1991 |title=The Lives of Norman Mailer: A Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Paragon House |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Slatzer |first=Robert F. |date=1974 |title=The Life and Curious Death of Marilyn Monroe |url= |location=New York |publisher=Pinnacle Books |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite letter |last=Stevens |first=Carol |recipient=Norman Mailer |subject=Letter to Norman Mailer |location=Norman Mailer Collection, University of Texas-Austin |publisher=Harry Ransom Center Humanities and Research Center |date={{date|January 31, 1986}} |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Wright |first=Lawrence |date=June 1981 |title=Shades of Gray |url= |magazine=Texas Monthly |pages=196-207 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Piling On: Norman Mailer’s Utilization of Marilyn Monroe}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Piling On: Norman Mailer’s Utilization of Marilyn Monroe

2025-04-22T14:59:29Z

Grlucas: /* Works Cited */ Clean-up.

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{{byline|last=Gladstein |first=Mimi Reisel |abstract=An exploration into Mailer’s long-term fascination with Marilyn Monroe. |note=My thanks to the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin for permission to examine the Norman Mailer archives in researching this essay. [Author’s note. —Ed.] |url=http://prmlr.us/mr05gla}}

{{dc|dc=I|n a lengthy, single-spaced, two-and-a-half-page typewritten critique}} of the Actor’s Studio production of ''Strawhead,'' Norman Mailer’s fifth wife, Carol, tasks him with the above observation about this third appropriation of Marilyn Monroe as a focus for his creative endeavors. It is a salient question, something mentioned not only by someone who knew him intimately, but also by critics of the relevant works, ''Marilyn,'' ''Of Women and Their Elegance,'' and ''Strawhead.'' Mailer’s biographers have also noted how beguiled he was with the topic. Robert Merrill calls it “a continuing obsession.”{{sfn|Merrill|1992|p=9}} Barry Leeds introduces his book-length study, ''The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer,'' with a chapter on Mailer and Marilyn, observing in his first sentence that for decades Mailer had been “fascinated with the life and death of Marilyn Monroe,” introducing the similarities between them, and concluding that they were both prisoners of sex.{{sfn|Leeds|2002|p=20}} The issue calls for further exploration of both its enduring allure for Mailer and the unsavory aspects of his handling of his Marilyn mania.

It is hard to know exactly when this “obsession” began. Mailer claimed on a number of occasions that he had never met Marilyn Monroe. Not so, according to Shelley Winters, quoted in the “Hollywood Politics” chapter of Peter Manso’s biography. She contradicts Mailer’s claim that he never met Monroe. According to Winters, they met at a rally for Henry Wallace in{{pg|264|265}} Hollywood in 1948.{{sfn|Manso|1985|p=131}} Both may be right according to their memories. It is possible that in 1948, the woman who would become Marilyn Monroe was still Norma Jeane and displayed little of that incandescent ability to exude sexuality as she projected herself to camera and fans.{{efn| {{harvtxt|Guiles|1984|p=}} spells it “Jeane” in ''Legend: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe,'' as does Leaming in ''Marilyn.'' Mailer spells it “Jean.”}} The as-yet-unknown Norma Jeane may not have made enough of an impression on Mailer for him to remember it. Years later, once he began writing about her, the official story from him and a number of his biographers is that the only place they ever met was in his imagination.{{efn|This holds true for the make-believe trial he created to forestall the criticism of his second Monroe book. When he is asked in an imaginary court scene, answers the Prosecutor’s question about whether he had ever met MM, by saying, “No, but I sat behind her once at Actor’s Studio.” {{harvtxt|Mailer|1980|p=33}}}} Regardless of whether or not they met briefly in the forties or never met, once Mailer had fastened onto Monroe as a topic for his literary delectation, he had a hard time letting go. In addition, his fervor sometimes led to “piling on” and on occasion “late hits” or “low blows,” to use football and boxing metaphors for Mailer’s literary excesses.

Oddly enough for what became such an enduring interest, the initial impetus to write about Monroe was not Mailer’s.{{efn|I am not unmindful of the earlier references to Monroe or the Marilynesque characters in previous Mailer works, but here I mean Marilyn as the main subject.}} It came as part of a book project for a compilation of photographs of Monroe by famous photographers, principle among them Larry Schiller who had taken nude photographs of the actress in the last days of her life. Others included Milton Greene, Bert Stern, Eve Arnold, and Richard Avedon.{{efn|Milton Greene’s photographs would be featured in {{harvtxt|Mailer|1980|p=}} second Monroe project ''Of Women and Their Elegance.''}} Mailer was a big name writer, whom they contacted to quickly deliver a ten-thousand-word preface for this photography book. However, as is often the case with addictions and/or obsessions, once started, they are difficult to abandon. The Preface was like an aphrodisiac appetizer for Mailer and once begun, the subject so enflamed his phallic pen, that eventually it produced more than ninety thousand words and, in the opinion of the ''New York Times'' reviewer, the “100 photographs...[were] reduced to serving the relatively minor function of illustrating his text.”{{sfn|Lehmann-Haupt|1973|p=27}} And while Marilyn was to serve as Mailer’s muse on three separate occasions, it was this initial foray into the world of America’s legendary sex goddess that first demonstrated Marilyn’s variety of uses for Mailer. In this case, the publication of ''Marilyn'' was professionally valuable in the development of Mailer’s career. Middle-aged, with his career in a “holding pattern,” according to Mary Dearborn, “''Marilyn'' put Norman’s name before the public, where it had not been” for some years.{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|p=324}}

Another possible source for Mailer’s obsession with Monroe could be Mailer’s competitive nature. A number of writers have suggested that his legendary ego might have been wounded by his lack of access to the era’s{{pg|265|266}} consummated sex goddess, as he considered himself the epitome of the macho man. The main men in her life were such that Mailer would want to measure himself against them. Husband number one was not a consideration. Mailer interviewed James Dougherty, but the man and his remembrances are summarily dismissed as possibly unreliable since they are those of a narcotics cop. For Mailer, in terms of possible competition, Dougherty qualifies at best as a neophyte, ignorant of the finer points of the contest. Husbands two and three are another matter. They were both significant figures in their different professions. Mailer, for whom boxing was an actual hobby and metaphorical trope, may have consciously or subconsciously regretted that he never even got the chance to get in the ring with either of these champions.{{efn|Hemingway also used the boxing metaphor, famously evaluating his writing in relation to other writers in terms of staying in the ring with them.}} It was about this time in Mailer’s life that Jose Torres began giving him boxing lessons in exchange for editorial assistance with the book Torres was writing about Muhammed Ali. In a contest with Monroe’s second husband, Mailer is out of his class, division, or league, whichever metaphor works. Joe DiMaggio was a legendary sports hero, an icon of the masculine arena. DiMaggio had reached such mythic status that he was referenced in popular music and in Hemingway’s admired novella, ''The Old Man and The Sea.''{{efn|A Simon and Garfunkel lyric for a song in the Academy Award-nominated film, ''The Graduate,'' positions DiMaggio as a national hero, one whose return the nation longs for: “Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio / A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” Santiago, the heroic fisherman in Hemingway’s ''The Old Man and the Sea,'' tells the boy about “the great DiMaggio.”}} Bouts are not scheduled between boxers who fall in different weight classes and, in the sports league, Mailer would not even try to get in the ring with DiMaggio. Instead, Mailer presents him in an almost complimentary manner, writing that during the years that Monroe was married to DiMaggio, she looked like she was fed on sexual candy.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=102}} In his need to find sufficiently lusty language, Mailer invents the term “fucky” to describe how Monroe looked during the DiMaggio period. He also pays DiMaggio the high compliment of comparing him to Hemingway in terms of eminence in his art, pointing out the “consistent courage” it took to face thousands of fast balls, any of which could kill or cripple him.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=99}} If there is a hero in this “novel,” it would have to be “Jolting Joe.” Mailer credits him with always being there for Marilyn “when she needs him, and is probably her closest friend in the months before she dies.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=95}} A photograph of DiMaggio at Monroe’s funeral is one of the last images in the book and Mailer’s last line reads, “Let us then take our estimate of her worth by the grief on Joe DiMaggio’s face the day of that dread funeral in Westwood west of Hollywood.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=262}}

The competition begins in earnest when Mailer turns to Monroe’s last husband, Arthur Miller. Miller is definitely in Mailer’s class, division,{{pg|266|267}} league: both are literary heavy-weights. Miller was a dominant figure in the intellectual and arts arena. Both ''Death of a Salesman'' and ''The Crucible'' were prominent theatrical vehicles, winning a number of drama awards and becoming mainstays of university and community theatres all over the country. Mailer takes a number of jabs at Miller, labeling him a “failure” as Monroe’s champion in her battles with Olivier in England and a “traitor” because he had written a note about how she embarrassed him, a note that devastated her when she read it.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=167}} As if taking on the role of Marilyn’s champion, Mailer pelts Miller with numerous pejoratives. Among them are “tight,” “tied up” and “abstemious.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=143}} In addition, Mailer tries to land a knockout blow by characterizing Miller in the the sexual arena as “an inhibited householder from Brooklyn.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=167}} In this metaphorically sexual bout, in addition to his below-the-belt punches, Mailer hits Miller with a glancing blow to the head with the assessment that he had “limited lyrical gifts, no capacity for intellectual shock.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=142}} Mailer is sure he could have beat Miller but he never did get in the ring with him because, as he complains, when they lived in close proximity he “waited for the call to visit, which of course never came.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=19}} He admits that a reason for the cut may have been the very fact of his competitive nature and the fact that stealing Marilyn had been his secret ambition. Convinced of his prowess in this arena, he suggests that Miller may have feared creating the opportunity. Of course that meeting with Marilyn never occurred, and as Mailer could not compete with either of these men in a real life ''mano a mano,'' he resorted to his most effective weapon. He created his own access—with his pen.

Returning to the subject of the many uses Mailer made of Monroe, ''Marilyn,'' as I argued in an earlier study, is, among other things, an exercise in creating a masturbatory fantasy about a woman who got away. It is also the initial volley in Mailer’s campaign to possess his subject inside and out, first in his voice as a biographer and then assuming her voice as memoiorist. From the onset of the first project, Mailer expresses his frustration with the time limitations imposed on his fantasy fulfillment. In “An Acknowledgment,” Mailer proclaims his discontent with having to meet a publication deadline.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=257}} This he was able to remedy in the future by creating his own projects, whereby he will be “master of his own domain.” Because of the time checks in this case, he protests that he cannot write a proper biography, which he claims would take at least two years just to amass the materials needed for a suitable job. Therefore, he complains,
{{pg|267|268}}

rather than the biography he desired to write, he has written a “novel biography.” Since he can't do his own original research, he enumerates the other writers whose works he draws on, as well as Norman Rosten’s manuscript for the as-yet-unpublished biography, ''Marilyn—An Untold Story.'' In addition, he cites what he calls “interviews in modest depth.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=259}} In this case, the Mailer braggadocio, his advertisments of himself, may have been uncharacteristically muted. In ''Legend: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe,'' Fred Lawrence Guiles, whose first biography ''Norma Jean'' is one of two cited by Mailer as the main sources for the facts in his book, returns the compliment, when he credits Mailer’s “modest” interview with producing the “most thorough account” of the relationship between Norma Jeane (not yet Marilyn) and André de Dienes, a Hungarian born fashion photographer. A number of the fresh-faced, jeans-clad photographs by Dienes are in the book.

''Marilyn'' was also to serve Mailer as a vita-enhancing publication. Robert Merrill argues for “serious reconsideration” of ''Marilyn'' as he contends that its excellences as a biography have been overlooked and, though one of Mailer’s “minor works,” it still contributes to the overall “imposing output of serious and original works.”{{sfn|Merrill|1992|p=142}}{{sfn|Merrill|1992|p=212}} Carl Rollyson considers it a “significant achievement in American letters with which biographers must reckon.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=261}} Jennifer Bailey reads it as an “unmistakable achievement.”{{sfn|Bailey|1979|p=140}} And, indeed, when one gets beyond the leeringly salacious element, there is much to admire about the book, both as a biography and as a novel. A charming element about it is Mailer’s tone, which is wonderfully self-deflating in places. One such instance is when he acknowledges his peevishness about not being invited to meet Marilyn as he was sure that “no one was so well suited to bring out the best in her.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=20}} Then, in the next line, he concedes that some failed marriages later, he was better equipped to understand that what he was probably responding to at the time was the same thing that some fifty million other men felt as a result of what he calls “the foundation of her art,” which was an ability to “speak to each man as if he were all of male existence available to her.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=20}} He admits that not only would he probably have failed her, but that she might well have “damaged” him. In another instance of uncharacteristically revealing candor, he admits, in a discussion of Monroe’s purported lack of self-assurance about sex, that “we all reveal our innocence about sex in a candid remark.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=75}} This from the writer who had, on occasion, postitioned himself as an “sexpert.” To a certain extent the tension between the macho writer taking lusty virtual possession of his sub-{{pg|268|269}} ject and the self-revelatory hesitations he expresses creates a correspondence between him and Monroe as they both projected a blatant forward sexuality that overlays an undercurrent of vulnerability.

Another service Marilyn/''Marilyn'' performs for Mailer, is facilitating his joys of linguistic excess.{{efn|I do not mean to imply that Mailer’s linguistic virtuosity is sparing in other works, only that this work allows him even more occasion for unmonitored verbal hijinks.}} Given the spectacular and extravagant nature of his subject and her reputation, he allows himself a surfeit of verbal highwire acts. On occasion the result is fun as when he catalogs the list of Monroe’s early Hollywood relationships: “Snively, Schenck, Karger, and Hyde! If she had been a bargirl lookng to sue an ex-lover in a raunchy case, she would have picked her law firm out of the yellow pages with a name like that.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=89}} But at other times his unmonitored metaphors and imagery are definitely in need of a discerning editor.{{efn|My colleague Robert Gunn suggests that Mailer’s prose flaunts a lack of monitoring, that in its “gleefully exhibitionistic (and highly erotic)” display demonstrates “not an absence of artistic control, but rather a deliberate choice to refuse propriety and proportionality.”}} In one jarring instance, he writes of Monroe’s final moments when “the wings of death lay wet feathers across her face.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=86}} “Wet feathers” is a clumsy image whereby to communicate the dark eminence of death. Rather than a sense of awe, what is evoked is annoyance; wet feathers would tickle or make one want to sneeze. Mailer’s choice of metaphor to describe Monroe’s inability to escape her past is to describe her behavior “as sluggish as a dinosaur’s tail.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=126}} This metaphor is equally inept. The image conveyed is awkward rather than apt. Experience that repeats itself “with the breath of a turnip” is another of his odd images (143) Wet feathers, dinosaur tails, and the breath of a turnip—surely a wordsmith like Mailer could do better.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=143}} In his explanation of why the “detritus of the insignificant” films she played in early in her career so damaged any good will she may have accumulated as a young women and led to “retaliations” he descibes as “nihilistic,” Mailer pulls out more over-the-top verbal imagery.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|pp=89-90}} He calls Monroe “a sly leviathan of survival, and, Faust among the Faustians.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=90}} In addition to the lingustic abandon, he also allows himself such salaciously voyeuristic flights of the imagination as an invented dialogue after the discovery by studio executives that their newest sensation had posed in the nude. Mailer excuses himself by pointing out that “a novelist has a right to invent the following dialogue.”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=92}} He then devises such questions as cannot help but inflame the imagination: “Did you spread your legs?” “Is your asshole showing?” “Any animals in it with you?” Lest he miss the opportunity to use every profanity he knows, Mailer includes the statement, when trying to describe the divided character of Monroe’s personality, that while she could be an angel, she was also “one hard and calculating{{pg|269|270}} computer of a cold and ambitious cunt” and then underlines his linguistic choice by stating parenthetically “(no other English word is near).”{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=97}}{{efn|I am reminded of an old graffiti:“Profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate mother-fucker.” I can think of a number of words that would work as well. I am sure Mailer could too, but he liked to shock and as I argue throughout, he gives himself full license with this topic.}}

The publication of ''Marilyn'' was a boon to Mailer both personally and professionally—and then as a bonus benefit unexpectedly, it serve him as a tool for seduction. In ''A Ticket to the Circus,'' Norris Church Mailer writes of its role in their first encounter and subsequent courtship.In 1975, in anticipation of meeting the famous author, Barbara Norris—her name when they met—brought her copy of the book for him to sign. He did not sign it until February of 1976 when a relationship had already begun. Addressing it to Barbara Mailer he writes, “Because I knew when I wrote this book that someone I had not yet met would read it and be with me.”{{sfn|Mailer|2010|p=89}} The Mailer chutzpah is in full force here.

''Of Women and Their Elegance,'' Mailer’s second appropriation of Marilyn Monroe, came some seven years after the first. Like the first, it is heavily reliant on the visual. Here, however, rather than pictures only of Marilyn, there are pictures of other women and their elegance. The photographs by Milton H. Greene run the gamut from Marlene Dietrich to Grandma Moses. In ''Marilyn,'' Mailer claimed to be writing a “novel biography” and he routinely referenced the biographical works of Maurice Zolotow, Fred Lawrence Guiles, and Norman Rosten, also often citing what he called “factoids.” Here he baldly states in a note before the text that he “does not pretend to offer factual representations.”

Obviously foreseeing much of the kind of criticism that this book would engender, Mailer anticipates his detractors in a make-believe trial published in ''New York'' magazine. Deftly titled “Before the Literary Bar,” besides his own voice he creates the parts of the Prosecutor, the Defense, and The Court. The charge is “criminal literary negligence” and Mailer himself characterizes the work as a “false autobiography” or “an imaginary memoir.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|pp=27-8}} The thrust of his main argument about his fast-and-loose treatment of the facts is that what he portrays in the book, “whether factual or not...[could] reasonably have occurred in Miss Monroe’s life” and that they are therefore “aesthetically true” if not literally so.{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=34}} Mailer assumes the variety of voices, both pro and con, in an adroit manner, convincingly developing the arguments of his detractors. In some spots he even demonstrates a delightful sense of self-irony. An example is when, after having been instructed numerous times to reply only to the questions asked of him, he has The Court remark, “Maybe Mr. Mailer thinks he is being paid by the word.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=34}} In another instance he{{pg|270|271}} has The Court assure him, after a question of whether or not he would like it if someone made up facts about him when he is dead, that they “do not wish to rush that occasion.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|pp=45-6}}

Mailer’s self-defense in “Before the Literary Bar” is that made-up parts of his fictional autobiography can be justified as having reasonably occurred in Monroe’s life. However, his creation of the Bobby de Peralta character pushes the boundaries of a reader’s willing suspension of disbelief. Mailer claims to have made him up to try to explain the tragic ambiguities in Monroe’s character, attributing them to buried matters in her psyche. He rationalizes that something in her unrecorded years in Hollywood must contain a “psychic cyst” or memories so bad that she could not face them.{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=45}}

Mailer’s rationalizations are unconvinicing and this sordid and sensational section of ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' is a prime example of Mailer’s “piling on.” To demonstrate the appropriateness of this football metaphor, at the point in her life at which Mailer claims to need a defining episode, like a downed quarterback, Marilyn’s background of illegitimacy, foster homes, absent father, family insanity, and a remembered attempted strangling in her crib have effectively already left her “sacked.” Any one or any combination of the events of her childhood could more than adequately explain why she would be the unhappy and disturbed person Mailer portrays. Dumping more excrement on her can serve little purpose other than to warrant the author’s desire to give license to his lascivious imagination. The pictures he paints are almost cliché in their pornographic purpose. For Marilyn’s first Hollywood party Mailer evokes rooms of filthy pictures filled with naked people and the imaginary Bobby “naked except for cowboy boots and a Stetson hat,” walking a Doberman named Romulus who tries to get in on the sexual action of the lustful couples.{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=130}}

But the party is only the destination point for the heart of this imaginary episode. Traveling to this party, Mailer indulges his fantasy by having Marilyn engage in a brief fling with a fictional “Rod” (the double entendre is almost funny). They ride to the party on his motorcycle, all the while having sexual intercourse at eighty miles an hour. Making the most of his imaginary license, Mailer has Marilyn explain how she had only “to lean up on the handlebars a little, and he was in the proper place, if from behind, my dear. I could have become an addict.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=129}} The situation only gets more sordid after that.{{efn|Stephan {{harvtxt|Morrow|2008|p=}} writes of Shelley Winters getting up and objecting when he played that scene in ''Strawhead.''}} As if picturing Marilyn as so dissolute that she rides to the party on a motorcycle having sex with the fictional Rod, after which she gives him{{pg|271|272}} a “blow-job” only to spend the night in an orgy with Bobby is not enough, Mailer also gives her murderous inclinations. When the nefarious Bobby suggests they go over and cut his wife’s throat, Mailer’s Marilyn creation responds with “excitement.” The prospect of murder stimulates her to the declaration that “I was nearer to myself than I ever wanted to be.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=137}} She relishes the idea that "everyone would talk of me," seeing it as "beautiful."{{sfn|Mailer|1980|pp=137-8}} She acknowledges that she is “ready to commit murder.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=138}} Murder is so appealing to her that it vanquishes her headache. If Mailer’s excuse for this sensationalism is that he had to create something awful in her past to explain her future bad behavior, his is a sharply flawed argument. In this fictional episode, Mailer’s Marilyn is already so lacking in any moral compass that she goes through all the motions of participating in a murder, only prevented from the act because it turns out that the designated victim is not there. She is willing to commit murder with a man who does not even know her “phone number or my address, or even my last name.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=142}} Logically, whatever brought her to this morally bankrupt state happened earlier and Mailer’s invention should be flagged by the referee as unnecessary roughness. Two days after this imaginary episode, Mailer adds the information that she had an abortion. Cleverly, in his self-defense before the imaginary literary bar, Mailer has the Prosecutor question him about the factual basis for Bobby de Peralta and the murder plot. He acknowledges that he has none and even allows his Prosecutor creation to describe his actions as “outrageous.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=40}} And I would add self-indulgent.

Even on his own terms, with himself as judge and jury, Mailer’s defense rings hollow. He claims that without such an episode the reader would be left with a characterization of Marilyn that presents only her “sweet, charming, madcap” side, thereby unable to understand why one so attractive would end so badly. Acknowledging what might have been “a failure of invention,” he concedes that it is difficult “to conceive of one powerful dramatic episode that will substitute satisfactorily for the sum of a thousand smaller episodes.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=45}} And that is, I would argue, because the thousand smaller episodes are more than sufficient explanation by themselves. Mailer, on the basis of what he calls “general knowledge” about the life of a Hollywood starlet, gives Marilyn the kind of demeaning and humiliating experiences that, along with her genetic and childhood history, could adequately explain her later behavior.{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=33}} Mailer had her remember being sent to perform fellatio on three executives in a row, on the half hour, before going to acting class. He even{{pg|272|273}} remarks to the prosecutor’s question about the episode that “the scars” of that period in her life explain why a woman with her “angelic appearance” came to be so difficult to work with and inconsiderate of co-stars, directors and crew. Calling the excerpt “factual” he quotes both Lee Strasberg and Arthur Miller to verify the “call girl” and “chewed and spat out” the quality of Monroe’s early Hollywood days.{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=33}}

Mailer’s sly manipulation here is blatantly self-serving in an additional manner. By making this particularly egregious episode Exhibit B in the trial, he can enjoy his imaginary voyeurism again. Not only are the offensive events in the book, but in case the reader of ''New York'' does not buy the book, Mailer has the opportunity to present his self-indulgent imaginings for a different audience—those who might pick up the magazine. He had the prosecution make him read the whole episode to the court as Exhibit B. The titillation quotient is high.

As a sidelight, it can be said that still another use Mailer made of his writing about Marilyn is payback or appreciation to Milton and Amy Greene. Whatever the realities of their behavior in their relationship with Monroe, in both ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' and ''Strawhead,'' Mailer casts them a very positive light and puts complimentary language in Marilyn’s mouth when she speaks of them. Milton Greene’s particular charm is portrayed with Marilyn’s initial reaction at their first meeting: “You’re just a boy.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=34}} Her expectation, given his fame as a fashion photographer, was for an older man. Mailer also tries to make him appealing in a scruffy kind of way when he has Marilyn describe him as looking like a young John Garfield if Garfield had been chewed a bit a by a toothless lion.{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=34}} He is portrayed as the only man who did not take advantage of Marilyn and she blames Arthur Miller for ruining their relationship. Besides the direct compliments, such as when Marilyn tells Amy her eyes are like stars and compliments her performance during the Edward R. Murrow interview as “truly scintillating” and done with “real poise” and “real vivacity.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=28}}{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=126}} Mailer also portrays Amy Greene as a mentor to Marilyn in matters of fashion, introducing her to the fashions of Norman Norell.{{efn|Although Norell’s fashions are given prominence in Mailer’s writing, he is ignored in many of the biographies. An interesting sidelight is that Michelle Obama wore a vintage Norell dress during the 2010 Christmas season.}} Marilyn lauds Amy’s organization down to her color coordination of her underwear with her clothing. Of course, the Greenes are his co-authors in a way as they provided the reminiscences and the photographs that make up the bulk of the book. Milton Greene’s ethics are also presented in a most favorable light when the break-up of of Marilyn Monroe Productions occurs. With the comment, “It was not my idea to make{{pg|273|274}} money on Marilyn Monroe,” Greene explains why he takes only $100,000 for his share when all had expected him to hold out for five times that much. The irony is not lost that Mailer, who ''is'' trying to make money on Marilyn Monroe, chooses this vindication for Greene. One might also say that Mailer uses this opportunity to pay the Greenes back by telling their stories along with Marilyn’s. We learn a lot of their histories and talents. One of the last things Mailer has Marilyn do is recall how beautiful Milton’s photographs are and remember, “Oh, how exquisite he could be.”{{sfn|Mailer|1980|p=235}}

The reception of ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' was mixed. The exploitive nature of Mailer’s use of Monroe did not go without notice. Although David Marshall considered it a “wonderful treasure,” mainly because of the photographs, he also remarked that Mailer was “squeezing the last dollar out of a woman he never met.” Lawrence Wright’s ''Texas Monthly'' article that explores the connections between fact and fiction, particularly in what is called the “new journalism,” compares Mailer’s ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' unfavorably to ''The Executioner’s Song.'' Wright terms the former “reader abuse” and concludes that Mailer’s depiction of Marilyn is unconvincing as he is “trying to fill the unexplored spaces in her personlaity with his own.”{{sfn|Wright|1981|p=202}} In addition, beyond the critiques of the text of the book, it has the dubious distinction that the 1999 ''Esquire'' Book Awards named ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' as Worst Title.

It took Mailer a few years to get back to “piling on” Marilyn. This time, the medium was theatre. Although ''Strawhead'' is often categorized as a dramatization of ''Of Women and Their Elegance,'' there are a number of variances, probably occasioned by the differences in media and perhaps by Mailer’s desire to emphasize the imaginary truth aspect of his take on Marilyn. Richard Hannum is listed as the co-author of the play. Among the number of drafts housed at the Harry Ransom Center is a bound copy that emphasizes the “staged” quality of the production.{{efn|There are numerous drafts in the {{harvtxt|Mailer|1986|p=}} collection, reflecting pre- and post-production rewrites.}} It begins with the ACTRESS, the DIRECTOR, and the PLAYWRIGHT discussing the issue of whether or not the ACTRESS should take the part and whether she feels up to it. She names her boyfriend, her agent and her consciousness-raising group as reasons not to take the part. In terms of the latter, Mailer’s cognizance of previous feminist reations to his “Marilyn” works may be in play. The ACTRESS names feminist indecision about whether to consider Marilyn a martyr, a victim, or a collaborator with the enemy.

Further removal of the distance between audience and subject is accom-{{pg|274|275}} plished by the way, when the play is ready to begin, the audience watches as the Marilyn character is created. The actress draws a small black mole on her cheek and puts on a blonde wig. In addition, Mailer uses the timeworn theatrical technique of the aside to indicate that the “mirror of her mind” is being reflected to the audience. These he indentifcies as D.A.—Direct Address. There are many occasions for this. Much of the action begins at Marilyn’s dressing table as she remembers. Stage directions call for the “actors who play varying roles in Marilyn Monroe’s life [to] appear...like ‘cat calls.’ They are verbal memories for Marilyn.{{sfn|Mailer|1986|p=1.1}}

Among the changes from text to stage is a different initial setting. Whereas ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' begins with an excerpt from a ''Life'' magazine interview shortly before she died and then moves to a Waldorf Towers suite, all of ''Strawhead'' takes place in Marilyn’s mind. Added sound effects contribute to the wistful and tragic tone of the piece. In a number of scenes there are claps of thunder heard and in one version, “Smile Though Your Heart is Aching” is played at the end of the play as Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chapline walk off together.

Although ''Strawhead'' was never produced on Broadway, it did receive some attention before going “kerflooie” in Mailer’s words.{{sfn|Mailer|1986|p=letter}} In 1983, The American Repertory Theatre at Harvard had a staged reading for alum of Mailer’s spec script. That same year, Provincetown Playhouse also produced a version. Mailer’s sexual obession was blatantly evident in the early script that began with a fantasy interview wherein the Marilyn character gives a blowjob to the Mailer-interviewer character. Shelley Winters had such a negative response that it resulted in a Mailer rewrite. The 1986 Actor’s Studio production was attended by many of Mailer’s friends, some of whom, such as Kitty Carlyle wrote that she found herself “enormously interested.” Less complimentary is a letter from Elia Kazan who diplomatically writes, “Your play is worth more work. You can and should improve it.”

On three occasions, Norman Mailer made use of Marilyn Monroe and I choose my language advisedly. He “used” her shamelessly. In an earlier study, I argue that Mailer, in ''Marilyn,'' creates an auto-erotic fantasy to satisfy his actual inability to consummate a sexual relationship with her. Obviously, the illusion was not fulfilling enough and so he was to attempt satisfaction two more times—again through photograph and text and finally, when those did not suffice, by bodying forth his imaginative vision with live actors in a theatrical production of his script ''Strawhead.''{{efn|Several writers have skirted around the quirky choice of his daughter Kate to play Monroe in the production, noting the Freudian associations. Stephan Morrow comments on the “various and delicious Oedipal” implications, especially during one rehearsal where Mailer demonstrated how he wanted the “blowjob” scene between Marilyn and Rod played. Kate got so disgusted that she refused to go on with the “tabloid bullshit” {{harvtxt|Morrow|2008|p=278}}. }} Barry Leeds has a less cyni-{{pg|275|276}} cal take on the subject of Mailer’s repeated return to the subject. In his biographical study ''The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer,'' he suggests other reasons for Mailer’s repeated return to the subject. Leeds rhapsodizes on what he considers the many similarities between NM and MM. ''Au contraire,'' I would counter, if there is a oneness of the two, I would invoke the Yin/Yang oneness, the oneness of opposites: in this case, I would suggest, the user and the used. However, Mailer’s uses were progressively less effective. ''Marilyn'' was a critical and financial success, ''Of Women and Their Elegance'' less so, and finally, ''Strawhead'' was never published and after a two week run at the Actor’s Studio, it had no further production.

Lest I be accused of piling on Mailer, a few lines about his success in writing in Marilyn’s voice are called for. Among her other attributes, Mailer gives his Marilyn a sensitivity to color, a trait that escapes many male writers who create female characters. She describes the colors of the furniture and walls in her Waldorf Tower apartment, using the word “buff” to describe the walls. Buff is not a word men often use; gradations in color tones are definitely a predominantly feminine bent. ''Strawhead'' also captures the terrible sense of loneliness Marilyn felt by staging her as the only person onstage, all the others being her remembrances. Among the bits printed in ''Fragments'' are the lines “''Alone!!!!! / I am alone''—I am ''always / alone / no matter what.''”{{sfn|Monroe|2010|pg=35}} Unfortunately, he gets little of her poetic side, her fears of aging captured in lines such as those written on hotel stationary in Surrey. “Where his eyes rest with pleasure—I / want to be still be—but time has changes / the hold of that glance. / Alas how will I cope when I am less youthful—.”{{sfn|Monroe|2010|p=119}} Finally, the issue divides itself into two conflicting parts. On the one hand, Mailer cannibalizes Marilyn for his own purposes, be it fantasy, financial, or ego-maniacal. On the other hand, his writing imagination is sometimes so spot-on as to create a viable portrait, first through biography and then autobiography. Michael Glenday also suggests that there is a certain pleasure associated with “encountering not just the memoir, but also the vitality of interaction between Mailer’s imagination and his subject.” {{sfn|Glenday|2008|p=350}} In addition, if the commonplace is that a man can’t write from a woman’s perspective, in ''Of Women And Their Elegance,'' although Mailer’s Marilyn voice is totally fictional and does not fully capture Marilyn, it is certainly a plausible creation.

To date, the obession with Marilyn does not seem to have abated.{{efn|As far back as 1974 the obsession was in full flower. In his biography, Robert F. {{harvtxt|Slatzer|1974|p=}} noted that over forty books had already been written about Monroe. Mailer was not the only famous novelist to write about her. Joyce Carol Oates tried her hand at it in ''Blonde,'' also labeled as a novel, published in 2000. Gloria Steinem is another celebrity biographer.}} Nor is it limited to Mailer. In a 2010 article, Maureen Dowd lists a number of current “Marilyn” projects. One is a biopic starring Naomi Watts, based {{pg|276|277}} ''Blonde,'' the novel by Joyce Carol Oates. Another movie is in the works about the conspiracy theory that Marilyn was murdered and not a suicide. A recent novel in Britain uses the trick of having “Maf” (short for Mafia), the Maltese terrier gifted to her by Frank Sinatra, as narrator. Still another film with Michelle Williams is titled ''My Week With Marilyn''.{{sfn|Dowd|2010|p=18A}} The dress Marilyn wore in the famous subway grate scene of ''The Seven Year Itch'' brought a record $5.6 million at Debbie Reynolds’ movie memorabilia sale in June, 2011. And, finally, a bittersweet footnote about the Marilyn/Mailer connection: A recent ''New York Times'' article about the sale of Mailer’s last home includes a reference to, among other items, a framed original print of Milton Greene’s photograph of Marilyn Monroe. “Mailer’s obsession and the subject of two affectionate books” is the identifying phrase for the picture, one among the many eclectic possessions left when Mailer died. One might conclude that Marilyn was with him to the end.{{efn|My thanks to my colleagues Robert Gunn and Ezra Cappell who read the first draft of this article and made several useful suggestions.}}

== Notes ==
{{notelist|20em}}

==Citations==
{{Reflist|15em}}

==Works Cited==
{{refbegin|indent=1|20em}}
* {{cite book |last=Bailey |first=Jennifer |date=1979 |title=Norman Mailer: Quick-Change Artist |url= |location=London |publisher=Macmillan |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Bengis |first=Ingrid |date=1986 |chapter=Monroe According to Mailer: One Legend Feeds on Another |title=Critical Essays on Norman Mailer |url= |location=Boston |publisher=G. K. Hall & Co. |pages=71-78 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Berger |first=Josephy |title=Norman Mailer’s Electric Life, as Seen Through His Last Home |url= |journal=New York Times |volume= |issue= |date=3 May 2011 |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite letter |last=Carlyle |first=Kitty |recipient=Norman Mailer |subject=Letter to Norman Mailer |location=Norman Mailer Collection, University of Texas-Austin |publisher=Harry Ransom Center Humanities Research Center |date=n.d. |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Marilyn V. |date=1999 |title=Mailer: A Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Dowd |first=Maureen |date=October 24, 2010 |title=Making Ignorance Chic |url= |work=El Paso Inc |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Gladstein |first=Mimi |title=Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman |url=http://prmlr.us/mr04gla |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=4 |issue=1 |date=2010 |pages=288-302 |access-date=2025-04-20 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Glenday |first=Michael K. |title=From Monroe to Picasso: Norman Mailer and the Life-Study |url=https://prmlr.us/mr02gle |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=2 |issue=1 |date=2008 |pages=348-363 |access-date=2025-04-20 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Guiles |first=Fred Lawrence |date=1984 |title=Legend:The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe |url= |location=Lanham, MD |publisher=Scarborough House |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Kazan |first=Elia |date=n.d. |title=Norman Mailer Collection |url= |location=University of Texas-Austin |publisher=Harry Ransom Center Humanities Research Center |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Leeds |first=Barry |date=2002 |title=The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer |url= |location=Bainbridge Island, WA |publisher=Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Lehmann-Haupt |first=Christopher |title=Aquarius on Gemini-I |url= |work=New York Times |date=July 16, 1973 |page=27 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=November 10, 1980 |title=Before the Literary Bar |url= |magazine=New York Magazine |pages=27-46 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=Loren Plotkin |subject=Letter to Loren Plotkin |location=Norman Mailer Collection, University of Texas-Austin |publisher=Harry Ransom Center Humanities Research Center |date={{date|May 7, 1986}} |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1980a |title=Of Women and Their Elegance |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Schuster |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1973 |title=Marilyn |url= |location=New York |publisher=Galahad |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1998 |chapter=The Jewish Princess |title=The Time of Our Time |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages=300-317 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite AV media |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1986 |title=Strawhead |url= |trans-title= |format= |work= |type=Performance |language= |location=New York |publisher=Actor's Studio |access-date=}}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norris Church |date=2010 |title=A Ticket to the Circus |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Manso |first=Peter |date=1985 |title=Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Marshall |first=David |date=2011 |chapter=Rev. of ''Of Women and Their Elegance'', by Norman Mailer |title=Marilyn Monroe and the Camera |url= |location= |publisher= |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Merrill |first=Robert |date=1992 |title=Norman Mailer Revisted |url= |location=New York |publisher=Twayne Publishers |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Monroe |first=Marilyn |date=2010 |title=Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters |url= |location=New York |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Morrow |first=Stephan |title=The Unknown General |url=https://prmlr.us/mr02mor |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=2 |issue=1 |date=2008 |pages=273-297 |access-date=2025-04-20 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rollyson |first=Carl |date=1991 |title=The Lives of Norman Mailer: A Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Paragon House |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Slatzer |first=Robert F. |date=1974 |title=The Life and Curious Death of Marilyn Monroe |url= |location=New York |publisher=Pinnacle Books |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite letter |last=Stevens |first=Carol |recipient=Norman Mailer |subject=Letter to Norman Mailer |location=Norman Mailer Collection, University of Texas-Austin |publisher=Harry Ransom Center Humanities and Research Center |date={{date|January 31, 1986}} |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Wright |first=Lawrence |date=June 1981 |title=Shades of Gray |url= |magazine=Texas Monthly |pages=196-207 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Piling On: Norman Mailer’s Utilization of Marilyn Monroe}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

Talk:The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010

2025-04-22T14:29:05Z

Grlucas:

===Article Assignments, Vol. 4===
You will need to request an article and user name for {{PM}}. You may click the link to your article below to begin your edits. Status indicators: {{tick}} = complete (ready for final edits and banner removal); {{yellow tick}} = in process; {{cross}} = not started.

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="width: 100%;"
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! Author !! Article !! Editor !! Status
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| Mailer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Postscript to the Fourth Advertisement for Myself|Postscript to the Fourth Advertisement for Myself]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Mailer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway Revisited|Hemingway Revisited]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Lennon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway to Mailer — A Delayed Response to The Deer Park|Hemingway to Mailer]] || [[User:Hobbitonya]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hemingway || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman, Ernest, and Greg|Norman, Ernest, and Greg]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Begiebing || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Ernest and Norman: A Dialogue in Two Acts|Ernest and Norman]] || [[User:DSánchez]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Bufithis & Curnutt || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway|A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway]] || [[User:Grlucas]] [[User:DBond007]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Meredith || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/The American Civil War in The Naked and the Dead and Across the River and Into the Trees|The American Civil War]] || [[User:KaraCroissant]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Shuman || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman vs. Ernest: Influence and Identity|Norman vs. Ernest]] || — || {{cross}}
|-
| Lowenburg || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hooking Off the Jab: Norman Mailer, Ernest Hemingway and Boxing|Hooking Off the Jab]] || [[User:ASpeed]] [[User:DBond007]]|| {{yellow tick}}
|-
| Cirino || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer's The Fight: Hemingway, Bullfighting, and the Lovely Metaphysics of Boxing|Norman Mailer's ''The Fight'']] || [[User:TWietstruk]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Boddy || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing|Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing]] || [[User:JBrown]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Leeds || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Firearms in the Works of Hemingway and Mailer|Firearms in the Works of Hemingway and Mailer]] || [[User:CVinson]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Plath || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Jive-Ass Aficionado: Why Are We in Vietnam? and Hemingway's Moral Code|Jive-Ass Aficionado]] || [[User:ADear]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Cappell || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway's Jewish Progeny: Roth and Goldstein in ''The Naked and the Dead''|Hemingway's Jewish Progeny]] || [[User:THarris]] [[User:Tbara4554]]|| {{tick}}
|-
| Peppard || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and the “Reds”|Mailer, Hemingway, and the “Reds”]] || [[User:KWatson]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Kaufmann || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Ernest and Norman (Exit Music)|Ernest and Norman (Exit Music)]] || [[User:Flowersbloom]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Justice || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Authorship and Alienation in Death in the Afternoon and Advertisements for Myself|Authorship and Alienation]] || [[User:APKnight25]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Josephs || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer's "Footnote to Death in the Afternoon"|Mailer's "Footnote to Death in the Afternoon"]] || [[User:KForeman]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Hays || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Battles for Regard, Writerly and Otherwise|Battles for Regard]] || [[User:ALedezma]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Gladstein || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman|Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman]] || [[User:ALedezma]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Batchelor || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Looking at the Past: Nostalgia as Technique in The Naked and the Dead and For Whom the Bell Tolls|Looking at the Past]] || [[User:DBond007]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Robinson || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Effects of Trauma on the Narrative Structures of Across the River and Into the Trees and The Naked and the Dead|Effects of Trauma on the Narrative Structures]] ||[[User:Priley1984]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Sanders || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Death, Art, and the Disturbing: Hemingway and Mailer and the Art of Writing|Death, Art, and the Disturbing]] || [[User:JBawlson]] [[User:CVinson]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Stoneback || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/"Oohh Normie — You're Sooo Hemingway": Mailer Memories and Encounters|Mailer Memories and Encounters]] || [[User:Tbara4554]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Jacomo || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Sparring with Norman|Sparing with Norman]] || [[User:Kamyers]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Gordon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Encounters with Mailer|Encounters with Mailer]] || [[User:Priley1984]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Vince || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Rumors of Grace: God-Language in Hemingway and Mailer|Rumors of Grace]] || [[User:Sherrilledwards]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Apple || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Inside Norman Mailer|Inside Norman Mailer]] || [[User:Chelsey.brantley]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Sinclair || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer: An Expected Encounter in an Unexpected Place|An Expected Encounter]] || [[User:Wverna]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Klavan || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/On Reading Mailer Too Young|On Reading Mailer Too Young]] || [[User:Essence903m]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Miele || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat|What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat]] || [[User:TBorel]] [[User:Flowersbloom]] [[User:Tbara4554]]|| {{tick}}
|-
| Vernon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Style, Politics, and Hemingway's Spanish Civil War Dispatches|Style, Politics, and Hemingway's Spanish Civil War Dispatches]] || [[User:MerAtticus]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Hooker || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer: From Orgone Accumulator to Cancer Protection for Schizophrenics|From Orgone Accumulator to Cancer Protection for Schizophrenics]] || [[User:JKilchenmann]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hinton || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Advertisements for Others: The Blurbs of Norman Mailer|Advertisements for Others]] || [[User:NrmMGA5108]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hicks || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Harlot's Ghost, Bildungsroman, Masculinity and Hemingway|''Harlot’s Ghost'', ''Bildungsroman'', Masculinity and Hemingway]] || [[User:JKilchenmann]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Mercer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Automatons and the Atomic Abyss: The Naked and the Dead|Automatons and the Atomic Abyss]] || [[User:MerAtticus]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Westaway || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/“A Noble Pursuit”: The Armies of the Night as Outside Agitator|“A Noble Pursuit”]] || [[User:Chelsey.brantley]] || {{yellow tick}}
|-
| Fox || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norris Church Mailer|Norris Church Mailer]] || [[User:Kamyers]] || {{tick}}
|}

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hooking Off the Jab: Norman Mailer, Ernest Hemingway and Boxing

2025-04-22T14:28:40Z

Grlucas: Some updates. Added image. Much more to finish.

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{{MR04}} 
{{byline |last=Lowenberg |first=Bill |abstract=Boxing was an essential element of the identity of both Norman Mailer and Ernest Hemingway, although writing about boxing comprised only a fraction of their immense bodies of work. Given Mailer's penchant for mixing it up both in and out of the ring, in physical as well as literary scraps, hooking off the jab seems an apt point of departure for a brief commentary on his best-known written pieces on the sport. Boxing also played a central role in Ernest Hemingway's persona. He, too, wrote about it, socialized with boxers and-to a much greater degree than Mailer-fancied himself as an accomplished fighter. Part II of this essay provides commentary on Hemingway as a boxer and Part III offers a fantasy ring match between the two would-be heavyweight literary champions, based on a passage from Mailer's book, ''The Fight''. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr04low }}
{{dc|dc=N|orman Mailer once published a boxing piece entitled}} “The Best Move Lies Very Close to the Worst.” In it, he explained how some strategies in boxing, like some in chess, simultaneously offer the greatest rewards as well as the greatest risks. Given Mailer’s penchant for mixing it up both in and out of the ring, in physical as well as literary scraps, hooking off the jab seems an apt point of departure for a brief commentary on his best-known written pieces on the sport. Boxing also played a central role in Ernest Hemingway’s persona. He also wrote about it, socialized with boxers and—to a much greater degree than Mailer—fancied himself as an accomplished fighter. Part II of this essay provides commentary on Hemingway as a boxer. The final section offers a fantasy ring match between the two would-be heavyweight literary champions, based on a passage from Mailer’s book, ''The Fight''. Two recent essays, which further explore the topic of boxing as it relates to Mailer’s career were published in the Fall 2008 Memorial Issue of ''The Mailer Review'': “He Was a Fighter,” by Barry Leeds, and “Fighters and Writers,” by
John Rodwan.

== I. Mailer on Boxing ==
The expression “hooking off the jab” refers to an advanced-but-risky technique
in boxing which, when properly executed, can be an effective offensive
weapon. The boxer first throws a left jab, followed immediately by a left
hook. Because the hook approaches the opponent’s head from an angle,
rather than straight-on like a jab, there is the chance the hook will be {{pg|105|106}} outside of his field of vision distracting the recipient with its sting, especially if the jab lands solidly. The hook is a power punch and according to some trainers the most dangerous punch in boxing. Along with not being easy to see, when properly thrown it conveys a considerable amount of the thrower’s weight, distilled into the diameter of his fist. All of this takes place in much less time than it has taken to describe. The caveat for hooking off the jab is the fighter throwing it leaves himself open to a right-hand counter, if not properly executed. My trainer, the venerable Earnee Butler, would demonstrate the consequence by gently planting his fist into the opposite palm, as if catching a softball. Butler, who taught Larry Holmes how to box, would then point to the canvas and declare, “End of fight.”

Mailer’s unprecedented writing on boxing took similar risks in that he
wove oblique story angles and quirky digressions into his delivery. While he
did not risk being knocked out by a right-hand counterpunch, as a writer he
risked its literary equivalent, the reader who snaps the book closed and never
returns. Mailer’s unorthodox approach to writing about boxing works much
more often than not. Unlike the after-effects of a ring knockout that often
leave the victim with no memory of what has happened, Mailer’s accounts
provide readers long-lasting visual, sensory, and emotional images.

From the early 1960s on, following the publication of his seminal essay,
“Ten Thousand Words A Minute,” boxing emerged and endured as a central
facet of Mailer’s persona. Even though his writing about boxing comprised
only a fraction of Mailer’s immense body of work, when he died in November
2007, many of the headlines from across the United States and around
the world referenced boxing. “Norman Mailer was a True Heavyweight,” declared
Bill Gallo in the ''New York Daily News''. “Two-fisted Mailer Finally
Counted Out,” announced the ''Irish Times''. “Stormin’ Norman Loses Last
Fight,” stated the London ''Sunday Mail''.

Mailer was introduced to boxing in the early 1950s by Al Morales, the father of his second wife, Adele. Morales had been a professional lightweight in his younger years and he often sparred with his son-in-law, teaching him the fundamentals of the sport. Morales who worked in the printing department at the New York Daily News, later in life became a friend of News boxing writer and cartoonist Bill Gallo. He reported to Gallo that Mailer “was a pretty willing scrapper,” who “no matter how many jabs he took on the snoot, keeps coming.”{{sfn|Gallo|2007}} This description is confirmed by Sal Cetrano, a friend of Mailer’s who often boxed with him in the 1970s in the {{pg|106|107}} Gramercy Gym in New York City. Cetrano described Norman as a game but-not-gifted boxer who did not shy away from receiving a punch in order to deliver one.
[[File:Screenshot 2025-04-22 at 10.17.52.jpg|thumb|Boxing gloves, Norman Mailer’s Provincetown living room. Photo by Bill Lowenburg.]]
By the late 1950s, Mailer had attended a number of prize fights in New
York City and had done considerable reading on the history of the sport and
the lives of its champions. One of his sources was Englishman Pierce Egan’s
''Boxiana''. Published in five volumes between 1813 and 1828, the massive work
included biographical sketches of fighters, round-by-round descriptions of
key fights, and ringside observations about the spectators. Similar observations
subsequently appear in Mailer’s writing about boxing. His study of the
sport during the 1950s nourished Mailer’s growing interest in existential philosophy
and his exploration of the place of violence in modern life. Along
with his new knowledge, his social circle expanded beyond literary friends
to include people in and around boxing. This led to some of Mailer’s most
important writing.{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|p=124}}

Mailer’s essay, “Ten Thousand Words A Minute,” describes the first Liston-
Patterson heavyweight championship match held in Chicago in 1961, as
well as the death of welterweight champion Benny Paret following a savage
beating by Emile Griffith. A brief excerpt from that account provides an example
of the way Mailer combined visual and auditory details with his interpretive
comments to build a scene which will endure in the mind of the
reader:
{{quote|And Paret? Paret died on his feet. As he took those eighteen punches something happened to everyone who was in psychic range of the event. Some part of his death reached out to us. One felt it hover in the air. He was still standing in the ropes, trapped as he had been before as he gave some little half-smile of regret, as if he were saying, “I didn’t know I was going to die just yet,” and then, his head leaning back but still erect, his death came to
breathe about him. He began to pass away. As he passed, so his limbs descended beneath him, and he sank slowly to the floor. He went down more slowly than any fighter had ever gone down, he went down like a large ship which turns on end and slides second by second into its grave. As he went down, the sound of Griffith’s punches echoed in the mind like a heavy ax in the distance chopping into a wet log.{{sfn|Mailer|1998|p=466}} }}{{pg | 107 |108}}
“Ten Thousand Words A Minute,” also includes Mailer’s personal impressions,
misadventures, and fantasies. A landmark essay, it not only demonstrates Mailer’s chops as a boxing writer, it provides the stylistic template for his later, longer boxing pieces. Of these, the two best known are King of the Hill, which describes the first Ali-Frazier fight, held at Madison Square Garden in 1971, and The Fight, a book-length account of the epic Ali-Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle,” held in Kinshasa, Zaire in 1974.While the two later and longer pieces are better-known, if they had never been published, “Ten Thousand Words A Minute,” stands on its own as a classic boxing
essay and an indicator of Mailer’s emerging, highly personal, idiosyncratic style of reportage. This approach served as a model for many of the New Journalists of the Sixties and beyond. What may be most remarkable about the piece is that it was written in four weeks in late 1962, only twenty-two months after Mailer had stabbed Adele, spent seventeen days in Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric ward, and was thought by close
friends to be “in worse shape than he had been in before the stabbing." {{sfn|Dearborn|1999|p=188}}The illogical associations Mailer suggests in “Ten Thousand Words A Minute” come across with a manic clarity suggesting the essay could only
have been written by someone careening in and out of control. Mailer’s behavior
of that period seems to confirm that was the case. Even more remarkable than this single achievement is that he recovered from the condition and went on in the succeeding four-plus decades to produce a huge body of work.

Following the motifs established in “Ten Thousand Words A Minute,” in
both King of the Hill and The Fight, Mailer takes the side of Muhammad Ali,
around whom he spins a socio-political-mystical web combining factual reportage
and fantasy. Numerous passages echo scenes in “Ten Thousand Words A Minute”: Mailer claims at times to believe his own actions may somehow mystically influence the outcome of the fight.

In one of The Fight’s most memorable scenes, Mailer describes himself scaling around a partition dividing the balcony of his seventh-floor hotel room from the adjacent balcony. It is the middle of the night, he is drunk— he takes the risk to show symbolic support for underdog Muhammad Ali (The Fight 124). The succinctly and dramatically described incident will make the reader’s palms sweat when Norman—as he refers to himself in the text—relates how both sides of the partition had to be squeezed to avoid tumbling backward and down. As exciting as the account is the {{pg|108|109}} stunt was not witnessed by anyone, nor is the report supported by internal evidence in the text. An objective reader may fairly ask whether the description could have been fictional. The point is largely moot, as this and similar anecdotes in all three of Mailer’s major boxing pieces make for compelling reading and demonstrate fine examples of his stylistic technique.

While Mailer’s pure boxing writing has received universal accolades with his description of events in the ring and his analysis of fighters’ strategy, it is
not without an occasional shortcoming. At times it reveals the lack of a comprehensive
understanding of strategy and technique which a veteran fighter or trainer would possess. In spite of the claim by Mailer’s close friend and former light heavyweight champion Jose Torres that Mailer “could even be
a champion of the Golden Gloves” (Mills 381), by Mailer’s own admission,
his personal skill level in the ring and the abilities of his sparring partners in
the Gramercy Gym were limited to the fundamentals. Of his workouts there
he wrote, “Some of us ventured into combinations, but never too far”
(Mailer, “The Best Move” 61). Mailer’s incomplete “body knowledge” may
have placed limitations on his ability to interpret what he saw taking place
in the ring when observing a match.

An example of Mailer’s limited experience as a boxer is reflected in his
account in The Fight of the intense first round of the Ali-Foreman battle in
Zaire. While illuminating, it is also reductive. In the chapter entitled “Right
Hand Leads,” Mailer attributes Ali’s advantage in the opening round to his
effective use of right-hand lead punches. While the unorthodox strategy was
a key element of Ali’s success, a careful analysis of the round shows that Ali was able to land the punches which caught Foreman by surprise due to subtle lateral movement, which Mailer never notes. By gliding around the perimeter of the ring and then reversing direction, Ali induced Foreman to “open up” his stance, leaving himself vulnerable to Ali’s right. Equally important, Foreman had been expecting Ali to rely on his trademark left jab, the greatest in the history of the sport.

Boxing as a creative endeavor shares something with other art forms such
as writing, photography, and music, in that sometimes what is not shown directly can be more effective than stating the obvious. Ali hinted and his reputation almost guaranteed that he would come out jabbing. Foreman could not afford to ignore the jab and Ali capitalized on Foreman’s anticipation by occasionally leading with his right hand. The surprise strategy earned Ali the early psychological and tactical advantage,{{pg|109|110}}
eventually resulting in an eighth-round knockout of the seemingly invincible
Foreman.

To Mailer’s credit, according to archivist and biographer J. Michael
Lennon, there is no evidence Mailer used anything other than his ringside
observations and notes to write his boxing accounts.He apparently did not
have the luxury of reviewing film or tape of the matches. Given the methods
Mailer used to write his boxing pieces, his descriptions of the Ali-Foreman
fight and others are remarkable works of reportage and analysis. The
minor deficiency noted in Mailer’s analysis above, relating to Ali’s lateral
movement, becomes evident only upon repeated viewings of the first round
in Zaire. On the whole, the comment in the British newspaper, The
Guardian, is true: “probably no one has written better about boxing than
Mailer has.”

== II. HEMINGWAY AS BOXER ==
Whether Ernest Hemingway was, as he might have put it, “any good” as a
boxer depends in large part upon the personal relationship the source had
with Hemingway. To some, he was the uncrowned heavyweight champion.
To others, he was fake. It is impossible, of course, to make an objective assessment
without motion picture evidence and, apparently, none exists. The
brief accounts that follow are not all-inclusive but are offered to show the
range of opinions that will come to the attention of anyone seeking a definitive
answer on the subject.

Eyewitness accounts of Hemingway boxing vary greatly and many are
provided by observers who had little or no boxing experience either as spectators
or participants. Many storytellers clearly had reasons to compliment
Hemingway. Max Perkins, editor to both Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald,
once told Morely Callaghan—a central figure in the Hemingway boxing
myth—that Hemingway had knocked out the middleweight champion of
France with one punch. He had not. This was prior to Callaghan lacing on
the gloves in the summer of 1929 and stepping into the ring with Hemingway
at the American Club in Paris. As soon as Callaghan did, he realized
Hemingway was not a real boxer. Fitzgerald, too, figures prominently in the
Callaghan story, which will be related shortly.{{sfn|Callaghan|1963|p=124}}

Another anecdote from that period, by painter and writer Wyndam Lewis,
is typical of the uninformed accounts. Like Hemingway, Lewis was an ambitious
young writer and a member of the expatriate social circle living in {{pg|110|111}} young writer and a member of the expatriate social circle living in Paris in the 1920s. Other members of the group included Joan Miró, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein. Lewis became a significant enough figure in Hemingway’s life to be mentioned in A Moveable Feast, Hemingway’s memoir of the Paris years written in the late 1950s. In his own writing, Lewis describes what he witnessed one day while visiting the studio of another expatriate, his friend, poet Ezra Pound.

"A splendidly built young man, stripped to the waist, and with a
torso of dazzling white, was standing not far from me. He was
tall, handsome and serene, and was repelling with his boxing
gloves—I thought without undue exertion—a hectic assault of
Ezra’s. After a final swing at the dazzling solar plexus (parried effortlessly
by the trousered statue) Pound fell back upon the settee.
The young man was Hemingway." (“Hemingway in Paris”)

From this glowing, almost awe-stricken account, we see that Hemingway
apparently made short work of Pound. However, Ezra Pound has never been
on any boxing writer’s list of “Authors Who Could Have Been a Contender.”
A more accurate title for the list might be “Writers Who Wanted Others to
Believe They Could Have Been a Contender.” Hemingway and Mailer both
belong at the top of this list and their quest to wear the championship belt
deserves additional inquiry beyond this essay.

Mailer was by far the more modest of the two writers in terms of promoting
his own boxing talent. “Never made a cent from it,” he once replied
to an overenthusiastic interviewer who tried to puff up his boxing achievements
(Mailer, “Living a Literary Life”). Mailer may have also done more
actual boxing than Hemingway, though never in any sanctioned amateur or
professional venue. Mailer’s son, Michael, did compete in several Golden
Gloves tournaments and other amateur boxing competitions.

The idea of any writer on the level of Hemingway or Mailer having what
it takes to excel in the professional boxing ring is as absurd as the idea of any
heavyweight champion winning the Pulitzer Prize or the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Gene Tunney and Muhammad Ali are two champions who immediately come to mind as “thinking men’s fighters.” Both studied the style of their opponents and adjusted their strategy accordingly—especially Ali— most brilliantly in his against-the-odds triumph over George Foreman in Zaire. While Ali and Tunney displayed remarkable intelligence in the ring, {{pg|111|112}} Ali’s literary output was limited to his sometimes-clever but otherwise childlike poetry. Tunney is given credit for authoring three books: Boxing and Training, A Man Must Fight, and Arms for Living, although it is unknown
whether they were ghostwritten, as is the case with many books by athletes
(Belfiore).

Tunney, who was the heavyweight champion from 1926 to 1928, actually
did box—briefly—with Hemingway. According to Tunney’s son, some years
after retirement the former heavyweight champion visited the author at his
estate in Cuba. Hemingway cajoled him into sparring, bare-fisted, in
the living room. Through a combination of clumsiness, ineptitude, and alcohol, Hemingway struck Tunney with a low blow, and it hurt. Tunney answered with a punch that would have knocked out and possibly killed Hemingway had Tunney not stopped it just short of the author’s face. “Don’t you ever do that again,” the champion warned, peering down the length of his arm into Hemingway’s eyes. The two remained friends, but in later years when Tunney returned to the finca, Hemingway never again asked
him to spar (Plimpton 65).

Tunney’s most famous nemesis, Jack Dempsey, wisely avoided putting on
the gloves with Hemingway—much to Hemingway’s benefit. During the
Roaring Twenties, for publicity purposes, celebrities such as Douglas Fairbanks
and Al Jolson often sparred a friendly round or two with the heavyweight
champion. The affairs usually ended in smiles, but not always.
Fairbanks apparently adhered to the social contract in his encounter with
the champ. Jolson, though, made the mistake of throwing a hard punch at
Dempsey and for his foolishness was knocked cold as the champion’s trained
reflexes automatically responded with a short effective counterpunch.
Afterward, Dempsey was extremely embarrassed and apologetic. The incident
made him reconsider boxing with amateurs. It may, in fact, have prevented
Hemingway from sustaining a serious injury. In Roger Kahn’s
biography, A Flame of Pure Fire, Dempsey recalls,

“There were a lot of Americans in Paris and I sparred with a couple,
just to be obliging,” Dempsey said. “But there was one fellow
I wouldn’t mix it with. That was Ernest Hemingway. He was
about twenty-five or so and in good shape, and I was getting so
I could read people, or anyway men, pretty well. I had this sense
that Hemingway, who really thought he could box, would come {{pg|112|113}}
out of the corner like a madman. To stop him, I would have to
hurt him badly. I didn’t want to do that to Hemingway. That’s
why I never sparred with him.” (qtd. in Gertz)

The most widely-told account of Hemingway in the boxing ring revolves
around his June 1929 Paris sparring match with his friend, fellow writer
Morely Callaghan. F. Scott Fitzgerald served as timekeeper. Several versions
of the story exist. The main details are consistent in both Carlos Baker’s
biography of Hemingway and Morely Callaghan’s memoir, That Summer in
Paris, from which the following summary has been written.

Hemingway and Fitzgerald picked up Callaghan at his apartment on the
way to the American Club, where Hemingway and Callaghan had sparred
several times previously. According to Callaghan, the afternoon began in a
relaxed attitude: before departing, Hemingway lounged for a time at the
apartment, reading a copy of the New York Times Book Review he spotted on
a table. Friction between Hemingway and Fitzgerald over the negative influence
Zelda Fitzgerald was having on Scott had been a source of conflict
between the two men for some time, but on this day Callaghan describes
them as very chummy.{{sfn|Callaghan|1963|p=211}}

Once at the club, Callaghan claims standard three-minute rounds were
agreed upon, along with a one minute rest period between rounds. Fitzgerald
was given the watch and the first round passed uneventfully, save for
Callaghan scoring easily on his bigger, yet slower opponent. Callaghan, four
inches shorter and forty pounds lighter, had trained for a year with good
collegiate boxers, and was able to hit Hemingway almost at will.{{sfn|Callaghan|1963|p=212}}

The second round continued as the first, with Callaghan landing
consistently, drawing a little blood from Hemingway’s nose and mouth.
According to Callaghan, because the two had sparred numerous times,
what was happening was of no surprise or consequence to either of them.
During the second round according to Callaghan and Baker, Hemingway, possibly embarrassed at his poor showing in front of Fitzgerald, made a careless lunge forward without protecting himself. Callaghan dropped him onto his back with a shot to the jaw.{{sfn|Callaghan|1963|p=213}}As Hemingway picked himself up from the canvas, Fitzgerald is reported to have cried, “Oh my God, I let the round go four minutes!” Hemingway {{pg|113|114}}
responded, “All right Scott. If you want to see me getting the shit knocked out of me, just say so. Only don’t say you made a mistake.”{{sfn|Callaghan|1963|p=214}}
It was only then that Callaghan realized the degree of tension that had been building between the other two writers. Fitzgerald immediately believed Hemingway thought he had let the round go on deliberately. In reality,
as happens to many people who observe boxing up close for the first
time, Fitzgerald may simply have been mesmerized by the action and forgot
to keep time. Hemingway then left the ring to wash the blood off his face and by the time he returned appeared to have regained his composure.{{sfn|Callaghan|1963|p=214}}
Callaghan’s version of subsequent events involves one more round of boxing, followed by Hemingway administering a good-natured boxing lesson to a bystander. Afterward, the men all adjourned to the Falstaff for drinks.
Callaghan remembers the three of them discussing his novel-in-progress in
a very professional and friendly way. Hemingway seemed in good spirits, but
as a result of this incident his friendship with Callaghan essentially ended.{{sfn|Callaghan|1963|p=219}}
Hemingway’s version of the afternoon differs. In his letter to Maxwell
Perkins of August 28, a little more than a month after the match, he writes that he had drunk “several bottles of white Burgundy” at lunch and also “had a couple of whiskeys enroute” to the sparring session. Rounds were set at one minute, with two minutes rest, “on account of my condition.” He admits to Perkins that Callaghan “cut my mouth and mushed up my face in general.”
He credits Callaghan with being a good boxer, who, luckily, “can’t hit hard, if he could he would have killed me” (Hemingway, Selected Letters 302).While never admitting to being knocked to the canvas, Hemingway does concede,
“I slipped and went down once.” He later notes that in the last five rounds he had sweated the alcohol out of his system and came back to out-point or
at least hold his own “with someone who had been beating me all over the
place” (303).
Complicating matters and contributing to Fitzgerald’s upset, Paris journalist Pierre Loving had secretly sent an embellished account of the incident to the Denver Post. The Post story was subsequently reported by Isabel Patterson in the November 24 edition of the New York Herald Tribune. In this version, following an argument at the Café Dome, “Callaghan knocked Hemingway
out cold” (Meyers 163). Callaghan saw the story and immediately
wrote to Patterson, receiving assurance a correction would be printed. Then,just prior to the publication of his letter, Callaghan received a cable that was sent
collect and read: “HAVE SEEN STORY IN HERALD TRIBUNE. ERNEST AND I AWAIT YOUR CORRECTION. SCOTT FITZGERALD.” {{sfn|Callaghan|1963|p=243}}
Hemingway initially attributed the story to Callaghan and was infuriated.
He pressured Fitzgerald into sending the cable. Hemingway later found out
that Loving and not Callaghan was the source. He cabled Loving, “Understand
you saw Morley Callaghan knock me cold answer Guaranty Trust
Paris." He received no answer (318).
The incident continued to trouble Fitzgerald. Hemingway wrote to him
about it at length in December of 1929, assuring Fitzgerald he had no ill feelings.
Hemingway repeatedly expressed his belief in Fitzgerald as a man and
writer and in their friendship, writing, “I know you are the soul of honor. I
mean that” (312). Referring to the long round of the previous summer, Hemingway
writes,
Besides if you had let the round go on deliberately—which I know
you did not—I would have not been sore. I knew when it had
gone by the time agreed. It is something that is done habitually
at amateur bouts often. When two boys are really socking each
other around the time keeper gives them an extra ten, fifteen or
thirty seconds, sometimes even a minute to see how things
come out. You seemed so upset that I thought you had done this
and regretted it. But the minute you said you had not I believed
you implicitly . . . You as I say are a man of the greatest honor.
(313)
Callaghan, while exonerated as the originator of the false story, fell forever
out of Hemingway’s circle of friends. According to Callaghan, in February of
1930,Hemingway wrote him a friendly letter stating he felt quite certain that
wearing small gloves he could knock Callaghan out in about five two minute
rounds. Callahan relates, “This belief of his however, wasn’t to be
taken as the unfriendly gesture of a man who was still sore.” Hemingway
qualified the remark as saying he knew he would have to absorb a lot of punishment.
He did want Callaghan to agree that he could knock him out. Callaghan wrote back a “good-humored” letter stating that while he had no objections to Hemingway thinking he could knock him out, since he had never been knocked out it was hard for him to imagine. He never heard from Hemingway again.{{sfn|Callaghan|1963|p=251}}
In subsequent letters to others, Hemingway makes several derisive references
to Callaghan. In 1930, while recovering from a broken arm in Billings
Montana, Hemingway writes to Archibald MacLeish that the surgeon used
kangaroo tendons to tie the bone together, “which ought to help me land
awfully hard on the jaw of Morely Callaghan some day” (Hemingway, Selected
Letters 329). In 1936, writing to poet and critic Ivan Kashkin, Hemingway
remarks that his story “Up in Michigan” had been “re-written by Morely
Callaghan many times in saleable terms” (430).
Writing to Fitzgerald’s biographer Arthur Mizener in 1951, Hemingway
recounts the match that took place twenty-two years earlier. He describes
the first round as going thirteen minutes, an obvious spoof, and recalls at
the end of the round saying to Scott, “You son of a bitch . . . Did you like
what you let happen to your best friend for eight full minutes when all you
had to do was be honest and call time?” He goes on to repeat that he is pretty
sure he could have knocked Callaghan out. “But I did not want to knock
him out,” he writes. “He boxed well He was a promising [sic] writer; and I
liked him” (Hemingway, Selected Letters 716–17). Regardless of the exact details
of the June afternoon in Paris in 1929, those few minutes made an indelible
mark on the lives of all three writers.
Many other stories of Hemingway as boxer have emerged over the years:
his backyard matches with all comers in Key West; his standing offer of $250
to any man on the island of Bimini who could last four rounds in the ring
with him; his claim to novelist and critic Josephine Herbst, among others,
that “My writing is nothing, My boxing is everything.”{{sfn|Callaghan|1963|p=122}} Such
stories—whether true or not—achieved an effect when repeated over the
years to fellow writers and people in publishing who knew nothing about
boxing.
In 1949,Malcolm Cowley, whom Hemingway had deemed “the best critic
working in America” (Baker 464), opened a feature on Hemingway in Life
with the following sentence: “Having ‘liberated’ Paris, set records in boxing,
hunting, fishing, and matrimony, and written the most influential novels of
his time, Ernest Hemingway is finishing a new book and trying to be everybody’s
father.” It is a glorious, eye-catching opening sentence, as long as
the reader does not stop too long to think critically about it. At least Cowley
was gracious enough when referring to Paris to place “liberated” within
quotation marks. As for boxing, the reader might legitimately ask exactly to
which “records” Cowley refers. Not only did Hemingway never set any boxing
records, like Norman Mailer, he never fought in a sanctioned amateur or
professional bout. In other words, Hemingway never had a real fight with a
real fighter.
In addition to associating with many fighters, Hemingway also had a close
relationship with a veteran boxing trainer, George Brown. Based in New
York, Brown was a respected figure in boxing circles. He also reluctantly advised
author George Plimpton in his 1959 tongue-in-cheek challenge of light heavyweight
champion Archie Moore. Plimpton was a friend to both Hemingway and Mailer, but unlike them he harbored no illusions about his fistic talents. Brown, who often sparred with Hemingway, told Plimpton that Papa was a dirty fighter and that Plimpton should not “even fool with him.”
In his 1977 book, Shadow Box, Plimpton provides an entertaining account of
how he talked his way out of just such an encounter at Hemingway’s house
in Cuba. He also tells of the night Hemingway and Mailer almost met, but
did not (Plimpton 74–75). Hemingway visited Brown’s gym to box whenever he passed through New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. A.E. Hotchner, in his memoir Papa
Hemingway, provides the following anecdote, told in Hemingway’s own
words:
“Any time I was in New York I used to work out at George
Brown’s Gym,” he recalled. “I was working out there one time
with George when The New Yorker asked if they could send over
St. Clair McKelway to do a ‘Talk of the Town’ on Hemingway the
Boxer. Well, George and I talked it over and decided McKelway
ought to have some good authentic color for his piece. At the entrance
to George’s place there was a big photo blowup of an Abe
Atell fight, two faces like raw liver, so bloody you couldn’t see the
features. When McKelway shows up I say, ‘See those guys, Mr.
McKelway? They weren’t really trying.’
Then George and I start to work out in the ring. George kept
calling out, ‘Maurice!’ (The ring boy was named Morris.) ‘Maurice!
Mr. Hemingway wants to toughen his feet.’ (I didn’t own
boxing shoes, so boxed in my stocking feet.) ‘Bring down some
pebbles from the roof.’ Morris got some pebbles and sprinkled
them around the ring. McKelway took notes. We boxed a little,
then George yelled, ‘Maurice! Strew some broken glass.’McKelway
is writing a mile a minute. ‘Mr. Brown’ Morris says, ‘we aint’
got no broken glass.’ ‘Then break some,’ George says. Finally we
belted each other a few times for show. McKelway was very impressed.
Don’t know if The New Yorker ever published the piece.”
(Hotchner 92)
The author and the trainer became close friends. While visiting Hemingway
at his home in Cuba, in September of 1955, Brown served as one of three
witnesses when Hemingway hand wrote and signed his last will and testament.
Brown had been brought in to work with Hemingway in an attempt
to help deliver him through one of his increasingly frequent periods of depression.
Brown was one of the few men to whom Hemingway would entrust
his care (Baker 531).
At some time in the 1950s or early 1960s,Hemingway inscribed a 1935 first
edition of Boxing in Art and Literature to Brown, writing “For George from
his pal Ernie.” The anthology includes Hemingway’s most famous boxing
story, “Fifty Grand.” Currently the book is for sale by rare book dealer
Charles Agvent of Mertztown, Pennsylvania, for $20,000 (Agvent).
Brown’s attention and unwavering loyalty earned him the role of confidant
and caretaker in the final years of Hemingway’s life. In 1961,whenHemingway
was released from his second stay at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester
Minnesota, Mary Hemingway summoned George in New York City. Hemingway
had received a series of electroconvulsive treatments for his depression
and delusions and his doctors believed he was improving. Just prior to
discharge,Hemingway wrote an encouraging, articulate, and tender note to
his doctor’s nine-year-old son,who was hospitalized with a heart condition.
The writing seems to originate from a clear and caring mind, as evidenced
from the opening line: “Dear Fritz, I was terribly sorry to hear this morning
in a note from your father that you were laid up in Denver for a few days
more and sped off this note to tell you how much I hope you’ll be feeling
better” (Baker 562).
Mary Hemingway knew otherwise. She had witnessed her husband’s manipulative
behavior many times and knew that Ernest was nowhere near recovery.
He was, in fact, in grave danger. She telephoned Brown in New York
City and he immediately flew to Rochester to drive Ernest and Mary back to
Ketchum, Idaho. Throughout the five-day, 1700-mile drive, Hemingway suffered
from paranoid delusions. He believed the state police were going to
arrest him for having alcohol in the car. He was frightened as to where they
would spend each night. During what must have been a very tense journey,
Brown was instrumental in helping to calm Hemingway’s fears. Finally, they
arrived home in Ketchum. It was a Friday. That Sunday morning, arising at
dawn, before everyone else in the house, Hemingway shot himself in the
front hallway. Brown served as a pallbearer at the funeral (Baker 563).
What did Mailer, who both admired Hemingway and sought to challenge
him as the figurative “Heavyweight Champion of Literature,” think of Hemingway
as a boxer? In “Boxing with Hemingway,” an essay also published
under the title “Punching Papa,”Mailer reveals his impressions. The opening
of the essay leaves no doubt that Mailer immediately understood Hemingway
was a boxing poser. He recounts the naïve Fitzgerald telling Morely
Callaghan prior to the big fall-out that “while Hemingway was probably not
good enough to be heavyweight champion, he was undoubtedly as good as
Young Stribling, the light-heavyweight champion. ‘Look Scott,’ said
Callaghan, ‘Ernest is an amateur. I’m an amateur. All this talk is ridiculous’”
(Mailer, “Boxing” 3).
Mailer’s commentary on the Callaghan story then takes an interesting
turn. Rather than disparaging Hemingway’s bravado and self-mythologizing,
Mailer delivers an insight revealing an empathetic and plausible explanation
for Hemingway’s behavior. Mailer writes, “It is not likely that Hemingway was a brave
man who sought danger for the sake of the sensations it provided him. What is more likely the truth of his long odyssey is that he struggled with his cowardice and against a secret lust to suicide all his life, that his inner life was a nightmare, and he spent his nights wrestling with the gods.” At this point, the reader might think Mailer is poised to deliver the knockout punch. Instead, he concisely articulates the foundation for his immense respect for Hemingway by writing, “There are two kinds of brave men: those who are brave by the grace of nature, and those who are brave by
an act of will. It is the merit of Callaghan’s long anecdote that the second
condition is suggested to be Hemingway’s own” (Mailer, “Boxing” 4).
III. THE FIGHT REVISITED
For literati interested in Mailer’s personal boxing prowess and endeavors, an
obvious question would be how would Norman have fared in the ring
against his chief role model Ernie Hemingway? Let us, in the spirit of Mailer’s
mind, allow our imaginations to take over, making sure, as Mark Twain once
warned, to not let the facts stand in the way of a good story.
The Mailer-Hemingway match would be held at the old smoke-filled
Madison Square Garden. On the morning of the weigh-in, the principles
and their entourages arrive in full force, some swaggering, some staggering
from the previous night’s final training session. Mailer’s at Sugar Ray
Robinson’s bar in Harlem and Hemingway’s at Jack Dempsey’s watering hole
in Manhattan. During the traditional stare-down before stepping onto the
scale, Hemingway condescendingly growls, “Keep your chin down Sonny
Boy. Try not to lead with it like you usually do.” Mailer, undaunted, stares up
at his six-inch taller rival and responds, “Not only can you not hook off the
jab; you can’t even hook off a participle.” In keeping with tradition, both
fighters have to be briefly restrained by their seconds, and cooler heads soon
prevail.
Like Ali in Zaire, Mailer has been tagged a three-to-one underdog by odds
makers. An ugly rumor has been circulating whose source is attributed to the
Hemingway camp, that Mailer being behind on his alimony payments has, like
the protagonist in Hemingway’s classic boxing story Fifty Grand, bet fifty
thousand dollars on himself—to lose.
On the night of the fight, in Hemingway’s corner we find Stanley Ketchel,
the former world champion Ernie admired, chief second A.E. Hotchner, with
Maxwell Perkins serving as cut man. In Mailer’s corner we find
trainer and strategist, the former light heavyweight champion Jose Torres.
Also there, holding the spit bucket and sponge, in tuxedos with towels slung
around their necks, providing what might best be described as moral imperative
and motivation, are George Plimpton, William F. Buckley, Jr., and
Gore Vidal. Zack Clayton, who refereed the Ali-Foreman match Mailer wrote
about in The Fight, is the third man in the ring.
The following account borrows heavily from Mailer’s description of the
Ali-Foreman fight, in which the specter of Hemingway loomed large: one
morning at three a.m., after doing roadwork with Ali along the banks of the
Zaire River, Mailer fantasized about being eaten by the descendants of what
he called “Hemingway’s lions.” What better way to resolve the literary grudge
match than to transpose the writers into the principals of Mailer’s account
of the first round of the “Rumble in the Jungle”?
The bell! Through a long unheard sigh of collective release, Mailer
charged across the ring. He looked as big and determined as Hemingway, so
he held himself as if he posed the true threat. They collided without
meeting, their bodies still five feet apart. Each veered backward like similar
magnetic poles repelling one another forcibly. Then Mailer came forward
again, Hemingway came forward, they circled, they feinted, they moved in
an electric ring, Mailer threw the first punch, a tentative left. It came up
short. Then he drove a lightning-strong right straight as a pole into the
stunned center of Hemingway’s head, the unmistakable thwomp of a high powered
punch. A cry went up. Whatever else happened, Papa had been hit.
No opponent had cracked Ernie this hard in years and no sparring partner
had dared to (Mailer, The Fight 177–78).
The course of subsequent rounds and the outcome of the match are left
to the imagination of the reader. Hopefully the action will be resumed this
evening in a local bar, with friends over drinks, ending in a late-night split
decision or, possibly, a draw.

Agvent, Charles. “Boxing In Art and Literature.” Advertisement. Charles Agvent Rare Books & Autographs. Charles Agvent, 2010.Web. 5 June 2010.
Baker, Carlos. Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. New York: Scribner’s, 1969. Print.
Belfiore, Michael. “Gene Tunney Biography.” Gene Tunney Biography. Jrank.org, n.d. Web. 5 June
2010.
Cetrano, Sal. Telephone interview. 25 May 2007.
Duggin, Keith. “Two-Fisted Mailer Finally Counted Out.” The Irish Times 17 Nov. 2007: 12. Lexis-
Nexis Academic. Web. 6 May 2009.
“Gene Tunney—Undefeated Until the End.” Famous Sports Stars. Sports.jrank.org, n.d. Web. 1 June 2010.
Gertz, Stephen J. “Ernest Hemingway: Down for the Count.” Book Patrol. Ed. Michael Lieberman.
Michael Lieberman, n.d.Web. 5 June 2010.
Hemingway, Ernest. Selected Letters 1917–1961. Ed. Carlos Baker. New York: Scribner’s, 1981. Print.
“Hemingway in Paris—Boxing.”New York Times. New York Times, 6 July 1961.Web. 5 June 2010.
Hotchner, Aaron Edward. Papa Hemingway. New York: Random House, 1966. Print.
Kahn, Roger. A Flame of Pure Fire. San Diego: Harcourt, 2000. Print.
Lennon,Michael. “Mailer Boxing Notes.”Message to the author. 10 Aug. 2009. E-mail.
Mailer, Norman. “The Best Move Lies Very Close to theWorst.” Esquire Oct. 1993: 60+. Print.
“Boxing with Hemingway.” The Time of Our Time. New York: Random House, 1998. 3–4.
Print. Rpt. of “Punching Papa: A Review of That Summer in Paris.” Cannibals and Christians.
New York: Dial, 1966. 156–9.
The Fight. Boston: Little, Brown, 1975. Print.
“Living a Literary Life.” Academy of Achievement. Academy of Achievement, 12 June 2004.
Web. 25 Mar. 2009.
he Time Of Our Time. New York: Random House, 1998. Print.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Hemingway: A Biography. New York: Harper and Row, 1985. Print.
Mills, Hilary.Mailer: A Biography. New York: Empire, 1982. Print.
Plimpton, George. Shadow Box. New York: Lyons & Burford, 1977. Print.
Syed, Matthew. “Heavyweight King of Ring Craft.” The London Times 13 Nov. 2007: 69. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 6 May 2009.
Walker, Bruce. “Stormin’ Norman Loses Last Fight.” Sunday Mail [London] 11 Nov. 2007: n. pag. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 7 May 2009.

== Citations ==
{{Reflist}}

== Works Cited ==
{{Refbegin|indent=1|20em}}
* {{cite book |last=Callaghan |first=Morely |date=1963 |title=That Summer in Paris. |location=New York |publisher=Coward-McCann |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary V. |date=1999 |title=Mailer. |location=Boston |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Gallo |first=Bill |date={{date|November 19, 2007}} |title=Norman Mailer was a True Heavyweight |url= |work=New York Daily News |location= |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date={{date|1998}} |chapter=Ten Thousand Words A Minute |title=The Time Of Our Time |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages=456–69 |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:}}
[[Category:2010 Vol. 4 (MR)]]

File:Screenshot 2025-04-22 at 10.17.52.jpg

2025-04-22T14:19:58Z

Grlucas: Boxing gloves, Norman Mailer’s Provincetown living room. Photo by Bill Lowenburg. Category:2010 Vol. 4 (MR)

== Summary ==
Boxing gloves, Norman Mailer’s Provincetown living room. Photo by [[Bill Lowenburg]].

[[Category:2010 Vol. 4 (MR)]]

Talk:The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010

2025-04-22T14:08:39Z

Grlucas:

===Article Assignments, Vol. 4===
You will need to request an article and user name for {{PM}}. You may click the link to your article below to begin your edits. Status indicators: {{tick}} = complete (ready for final edits and banner removal); {{yellow tick}} = in process; {{cross}} = not started.

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="width: 100%;"
|-
! Author !! Article !! Editor !! Status
|-
| Mailer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Postscript to the Fourth Advertisement for Myself|Postscript to the Fourth Advertisement for Myself]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Mailer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway Revisited|Hemingway Revisited]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Lennon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway to Mailer — A Delayed Response to The Deer Park|Hemingway to Mailer]] || [[User:Hobbitonya]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hemingway || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman, Ernest, and Greg|Norman, Ernest, and Greg]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Begiebing || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Ernest and Norman: A Dialogue in Two Acts|Ernest and Norman]] || [[User:DSánchez]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Bufithis & Curnutt || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway|A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway]] || [[User:Grlucas]] [[User:DBond007]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Meredith || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/The American Civil War in The Naked and the Dead and Across the River and Into the Trees|The American Civil War]] || [[User:KaraCroissant]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Shuman || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman vs. Ernest: Influence and Identity|Norman vs. Ernest]] || — || {{cross}}
|-
| Lowenburg || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hooking Off the Jab: Norman Mailer, Ernest Hemingway and Boxing|Hooking Off the Jab]] || [[User:ASpeed]] [[User:DBond007]]|| {{cross}}
|-
| Cirino || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer's The Fight: Hemingway, Bullfighting, and the Lovely Metaphysics of Boxing|Norman Mailer's ''The Fight'']] || [[User:TWietstruk]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Boddy || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing|Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing]] || [[User:JBrown]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Leeds || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Firearms in the Works of Hemingway and Mailer|Firearms in the Works of Hemingway and Mailer]] || [[User:CVinson]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Plath || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Jive-Ass Aficionado: Why Are We in Vietnam? and Hemingway's Moral Code|Jive-Ass Aficionado]] || [[User:ADear]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Cappell || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway's Jewish Progeny: Roth and Goldstein in ''The Naked and the Dead''|Hemingway's Jewish Progeny]] || [[User:THarris]] [[User:Tbara4554]]|| {{tick}}
|-
| Peppard || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and the “Reds”|Mailer, Hemingway, and the “Reds”]] || [[User:KWatson]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Kaufmann || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Ernest and Norman (Exit Music)|Ernest and Norman (Exit Music)]] || [[User:Flowersbloom]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Justice || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Authorship and Alienation in Death in the Afternoon and Advertisements for Myself|Authorship and Alienation]] || [[User:APKnight25]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Josephs || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer's "Footnote to Death in the Afternoon"|Mailer's "Footnote to Death in the Afternoon"]] || [[User:KForeman]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Hays || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Battles for Regard, Writerly and Otherwise|Battles for Regard]] || [[User:ALedezma]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Gladstein || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman|Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman]] || [[User:ALedezma]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Batchelor || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Looking at the Past: Nostalgia as Technique in The Naked and the Dead and For Whom the Bell Tolls|Looking at the Past]] || [[User:DBond007]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Robinson || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Effects of Trauma on the Narrative Structures of Across the River and Into the Trees and The Naked and the Dead|Effects of Trauma on the Narrative Structures]] ||[[User:Priley1984]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Sanders || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Death, Art, and the Disturbing: Hemingway and Mailer and the Art of Writing|Death, Art, and the Disturbing]] || [[User:JBawlson]] [[User:CVinson]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Stoneback || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/"Oohh Normie — You're Sooo Hemingway": Mailer Memories and Encounters|Mailer Memories and Encounters]] || [[User:Tbara4554]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Jacomo || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Sparring with Norman|Sparing with Norman]] || [[User:Kamyers]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Gordon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Encounters with Mailer|Encounters with Mailer]] || [[User:Priley1984]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Vince || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Rumors of Grace: God-Language in Hemingway and Mailer|Rumors of Grace]] || [[User:Sherrilledwards]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Apple || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Inside Norman Mailer|Inside Norman Mailer]] || [[User:Chelsey.brantley]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Sinclair || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer: An Expected Encounter in an Unexpected Place|An Expected Encounter]] || [[User:Wverna]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Klavan || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/On Reading Mailer Too Young|On Reading Mailer Too Young]] || [[User:Essence903m]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Miele || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat|What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat]] || [[User:TBorel]] [[User:Flowersbloom]] [[User:Tbara4554]]|| {{tick}}
|-
| Vernon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Style, Politics, and Hemingway's Spanish Civil War Dispatches|Style, Politics, and Hemingway's Spanish Civil War Dispatches]] || [[User:MerAtticus]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Hooker || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer: From Orgone Accumulator to Cancer Protection for Schizophrenics|From Orgone Accumulator to Cancer Protection for Schizophrenics]] || [[User:JKilchenmann]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hinton || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Advertisements for Others: The Blurbs of Norman Mailer|Advertisements for Others]] || [[User:NrmMGA5108]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hicks || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Harlot's Ghost, Bildungsroman, Masculinity and Hemingway|''Harlot’s Ghost'', ''Bildungsroman'', Masculinity and Hemingway]] || [[User:JKilchenmann]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Mercer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Automatons and the Atomic Abyss: The Naked and the Dead|Automatons and the Atomic Abyss]] || [[User:MerAtticus]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Westaway || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/“A Noble Pursuit”: The Armies of the Night as Outside Agitator|“A Noble Pursuit”]] || [[User:Chelsey.brantley]] || {{yellow tick}}
|-
| Fox || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norris Church Mailer|Norris Church Mailer]] || [[User:Kamyers]] || {{tick}}
|}

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/The American Civil War in The Naked and the Dead and Across the River and Into the Trees

2025-04-22T14:06:10Z

Grlucas: Final edits.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>The American Civil War in ''The Naked and the Dead'' and ''Across the River and Into the Trees''}}
{{MR04}}
{{byline
| last = Meredith
| first = James H.
| abstract = Allusions to the American Civil War informs {{NM}}’s ''[[The Naked and the Dead]]'' and Ernest Hemingway’s ''Across the River and into the Trees''. Both novelists understood the historical importance the Civil War had on the modern psyche and modernist literature. Both novelists understood the impact of war on the individuals who fight in them and who enter into battle and how that ripples throughout history and modern life.
| url = http://prmlr.us/mr04merd
}}
{{dc|dc=T|he great calamity of the US Civil War}} was the impetus for major changes in American fiction. This brother-against-brother engagement not only profoundly disrupted American society but also precipitated a dramatic alteration in the way serious novelists wrote about the experience of combat. This war between the states promulgated an American war novel tradition that remained essentially unchanged until the end of the Vietnam War. The advent of new and highly destructive war technologies outstripped military tactics, causing the dramatic increases in the number and severity of causalities and destruction. This conflict multiplied the tragic and traumatic consequences of modern war in a very short amount of time. Concomitantly, the use of the photographic camera on the battlefield brought the war’s frightful arithmetic to the home front and helped change the literary expectations of a nation from romanticism to realism and naturalism and, later, modernism.

The American Civil War initiated what would become a deepening level of trauma throughout American culture that continued throughout the war-plagued Twentieth Century. As a consequence, developments in post-war {{pg|81|82}} American literature made the realistic depiction of death and dying a widespread phenomenon. Modern American war fiction, which was written beginning in the immediate post-World War I period, is simply defined here as that depiction of the soldier’s continuing and deepening sense of tragedy and trauma in a military that has become overly technologized and irrationally bureaucratized, an outgrowth of the modern condition. In a broad sense, therefore, the modern period began at the time where mathematics replaced metaphor and fact replaced romance and mythology.

There have been several major studies about the impact of the Civil War on American literature that influences this study here, such as Craig A.Warren’s ''Scars to Prove It: The Civil War Soldier & American Literature'', Michael W. Schaefer’s ''Just What War Is: The Civil War Writings of DeForest and Bierce'', Daniel Aaron’s ''The Unwritten War: American Writers and the Civil War'', and Thomas C. Leonard’s ''Above the Battle: War-Making in America from Appomattox to Versailles''. The most famous study is Edmund Wilson’s ''Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War''. What is most evident in these studies is how the Civil War dramatically altered the course of American literature up to the modern period.

By the time Norman Mailer and Ernest Hemingway began writing their World War II novels, ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948) and ''Across the River and into the Trees'' (1950), where they make allusions to the Civil War, the impact that this war had on American literary sensibilities was very well evident. While their allusions to the American Civil War may be relatively slight in these novels, the implications about what this particular conflict might mean are much more significant than what the number of their words in the text may indicate. In alluding to the Civil War, both Mailer and Hemingway, who continually demonstrated a broad and complex view of history throughout their careers, perpetuate the residual influence of this particular war, and the soldiers who fought, on American literature. Hemingway and Mailer, therefore, are important writers to study because while they have so much in common, they also have significant differences in both style and literary vision, especially in the way they allude to the Civil War and quite possibly in their distinct attitudes about this war and war in general.

The tragedy and trauma that the war initiated throughout American history has a simple cause: Not only does this war remain the most calamitous conflict in US history; the Civil War also was the first to involve common citizens as drafted soldiers on a massive scale. The Civil War created more {{pg|82|83}} domestic grief than both World War I and World War II and all the other wars combined, and the impact of this experience was enough to make for a major turn or trope in American literature. Both Mailer and Hemingway understood this level of trauma. More important, both writers understood the Hegelian dialectical dimensions of how military history, and the psychological and micro-machinations of those in power, are manifested in the outcomes of their actions. For example, while the astronomical casualty rates during the spring and summer of 1864 were the direct results of the Richmond and Atlanta campaigns by Grant and Sherman and by Lee’s and the Confederate’s defense of them, the indirect causes resided in the psyche of the commanding generals and their resulting actions. In other words, Grant and Lee’s personalities drove the war and the war’s consequences drove the trauma.

In Hemingway’s writing, his historical perspective of the Civil War is most pronounced. Throughout his life, Hemingway was a student of military history. Moreover, both his grandfathers were participants in the Civil War. His paternal great uncles George and Rodney and his grandfather Anson participated in the Civil War by joining various volunteer Illinois units, the Eighteenth Illinois Infantry and the Chicago Board of Trade regiment. Anson was the only Hemingway brother to survive the war.{{sfn|Nagel|1996|p=8-9}} Hemingway’s maternal grandfather Hall also served in some capacity during the Civil War, but his experience does not seem to be as direct as Hemingway’s had been. In Hemingway’s library, he possessed several classics of Civil War history, including the Bruce Catton histories.

The Civil War is alluded to in ''Across the River and into the Trees'' specifically and primarily in the title, which comes from the dying last words of General Stonewall Jackson: “Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees”.{{sfn|Robertson, Jr.|1997|p=753}} This title sets the melancholic tone for the whole novel. Colonel, formerly General, Richard Cantwell is spending his last few days on earth alive in the town he loves the most in life, Venice, immediately after World War II. While Jackson’s are not the dying words of Cantwell, there is a symmetrical connection. Right before he dies from a final heart attack, Cantwell tells his driver, aptly named Jackson, “I am now going to get into the large back seat of this god-damned, over-sized luxurious automobile”.{{sfn|Hemingway|1950|p=307}} This very reductive, modern statement, lacking in the poetry of Stonewall Jackson’s last words, is to be expected since even the book’s title is itself a reductive paraphrase of the Civil War general’s {{pg|83|84}} famous last words. Eight decades after Jackson’s death at Chancellorsville, the residue of his ''ethos'' informs Hemingway’s 1950 novel. In fact, the novel’s title has a noticeable epitaphic quality to it, primarily because it lacks the sense of inclusive camaraderie implied in “Let us cross” and, more importantly, the title lacks the essential verb “rest.” The result of this modern paraphrase creates a strong sense of loneliness and despair. Rest is what Cantwell, the professional soldier, has needed the most in his later professional life, but, of course, a sense of rest seems still to be lacking even in his dying. This scarred up old soldier is going to die alone in the back seat of a Buick, an ignominious scene of abject modernity.

This contrast with Stonewall Jackson excruciatingly reveals the true timber of Richard Cantwell’s ignominious fate. Jackson’s biographer James I. Robertson, Jr., writes that
<blockquote>[d]eath removed [Jackson] from the scene at the apogee of a military fame enjoyed by no other Civil War figure. His passing at a high point in Confederate success was the ultimate offering for the Southern cause. Death at the hour of his most spectacular victory led to more poems of praise than did any other single event of the war. Jackson was the only officer to be pictured on
Confederate currency, and his likeness graced the most expensive note issued in Richmond: a $500 bill.{{sfn|Robertson, Jr.|1997|p=ix}}</blockquote>

No such fame became of Cantwell, who led a gallant and purposeful life in the service of his army. Much of this contrast rests in the fact that Civil War veterans had been highly revered in American culture a half century before World War I and later World War II. Although veterans from World War II have been more celebrated than veterans from the First World War, neither of them have been as mythologized as much as the Civil War veterans from both sides of the conflict.

While Mailer did not have the familial or cultural connections to the Civil War, he was similarly aware of the war’s historical importance in American culture. The Civil War is specially alluded to in ''The Naked and the Dead'' when Cummings reveals a public humiliation at West Point; he seemingly asks a question about Lee and Grant improperly. In this particular scene, Cummings is a maniacal rhetorician. In this case, Cummings is in the agonistic throes of a Socratic contest against his West Point instructor, {{pg|84|85}} rhetorically dueling over who was the better commander Lee or Grant during the Civil War. In this scene, Cummings asks this richly loaded question:
<blockquote>Sir (he gets permission to speak), is it fair to say that Lee was the better general than Grant? I know that their tactics don’t compare, but Grant had the knowledge of strategy. What good are tactics, sir, if the . . . larger mechanics of men and supplies are not developed properly, because the tactics are just the part of the whole? In this conception wasn’t Grant the greatest man because he tried to take into account the intangibles. He wasn’t much good at the buck-and-wing but he could think up the rest of the show. (The classroom roars.)

It has been a triple error. He has been contradictory, rebellious and facetious.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=411-2}}
</blockquote>

Interestingly, everyone, including the narrator, thinks Cummings has made an error here, and he probably has in the eyes of these mere mortals, but actually, Cummings, who plays by the rules of the classical gods, has not. Cummings views war, almost literally, in fact, much like Dick Diver expressed in Fitzgerald’s ''Tender Is the Night'', as a “love battle”. According to this thinking, all war was a battle fought between two men who were in love with themselves and what they do. To General Cummings, war or any visceral contest was always psychosexual. Underscoring this point is the very idealistic Lieutenant Hearns’ discovery that Cummings is making battlefield decisions based almost directly on his rhetorical interactions with him—in reaction, actually, to Cummings’s repressed homosexual desire for his lieutenant aide-de-camp. He is a man indeed who enjoys verbal combat. When he discovers this secret psychosexual truth, Hearns leaves his safe staff job for one directly on the front for which he is subsequently killed. For the general’s part, his actions come from a combination of submerged homosexual desire and the sociopathic need to fulfill every impulse, even if they follow a complicated sublimation pattern and even if they cause serious causality rates. No matter the need or method, Hearn nevertheless uncovered a painful metaphysical lesson about warfare (at least according to Mailer’s view of life): Every army needs a controlled killer in charge of its army, but with the advent of modern technological weapons, the tragic and traumatic consequences of these men are not only enormous but long lasting as well. {{pg|85|86}} In their own unique way, the object of Cummings’ verbal sparring, fellow West Pointers Lee and Grant, could also be seen as sociopathic killers on a large scale, despite Lee’s and Grant’s somewhat hagiological status. Although they are typically used as foils to each other, Lee and Grant are more accurately understood as two different faces on the same coin. Grant is the military organizational genius who understood the primary principle of military mathematics. He had twice as many men and ten times the resources as the enemy, and he knew how best to employ that math. Grant used blunt force trauma not only to pound the enemy into submission, to compound his mathematical advantage, but also to pound his own army into being a sharp fighting force. But Grant also needed to lose control of himself with alcohol and tobacco on occasion to function psychologically in the places that his genius took him. On the other side of the coin, Lee is the courtly and courteous well-bred Southerner, undermanned and eventually out-resourced. He was typically so controlled in what he did that he could tune out even the most disconcerting and devastating violence around him. Yet on one occasion, during the 1864 Battle of the Spotsylvania, he snapped, losing control of himself so profoundly that his soldiers had to grab his reins and shout “Lee to the rear” to keep him from charging headlong into a murderous pitched battle.{{sfn|USNPS|1999|p=54-55}} This tangible anger, from a man who was archetypically well-mannered, originated from his profound love for his fellow Southerners. His anger was nurtured by his realization that he was compelled to sacrifice his life and theirs for ''the mythological Cause''. The deepest depths of this anger, however, can be framed by the first premise of Lee’s warrior syllogism, his thesis, which was always to be the consummate aggressor in battle. Until the advent of Grant, who sacrificed his men for a modern government that had all the mathematical advantages, Lee had had no binary counterpart. Until that historical moment, Lee had been aggressive and victorious, and the large-scale sacrifices had been psychologically manageable.

During the spring and summer of 1864, Lee met not so much his match but his more dominant syllogistic twin, the other face of a catastrophic coin. In that moment, Lee knew what the ultimate conclusion had to be—the coin would flip. Grant’s entry into the equation meant the end of the war and the fighting and the end of doing what Lee had always been called to do: attack. Remember: Lee was the man who said that is was a good thing war was so horrible because we would love it too much if it weren’t.{{sfn|USNPS|1999|p=34}} {{pg|86|87}} At the May, 1864, Battle of Spotsylvania, both sides of the Hegelian coin were cast. For Lee, the war had become too horrible, and the end was finally in sight. However, what truly altered Lee was the fact that he was, for the first time in his life, no longer the assertive thesis, the archetypal aggressor, the man constantly on the offense, in charge of himself and fate. With Grant, Lee had suddenly become the archetypical submissive antithesis; in effect, he had become emasculated but not unmanned. To be more precise, the mythological Lee was outmanned and out supplied and tragically, mathematically disadvantaged. Although Lee was bested, he did remain intact in the process, not diminished as much as altered. It does not take much knowledge of Freudian psychoanalytic theory to speculate what kind of dreams Lee was having at the time, and his biographer does state that he had begun having troubled sleep as well as physical deterioration, which was new for him.

This out-manning of the chivalric Lee by the transfigured hero in the guise of Grant is the moment that modernity profoundly took over in Western civilization warfare and eventually literature. Grant is still a hero, but one of a different shape and form than the traditional Lee. The rough, slouching Grant becomes the Yeatsian beast of modernity. However, Grant’s archetype could only emerge when juxtaposed against the perfect foil—Lee. In the age of Grant, realism of course was the immediate literary reaction. With World War I, and the rise of modernist literature, the archetypal shift propagated by Grant vs. Lee was resolved. The modernist epic re-imaging through Pound and Eliot became the final solution. So by the time of World War II, with Mailer especially, Lee’s classical sensibilities have been imaginatively subsumed by Grant’s calculus for modern war.

The literary descendents of these historical figures, thus, logically reflect the strategies for emotionless mass destruction that allowed Grant to reunite the Union. Mailer’s Cummings is a textbook case in point. More than any other member of his West Point class and his instructor, Cummings knew about all this war madness, even then as a cadet, about how the mind of great generals work, how they derive strategy and tactics out of their own psychological needs, and how the especially great soldiers pull battle plans out of their otherwise inexplicable genius, out of motives that could be called pure if they could ever be clearly understood. Important generals, like anyone else who makes history change, are not taught their changeling genius at places like the military academies, but that is where they discover their role models and that is where their combative, sociopathic personalities are {{pg|87|88}} sharpened into fighting form. In Mailer’s world, the motives and impulses of men who change history, whether they are an Army general, a presidential assassin, a serial killer, or Gary Gilmore, are never actually understood by the characters themselves or especially the readers; they are just acted upon. That is truly what makes them special: They are not afraid to act upon even their worst impulses. Thus, this one allusion from ''The Naked and the Dead'' does not distract from Mailer’s text but rather illuminates more fully Cummings’ character, which ultimately illustrates that in military organizations, the psychology of the individual commander directly affects the lives of the common soldier: The ones who pay the price from those who give the orders.

With all of this in mind, one can also clearly see how Hemingway’s Cantwell represents the sacrificial soldier for a modern bureaucratic army, the transfigured Jackson, who dies at the moment of his greatest victory. While Jackson’s death is heroic, Cantwell’s is ignominious in that his greatest victory is not a military one, but merely a personal one. His is a modern, reductive victory over himself and the acceptance of his death. Cantwell is merely another soldier who has had to pay the price of modern warfare. On the other hand, Mailer’s Cummings forms another face on the coin, but of a different type. He is the emotionless sacrificer—the general who has minted Grant’s legacy into a modern, sociopathic coinage. As these two allusions to the American Civil War demonstrate, these two major writers of the Twentieth Century, whose legacies will remain influential throughout the Twenty-First century, understood the influence of this conflict on the American psyche. Mailer and Hemingway, both veterans of war themselves, viscerally understood this war’s enormous costs created a trauma that permeates and promulgates the modern vernacular and literature, illuminating the point that the American Civil War, especially in the costs that it took to fight it, accelerated the dramatic shift to the modern sensibility.

==Citations==
{{Reflist|15em}}

==Works Cited==
{{Refbegin|indent=1|20em}}
* {{cite book |last=Fitzgerald |first=F. Scott |date=1934 |title=Tender Is the Night |url= |location=New York |publisher=Scribner |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |author= |date=1999 |title=Fredericksburg Battlefields |url= |location=Washington, DC |publisher=US Department of Interior |pages= |ref={{SfnRef|USNPS|1999}} }}
* {{cite book |last=Freeman |first=Douglas Southall |date=1997 |title=Lee |editor-first=Richard |editor-last=Harwell |orig-year=1961 |edition=Abr. |url= |location= |publisher=Touchstone |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |date=1950 |title=Across the River and into the Trees |url= |location=New York |publisher=Scribner |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1948 |title=The Naked and the Dead |url= |location=New York |publisher=Rinehart |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Nagel |first=James |chapter=Introduction |date=1996 |title=Ernest Hemingway: The Oak Park Legacy |editor-last=Nagel |editor-first=James |url= |location=Tuscaloosa |publisher=U of Alabama P |pages=3-20 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Robertson, Jr. |first=James I. |date=1997 |title=Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, and the Legend |url= |location= New York |publisher=Macmillan |pages= |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

{{Review}}
[[Category:Classic Interpretations (MR)]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:American Civil War in The Naked and the Dead and Across the River and Into the Trees, The}}