Project Mailer - User contributions [en]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007

2020-10-05T17:29:35Z

JPerkins: added news citations

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{{Byline|last=Holmes|first=Constance E.|last1=Wilson|first1=Kristine A.|note=Much of the following has been incorporated into ''[[NM:WD|Norman Mailer: Works and Days]]''.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08bib}}
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==Addenda through 2006==
===Primary===
====Letters====

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=10:5 |date=March 4, 1968 |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Leonid I. Brezhnev, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Violence in Oakland |location=10:9 |date=May 9, 1968 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/05/09/violence-in-oakland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=12:6 |date=March 27, 1969 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of telegram to Hon. U Thant, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Committee to Defend the Conspiracy |location=12:12 |date=June 19, 1969 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/06/19/the-committee-to-defend-the-conspiracy/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Ford’s Better Idea |location=19:11 & 12 |date=January 25, 1973 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/01/25/fords-better-idea/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Words for the Shah |location=24:19 |date=November 24, 1977 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1977/11/24/words-for-the-shah/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Open letter to the Prime Minister of Iran, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=In a Cuban Prison |location=25:19 |date=December 7, 1978 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1978/12/07/in-a-cuban-prison/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Alexandr Bogolovski |location=31:15 |date=October 11, 1984 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Mr. A. M. Rekunov, Procurator General of the USSR, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Arrests in Poland |location=33.13 |date=August 13, 1986 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1986/08/14/arrests-in-poland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Celebrating Mencken |location=37:4 |date=March 15, 1990 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/03/15/celebrating-mencken/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=President Clinton. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=An Urgent Appeal from Pen American Center |location=40:4 |date=February 11, 1993 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1993/02/11/an-urgent-appeal-from-pen-american-center/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=to Prime Minister Paul Keating et al. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Wei Jingsheng |location=43:3 |date=February 15, 1996 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996/02/15/the-case-of-wei-jingsheng/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories. An open letter.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=JFK’s Assassination |location=50:20 |date=December 18, 2003 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2003/12/18/jfks-assassination/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Election and America’s Future |location=51:17 |date=November 4, 2004 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/11/04/the-election-and-americas-future/ |url-access=subscription |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Letter; one of a series solicited by the Editors.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject= Blocked |location=52:13 |date=August 11, 2005 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2005/08/11/blocked/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} As author of ''Oswald’s Tale'', with other signatories.

==2007==

===Primary===
====Books====
{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last1=Mailer |first1=Norman |author-mask=1 |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |date=2007 |title=On God: An Uncommon Conversation |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }}

====Book Contributions====
{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contribution=Commentary |last=Regan |first=Ken |date=2007 |title=Knockout: The Art of Boxing |url= |location=San Rafael, CA |publisher=Insight Editions |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contributor-mask=1 |contribution=Introduction |last=Schiller |first=Lawrence |date=2007 |title=Marilyn Monroe |url= |location=Los Angles, CA |publisher=East End Editions KLS |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

====Interviews====


{{cite magazine |last=Binelli |first=Mark |date=May 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Rolling Stone |pages=3–17 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Foley |first=Dylan |date=January 28, 2007 |title=A Portrait of the Devil as a Young Man |url= |work=Star-Ledger |location=final ed. |page=6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Fox |first=Sue |date=July 8, 2007 |title=Even at 84, Norman Mailer Refuses to Pull His Punches |url=https://www.pressreader.com/uk/sunday-express-1070/20070708/282346855399714 |work=Sunday Express |location=UK first ed. |page=55 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Devilish Motives |url=https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/devilish-motives-20070120-gdp9x7.html |work=Sydney Morning Herald |location=Australia |access-date=2020-10-01 |page=30 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Goldberg |first=Nan |date= |title=Writing with the Devil |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/11/10/writing_with_the_devil/ |work=Boston Globe |location=Magazine |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Kirschling |first=Gregory |date=January 19, 2007 |title=Tough Guys Don’t Quit |url= |magazine=Entertainment Weekly |issue=916 |page=48 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lee |first=Michael |title=The Devil in Norman Mailer |url=https://search.proquest.com/openview/5bff77fb5c089c0b3d810827ee4686c7/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=40852 |journal=Literary Review |volume=50 |issue=4 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=202–217 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Lennon |first=Michael |date=October 5, 2007 |title=The Rise of Mailerism |url=https://nymag.com/news/features/38961/ |magazine=New York |issue=40.36 |pages=24+ |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }} Mailer discusses ''On God''.

{{cite magazine |last=Llewellyn |first=Caro |author-mask= |title=The Lion in Winter: Norman Mailer Talks about Writing His First Novel in a Decade |url= |magazine=Weekend Australian |location=pre-prints ed. |date=March 31, 2007 |pages=1 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=McCrum |first=Robert |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Author at Home |url= |work=The Observer |location=England |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Miner |first=Colin |date=January 22, 2007 |title=Mailer on Bush, Obama & Writing |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-on-bush-obama-writing/47109/ |work=New York Sun |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |title=The Art of Fiction No. 193, Norman Mailer |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5775/the-art-of-fiction-no-193-norman-mailer |journal=The Paris Review |volume=49 |issue=181 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=44+ |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |author-mask=1 |title=Get Your Ass off My Pillow |url=https://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/get-your-ass-off-my-pillow/ |url-access=subscription |magazine=Harper’s Magazine |issue=315.1888 |date=September 2007 |pages=22–24 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Pierleoni |first=Allen |date=February 7, 2007 |title=Now Age 84.... |url= |work=Sacramento Bee |location=metro final ed.: TK22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 2007 |title=Proust Questionnaire: Norman Mailer |url=https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/01/proust_mailer200701 |magazine=Vanity Fair |issue=557 |page=166 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Rose |first=Daniel Asa |date=January 21, 2007 |title=In Conversation ... ; with Norman Mailer |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/AR2007011802000_pf.html |work=Washington Post |location=Final ed.: T07 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Santaro |first=Gene |title=The Sound and the Baby Führer |url=https://www.historynet.com/interview-sound-baby-fuhrer.htm |journal=World War II |volume=22 |issue=2 |date=May 2007 |pages=23–25 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Stoffman |first=Judy |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Novel Ideas about Hitler |url=https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2007/01/28/mailers_novel_ideas_about_hitler.html |work=The Toronto Star |page=C04 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Wollheim |first=Richard |title=Living like Heroes |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/society/2007/11/violence-hip-mailer-1961 |magazine=New Statesman |issue=137.4871 |date=November 19, 2007 |pages=62 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Abridged reprint of a 1961 interview promoting ''Advertisements for Myself''.

===Secondary===

====Essays, Articles, Book Chapters, and Dissertations====

{{cite news |author= |date=January 17, 2007 |title=Sex-Mad Mailer Enraged Rival |url=https://pagesix.com/2007/01/25/sex-mad-mailer-enraged-rival/ |work=New York Post |location=Page Six |page=12 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Article discussing Ralph Ellison’s attitude toward Mailer, according to Ellison’s biographer.

{{cite news |author=Bancroft, Collette |date=October 16, 2007 |title=A Man of Many Letters |url=https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2007/10/16/a-man-of-many-letters/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida 1E |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }} A look at Mailer and Mailer scholarship on the occasion of both the publication of ''On God'' and the launch of ''Mailer Review''.

{{cite news |author=Beach, Patrick |date=December 23, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Memories about to Open at Ransom Center |url= |work=Austin American-Statesman |location=final ed. |page=J5 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author=Bennett, Bruce |date=July 20, 2007 |title=Mailer at the Movies |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-at-the-movies/58850/ |work=New York Sun |location=11 |page= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Overview of Mailer’s films.

{{cite news |author=Brokaw, Leslie |date=September 16, 2007 |title=HFA Salutes Norman Mailer on Film |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2007/09/16/hfa_salutes_norman_mailer_on_film/ |work=Boston Globe |location=third ed. |page=N11 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=Bufithis, Philip |date=2007 |title=''The Executioner’s Song'': A Life Beneath Our Conscience |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07bufi |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |edition=1 |location= |page=77-79 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=Burns |first=Paul C. |date=2007 |title=In Jesus in Twentieth-Century Literature, Art, and Movies |chapter=Transformation of Biblical Methods and Godhead in Norman Mailer’s Gospel |location=New York |publisher=Continuum |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Chaiken |first=Michael |title=The Master’s Mercurial Mistress: How Norman Mailer Courted Chaos 24 Frames per Second |journal=Film Comment |url=http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/25897522/the-masters-mercurial-mistress-how-norman-mailer-courted-chaos-24-frames-per-second |url-access=subscription |volume=43 |issue=4 |date=July 2007 |pages=36–42 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Crook |first=Zeba |date=January 2007 |title=Fictionalizing Jesus: Story and History in Two Recent Jesus Novels |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249573018_Fictionalizing_Jesus_Story_and_History_in_Two_Recent_Jesus_Novels |url-access=subscription |work=Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus |volume=5 |issue=1 |page=33-55 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |date=2007 |title=How Mailer Became ‘Mailer’: The Writer as Private and Public Character |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07dick |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=118-31 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Duguid |first=Scott |date=2007 |title=The Addiction of Masculinity: Norman Mailer’s ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' and the Cultural Politics of Reaganism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4619310 |url-access=subscription |work=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |page=23-30 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Writers Remain a Robust Bunch |work=St. Petersburg Times |page=B1+ |location=Florida |access-date= |ref=harv }} Article about the continued productivity of aging “literary giants” Mailer, Updike, and Roth.

{{cite news |last=Goldfarb |first=Reuven |date=November 20, 2007 |title=The Jewish Mailer |url=https://www.jpost.com/opinion/op-ed-contributors/the-jewish-mailer |work=Jerusalem Post |volume=14 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Gottlieb |first=Akiva |date=July 20, 2017 |title=Norman Mailer, Auteur |url=http://old.forward.com/articles/11164/norman-mailer-auteur-00143/index.html |work=Forward |location=B1+ |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Article on Mailer’s films, on the occasion of the New York exhibit “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

{{cite journal |last=Henderson |first=Cathy |last2=Oram |first2=Richard W. |last3=Schwartzburg |first3=Molly |last4=Hardy |first4=Molly |title=Mailer Takes on America: Images from the Ransom Center Archive |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07hend |journal=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=141-75 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Holmes |first=Constance E. |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |title=Norman Mailer: Supplemental Bibliography through 2006 |url=https://prmlr.us/mr06bib |journal=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2007 |pages=234-60 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Houpt |first=Simon |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Still a Brawler at Heart |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/still-a-brawler-at-heart/article677847/ |work=Globe and Mail |location=Canada |page=R4 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Howard |first=Gerald |title=Mailer Gets Hammered |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/books/review/Howard-t.html |work=New York Times Book Review |issue=late ed, final |date=August 2007 |pages=27 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Essay discussing Mailer’s films, focusing on ''Maidstone''.

{{cite journal |last=Howley |first=Ashton |title=Mailer Again: Heterophobia in ''Tough Guys Don't Dance'' |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=31-46 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=James |first=Clive |date=2007 |title=Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts |url= |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton |pages=409-413 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=J. C. |title=White Mischief |url= |journal=TLS: Times Literary Supplement |volume= |issue= |date=October 26, 2007 |pages=36 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Includes brief mention of ''Mailer Review''.

{{cite magazine |last=Junod |first=Tom |date=January 2007 |title=The Last Man Standing |magazine=Esquire |volume=147 |issue=1|pages=108-133 |url=https://classic.esquire.com/article/2007/1/1/the-last-man-standing |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Kachka |first=Boris |date=January 15, 2007 |title=Mr. Tenditious |url= |magazine=New York |volume=40 |issue=2 |pages=62 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Recaps Mailer’s history of responding negatively—even violently—to criticism.

{{cite journal |last=Kaufmann |first=Donald L. |date=Fall 2007 |title=An American Dream: The Singular Nightmare |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07kauf |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=194-205 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Kennedy |first=William |date=Fall 2007 |title=Norman Mailer as Occasional Commentator in a Self-Interview and Memoir |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07kenn |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=11-26 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Kriegel |first=Leonard |date=Fall 2007 |title=Mailer’s Hitler: Round One |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40211658|url-access=subscription |work=Sewanee Review |volume=115 |issue=4 |page=615-620 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |date=Fall 2007 |title=Gallery Talk: The Mailer Archive |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07lenn |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=132-40 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |author-mask=1 |date=2007 |title=Norman Mailer: Novelist, Journalist, or Historian? |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4619315|url-access=subscription |work=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |page=91-103 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |editor-last=Lennon |editor-first=J. Michael |editor-mask=1 |date=Fall 2007 |title=‘A Series of Tragicomedies’: Mailer’s Letters on ''The Deer Park'', 1954–55 |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07lenn1 |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=45-79 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

. . .

Long, Karen Haymon. “Mailer in Review.” ''Tampa Tribune'' 18 Nov 2007, final ed., Baylife: 1. Discusses the formation of the Mailer Society and the annual conference, focusing on Tampa-area members and the launch of the Mailer Review out of USF.

Lucid, Robert F. “[Boston State Hospital: The Summer of 1942].” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 27–33. Excerpt from incomplete authorized biography.

Masters, Brian. “So Are Some People Really Born Evil?” Daily Mail [London] 19 April 2007, first ed.: 14. Article discussing ''The Castle in the Forest'' in relation to an actual scientific study on evil and genetics.

McDonald, Brian. “Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s ''The Gospel According to the Son''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 78–90.

Meloy, Michael. ''Sex Fiends of the Fifties: Intersections of Violence, Sexuality, and Masculinity in the Work of Norman Mailer, William Styron, and Ken Kesey''. Diss. U of South Carolina, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3280339.

Middlebrook, Jonathan: “Five Notes toward a Reassessment of Norman Mailer.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 179–83.

Partridge, Jeffrey F. L. “''The Gospel According to the Son and Christian Belief''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 64–77.

Petigny, Alan.“Norman Mailer,‘The White Negro,’ and New Conceptions of the Self in Postwar America.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 184–93.

Rampton, David. “Plexed Artistry: The Formal Case for Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 47–63.

Rodwin, John G. "Fighters and Writers". ''The Mailer Review''. Fall 2008. 396-406.

Rollyson, Carl. “Mailer’s Other Career.” ''Village Voice'' 52.29 (18–24 Jul 2007): 68. On the occasion of the New York exhibit, “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

Rose, Daniel Asa. “Advertisements for a Gay Self.” ''New York'' 40.4 (5 Feb 2007): 9. Brief comment praising Mailer’s treatment of homosexuality in ''The Castle in the Forest''.

Ryan, James Emmett. “‘Insatiable as Good Old America’: Tough Guys Don’t Dance and Popular Criminality.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 17–22.

Scott, A.O. “Norman Mailer Unbound.” ''New York Times'' 20 Jul 2007, late ed. final, east coast: E1!. Discuss/reviews Mailer’s films in anticipation of a screening at Lincoln Center.

Severs, Jeffrey Frank. ''Reinventing Totalitarianism in the Postwar American Novel''. Diss. Harvard U, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3265089.

====Book Reviews====
=====Reviews of ''The Castle in the Forest''=====

{{cite magazine |last=Abell |first=Stephen |date=February 16, 2007 |title=The Anality of Evil |url= |magazine=TLS: Times Literary Supplement |pages=21–22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Allen |first=Bruce |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer Asks: Who Made Hitler? |url= |work=News & Observer |edition=final |page=G5 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{cite news |last=Allington |first=Patrick |date=May 12, 2007 |title=Devil’s Disciple |url= |work=Advertiser |location=Australia |edition=state |page=W10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Amidon |first=Stephen |date=February 4, 2007 |title=Portrait of a Monster |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/portrait-of-a-monster-nr77qrvvxqg |url-access=subscription |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=54 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Anderson |first=Don |date=April 7, 2007 |title=Devil of a Time |url= |work=Weekend Australian |edition=Qld Review |page=10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Anshen |first=D. |title=An Enigmatic Development |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/485260/pdf |url-access=subscription |journal=American Book Review |volume=28 |issue=6 |date=September 2007 |page=18 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Arditti |first=Michael |date=February 16, 2007 |title=New Fiction |url= |work=Daily Mailer |location=London |edition=first |page=72 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Bainbridge |first=Beryl |date=February 10, 2007 |title=Devil’s Plaything: Norman Mailer has Produced an Electrifying Inquiry into the Nature of Evil |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/feb/10/fiction.berylbainbridge |work=The Guardian |location=London |edition=final |page=16 |access-date=2020-10-05 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Bancroft |first=Colette |date=February 4, 2007 |title=Hitler: the Intimacy of Evil |url=https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2007/02/04/hitler-the-intimacy-of-evil/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida |page=10L |access-date=2020-10-05 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Barron |first=John |date=January 21, 2007 |title=The Devil Made Hitler Do It, According to Norman Mailer |url=http://www.pressreader.com/usa/chicago-sun-times/20070121/283407712255383 |work=Chicago Sun-Times |edition=final |page=B12 |access-date=2020-10-05 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Bate |first=Jonathan |date=February 11, 2007 |title=Fiction: Jonathan Bate is Dismayed by Norman Mailer’s Account of Hitler in Short Trousers |url= |work=Sunday Telegraph |location=London |edition=sec. Seven |page=41 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Battersby |first=Eileen |date=February 10, 2007 |title=Young Hitler Defeats Mailer |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/young-hitler-defeats-mailer-1.1194613 |work=Irish Times |edition=Weekend |page=11 |access-date=2020-10-05 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Begiebing |first=Robert J. |title=Castle Mailer |url=https://promlr.us/mr07begi |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=215–22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Boyagoda |first=Randy |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Mailer on Hitler Still No Moby-Dick |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/mailer-on-hitler-still-no-moby-dick/article721277/ |work=The Globe and Mail |location=Canada |page=D6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Boyd |first=William |date=January 21, 2007 |title=Hitler Youth |url= |work=Washington Post |edition=final |page=T07 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Boyd |first=William |author-mask=1 |date=January 21, 2007 |title=Mailer Takes on a Juvenile Hitler |url= |work= |location=St. Louis Post-Dispatch |edition=fourth |page=F8 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{cite journal |author= |title=His Perfect Sense of the Other |url=https://newcriterion.com/issues/2007/2/ldquohis-perfect-sense-of-the-otherrdquo |journal=New Criterion |volume=25 |issue=6 |date=February 2007 |pages=1–2 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Little Hitler |url=https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2007/01/18/little-hitler |magazine=Economist |location=Books & Arts |page=92 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=August 8, 2007 |title=Mailer Brings out the Devil in Hitler |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=21 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer Digs into Hitler’s Childhood |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7040474 |work=Weekend Edition: All Things Considered |location=NPR |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer Writes a Novel about Adolf Hitler’s Childhood |url= |magazine=Gleaner |location=New Brunswick |pages=C4 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

====Obituaries and Retrospectives====

{{cite news |last=Allen-Mills |first=Tony |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer, Literary Rebel, Dies |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/norman-mailer-literary-rebeldies-zkhkhdbchfw |work=Sunday Times |location=London |pages=1+ |access-date=2020-10-01 |url-access=subscription |ref=harv }} [Note: Also printed in the ''Australian'' under a different headline.]

{{cite news |last=Ambrose |first=Jay |date=November 25, 2007 |title=Remembering Mailer |url= |work=Knoxville News |location= |page=73 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Andriani |first=Lynn |date=November 19, 2007 |title=A Prolific Life to the End |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20071119.html |magazine=Publishers Weekly |location= |publisher= |access-date=2020-10-03 |url-access=subscription }}

{{cite news |author= |title=Literary Lion Sparked American Debate |url= |work=Daily Variety |agency=Associated Press |date=November 12, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |title=Writers Remember Mailer |url= |work=Times Union |agency=Associated Press |date=November 13, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Bad Boy of U.S. Literature |url= |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=20 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Baddiel |first=David |date=November 17, 2007 |title=For Norman Mailer, Authenticity was all about Masculinity |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=3 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Bancroft |first=Colette |date=November 11, 2007 |title=‘He was Much More’ than a Writer |url= |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida |page=1A |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Barnes |first=Bart |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Blustery Force in Life and Letters |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/norman-mailer-blustery-force-in-life-and-letters-dies-at-84/2019/01/24/56b92688-2031-11e9-9145-3f74070bbdb9_story.html |work=Washington Post |location= |page=A01 |access-date=2020-10-04 |url-access=subscription |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Bernstein |first=Mashey |date=December 2007 |title=In Different Way, Norman Mailer was a Deeply Jewish Writer |url= |magazine=Deep South Jewish Voice |location= |publisher= |access-date= }}

{{cite news |last1=Blau |first1=Rosie |last2=Mulligan |first2=Martin |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Pulling No Punches to the End |url=https://www.ft.com/content/aa64fec6-9085-11dc-a6f2-0000779fd2ac |work=London Financial Times |location= |page=13 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Boyd |first=Herb |date=November 15, 2007 |title=When James Baldwin Met Norman Mailer |url= |work=New York Amsterdam News |location= |page=1+ |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last1=Burke |first1=Cathy |last2=Venezia |first2=Todd |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Literary Pug and Original Hipster Mailer, 84, Dies |url=https://nypost.com/2007/11/11/literary-pug-original-hipster-mailer-84-dies/ |work=New York Post |location= |page=November 11, 2007 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date= November 12, 2007 |title=A Brawler who Never Pulled a Punch |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/a-brawler-who-never-pulled-a-punch-1.981221 |work=Irish Times |location= |page=10 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Calabrese |first=Erin |date=November 19, 2007 |title=Widow Defends Mailer, Says He ‘Loved Women’ |url=https://nypost.com/2007/11/19/widow-defends-mailer-says-he-loved-women/ |work=New York Post |location= |page=14 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Campbell |first=James |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer: Pugnacious Journalist and Author |url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/nov/12/guardianobituaries.usa |work=Guardian |location=London |page=34 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Cappell |first=Ezra |date=November 16, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer: A Man of Letters Inspired by the People of the Book |url=https://forward.com/news/12032/norman-mailer-a-man-of-letters-inspired-by-the-pe-00800/ |work=Forward |location= |page=A1+ |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Clark |first=Roy Peter |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Two Minutes with Mailer |url=https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2007/two-minutes-with-mailer/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida |page=1E |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Clarke |first=Toni |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Writer Norman Mailer dies at 84 |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/writer-norman-mailer-dies-at-84-1.981225 |work=Irish Times |location= |page=10 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Craig |first=Olga |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Life of Books, Bars, Brawling |url=https://www.pressreader.com/canada/montreal-gazette/20071111/textview |work=Gazette |location=Montreal |page=A3 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Crosbie |first=Lynn |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Believe it: This was the Man who Loved Women |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/believe-it-this-was-the-man-who-loved-women/article726268/ |work=Globe and Mail |location=Canada |page=R1 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Crossen |first=Cynthia |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Readback: When Normal Mailer Was Nobody: 1948’s ‘The Naked and the Dead’ Was Written Before He Was Famous, And That Is Its Greatest Blessing |url= |work=Wall Street Journal Online |location= |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last1=Cryer |first1=Dan |last2=Jacobson |first2=Aileen |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer 1923–2007: A Literary Icon Dies |url= |work=Newsday |location= |page=A08 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 14, 2007 |title=Heavyweight: Mailer’s Life and Work Were Outsized |url=https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/2007/11/14/Heavyweight-Mailer-s-life-and-work-were-outsized/stories/200711140262 |work=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |location= |page=B6 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Legendary Writer with Particular Love for the Irish |url=https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/legendary-writer-with-particular-love-for-the-irish-26331219.html |work=Irish Independent |location= |page=unknown |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Life of Writing, Boozing and Brawling |url= |work=Edmonton Journal |location= |page=A3 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 19, 2007 |title=Mailer won pair of Pulitzers |url= |work=Variety |location= |page=55 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Mailer's Ghost |url=https://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/41004/ |magazine=New York |location= |publisher= |date=November 26, 2007 |access-date=2020-10-02 }} [Note: Revisits the seven covers of ''New York Magazine'' that have featured Mailer, either as author or subject.]

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.economist.com/obituary/2007/11/15/norman-mailer |work=Economist |location=US |page=103 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Sunday Independent |location=Ireland |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=53 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 13, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/norman-mailer-400006.html |work=Independent |location=London |page=34 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times Union |location= |page=A12 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Cincinnati Post |location= |page=C10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Norman Mailer, 84 |url= |magazine=Newsweek |location= |publisher= |date=December 31, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Obituary of Norman Mailer |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1569056/Norman-Mailer.html |work=Daily Telegraph |location=London |page2= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Pulitzer Prize Author Norman Mailer Dies at 84 |url= |work=Providence Journal |location= |page=A6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{cite news |last=D’Alessio |first=Jeff |title=A Life Written and Lived on a Large Scale: Norman Mailer 1923–2007 |url= |journal=Atlanta Journal-Constitution |volume= |issue= |date=November 11, 2007 |page=A5 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Reactions from Atlanta residents on the life and death of Mailer.

{{cite magazine |last=Deignan |first=Tom |title=Mailer: More Irish than the Irish |url= |magazine=Irish Voice |volume=21 |issue=47 |date=November 21, 2007 |pages=11 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Demirel |first=Selçuk |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Nation |volume=285 |issue=18 |date=December 3, 2007 |page=8 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |title=The Nijinsky of Ambivalence |url= |magazine=Nation |volume=285 |issue=19 |date=December 10, 2007 |pages=48–52 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |author-mask=1 |title=The Un-generation |url= |work=Los Angeles Times |volume= |issue= |date=December 30, 2007 |page=R4 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Retrospective comparing the lives and careers of Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and Grace Paley, who all died in 2007 at the age of 84.

. . .

{{cite magazine |last=Duggan |first=Keith |title=Two-Fisted Mailer Finally Counter Out |url= |magazine=Irish Times |volume= |issue= |date=November 7, 2007 |page=12 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Epstein |first=Jason |title=Norman Mailer (1923–2007) |url= |magazine=New York Review of Books |volume=54 |issue=20 |date=December 20, 2007 |page=10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Eyman |first=Scott |title=Mailer’s Works Made Deep Impression on Post-WWII Political, Cultural Landscape |url= |magazine=Palm Beach Post |volume= |issue= |date=November 11, 2007 |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last1=Fee |first1=Gayle |last2=Raposa |first2=Laura |title=Mailer's Car Tale Resurrected |url= |journal=Boston Herald |volume= |issue= |date=November 14, 2007 |page=News:20 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Feeney |first=Mark |title=Norman Mailer, Self-titled King of the Literary Hill, Dies at 84 |url= |journal=Boston Globe |volume=third ed |issue=Obituaries |date=November 11, 2007 |page=A1 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Fields|first=Suzanne |title=Recalling My Mailer Crush|url= |journal=Washington Times|volume= |issue= |date=November 15, 2007 |page=A21 |access-date= |ref=harv }}[Note:Versions of this article also appear elsewhere under similar headlines.]

{{cite news |last=Fulford |first=Robert |title=The Failed Career of Norman Mailer |url= |journal=National Post [Canada] |volume=national ed |issue= |date=November 12, 2007 |page=A13 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Gagen |first=Thomas |title=Advertisements for Himself |url= |journal=Boston Globe |volume=third ed |issue= |date=November 13, 2007 |page=A14 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Gallo |first=Bill |title=Mailer was a True Heavyweight |url= |journal=Daily News [New York] |volume=sports final ed |issue= |date=November 18, 2007 |page=94 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{Review|state=expanded}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007}}
[[Category:Bibliographies (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007

2020-10-05T17:03:39Z

JPerkins:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}
{{MR02}}
{{Byline|last=Holmes|first=Constance E.|last1=Wilson|first1=Kristine A.|note=Much of the following has been incorporated into ''[[NM:WD|Norman Mailer: Works and Days]]''.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08bib}}
{{TOC right|width=25%}}
==Addenda through 2006==
===Primary===
====Letters====

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=10:5 |date=March 4, 1968 |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Leonid I. Brezhnev, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Violence in Oakland |location=10:9 |date=May 9, 1968 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/05/09/violence-in-oakland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=12:6 |date=March 27, 1969 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of telegram to Hon. U Thant, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Committee to Defend the Conspiracy |location=12:12 |date=June 19, 1969 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/06/19/the-committee-to-defend-the-conspiracy/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Ford’s Better Idea |location=19:11 & 12 |date=January 25, 1973 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/01/25/fords-better-idea/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Words for the Shah |location=24:19 |date=November 24, 1977 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1977/11/24/words-for-the-shah/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Open letter to the Prime Minister of Iran, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=In a Cuban Prison |location=25:19 |date=December 7, 1978 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1978/12/07/in-a-cuban-prison/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Alexandr Bogolovski |location=31:15 |date=October 11, 1984 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Mr. A. M. Rekunov, Procurator General of the USSR, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Arrests in Poland |location=33.13 |date=August 13, 1986 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1986/08/14/arrests-in-poland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Celebrating Mencken |location=37:4 |date=March 15, 1990 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/03/15/celebrating-mencken/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=President Clinton. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=An Urgent Appeal from Pen American Center |location=40:4 |date=February 11, 1993 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1993/02/11/an-urgent-appeal-from-pen-american-center/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=to Prime Minister Paul Keating et al. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Wei Jingsheng |location=43:3 |date=February 15, 1996 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996/02/15/the-case-of-wei-jingsheng/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories. An open letter.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=JFK’s Assassination |location=50:20 |date=December 18, 2003 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2003/12/18/jfks-assassination/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Election and America’s Future |location=51:17 |date=November 4, 2004 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/11/04/the-election-and-americas-future/ |url-access=subscription |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Letter; one of a series solicited by the Editors.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject= Blocked |location=52:13 |date=August 11, 2005 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2005/08/11/blocked/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} As author of ''Oswald’s Tale'', with other signatories.

==2007==

===Primary===
====Books====
{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last1=Mailer |first1=Norman |author-mask=1 |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |date=2007 |title=On God: An Uncommon Conversation |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }}

====Book Contributions====
{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contribution=Commentary |last=Regan |first=Ken |date=2007 |title=Knockout: The Art of Boxing |url= |location=San Rafael, CA |publisher=Insight Editions |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contributor-mask=1 |contribution=Introduction |last=Schiller |first=Lawrence |date=2007 |title=Marilyn Monroe |url= |location=Los Angles, CA |publisher=East End Editions KLS |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

====Interviews====


{{cite magazine |last=Binelli |first=Mark |date=May 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Rolling Stone |pages=3–17 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Foley |first=Dylan |date=January 28, 2007 |title=A Portrait of the Devil as a Young Man |url= |work=Star-Ledger |location=final ed. |page=6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Fox |first=Sue |date=July 8, 2007 |title=Even at 84, Norman Mailer Refuses to Pull His Punches |url=https://www.pressreader.com/uk/sunday-express-1070/20070708/282346855399714 |work=Sunday Express |location=UK first ed. |page=55 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Devilish Motives |url=https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/devilish-motives-20070120-gdp9x7.html |work=Sydney Morning Herald |location=Australia |access-date=2020-10-01 |page=30 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Goldberg |first=Nan |date= |title=Writing with the Devil |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/11/10/writing_with_the_devil/ |work=Boston Globe |location=Magazine |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Kirschling |first=Gregory |date=January 19, 2007 |title=Tough Guys Don’t Quit |url= |magazine=Entertainment Weekly |issue=916 |page=48 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lee |first=Michael |title=The Devil in Norman Mailer |url=https://search.proquest.com/openview/5bff77fb5c089c0b3d810827ee4686c7/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=40852 |journal=Literary Review |volume=50 |issue=4 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=202–217 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Lennon |first=Michael |date=October 5, 2007 |title=The Rise of Mailerism |url=https://nymag.com/news/features/38961/ |magazine=New York |issue=40.36 |pages=24+ |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }} Mailer discusses ''On God''.

{{cite magazine |last=Llewellyn |first=Caro |author-mask= |title=The Lion in Winter: Norman Mailer Talks about Writing His First Novel in a Decade |url= |magazine=Weekend Australian |location=pre-prints ed. |date=March 31, 2007 |pages=1 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=McCrum |first=Robert |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Author at Home |url= |work=The Observer |location=England |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Miner |first=Colin |date=January 22, 2007 |title=Mailer on Bush, Obama & Writing |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-on-bush-obama-writing/47109/ |work=New York Sun |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |title=The Art of Fiction No. 193, Norman Mailer |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5775/the-art-of-fiction-no-193-norman-mailer |journal=The Paris Review |volume=49 |issue=181 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=44+ |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |author-mask=1 |title=Get Your Ass off My Pillow |url=https://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/get-your-ass-off-my-pillow/ |url-access=subscription |magazine=Harper’s Magazine |issue=315.1888 |date=September 2007 |pages=22–24 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Pierleoni |first=Allen |date=February 7, 2007 |title=Now Age 84.... |url= |work=Sacramento Bee |location=metro final ed.: TK22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 2007 |title=Proust Questionnaire: Norman Mailer |url=https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/01/proust_mailer200701 |magazine=Vanity Fair |issue=557 |page=166 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Rose |first=Daniel Asa |date=January 21, 2007 |title=In Conversation ... ; with Norman Mailer |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/AR2007011802000_pf.html |work=Washington Post |location=Final ed.: T07 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Santaro |first=Gene |title=The Sound and the Baby Führer |url=https://www.historynet.com/interview-sound-baby-fuhrer.htm |journal=World War II |volume=22 |issue=2 |date=May 2007 |pages=23–25 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Stoffman |first=Judy |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Novel Ideas about Hitler |url=https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2007/01/28/mailers_novel_ideas_about_hitler.html |work=The Toronto Star |page=C04 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Wollheim |first=Richard |title=Living like Heroes |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/society/2007/11/violence-hip-mailer-1961 |magazine=New Statesman |issue=137.4871 |date=November 19, 2007 |pages=62 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Abridged reprint of a 1961 interview promoting ''Advertisements for Myself''.

===Secondary===

====Essays, Articles, Book Chapters, and Dissertations====

{{cite news |author= |date=January 17, 2007 |title=Sex-Mad Mailer Enraged Rival |url=https://pagesix.com/2007/01/25/sex-mad-mailer-enraged-rival/ |work=New York Post |location=Page Six |page=12 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Article discussing Ralph Ellison’s attitude toward Mailer, according to Ellison’s biographer.

{{cite news |author=Bancroft, Collette |date=October 16, 2007 |title=A Man of Many Letters |url=https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2007/10/16/a-man-of-many-letters/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida 1E |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }} A look at Mailer and Mailer scholarship on the occasion of both the publication of ''On God'' and the launch of ''Mailer Review''.

{{cite news |author=Beach, Patrick |date=December 23, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Memories about to Open at Ransom Center |url= |work=Austin American-Statesman |location=final ed. |page=J5 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author=Bennett, Bruce |date=July 20, 2007 |title=Mailer at the Movies |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-at-the-movies/58850/ |work=New York Sun |location=11 |page= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Overview of Mailer’s films.

{{cite news |author=Brokaw, Leslie |date=September 16, 2007 |title=HFA Salutes Norman Mailer on Film |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2007/09/16/hfa_salutes_norman_mailer_on_film/ |work=Boston Globe |location=third ed. |page=N11 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=Bufithis, Philip |date=2007 |title=''The Executioner’s Song'': A Life Beneath Our Conscience |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07bufi |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |edition=1 |location= |page=77-79 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=Burns |first=Paul C. |date=2007 |title=In Jesus in Twentieth-Century Literature, Art, and Movies |chapter=Transformation of Biblical Methods and Godhead in Norman Mailer’s Gospel |location=New York |publisher=Continuum |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Chaiken |first=Michael |title=The Master’s Mercurial Mistress: How Norman Mailer Courted Chaos 24 Frames per Second |journal=Film Comment |url=http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/25897522/the-masters-mercurial-mistress-how-norman-mailer-courted-chaos-24-frames-per-second |url-access=subscription |volume=43 |issue=4 |date=July 2007 |pages=36–42 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Crook |first=Zeba |date=January 2007 |title=Fictionalizing Jesus: Story and History in Two Recent Jesus Novels |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249573018_Fictionalizing_Jesus_Story_and_History_in_Two_Recent_Jesus_Novels |url-access=subscription |work=Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus |volume=5 |issue=1 |page=33-55 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |date=2007 |title=How Mailer Became ‘Mailer’: The Writer as Private and Public Character |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07dick |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=118-31 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Duguid |first=Scott |date=2007 |title=The Addiction of Masculinity: Norman Mailer’s ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' and the Cultural Politics of Reaganism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4619310 |url-access=subscription |work=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |page=23-30 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Writers Remain a Robust Bunch |work=St. Petersburg Times |page=B1+ |location=Florida |access-date= |ref=harv }} Article about the continued productivity of aging “literary giants” Mailer, Updike, and Roth.

{{cite news |last=Goldfarb |first=Reuven |date=November 20, 2007 |title=The Jewish Mailer |url=https://www.jpost.com/opinion/op-ed-contributors/the-jewish-mailer |work=Jerusalem Post |volume=14 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Gottlieb |first=Akiva |date=July 20, 2017 |title=Norman Mailer, Auteur |url=http://old.forward.com/articles/11164/norman-mailer-auteur-00143/index.html |work=Forward |location=B1+ |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Article on Mailer’s films, on the occasion of the New York exhibit “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

{{cite journal |last=Henderson |first=Cathy |last2=Oram |first2=Richard W. |last3=Schwartzburg |first3=Molly |last4=Hardy |first4=Molly |title=Mailer Takes on America: Images from the Ransom Center Archive |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07hend |journal=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=141-75 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Holmes |first=Constance E. |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |title=Norman Mailer: Supplemental Bibliography through 2006 |url=https://prmlr.us/mr06bib |journal=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2007 |pages=234-60 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Houpt |first=Simon |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Still a Brawler at Heart |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/still-a-brawler-at-heart/article677847/ |work=Globe and Mail |location=Canada |page=R4 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Howard |first=Gerald |title=Mailer Gets Hammered |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/books/review/Howard-t.html |work=New York Times Book Review |issue=late ed, final |date=August 2007 |pages=27 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Essay discussing Mailer’s films, focusing on ''Maidstone''.

{{cite journal |last=Howley |first=Ashton |title=Mailer Again: Heterophobia in ''Tough Guys Don't Dance'' |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=31-46 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=James |first=Clive |date=2007 |title=Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts |url= |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton |pages=409-413 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=J. C. |title=White Mischief |url= |journal=TLS: Times Literary Supplement |volume= |issue= |date=October 26, 2007 |pages=36 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Includes brief mention of ''Mailer Review''.

{{cite magazine |last=Junod |first=Tom |date=January 2007 |title=The Last Man Standing |magazine=Esquire |volume=147 |issue=1|pages=108-133 |url=https://classic.esquire.com/article/2007/1/1/the-last-man-standing |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Kachka |first=Boris |date=January 15, 2007 |title=Mr. Tenditious |url= |magazine=New York |volume=40 |issue=2 |pages=62 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Recaps Mailer’s history of responding negatively—even violently—to criticism.

{{cite journal |last=Kaufmann |first=Donald L. |date=Fall 2007 |title=An American Dream: The Singular Nightmare |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07kauf |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=194-205 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Kennedy |first=William |date=Fall 2007 |title=Norman Mailer as Occasional Commentator in a Self-Interview and Memoir |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07kenn |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=11-26 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Kriegel |first=Leonard |date=Fall 2007 |title=Mailer’s Hitler: Round One |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40211658|url-access=subscription |work=Sewanee Review |volume=115 |issue=4 |page=615-620 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |date=Fall 2007 |title=Gallery Talk: The Mailer Archive |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07lenn |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=132-40 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |author-mask=1 |date=2007 |title=Norman Mailer: Novelist, Journalist, or Historian? |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4619315|url-access=subscription |work=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |page=91-103 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |editor-last=Lennon |editor-first=J. Michael |editor-mask=1 |date=Fall 2007 |title=‘A Series of Tragicomedies’: Mailer’s Letters on ''The Deer Park'', 1954–55 |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07lenn1 |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=45-79 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

. . .

Long, Karen Haymon. “Mailer in Review.” ''Tampa Tribune'' 18 Nov 2007, final ed., Baylife: 1. Discusses the formation of the Mailer Society and the annual conference, focusing on Tampa-area members and the launch of the Mailer Review out of USF.

Lucid, Robert F. “[Boston State Hospital: The Summer of 1942].” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 27–33. Excerpt from incomplete authorized biography.

Masters, Brian. “So Are Some People Really Born Evil?” Daily Mail [London] 19 April 2007, first ed.: 14. Article discussing ''The Castle in the Forest'' in relation to an actual scientific study on evil and genetics.

McDonald, Brian. “Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s ''The Gospel According to the Son''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 78–90.

Meloy, Michael. ''Sex Fiends of the Fifties: Intersections of Violence, Sexuality, and Masculinity in the Work of Norman Mailer, William Styron, and Ken Kesey''. Diss. U of South Carolina, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3280339.

Middlebrook, Jonathan: “Five Notes toward a Reassessment of Norman Mailer.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 179–83.

Partridge, Jeffrey F. L. “''The Gospel According to the Son and Christian Belief''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 64–77.

Petigny, Alan.“Norman Mailer,‘The White Negro,’ and New Conceptions of the Self in Postwar America.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 184–93.

Rampton, David. “Plexed Artistry: The Formal Case for Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 47–63.

Rodwin, John G. "Fighters and Writers". ''The Mailer Review''. Fall 2008. 396-406.

Rollyson, Carl. “Mailer’s Other Career.” ''Village Voice'' 52.29 (18–24 Jul 2007): 68. On the occasion of the New York exhibit, “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

Rose, Daniel Asa. “Advertisements for a Gay Self.” ''New York'' 40.4 (5 Feb 2007): 9. Brief comment praising Mailer’s treatment of homosexuality in ''The Castle in the Forest''.

Ryan, James Emmett. “‘Insatiable as Good Old America’: Tough Guys Don’t Dance and Popular Criminality.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 17–22.

Scott, A.O. “Norman Mailer Unbound.” ''New York Times'' 20 Jul 2007, late ed. final, east coast: E1!. Discuss/reviews Mailer’s films in anticipation of a screening at Lincoln Center.

Severs, Jeffrey Frank. ''Reinventing Totalitarianism in the Postwar American Novel''. Diss. Harvard U, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3265089.

====Book Reviews====
=====Reviews of ''The Castle in the Forest''=====

{{cite magazine |last=Abell |first=Stephen |date=February 16, 2007 |title=The Anality of Evil |url= |magazine=TLS: Times Literary Supplement |pages=21–22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Allen |first=Bruce |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer Asks: Who Made Hitler? |url= |work=News & Observer |edition=final |page=G5 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{cite news |last=Allington |first=Patrick |date=May 12, 2007 |title=Devil’s Disciple |url= |work=Advertiser |location=Australia |edition=state |page=W10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Amidon |first=Stephen |date=February 4, 2007 |title=Portrait of a Monster |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/portrait-of-a-monster-nr77qrvvxqg |url-access=subscription |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=54 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Anderson |first=Don |date=April 7, 2007 |title=Devil of a Time |url= |work=Weekend Australian |edition=Qld Review |page=10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Anshen |first=D. |title=An Enigmatic Development |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/485260/pdf |url-access=subscription |journal=American Book Review |volume=28 |issue=6 |date=September 2007 |page=18 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Arditti |first=Michael |date=February 16, 2007 |title=New Fiction |url= |work=Daily Mailer |location=London |edition=first |page=72 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Bainbridge |first=Beryl |date=February 10, 2007 |title=Devil’s Plaything: Norman Mailer has Produced an Electrifying Inquiry into the Nature of Evil |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/feb/10/fiction.berylbainbridge |work=The Guardian |location=London |edition=final |page=16 |access-date=2020-10-05 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Bancroft |first=Colette |date=February 4, 2007 |title=Hitler: the Intimacy of Evil |url=https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2007/02/04/hitler-the-intimacy-of-evil/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida |page=10L |access-date=2020-10-05 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Barron |first=John |date=January 21, 2007 |title=The Devil Made Hitler Do It, According to Norman Mailer |url=http://www.pressreader.com/usa/chicago-sun-times/20070121/283407712255383 |work=Chicago Sun-Times |edition=final |page=B12 |access-date=2020-10-05 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Bate |first=Jonathan |date=February 11, 2007 |title=Fiction: Jonathan Bate is Dismayed by Norman Mailer’s Account of Hitler in Short Trousers |url= |work=Sunday Telegraph |location=London |edition=sec. Seven |page=41 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Battersby |first=Eileen |date=February 10, 2007 |title=Young Hitler Defeats Mailer |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/young-hitler-defeats-mailer-1.1194613 |work=Irish Times |edition=Weekend |page=11 |access-date=2020-10-05 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Begiebing |first=Robert J. |title=Castle Mailer |url=https://promlr.us/mr07begi |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=215–22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Boyagoda |first=Randy |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Mailer on Hitler Still No Moby-Dick |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/mailer-on-hitler-still-no-moby-dick/article721277/ |work=The Globe and Mail |location=Canada |page=D6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Boyd |first=William |date=January 21, 2007 |title=Hitler Youth |url= |work=Washington Post |edition=final |page=T07 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Boyd |first=William |author-mask=1 |date=January 21, 2007 |title=Mailer Takes on a Juvenile Hitler |url= |work= |location=St. Louis Post-Dispatch |edition=fourth |page=F8 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{cite journal |author= |title=His Perfect Sense of the Other |url=https://newcriterion.com/issues/2007/2/ldquohis-perfect-sense-of-the-otherrdquo |journal=New Criterion |volume=25 |issue=6 |date=February 2007 |pages=1–2 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Little Hitler |url=https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2007/01/18/little-hitler |magazine=Economist |location=Books & Arts |page=92 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=August 8, 2007 |title=Mailer Brings out the Devil in Hitler |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=21 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer Digs into Hitler’s Childhood |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7040474 |work=Weekend Edition: All Things Considered |location=NPR |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer Writes a Novel about Adolf Hitler’s Childhood |url= |magazine=Gleaner |location=New Brunswick |pages=C4 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

====Obituaries and Retrospectives====

{{cite news |last=Allen-Mills |first=Tony |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer, Literary Rebel, Dies |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/norman-mailer-literary-rebeldies-zkhkhdbchfw |work=Sunday Times |location=London |pages=1+ |access-date=2020-10-01 |url-access=subscription |ref=harv }} [Note: Also printed in the ''Australian'' under a different headline.]

{{cite news |last=Ambrose |first=Jay |date=November 25, 2007 |title=Remembering Mailer |url= |work=Knoxville News |location= |page=73 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Andriani |first=Lynn |date=November 19, 2007 |title=A Prolific Life to the End |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20071119.html |magazine=Publishers Weekly |location= |publisher= |access-date=2020-10-03 |url-access=subscription }}

{{cite news |author= |title=Literary Lion Sparked American Debate |url= |work=Daily Variety |agency=Associated Press |date=November 12, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |title=Writers Remember Mailer |url= |work=Times Union |agency=Associated Press |date=November 13, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Bad Boy of U.S. Literature |url= |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=20 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Baddiel |first=David |date=November 17, 2007 |title=For Norman Mailer, Authenticity was all about Masculinity |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=3 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Bancroft |first=Colette |date=November 11, 2007 |title=‘He was Much More’ than a Writer |url= |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida |page=1A |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Barnes |first=Bart |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Blustery Force in Life and Letters |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/norman-mailer-blustery-force-in-life-and-letters-dies-at-84/2019/01/24/56b92688-2031-11e9-9145-3f74070bbdb9_story.html |work=Washington Post |location= |page=A01 |access-date=2020-10-04 |url-access=subscription |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Bernstein |first=Mashey |date=December 2007 |title=In Different Way, Norman Mailer was a Deeply Jewish Writer |url= |magazine=Deep South Jewish Voice |location= |publisher= |access-date= }}

{{cite news |last1=Blau |first1=Rosie |last2=Mulligan |first2=Martin |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Pulling No Punches to the End |url=https://www.ft.com/content/aa64fec6-9085-11dc-a6f2-0000779fd2ac |work=London Financial Times |location= |page=13 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Boyd |first=Herb |date=November 15, 2007 |title=When James Baldwin Met Norman Mailer |url= |work=New York Amsterdam News |location= |page=1+ |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last1=Burke |first1=Cathy |last2=Venezia |first2=Todd |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Literary Pug and Original Hipster Mailer, 84, Dies |url=https://nypost.com/2007/11/11/literary-pug-original-hipster-mailer-84-dies/ |work=New York Post |location= |page=November 11, 2007 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date= November 12, 2007 |title=A Brawler who Never Pulled a Punch |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/a-brawler-who-never-pulled-a-punch-1.981221 |work=Irish Times |location= |page=10 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Calabrese |first=Erin |date=November 19, 2007 |title=Widow Defends Mailer, Says He ‘Loved Women’ |url=https://nypost.com/2007/11/19/widow-defends-mailer-says-he-loved-women/ |work=New York Post |location= |page=14 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Campbell |first=James |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer: Pugnacious Journalist and Author |url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/nov/12/guardianobituaries.usa |work=Guardian |location=London |page=34 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Cappell |first=Ezra |date=November 16, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer: A Man of Letters Inspired by the People of the Book |url=https://forward.com/news/12032/norman-mailer-a-man-of-letters-inspired-by-the-pe-00800/ |work=Forward |location= |page=A1+ |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Clark |first=Roy Peter |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Two Minutes with Mailer |url=https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2007/two-minutes-with-mailer/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida |page=1E |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Clarke |first=Toni |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Writer Norman Mailer dies at 84 |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/writer-norman-mailer-dies-at-84-1.981225 |work=Irish Times |location= |page=10 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Craig |first=Olga |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Life of Books, Bars, Brawling |url=https://www.pressreader.com/canada/montreal-gazette/20071111/textview |work=Gazette |location=Montreal |page=A3 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Crosbie |first=Lynn |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Believe it: This was the Man who Loved Women |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/believe-it-this-was-the-man-who-loved-women/article726268/ |work=Globe and Mail |location=Canada |page=R1 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Crossen |first=Cynthia |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Readback: When Normal Mailer Was Nobody: 1948’s ‘The Naked and the Dead’ Was Written Before He Was Famous, And That Is Its Greatest Blessing |url= |work=Wall Street Journal Online |location= |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last1=Cryer |first1=Dan |last2=Jacobson |first2=Aileen |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer 1923–2007: A Literary Icon Dies |url= |work=Newsday |location= |page=A08 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 14, 2007 |title=Heavyweight: Mailer’s Life and Work Were Outsized |url=https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/2007/11/14/Heavyweight-Mailer-s-life-and-work-were-outsized/stories/200711140262 |work=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |location= |page=B6 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Legendary Writer with Particular Love for the Irish |url=https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/legendary-writer-with-particular-love-for-the-irish-26331219.html |work=Irish Independent |location= |page=unknown |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Life of Writing, Boozing and Brawling |url= |work=Edmonton Journal |location= |page=A3 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 19, 2007 |title=Mailer won pair of Pulitzers |url= |work=Variety |location= |page=55 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Mailer's Ghost |url=https://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/41004/ |magazine=New York |location= |publisher= |date=November 26, 2007 |access-date=2020-10-02 }} [Note: Revisits the seven covers of ''New York Magazine'' that have featured Mailer, either as author or subject.]

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.economist.com/obituary/2007/11/15/norman-mailer |work=Economist |location=US |page=103 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Sunday Independent |location=Ireland |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=53 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 13, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/norman-mailer-400006.html |work=Independent |location=London |page=34 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times Union |location= |page=A12 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Cincinnati Post |location= |page=C10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Norman Mailer, 84 |url= |magazine=Newsweek |location= |publisher= |date=December 31, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Obituary of Norman Mailer |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1569056/Norman-Mailer.html |work=Daily Telegraph |location=London |page2= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Pulitzer Prize Author Norman Mailer Dies at 84 |url= |work=Providence Journal |location= |page=A6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{cite news |last=D’Alessio |first=Jeff |title=A Life Written and Lived on a Large Scale: Norman Mailer 1923–2007 |url= |journal=Atlanta Journal-Constitution |volume= |issue= |date=November 11, 2007 |page=A5 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Reactions from Atlanta residents on the life and death of Mailer.

{{cite magazine |last=Deignan |first=Tom |title=Mailer: More Irish than the Irish |url= |magazine=Irish Voice |volume=21 |issue=47 |date=November 21, 2007 |pages=11 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Demirel |first=Selçuk |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Nation |volume=285 |issue=18 |date=December 3, 2007 |page=8 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |title=The Nijinsky of Ambivalence |url= |magazine=Nation |volume=285 |issue=19 |date=December 10, 2007 |pages=48–52 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |author-mask=1 |title=The Un-generation |url= |work=Los Angeles Times |volume= |issue= |date=December 30, 2007 |page=R4 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Retrospective comparing the lives and careers of Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and Grace Paley, who all died in 2007 at the age of 84.

. . .

{{cite magazine |last=Duggan |first=Keith |title=Two-Fisted Mailer Finally Counter Out |url= |magazine=Irish Times |volume= |issue= |date=November 7, 2007 |page=12 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Epstein |first=Jason |title=Norman Mailer (1923–2007) |url= |magazine=New York Review of Books |volume=54 |issue=20 |date=December 20, 2007 |page=10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Eyman |first=Scott |title=Mailer’s Works Made Deep Impression on Post-WWII Political, Cultural Landscape |url= |magazine=Palm Beach Post |volume= |issue= |date=November 11, 2007 |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last1=Fee |first1=Gayle |last2=Raposa |first2=Laura |title=Mailer's Car Tale Resurrected |url= |journal=Boston Herald |volume= |issue= |date=November 14, 2007 |page=News:20 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Feeney |first=Mark |title=Norman Mailer, Self-titled King of the Literary Hill, Dies at 84 |url= |journal=Boston Globe |volume=third ed |issue=Obituaries |date=November 11, 2007 |page=A1 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Fields|first=Suzanne |title=Recalling My Mailer Crush|url= |journal=Washington Times|volume= |issue= |date=November 15, 2007 |page=A21 |access-date= |ref=harv }}[Note:Versions of this article also appear elsewhere under similar headlines.]

. . .

{{Review|state=expanded}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007}}
[[Category:Bibliographies (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007

2020-10-05T16:58:05Z

JPerkins: edited citation mistake

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}
{{MR02}}
{{Byline|last=Holmes|first=Constance E.|last1=Wilson|first1=Kristine A.|note=Much of the following has been incorporated into ''[[NM:WD|Norman Mailer: Works and Days]]''.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08bib}}
{{TOC right|width=25%}}
==Addenda through 2006==
===Primary===
====Letters====

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=10:5 |date=March 4, 1968 |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Leonid I. Brezhnev, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Violence in Oakland |location=10:9 |date=May 9, 1968 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/05/09/violence-in-oakland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=12:6 |date=March 27, 1969 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of telegram to Hon. U Thant, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Committee to Defend the Conspiracy |location=12:12 |date=June 19, 1969 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/06/19/the-committee-to-defend-the-conspiracy/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Ford’s Better Idea |location=19:11 & 12 |date=January 25, 1973 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/01/25/fords-better-idea/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Words for the Shah |location=24:19 |date=November 24, 1977 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1977/11/24/words-for-the-shah/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Open letter to the Prime Minister of Iran, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=In a Cuban Prison |location=25:19 |date=December 7, 1978 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1978/12/07/in-a-cuban-prison/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Alexandr Bogolovski |location=31:15 |date=October 11, 1984 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Mr. A. M. Rekunov, Procurator General of the USSR, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Arrests in Poland |location=33.13 |date=August 13, 1986 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1986/08/14/arrests-in-poland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Celebrating Mencken |location=37:4 |date=March 15, 1990 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/03/15/celebrating-mencken/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=President Clinton. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=An Urgent Appeal from Pen American Center |location=40:4 |date=February 11, 1993 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1993/02/11/an-urgent-appeal-from-pen-american-center/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=to Prime Minister Paul Keating et al. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Wei Jingsheng |location=43:3 |date=February 15, 1996 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996/02/15/the-case-of-wei-jingsheng/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories. An open letter.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=JFK’s Assassination |location=50:20 |date=December 18, 2003 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2003/12/18/jfks-assassination/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Election and America’s Future |location=51:17 |date=November 4, 2004 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/11/04/the-election-and-americas-future/ |url-access=subscription |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Letter; one of a series solicited by the Editors.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject= Blocked |location=52:13 |date=August 11, 2005 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2005/08/11/blocked/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} As author of ''Oswald’s Tale'', with other signatories.

==2007==

===Primary===
====Books====
{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last1=Mailer |first1=Norman |author-mask=1 |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |date=2007 |title=On God: An Uncommon Conversation |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }}

====Book Contributions====
{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contribution=Commentary |last=Regan |first=Ken |date=2007 |title=Knockout: The Art of Boxing |url= |location=San Rafael, CA |publisher=Insight Editions |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contributor-mask=1 |contribution=Introduction |last=Schiller |first=Lawrence |date=2007 |title=Marilyn Monroe |url= |location=Los Angles, CA |publisher=East End Editions KLS |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

====Interviews====


{{cite magazine |last=Binelli |first=Mark |date=May 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Rolling Stone |pages=3–17 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Foley |first=Dylan |date=January 28, 2007 |title=A Portrait of the Devil as a Young Man |url= |work=Star-Ledger |location=final ed. |page=6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Fox |first=Sue |date=July 8, 2007 |title=Even at 84, Norman Mailer Refuses to Pull His Punches |url=https://www.pressreader.com/uk/sunday-express-1070/20070708/282346855399714 |work=Sunday Express |location=UK first ed. |page=55 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Devilish Motives |url=https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/devilish-motives-20070120-gdp9x7.html |work=Sydney Morning Herald |location=Australia |access-date=2020-10-01 |page=30 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Goldberg |first=Nan |date= |title=Writing with the Devil |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/11/10/writing_with_the_devil/ |work=Boston Globe |location=Magazine |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Kirschling |first=Gregory |date=January 19, 2007 |title=Tough Guys Don’t Quit |url= |magazine=Entertainment Weekly |issue=916 |page=48 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lee |first=Michael |title=The Devil in Norman Mailer |url=https://search.proquest.com/openview/5bff77fb5c089c0b3d810827ee4686c7/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=40852 |journal=Literary Review |volume=50 |issue=4 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=202–217 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Lennon |first=Michael |date=October 5, 2007 |title=The Rise of Mailerism |url=https://nymag.com/news/features/38961/ |magazine=New York |issue=40.36 |pages=24+ |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }} Mailer discusses ''On God''.

{{cite magazine |last=Llewellyn |first=Caro |author-mask= |title=The Lion in Winter: Norman Mailer Talks about Writing His First Novel in a Decade |url= |magazine=Weekend Australian |location=pre-prints ed. |date=March 31, 2007 |pages=1 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=McCrum |first=Robert |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Author at Home |url= |work=The Observer |location=England |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Miner |first=Colin |date=January 22, 2007 |title=Mailer on Bush, Obama & Writing |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-on-bush-obama-writing/47109/ |work=New York Sun |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |title=The Art of Fiction No. 193, Norman Mailer |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5775/the-art-of-fiction-no-193-norman-mailer |journal=The Paris Review |volume=49 |issue=181 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=44+ |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |author-mask=1 |title=Get Your Ass off My Pillow |url=https://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/get-your-ass-off-my-pillow/ |url-access=subscription |magazine=Harper’s Magazine |issue=315.1888 |date=September 2007 |pages=22–24 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Pierleoni |first=Allen |date=February 7, 2007 |title=Now Age 84.... |url= |work=Sacramento Bee |location=metro final ed.: TK22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 2007 |title=Proust Questionnaire: Norman Mailer |url=https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/01/proust_mailer200701 |magazine=Vanity Fair |issue=557 |page=166 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Rose |first=Daniel Asa |date=January 21, 2007 |title=In Conversation ... ; with Norman Mailer |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/AR2007011802000_pf.html |work=Washington Post |location=Final ed.: T07 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Santaro |first=Gene |title=The Sound and the Baby Führer |url=https://www.historynet.com/interview-sound-baby-fuhrer.htm |journal=World War II |volume=22 |issue=2 |date=May 2007 |pages=23–25 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Stoffman |first=Judy |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Novel Ideas about Hitler |url=https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2007/01/28/mailers_novel_ideas_about_hitler.html |work=The Toronto Star |page=C04 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Wollheim |first=Richard |title=Living like Heroes |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/society/2007/11/violence-hip-mailer-1961 |magazine=New Statesman |issue=137.4871 |date=November 19, 2007 |pages=62 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Abridged reprint of a 1961 interview promoting ''Advertisements for Myself''.

===Secondary===

====Essays, Articles, Book Chapters, and Dissertations====

{{cite news |author= |date=January 17, 2007 |title=Sex-Mad Mailer Enraged Rival |url=https://pagesix.com/2007/01/25/sex-mad-mailer-enraged-rival/ |work=New York Post |location=Page Six |page=12 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Article discussing Ralph Ellison’s attitude toward Mailer, according to Ellison’s biographer.

{{cite news |author=Bancroft, Collette |date=October 16, 2007 |title=A Man of Many Letters |url=https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2007/10/16/a-man-of-many-letters/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida 1E |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }} A look at Mailer and Mailer scholarship on the occasion of both the publication of ''On God'' and the launch of ''Mailer Review''.

{{cite news |author=Beach, Patrick |date=December 23, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Memories about to Open at Ransom Center |url= |work=Austin American-Statesman |location=final ed. |page=J5 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author=Bennett, Bruce |date=July 20, 2007 |title=Mailer at the Movies |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-at-the-movies/58850/ |work=New York Sun |location=11 |page= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Overview of Mailer’s films.

{{cite news |author=Brokaw, Leslie |date=September 16, 2007 |title=HFA Salutes Norman Mailer on Film |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2007/09/16/hfa_salutes_norman_mailer_on_film/ |work=Boston Globe |location=third ed. |page=N11 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=Bufithis, Philip |date=2007 |title=''The Executioner’s Song'': A Life Beneath Our Conscience |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07bufi |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |edition=1 |location= |page=77-79 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=Burns |first=Paul C. |date=2007 |title=In Jesus in Twentieth-Century Literature, Art, and Movies |chapter=Transformation of Biblical Methods and Godhead in Norman Mailer’s Gospel |location=New York |publisher=Continuum |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Chaiken |first=Michael |title=The Master’s Mercurial Mistress: How Norman Mailer Courted Chaos 24 Frames per Second |journal=Film Comment |url=http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/25897522/the-masters-mercurial-mistress-how-norman-mailer-courted-chaos-24-frames-per-second |url-access=subscription |volume=43 |issue=4 |date=July 2007 |pages=36–42 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Crook |first=Zeba |date=January 2007 |title=Fictionalizing Jesus: Story and History in Two Recent Jesus Novels |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249573018_Fictionalizing_Jesus_Story_and_History_in_Two_Recent_Jesus_Novels |url-access=subscription |work=Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus |volume=5 |issue=1 |page=33-55 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |date=2007 |title=How Mailer Became ‘Mailer’: The Writer as Private and Public Character |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07dick |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=118-31 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Duguid |first=Scott |date=2007 |title=The Addiction of Masculinity: Norman Mailer’s ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' and the Cultural Politics of Reaganism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4619310 |url-access=subscription |work=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |page=23-30 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Writers Remain a Robust Bunch |work=St. Petersburg Times |page=B1+ |location=Florida |access-date= |ref=harv }} Article about the continued productivity of aging “literary giants” Mailer, Updike, and Roth.

{{cite news |last=Goldfarb |first=Reuven |date=November 20, 2007 |title=The Jewish Mailer |url=https://www.jpost.com/opinion/op-ed-contributors/the-jewish-mailer |work=Jerusalem Post |volume=14 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Gottlieb |first=Akiva |date=July 20, 2017 |title=Norman Mailer, Auteur |url=http://old.forward.com/articles/11164/norman-mailer-auteur-00143/index.html |work=Forward |location=B1+ |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Article on Mailer’s films, on the occasion of the New York exhibit “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

{{cite journal |last=Henderson |first=Cathy |last2=Oram |first2=Richard W. |last3=Schwartzburg |first3=Molly |last4=Hardy |first4=Molly |title=Mailer Takes on America: Images from the Ransom Center Archive |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07hend |journal=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=141-75 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Holmes |first=Constance E. |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |title=Norman Mailer: Supplemental Bibliography through 2006 |url=https://prmlr.us/mr06bib |journal=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2007 |pages=234-60 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Houpt |first=Simon |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Still a Brawler at Heart |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/still-a-brawler-at-heart/article677847/ |work=Globe and Mail |location=Canada |page=R4 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Howard |first=Gerald |title=Mailer Gets Hammered |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/books/review/Howard-t.html |work=New York Times Book Review |issue=late ed, final |date=August 2007 |pages=27 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Essay discussing Mailer’s films, focusing on ''Maidstone''.

{{cite journal |last=Howley |first=Ashton |title=Mailer Again: Heterophobia in ''Tough Guys Don't Dance'' |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=31-46 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=James |first=Clive |date=2007 |title=Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts |url= |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton |pages=409-413 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=J. C. |title=White Mischief |url= |journal=TLS: Times Literary Supplement |volume= |issue= |date=October 26, 2007 |pages=36 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Includes brief mention of ''Mailer Review''.

{{cite magazine |last=Junod |first=Tom |date=January 2007 |title=The Last Man Standing |magazine=Esquire |volume=147 |issue=1|pages=108-133 |url=https://classic.esquire.com/article/2007/1/1/the-last-man-standing |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Kachka |first=Boris |date=January 15, 2007 |title=Mr. Tenditious |url= |magazine=New York |volume=40 |issue=2 |pages=62 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Recaps Mailer’s history of responding negatively—even violently—to criticism.

{{cite journal |last=Kaufmann |first=Donald L. |date=Fall 2007 |title=An American Dream: The Singular Nightmare |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07kauf |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=194-205 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Kennedy |first=William |date=Fall 2007 |title=Norman Mailer as Occasional Commentator in a Self-Interview and Memoir |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07kenn |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=11-26 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Kriegel |first=Leonard |date=Fall 2007 |title=Mailer’s Hitler: Round One |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40211658|url-access=subscription |work=Sewanee Review |volume=115 |issue=4 |page=615-620 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |date=Fall 2007 |title=Gallery Talk: The Mailer Archive |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07lenn |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=132-40 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |author-mask=1 |date=2007 |title=Norman Mailer: Novelist, Journalist, or Historian? |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4619315|url-access=subscription |work=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |page=91-103 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |editor-last=Lennon |editor-first=J. Michael |editor-mask=1 |date=Fall 2007 |title=‘A Series of Tragicomedies’: Mailer’s Letters on ''The Deer Park'', 1954–55 |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07lenn1 |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=45-79 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

. . .

Long, Karen Haymon. “Mailer in Review.” ''Tampa Tribune'' 18 Nov 2007, final ed., Baylife: 1. Discusses the formation of the Mailer Society and the annual conference, focusing on Tampa-area members and the launch of the Mailer Review out of USF.

Lucid, Robert F. “[Boston State Hospital: The Summer of 1942].” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 27–33. Excerpt from incomplete authorized biography.

Masters, Brian. “So Are Some People Really Born Evil?” Daily Mail [London] 19 April 2007, first ed.: 14. Article discussing ''The Castle in the Forest'' in relation to an actual scientific study on evil and genetics.

McDonald, Brian. “Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s ''The Gospel According to the Son''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 78–90.

Meloy, Michael. ''Sex Fiends of the Fifties: Intersections of Violence, Sexuality, and Masculinity in the Work of Norman Mailer, William Styron, and Ken Kesey''. Diss. U of South Carolina, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3280339.

Middlebrook, Jonathan: “Five Notes toward a Reassessment of Norman Mailer.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 179–83.

Partridge, Jeffrey F. L. “''The Gospel According to the Son and Christian Belief''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 64–77.

Petigny, Alan.“Norman Mailer,‘The White Negro,’ and New Conceptions of the Self in Postwar America.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 184–93.

Rampton, David. “Plexed Artistry: The Formal Case for Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 47–63.

Rodwin, John G. "Fighters and Writers". ''The Mailer Review''. Fall 2008. 396-406.

Rollyson, Carl. “Mailer’s Other Career.” ''Village Voice'' 52.29 (18–24 Jul 2007): 68. On the occasion of the New York exhibit, “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

Rose, Daniel Asa. “Advertisements for a Gay Self.” ''New York'' 40.4 (5 Feb 2007): 9. Brief comment praising Mailer’s treatment of homosexuality in ''The Castle in the Forest''.

Ryan, James Emmett. “‘Insatiable as Good Old America’: Tough Guys Don’t Dance and Popular Criminality.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 17–22.

Scott, A.O. “Norman Mailer Unbound.” ''New York Times'' 20 Jul 2007, late ed. final, east coast: E1!. Discuss/reviews Mailer’s films in anticipation of a screening at Lincoln Center.

Severs, Jeffrey Frank. ''Reinventing Totalitarianism in the Postwar American Novel''. Diss. Harvard U, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3265089.

====Book Reviews====
=====Reviews of ''The Castle in the Forest''=====

{{cite magazine |last=Abell |first=Stephen |date=February 16, 2007 |title=The Anality of Evil |url= |magazine=TLS: Times Literary Supplement |pages=21–22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Allen |first=Bruce |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer Asks: Who Made Hitler? |url= |work=News & Observer |edition=final |page=G5 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{cite news |last=Allington |first=Patrick |date=May 12, 2007 |title=Devil’s Disciple |url= |work=Advertiser |location=Australia |edition=state |page=W10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Amidon |first=Stephen |date=February 4, 2007 |title=Portrait of a Monster |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/portrait-of-a-monster-nr77qrvvxqg |url-access=subscription |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=54 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Anderson |first=Don |date=April 7, 2007 |title=Devil of a Time |url= |work=Weekend Australian |edition=Qld Review |page=10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Anshen |first=D. |title=An Enigmatic Development |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/485260/pdf |url-access=subscription |journal=American Book Review |volume=28 |issue=6 |date=September 2007 |page=18 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Arditti |first=Michael |date=February 16, 2007 |title=New Fiction |url= |work=Daily Mailer |location=London |edition=first |page=72 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Bainbridge |first=Beryl |date=February 10, 2007 |title=Devil’s Plaything: Norman Mailer has Produced an Electrifying Inquiry into the Nature of Evil |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/feb/10/fiction.berylbainbridge |work=The Guardian |location=London |edition=final |page=16 |access-date=2020-10-05 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Bancroft |first=Colette |date=February 4, 2007 |title=Hitler: the Intimacy of Evil |url=https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2007/02/04/hitler-the-intimacy-of-evil/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida |page=10L |access-date=2020-10-05 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Barron |first=John |date=January 21, 2007 |title=The Devil Made Hitler Do It, According to Norman Mailer |url=http://www.pressreader.com/usa/chicago-sun-times/20070121/283407712255383 |work=Chicago Sun-Times |edition=final |page=B12 |access-date=2020-10-05 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Bate |first=Jonathan |date=February 11, 2007 |title=Fiction: Jonathan Bate is Dismayed by Norman Mailer’s Account of Hitler in Short Trousers |url= |work=Sunday Telegraph |location=London |edition=sec. Seven |page=41 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Battersby |first=Eileen |date=February 10, 2007 |title=Young Hitler Defeats Mailer |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/young-hitler-defeats-mailer-1.1194613 |work=Irish Times |edition=Weekend |page=11 |access-date=2020-10-05 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Begiebing |first=Robert J. |title=Castle Mailer |url=https://promlr.us/mr07begi |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=215–22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Boyagoda |first=Randy |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Mailer on Hitler Still No Moby-Dick |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/mailer-on-hitler-still-no-moby-dick/article721277/ |work=The Globe and Mail |location=Canada |page=D6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Boyd |first=William |date=January 21, 2007 |title=Hitler Youth |url= |work=Washington Post |edition=final |page=T07 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Boyd |first=William |author-mask=1 |date=January 21, 2007 |title=Mailer Takes on a Juvenile Hitler |url= |work= |location=St. Louis Post-Dispatch |edition=fourth |page=F8 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{cite journal |author= |title=His Perfect Sense of the Other |url=https://newcriterion.com/issues/2007/2/ldquohis-perfect-sense-of-the-otherrdquo |journal=New Criterion |volume=25 |issue=6 |date=February 2007 |pages=1–2 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Little Hitler |url=https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2007/01/18/little-hitler |magazine=Economist |location=Books & Arts |page=92 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=August 8, 2007 |title=Mailer Brings out the Devil in Hitler |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=21 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer Digs into Hitler’s Childhood |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7040474 |work=Weekend Edition: All Things Considered |location=NPR |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer Writes a Novel about Adolf Hitler’s Childhood |url= |magazine=Gleaner |location=New Brunswick |pages=C4 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

====Obituaries and Retrospectives====

{{cite news |last=Allen-Mills |first=Tony |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer, Literary Rebel, Dies |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/norman-mailer-literary-rebeldies-zkhkhdbchfw |work=Sunday Times |location=London |pages=1+ |access-date=2020-10-01 |url-access=subscription |ref=harv }} [Note: Also printed in the ''Australian'' under a different headline.]

{{cite news |last=Ambrose |first=Jay |date=November 25, 2007 |title=Remembering Mailer |url= |work=Knoxville News |location= |page=73 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Andriani |first=Lynn |date=November 19, 2007 |title=A Prolific Life to the End |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20071119.html |magazine=Publishers Weekly |location= |publisher= |access-date=2020-10-03 |url-access=subscription }}

{{cite news |author= |title=Literary Lion Sparked American Debate |url= |work=Daily Variety |agency=Associated Press |date=November 12, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |title=Writers Remember Mailer |url= |work=Times Union |agency=Associated Press |date=November 13, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Bad Boy of U.S. Literature |url= |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=20 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Baddiel |first=David |date=November 17, 2007 |title=For Norman Mailer, Authenticity was all about Masculinity |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=3 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Bancroft |first=Colette |date=November 11, 2007 |title=‘He was Much More’ than a Writer |url= |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida |page=1A |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Barnes |first=Bart |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Blustery Force in Life and Letters |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/norman-mailer-blustery-force-in-life-and-letters-dies-at-84/2019/01/24/56b92688-2031-11e9-9145-3f74070bbdb9_story.html |work=Washington Post |location= |page=A01 |access-date=2020-10-04 |url-access=subscription |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Bernstein |first=Mashey |date=December 2007 |title=In Different Way, Norman Mailer was a Deeply Jewish Writer |url= |magazine=Deep South Jewish Voice |location= |publisher= |access-date= }}

{{cite news |last1=Blau |first1=Rosie |last2=Mulligan |first2=Martin |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Pulling No Punches to the End |url=https://www.ft.com/content/aa64fec6-9085-11dc-a6f2-0000779fd2ac |work=London Financial Times |location= |page=13 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Boyd |first=Herb |date=November 15, 2007 |title=When James Baldwin Met Norman Mailer |url= |work=New York Amsterdam News |location= |page=1+ |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last1=Burke |first1=Cathy |last2=Venezia |first2=Todd |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Literary Pug and Original Hipster Mailer, 84, Dies |url=https://nypost.com/2007/11/11/literary-pug-original-hipster-mailer-84-dies/ |work=New York Post |location= |page=November 11, 2007 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date= November 12, 2007 |title=A Brawler who Never Pulled a Punch |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/a-brawler-who-never-pulled-a-punch-1.981221 |work=Irish Times |location= |page=10 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Calabrese |first=Erin |date=November 19, 2007 |title=Widow Defends Mailer, Says He ‘Loved Women’ |url=https://nypost.com/2007/11/19/widow-defends-mailer-says-he-loved-women/ |work=New York Post |location= |page=14 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Campbell |first=James |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer: Pugnacious Journalist and Author |url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/nov/12/guardianobituaries.usa |work=Guardian |location=London |page=34 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Cappell |first=Ezra |date=November 16, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer: A Man of Letters Inspired by the People of the Book |url=https://forward.com/news/12032/norman-mailer-a-man-of-letters-inspired-by-the-pe-00800/ |work=Forward |location= |page=A1+ |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Clark |first=Roy Peter |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Two Minutes with Mailer |url=https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2007/two-minutes-with-mailer/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida |page=1E |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Clarke |first=Toni |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Writer Norman Mailer dies at 84 |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/writer-norman-mailer-dies-at-84-1.981225 |work=Irish Times |location= |page=10 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Craig |first=Olga |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Life of Books, Bars, Brawling |url=https://www.pressreader.com/canada/montreal-gazette/20071111/textview |work=Gazette |location=Montreal |page=A3 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Crosbie |first=Lynn |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Believe it: This was the Man who Loved Women |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/believe-it-this-was-the-man-who-loved-women/article726268/ |work=Globe and Mail |location=Canada |page=R1 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Crossen |first=Cynthia |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Readback: When Normal Mailer Was Nobody: 1948’s ‘The Naked and the Dead’ Was Written Before He Was Famous, And That Is Its Greatest Blessing |url= |work=Wall Street Journal Online |location= |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last1=Cryer |first1=Dan |last2=Jacobson |first2=Aileen |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer 1923–2007: A Literary Icon Dies |url= |work=Newsday |location= |page=A08 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 14, 2007 |title=Heavyweight: Mailer’s Life and Work Were Outsized |url=https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/2007/11/14/Heavyweight-Mailer-s-life-and-work-were-outsized/stories/200711140262 |work=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |location= |page=B6 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Legendary Writer with Particular Love for the Irish |url=https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/legendary-writer-with-particular-love-for-the-irish-26331219.html |work=Irish Independent |location= |page=unknown |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Life of Writing, Boozing and Brawling |url= |work=Edmonton Journal |location= |page=A3 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 19, 2007 |title=Mailer won pair of Pulitzers |url= |work=Variety |location= |page=55 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Mailer's Ghost |url=https://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/41004/ |magazine=New York |location= |publisher= |date=November 26, 2007 |access-date=2020-10-02 }} [Note: Revisits the seven covers of ''New York Magazine'' that have featured Mailer, either as author or subject.]

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.economist.com/obituary/2007/11/15/norman-mailer |work=Economist |location=US |page=103 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Sunday Independent |location=Ireland |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=53 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 13, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/norman-mailer-400006.html |work=Independent |location=London |page=34 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times Union |location= |page=A12 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Cincinnati Post |location= |page=C10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Norman Mailer, 84 |url= |magazine=Newsweek |location= |publisher= |date=December 31, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Obituary of Norman Mailer |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1569056/Norman-Mailer.html |work=Daily Telegraph |location=London |page2= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Pulitzer Prize Author Norman Mailer Dies at 84 |url= |work=Providence Journal |location= |page=A6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{cite news |last=D’Alessio |first=Jeff |title=A Life Written and Lived on a Large Scale: Norman Mailer 1923–2007 |url= |journal=Atlanta Journal-Constitution |volume= |issue= |date=November 11, 2007 |page=A5 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Reactions from Atlanta residents on the life and death of Mailer.

{{cite magazine |last=Deignan |first=Tom |title=Mailer: More Irish than the Irish |url= |magazine=Irish Voice |volume=21 |issue=47 |date=November 21, 2007 |pages=11 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Demirel |first=Selçuk |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Nation |volume=285 |issue=18 |date=December 3, 2007 |page=8 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |title=The Nijinsky of Ambivalence |url= |magazine=Nation |volume=285 |issue=19 |date=December 10, 2007 |pages=48–52 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |author-mask=1 |title=The Un-generation |url= |work=Los Angeles Times |volume= |issue= |date=December 30, 2007 |page=R4 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Retrospective comparing the lives and careers of Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and Grace Paley, who all died in 2007 at the age of 84.

. . .

{{cite magazine |last=Duggan |first=Keith |title=Two-Fisted Mailer Finally Counter Out |url= |magazine=Irish Times |volume= |issue= |date=November 7, 2007 |page=12 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Epstein |first=Jason |title=Norman Mailer (1923–2007) |url= |magazine=New York Review of Books |volume=54 |issue=20 |date=December 20, 2007 |page=10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Eyman |first=Scott |title=Mailer’s Works Made Deep Impression on Post-WWII Political, Cultural Landscape |url= |magazine=Palm Beach Post |volume= |issue= |date=November 11, 2007 |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last1=Fee |first1=Gayle |last2=Raposa |first=2Laura |title=Mailer's Car Tale Resurrected |url= |journal=Boston Herald |volume= |issue= |date=November 14, 2007 |page=News:20 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Feeney |first=Mark |title=Norman Mailer, Self-titled King of the Literary Hill, Dies at 84 |url= |journal=Boston Globe |volume=third ed |issue=Obituaries |date=November 11, 2007 |page=A1 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Fields|first=Suzanne |title=Recalling My Mailer Crush|url= |journal=Washington Times|volume= |issue= |date=November 15, 2007 |page=A21 |access-date= |ref=harv }}[Note:Versions of this article also appear elsewhere under similar headlines.]

. . .

{{Review|state=expanded}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007}}
[[Category:Bibliographies (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007

2020-10-05T16:56:48Z

2020-09-28T18:01:15Z

JPerkins:

{{Byline|last=Whalen-Bridge|first=John|url=|abstract=|note=}}

=Bio=
Hello all, my name is Jayla Perkins, I'm currently a senior and NMAC major at Middle Georgia State University. After I acquire my Bachelor's I plan to work for a major news outlet and broaden my political activism. In my spare time I like to read works from women of color and debate with my peers. I have learned a lot during my academic journey, I'm excited to apply these teachings in the outside world. ~~Jayla Perkins

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in The Castle in the Forest

2020-09-22T18:06:59Z

JPerkins: addd body and parenthesis

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in ''The Castle in the Forest''}}
{{Working}}
{{MR12}}
{{Byline|last=Whalen-Bridge|first=John|abstract=Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. Mailer’s Hitler novel recapitulates his karmic unified-field theory of life in a number of ways. We cannot make sense of the last two decades of Mailer’s writing career without paying attention to the ''Castle''’s cavalier wit, which is, at its heart, almost invariably alone.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08whal}}
{{quote|“Himmler subscribed to the theory that the best human possibilities lie close to the worst.”}}

{{dc|dc=T|here is a joke about attorneys}} that goes like this: lots of people were on a boat, which sank in shark-infested waters. It was horrible. The sharks were tearing all the passengers to pieces as they tried to make it to shore. All the passengers were dying. Except one passenger, who was an attorney. He swam right to the shore. As he was shaking himself off, the bewildered people on the beach asked him, “How come the sharks did not eat you?” He said: “Professional courtesy, I suppose.” We don’t like attorneys, such a joke conveys, because they are not like us. They are like sharks, and we are like people. We laugh at the joke, if we do, to commune in our fantasy-rejection of lawyerly cruelty. But Mailer’s last novel, ''The Castle in the Forest'', is organized around a very different sort of humor. Instead of laughing at lawyers to confirm our fantasy that we ourselves are not sharks, Mailer shocks readers, methodically and skillfully, with the knowledge that they are intimately involved with so much of what they—we, I should say—resoundingly reject. The undertow of laughter in this novel won’t necessarily drag you out to sea, but it will make you ask if you share qualities with what is being held up for laughter and judgment.

Mailer’s narrator in ''The Castle in the Forest'' speaks with courtesy and intelligence.{{efn|Both Steven Poole in his ''New Statesman'' review, “[https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2007/02/norman-mailer-hitler-novel Sympathy for the Devil]” (19 February 2007) and John Freeman in his ''Independent'' review “[https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/sympathy-for-the-devil-norman-mailer-on-his-satanic-new-novel-434647.html Sympathy for the Devil: Norman Mailer on His Satanic New Novel]” (2 February 2007) connect Mailer’s novel and the Rolling Stones’ song in their titles. The Jagger/Richards song, which first appeared on the 1968 album ''Beggers Banquet'', is a dramatic monologue in which Lucifer brags about his achievements, insists on commonalities between himself and his listeners, and demands courtesy if met: he is a “man of wealth and taste,” after all. All criminals are cops, all sinners are saints, and we all killed the Kennedys.}} He calls himself “Dieter” (though it is not clear what he means to “deter”), and he has been a witness to the formation of Adolf Hitler. Dieter explains to the reader that he has been a functionary in the Third Reich, but he has been—long before he came to work for Himmler—part of the Devil’s bureaucracy, with young “Adi” as his most important case. In this way, Mailer manages to bring together the bureaucratic “banality” of evil with the attractions and powers of evil that the word banality cannot subsume.

Mailer’s final novel (2007) is a concatenation of aesthetic shocks that tells of the formation of Adolf Hitler’s character, beginning with the incestuous influences of his grandfather (about the identity of whom there has been much historical speculation), and continuing through his schooling. Ron Rosenbaum’s ''Explaining Hitler'' can fruitfully be read as a companion-text to Mailer’s novel; its central question is “When and how did Hitler become Hitler?” Mailer’s novel affirms the idea that Hitler developed sociopathic tendencies by his early teens and that these were the foundation for the subsequent obsession with eliminationist anti-Semitism that would come later—but this evolution in Hitler’s darkness is not central to Mailer’s novel. Mailer builds a Hitler to explain a person attracted to murder and deceit, but anti-Semitism is not the driving force of the life Mailer imagines. Mailer does not at all exclude the idea that everything in the novel is tuned toward the Holocaust. The title “The Castle in the Forest,” Dieter tells readers in the final pages, is the translation of a death camp called “''Schlossimwald''” by those inmates who would not, even in the face of ultimate pain and evil, surrender their sense of irony.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=465}} That irony would remain a prized possession under such circumstances will shock some readers, since the phenomena of Hitler and the Holocaust are for many the very limit of irony. In the Rortyean, postmodern, and thoroughly ironic world in which we live, the Holocaust cannot be reduced to a contingent phenomena whose meaning is entirely dependent upon the subject position of the perceiver. Such a way of thinking will earn a comparison with Holocaust deniers. Mailer not only concludes with an homage to ironic camp inmates but also has Dieter-the-demon tell us that the Devil (whom he calls “the Maestro”) is a connoisseur of irony: “All this was uttered by the Maestro with characteristic irony. We never know how serious he might be when he speaks to our mind’s ear. (His voice is a cornucopia of humors.)”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=78}} Mailer might even be describing himself in this passage.

A ''New York Times'' article paused to note that a number of recent novels had the odd feature of including bibliographies. The bibliography of ''The Castle in the Forest'' is rich with entries on bee-keeping. Readers of the novel know it is a richly over-determined metaphor, combining elements of mod- ulated brutality and great technical skill. Bee-keeping is perhaps the central metaphor of the novel, and Mailer’s bibliography lists half-a-dozen or so specialist books on the subject. Bee-keeping signifies social order, but order as understood from an awful height, that of humans looking down on potentially profitable insects, or that of God looking down on mischievous creation. The bees themselves are ruthless at maintaining order, and they eliminate all threats to the hive without hesitation. Mailer’s Alois Hitler is presented as a dedicated bee-keeper, and the narrator Dieter—while per- haps disingenuously or even seductively warning readers not to make too much of such events!—presents several scenes in which hives are gassed or burned. Readers might wonder how exactly they could ever make “too much” of such a parallel.

As important as bee-keeping is to Mailer’s larger narrative loops, it competes in the reader’s imagination with a theme that is given equal air-time but which etches the memory more ruthlessly moment for moment and image for image: transgressive sex. Mailer stays true to his fascination with the idea that God and the Devil partake in human lives through dreams and sex acts. The reader must consider a Freudian primal scene in which young Adolf witnesses Alois and Klara in the sixty-nine position, and witnessing the fictional event makes the reader equal, in some imaginative sense, to demons like Dieter who enter minds and bodies in the most intimate situations imaginable.

Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. By “epistemological realism,” I mean that we can only experience our own minds directly, unless we have supernormal pow- ers, and furthermore we can only draw inferences about other minds.{{efn|I am not using “epistemological realism” in the standard way, which refers specifically to the form of objectivism in which objects exist independently of one’s own mind in support of a correspondence theory of truth. Such objects would then, presumably, be available for apprehension by subjects from various perspectives, ameliorating the ways in which contemporary, post-Nietzschean perspectivism subverts assertions about an objective world. Mailer’s attraction to what I’m calling “epistemological realism,” on the other hand, finds ways of conflating first- and third-person perspectives—such as by resorting to the epistolary novel in the omega manuscript of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' to ensure that all perceptions are grounded in the first-person-singular perspective—precisely because Mailer’s fictions do not construct worlds out of a comfortable, objectivist epistemological realism.}} So first-person-singular narration is as close as fiction can get to what an individual person without telepathic skills can really know. Yet our success in the world depends entirely on having confidence in inferences drawn about other minds, and to develop this confidence we need to develop exactly the sort of imagination found in a convincing social novel. But in ''The Castle in the Forest'', Mailer’s narrator is a demon from hell who takes pride in his work; the associative connection Mailer develops at length does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that all human knowing is damned, but we are privy, as it were, to the intrusions of devils much, much more than we are, in Mailer’s fictional rendition, to the mind-intrusions of angels.

What are we to make of a carefully wrought fictional scene in which the Hitlers, before young Adi even comes into the world, adventure past ordinary naughty sex into pedal-to-the-metal analingus? In foregrounding sex acts of this sort in a book purportedly about radical evil, Mailer risks being discussed in terms of radical eccentricity.<ref>Rosenbaum, Ron. “The Last Temptation of Norman Mailer: What Will He Make of ‘Hitler’s
Chappaquiddick’?” Slate, posted March 6, 2007, http://www.slate.com/id/2161302/ accessed
1 August 2008.</ref> Or, one could say that approaching radical evil through sexual obscenity is artistically obscene. However we put it, the novel intentionally jars the reader just as much as ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983), and the central narrative device of ''that'' novel was an act of fellatio between two ghosts in a tomb. Here is the sex act between Alois and Klara that Mailer’s young Hitler witnesses:

We may remember that the last time we saw Alois, he was burying his nose and lips in Klara’s vulva, his tongue as long and demonic as a devil’s phallus. (Be it said: we are not without our contributions to these arts). Alois was certainly being aided by us. Never before had he given himself so completely to this exercise, and quickly he had become good at it, and so quickly that no explanation is possible unless we are given credit as well. (Which is why we speak of the Evil One when joining in the act—we do have the power to pass these lubricious gifts to men and women even when we are not attempting to convert them into clients).(98)

What shall we make of this? One possible response will be to link Mailer’s use of the Holocaust with that of Sylvia Plath.<ref>
Gubar, Susan. “Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contem- poraries.” The Yale Journal of Criticism 14.1 ~Spring 2001!: 191–215.</ref> One could say each author uses the pain of others to provide historical ballast to pain that is really individual. It would be the height of egotism to use the deaths of six million in order to hide the idiosyncrasy of one’s pain or the eccentricity of one’s ideas.

Mailer’s Hitler novel recapitulates his karmic unified-field theory of life in a number of ways. He consistently presented himself as an author with an important vision, one worthy of “the mind of Joyce” or Melville, since the mid-1950s, and critics debated whether he ever wrote his ''Ulysses'' or ''Moby- Dick''. Mailer’s personal ambition, however, was never in question.

The cosmological vision has been reiterated in all of Mailer’s major works, including ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983), ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991), and ''The Gospel acccording to the Son'' (1997).<ref>
Lennon, J. Michael. “Mailer’s Cosmology.” Modern Language Studies, 12:3 ~Summer 1982!: 18–29.</ref> In each of these novel’s (if we allow for ''The Executioner’s Song'' as a “nonfiction novel”), the struggle between divine forces explains the relation between apparently insignificant actors in ways that factor out what Mailer calls “the Absurd.” The divinity potential of quotidian existence is the binding material in Mailer’s cosmos, with “divinity” meaning extraordinary, magical, and foundational. The experience of the divine overlaps with the extraordinary in the manner of aesthetic wonder, and this commonality allows Mailer to find God in the aesthetic aspects of sexual experience, but the divine must be more than ''merely'' extraordinary.The experience of divinity, which some people achieve and many do not, transcends ordinary experience, meaning that, in Mailer’s Romantic articulation, there is a hierarchy of knowing, and that only some (heroic) persons are able to glimpse the magical foundations of being. Such a vision requires huge risks, which explains why many would prefer not to see what Mailer’s heroic seers may encounter, and those who take such risks are not necessarily good people.

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

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

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
* {{cite journal |last=Adamowski |first=T. H. |title=Demoralizing Liberalism: Lionel Trilling, Leslie Fiedler, and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=University of Toronto Quarterly |volume=75 |issue=3 |date=Summer 2006 |pages=883–904 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Bosman |first=Julie |date=December 6, 2006 |title=Literature: Do Novels Really Need Bibliographies? |url=http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061208122042/http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-date=December 8, 2006 |work=International Herald Tribune |location= |access-date=2020-09-10 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Chakrabarty |first=Dipesh |date=2007 |title=Provincializing Europe:Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference |url= |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} New edition with a new preface by the author.
* {{cite journal |last=Gubar |first=Susan |title=Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contemporaries |url= |journal=The Yale Journal of Criticism |volume=14 |issue=1 |date=Spring 2001 |pages=191–215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Lennon|first=J. Micheal|title=Mailers Cosmology |url= |journal=Modern Language Studies |volume=12 |issue=3|date=Summer 1982 |pages=18-29 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
*
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1983 |title=Ancient Evenings |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman |authormask=1 |date=1948 |title=The Naked and the Dead |url= |location=New York |publisher=Rinehart |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman| authormask=1 |date=2003 |title= Why Are We at War |url= |location= New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McCann |first=Sean |title=The Imperiled Republic:Norman Mailer and the poetics of Anti-Liberalism |url= |journal=English Literary History|volume=67 |issue=1|date=Fall 2016 |pages=293-336 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McDonald |first=Brian |title=Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s The Gospel according to the Son |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2006 |pages=78-90 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rorty |first=Richard |date=1989 |title=Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity |url= |location=New York |publisher=Cambridge UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Taylor |first=A.J.P |date=1996 |title=The Origins of the Second World War |url= |location=New York |publisher=Touchstone |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
. . .
{{Refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Their Humor Annoyed Him}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in The Castle in the Forest

2020-09-22T18:03:54Z

JPerkins: added body and edited parentheses

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in ''The Castle in the Forest''}}
{{Working}}
{{MR12}}
{{Byline|last=Whalen-Bridge|first=John|abstract=Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. Mailer’s Hitler novel recapitulates his karmic unified-field theory of life in a number of ways. We cannot make sense of the last two decades of Mailer’s writing career without paying attention to the ''Castle''’s cavalier wit, which is, at its heart, almost invariably alone.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08whal}}
{{quote|“Himmler subscribed to the theory that the best human possibilities lie close to the worst.”}}

{{dc|dc=T|here is a joke about attorneys}} that goes like this: lots of people were on a boat, which sank in shark-infested waters. It was horrible. The sharks were tearing all the passengers to pieces as they tried to make it to shore. All the passengers were dying. Except one passenger, who was an attorney. He swam right to the shore. As he was shaking himself off, the bewildered people on the beach asked him, “How come the sharks did not eat you?” He said: “Professional courtesy, I suppose.” We don’t like attorneys, such a joke conveys, because they are not like us. They are like sharks, and we are like people. We laugh at the joke, if we do, to commune in our fantasy-rejection of lawyerly cruelty. But Mailer’s last novel, ''The Castle in the Forest'', is organized around a very different sort of humor. Instead of laughing at lawyers to confirm our fantasy that we ourselves are not sharks, Mailer shocks readers, methodically and skillfully, with the knowledge that they are intimately involved with so much of what they—we, I should say—resoundingly reject. The undertow of laughter in this novel won’t necessarily drag you out to sea, but it will make you ask if you share qualities with what is being held up for laughter and judgment.

Mailer’s narrator in ''The Castle in the Forest'' speaks with courtesy and intelligence.{{efn|Both Steven Poole in his ''New Statesman'' review, “[https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2007/02/norman-mailer-hitler-novel Sympathy for the Devil]” (19 February 2007) and John Freeman in his ''Independent'' review “[https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/sympathy-for-the-devil-norman-mailer-on-his-satanic-new-novel-434647.html Sympathy for the Devil: Norman Mailer on His Satanic New Novel]” (2 February 2007) connect Mailer’s novel and the Rolling Stones’ song in their titles. The Jagger/Richards song, which first appeared on the 1968 album ''Beggers Banquet'', is a dramatic monologue in which Lucifer brags about his achievements, insists on commonalities between himself and his listeners, and demands courtesy if met: he is a “man of wealth and taste,” after all. All criminals are cops, all sinners are saints, and we all killed the Kennedys.}} He calls himself “Dieter” (though it is not clear what he means to “deter”), and he has been a witness to the formation of Adolf Hitler. Dieter explains to the reader that he has been a functionary in the Third Reich, but he has been—long before he came to work for Himmler—part of the Devil’s bureaucracy, with young “Adi” as his most important case. In this way, Mailer manages to bring together the bureaucratic “banality” of evil with the attractions and powers of evil that the word banality cannot subsume.

Mailer’s final novel (2007) is a concatenation of aesthetic shocks that tells of the formation of Adolf Hitler’s character, beginning with the incestuous influences of his grandfather (about the identity of whom there has been much historical speculation), and continuing through his schooling. Ron Rosenbaum’s ''Explaining Hitler'' can fruitfully be read as a companion-text to Mailer’s novel; its central question is “When and how did Hitler become Hitler?” Mailer’s novel affirms the idea that Hitler developed sociopathic tendencies by his early teens and that these were the foundation for the subsequent obsession with eliminationist anti-Semitism that would come later—but this evolution in Hitler’s darkness is not central to Mailer’s novel. Mailer builds a Hitler to explain a person attracted to murder and deceit, but anti-Semitism is not the driving force of the life Mailer imagines. Mailer does not at all exclude the idea that everything in the novel is tuned toward the Holocaust. The title “The Castle in the Forest,” Dieter tells readers in the final pages, is the translation of a death camp called “''Schlossimwald''” by those inmates who would not, even in the face of ultimate pain and evil, surrender their sense of irony.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=465}} That irony would remain a prized possession under such circumstances will shock some readers, since the phenomena of Hitler and the Holocaust are for many the very limit of irony. In the Rortyean, postmodern, and thoroughly ironic world in which we live, the Holocaust cannot be reduced to a contingent phenomena whose meaning is entirely dependent upon the subject position of the perceiver. Such a way of thinking will earn a comparison with Holocaust deniers. Mailer not only concludes with an homage to ironic camp inmates but also has Dieter-the-demon tell us that the Devil (whom he calls “the Maestro”) is a connoisseur of irony: “All this was uttered by the Maestro with characteristic irony. We never know how serious he might be when he speaks to our mind’s ear. (His voice is a cornucopia of humors.)”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=78}} Mailer might even be describing himself in this passage.

A ''New York Times'' article paused to note that a number of recent novels had the odd feature of including bibliographies. The bibliography of ''The Castle in the Forest'' is rich with entries on bee-keeping. Readers of the novel know it is a richly over-determined metaphor, combining elements of mod- ulated brutality and great technical skill. Bee-keeping is perhaps the central metaphor of the novel, and Mailer’s bibliography lists half-a-dozen or so specialist books on the subject. Bee-keeping signifies social order, but order as understood from an awful height, that of humans looking down on potentially profitable insects, or that of God looking down on mischievous creation. The bees themselves are ruthless at maintaining order, and they eliminate all threats to the hive without hesitation. Mailer’s Alois Hitler is presented as a dedicated bee-keeper, and the narrator Dieter—while per- haps disingenuously or even seductively warning readers not to make too much of such events!—presents several scenes in which hives are gassed or burned. Readers might wonder how exactly they could ever make “too much” of such a parallel.

As important as bee-keeping is to Mailer’s larger narrative loops, it competes in the reader’s imagination with a theme that is given equal air-time but which etches the memory more ruthlessly moment for moment and image for image: transgressive sex. Mailer stays true to his fascination with the idea that God and the Devil partake in human lives through dreams and sex acts. The reader must consider a Freudian primal scene in which young Adolf witnesses Alois and Klara in the sixty-nine position, and witnessing the fictional event makes the reader equal, in some imaginative sense, to demons like Dieter who enter minds and bodies in the most intimate situations imaginable.

Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. By “epistemological realism,” I mean that we can only experience our own minds directly, unless we have supernormal pow- ers, and furthermore we can only draw inferences about other minds.{{efn|I am not using “epistemological realism” in the standard way, which refers specifically to the form of objectivism in which objects exist independently of one’s own mind in support of a correspondence theory of truth. Such objects would then, presumably, be available for apprehension by subjects from various perspectives, ameliorating the ways in which contemporary, post-Nietzschean perspectivism subverts assertions about an objective world. Mailer’s attraction to what I’m calling “epistemological realism,” on the other hand, finds ways of conflating first- and third-person perspectives—such as by resorting to the epistolary novel in the omega manuscript of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' to ensure that all perceptions are grounded in the first-person-singular perspective—precisely because Mailer’s fictions do not construct worlds out of a comfortable, objectivist epistemological realism.}} So first-person-singular narration is as close as fiction can get to what an individual person without telepathic skills can really know. Yet our success in the world depends entirely on having confidence in inferences drawn about other minds, and to develop this confidence we need to develop exactly the sort of imagination found in a convincing social novel. But in ''The Castle in the Forest'', Mailer’s narrator is a demon from hell who takes pride in his work; the associative connection Mailer develops at length does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that all human knowing is damned, but we are privy, as it were, to the intrusions of devils much, much more than we are, in Mailer’s fictional rendition, to the mind-intrusions of angels.

What are we to make of a carefully wrought fictional scene in which the Hitlers, before young Adi even comes into the world, adventure past ordinary naughty sex into pedal-to-the-metal analingus? In foregrounding sex acts of this sort in a book purportedly about radical evil, Mailer risks being discussed in terms of radical eccentricity.<ref>Rosenbaum, Ron. “The Last Temptation of Norman Mailer: What Will He Make of ‘Hitler’s
Chappaquiddick’?” Slate, posted March 6, 2007, http://www.slate.com/id/2161302/ accessed
1 August 2008.</ref> Or, one could say that approaching radical evil through sexual obscenity is artistically obscene. However we put it, the novel intentionally jars the reader just as much as ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983), and the central narrative device of ''that'' novel was an act of fellatio between two ghosts in a tomb. Here is the sex act between Alois and Klara that Mailer’s young Hitler witnesses:

We may remember that the last time we saw Alois, he was burying his nose and lips in Klara’s vulva, his tongue as long and demonic as a devil’s phallus. (Be it said: we are not without our contributions to these arts). Alois was certainly being aided by us. Never before had he given himself so completely to this exercise, and quickly he had become good at it, and so quickly that no explanation is possible unless we are given credit as well. (Which is why we speak of the Evil One when joining in the act—we do have the power to pass these lubricious gifts to men and women even when we are not attempting to convert them into clients).(98)

What shall we make of this? One possible response will be to link Mailer’s use of the Holocaust with that of Sylvia Plath.<ref>
Gubar, Susan. “Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contem- poraries.” The Yale Journal of Criticism 14.1 ~Spring 2001!: 191–215.</ref> One could say each author uses the pain of others to provide historical ballast to pain that is really individual. It would be the height of egotism to use the deaths of six million in order to hide the idiosyncrasy of one’s pain or the eccentricity of one’s ideas.

Mailer’s Hitler novel recapitulates his karmic unified-field theory of life in a number of ways. He consistently presented himself as an author with an important vision, one worthy of “the mind of Joyce” or Melville, since the mid-1950s, and critics debated whether he ever wrote his ''Ulysses'' or ''Moby- Dick''. Mailer’s personal ambition, however, was never in question.

The cosmological vision has been reiterated in all of Mailer’s major works, including ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983), ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991), and ''The Gospel acccording to the Son'' (1997).<ref>
Lennon, J. Michael. “Mailer’s Cosmology.” Modern Language Studies, 12:3 ~Summer 1982!: 18–29.</ref> In each of these novel’s (if we allow for ''The Executioner’s Song'' as a “nonfiction novel”), the struggle between divine forces explains the relation between apparently insignificant actors in ways that factor out what Mailer calls “the Absurd.” The divinity potential of quotidian existence is the binding material in Mailer’s cosmos, with “divinity” meaning extraordinary, magical, and foundational. The experience of the divine overlaps with the extraordinary in the manner of aesthetic wonder, and this commonality allows Mailer to find God in the aesthetic aspects of sexual experience, but the divine must be more than ''merely'' extraordinary.

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

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

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
* {{cite journal |last=Adamowski |first=T. H. |title=Demoralizing Liberalism: Lionel Trilling, Leslie Fiedler, and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=University of Toronto Quarterly |volume=75 |issue=3 |date=Summer 2006 |pages=883–904 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Bosman |first=Julie |date=December 6, 2006 |title=Literature: Do Novels Really Need Bibliographies? |url=http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061208122042/http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-date=December 8, 2006 |work=International Herald Tribune |location= |access-date=2020-09-10 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Chakrabarty |first=Dipesh |date=2007 |title=Provincializing Europe:Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference |url= |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} New edition with a new preface by the author.
* {{cite journal |last=Gubar |first=Susan |title=Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contemporaries |url= |journal=The Yale Journal of Criticism |volume=14 |issue=1 |date=Spring 2001 |pages=191–215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Lennon|first=J. Micheal|title=Mailers Cosmology |url= |journal=Modern Language Studies |volume=12 |issue=3|date=Summer 1982 |pages=18-29 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
*
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1983 |title=Ancient Evenings |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman |authormask=1 |date=1948 |title=The Naked and the Dead |url= |location=New York |publisher=Rinehart |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman| authormask=1 |date=2003 |title= Why Are We at War |url= |location= New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McCann |first=Sean |title=The Imperiled Republic:Norman Mailer and the poetics of Anti-Liberalism |url= |journal=English Literary History|volume=67 |issue=1|date=Fall 2016 |pages=293-336 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McDonald |first=Brian |title=Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s The Gospel according to the Son |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2006 |pages=78-90 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rorty |first=Richard |date=1989 |title=Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity |url= |location=New York |publisher=Cambridge UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Taylor |first=A.J.P |date=1996 |title=The Origins of the Second World War |url= |location=New York |publisher=Touchstone |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
. . .
{{Refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Their Humor Annoyed Him}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in The Castle in the Forest

2020-09-22T17:56:50Z

JPerkins: added italics and body

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in ''The Castle in the Forest''}}
{{Working}}
{{MR12}}
{{Byline|last=Whalen-Bridge|first=John|abstract=Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. Mailer’s Hitler novel recapitulates his karmic unified-field theory of life in a number of ways. We cannot make sense of the last two decades of Mailer’s writing career without paying attention to the ''Castle''’s cavalier wit, which is, at its heart, almost invariably alone.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08whal}}
{{quote|“Himmler subscribed to the theory that the best human possibilities lie close to the worst.”}}

{{dc|dc=T|here is a joke about attorneys}} that goes like this: lots of people were on a boat, which sank in shark-infested waters. It was horrible. The sharks were tearing all the passengers to pieces as they tried to make it to shore. All the passengers were dying. Except one passenger, who was an attorney. He swam right to the shore. As he was shaking himself off, the bewildered people on the beach asked him, “How come the sharks did not eat you?” He said: “Professional courtesy, I suppose.” We don’t like attorneys, such a joke conveys, because they are not like us. They are like sharks, and we are like people. We laugh at the joke, if we do, to commune in our fantasy-rejection of lawyerly cruelty. But Mailer’s last novel, ''The Castle in the Forest'', is organized around a very different sort of humor. Instead of laughing at lawyers to confirm our fantasy that we ourselves are not sharks, Mailer shocks readers, methodically and skillfully, with the knowledge that they are intimately involved with so much of what they—we, I should say—resoundingly reject. The undertow of laughter in this novel won’t necessarily drag you out to sea, but it will make you ask if you share qualities with what is being held up for laughter and judgment.

Mailer’s narrator in ''The Castle in the Forest'' speaks with courtesy and intelligence.{{efn|Both Steven Poole in his ''New Statesman'' review, “[https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2007/02/norman-mailer-hitler-novel Sympathy for the Devil]” (19 February 2007) and John Freeman in his ''Independent'' review “[https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/sympathy-for-the-devil-norman-mailer-on-his-satanic-new-novel-434647.html Sympathy for the Devil: Norman Mailer on His Satanic New Novel]” (2 February 2007) connect Mailer’s novel and the Rolling Stones’ song in their titles. The Jagger/Richards song, which first appeared on the 1968 album ''Beggers Banquet'', is a dramatic monologue in which Lucifer brags about his achievements, insists on commonalities between himself and his listeners, and demands courtesy if met: he is a “man of wealth and taste,” after all. All criminals are cops, all sinners are saints, and we all killed the Kennedys.}} He calls himself “Dieter” (though it is not clear what he means to “deter”), and he has been a witness to the formation of Adolf Hitler. Dieter explains to the reader that he has been a functionary in the Third Reich, but he has been—long before he came to work for Himmler—part of the Devil’s bureaucracy, with young “Adi” as his most important case. In this way, Mailer manages to bring together the bureaucratic “banality” of evil with the attractions and powers of evil that the word banality cannot subsume.

Mailer’s final novel (2007) is a concatenation of aesthetic shocks that tells of the formation of Adolf Hitler’s character, beginning with the incestuous influences of his grandfather (about the identity of whom there has been much historical speculation), and continuing through his schooling. Ron Rosenbaum’s ''Explaining Hitler'' can fruitfully be read as a companion-text to Mailer’s novel; its central question is “When and how did Hitler become Hitler?” Mailer’s novel affirms the idea that Hitler developed sociopathic tendencies by his early teens and that these were the foundation for the subsequent obsession with eliminationist anti-Semitism that would come later—but this evolution in Hitler’s darkness is not central to Mailer’s novel. Mailer builds a Hitler to explain a person attracted to murder and deceit, but anti-Semitism is not the driving force of the life Mailer imagines. Mailer does not at all exclude the idea that everything in the novel is tuned toward the Holocaust. The title “The Castle in the Forest,” Dieter tells readers in the final pages, is the translation of a death camp called “''Schlossimwald''” by those inmates who would not, even in the face of ultimate pain and evil, surrender their sense of irony.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=465}} That irony would remain a prized possession under such circumstances will shock some readers, since the phenomena of Hitler and the Holocaust are for many the very limit of irony. In the Rortyean, postmodern, and thoroughly ironic world in which we live, the Holocaust cannot be reduced to a contingent phenomena whose meaning is entirely dependent upon the subject position of the perceiver. Such a way of thinking will earn a comparison with Holocaust deniers. Mailer not only concludes with an homage to ironic camp inmates but also has Dieter-the-demon tell us that the Devil (whom he calls “the Maestro”) is a connoisseur of irony: “All this was uttered by the Maestro with characteristic irony. We never know how serious he might be when he speaks to our mind’s ear. (His voice is a cornucopia of humors.)”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=78}} Mailer might even be describing himself in this passage.

A ''New York Times'' article paused to note that a number of recent novels had the odd feature of including bibliographies. The bibliography of ''The Castle in the Forest'' is rich with entries on bee-keeping. Readers of the novel know it is a richly over-determined metaphor, combining elements of mod- ulated brutality and great technical skill. Bee-keeping is perhaps the central metaphor of the novel, and Mailer’s bibliography lists half-a-dozen or so specialist books on the subject. Bee-keeping signifies social order, but order as understood from an awful height, that of humans looking down on potentially profitable insects, or that of God looking down on mischievous creation. The bees themselves are ruthless at maintaining order, and they eliminate all threats to the hive without hesitation. Mailer’s Alois Hitler is presented as a dedicated bee-keeper, and the narrator Dieter—while per- haps disingenuously or even seductively warning readers not to make too much of such events!—presents several scenes in which hives are gassed or burned. Readers might wonder how exactly they could ever make “too much” of such a parallel.

As important as bee-keeping is to Mailer’s larger narrative loops, it competes in the reader’s imagination with a theme that is given equal air-time but which etches the memory more ruthlessly moment for moment and image for image: transgressive sex. Mailer stays true to his fascination with the idea that God and the Devil partake in human lives through dreams and sex acts. The reader must consider a Freudian primal scene in which young Adolf witnesses Alois and Klara in the sixty-nine position, and witnessing the fictional event makes the reader equal, in some imaginative sense, to demons like Dieter who enter minds and bodies in the most intimate situations imaginable.

Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. By “epistemological realism,” I mean that we can only experience our own minds directly, unless we have supernormal pow- ers, and furthermore we can only draw inferences about other minds.{{efn|I am not using “epistemological realism” in the standard way, which refers specifically to the form of objectivism in which objects exist independently of one’s own mind in support of a correspondence theory of truth. Such objects would then, presumably, be available for apprehension by subjects from various perspectives, ameliorating the ways in which contemporary, post-Nietzschean perspectivism subverts assertions about an objective world. Mailer’s attraction to what I’m calling “epistemological realism,” on the other hand, finds ways of conflating first- and third-person perspectives—such as by resorting to the epistolary novel in the omega manuscript of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' to ensure that all perceptions are grounded in the first-person-singular perspective—precisely because Mailer’s fictions do not construct worlds out of a comfortable, objectivist epistemological realism.}} So first-person-singular narration is as close as fiction can get to what an individual person without telepathic skills can really know. Yet our success in the world depends entirely on having confidence in inferences drawn about other minds, and to develop this confidence we need to develop exactly the sort of imagination found in a convincing social novel. But in ''The Castle in the Forest'', Mailer’s narrator is a demon from hell who takes pride in his work; the associative connection Mailer develops at length does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that all human knowing is damned, but we are privy, as it were, to the intrusions of devils much, much more than we are, in Mailer’s fictional rendition, to the mind-intrusions of angels.

What are we to make of a carefully wrought fictional scene in which the Hitlers, before young Adi even comes into the world, adventure past ordinary naughty sex into pedal-to-the-metal analingus? In foregrounding sex acts of this sort in a book purportedly about radical evil, Mailer risks being discussed in terms of radical eccentricity.<ref>Rosenbaum, Ron. “The Last Temptation of Norman Mailer: What Will He Make of ‘Hitler’s
Chappaquiddick’?” Slate, posted March 6, 2007, http://www.slate.com/id/2161302/ accessed
1 August 2008.</ref> Or, one could say that approaching radical evil through sexual obscenity is artistically obscene. However we put it, the novel intentionally jars the reader just as much as ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983), and the central narrative device of ''that'' novel was an act of fellatio between two ghosts in a tomb. Here is the sex act between Alois and Klara that Mailer’s young Hitler witnesses:

We may remember that the last time we saw Alois, he was burying his nose and lips in Klara’s vulva, his tongue as long and demonic as a devil’s phallus. (Be it said: we are not without our contributions to these arts). Alois was certainly being aided by us. Never before had he given himself so completely to this exercise, and quickly he had become good at it, and so quickly that no explanation is possible unless we are given credit as well. (Which is why we speak of the Evil One when joining in the act—we do have the power to pass these lubricious gifts to men and women even when we are not attempting to convert them into clients).(98)

What shall we make of this? One possible response will be to link Mailer’s use of the Holocaust with that of Sylvia Plath.<ref>
Gubar, Susan. “Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contem- poraries.” The Yale Journal of Criticism 14.1 ~Spring 2001!: 191–215.</ref> One could say each author uses the pain of others to provide historical ballast to pain that is really individual. It would be the height of egotism to use the deaths of six million in order to hide the idiosyncrasy of one’s pain or the eccentricity of one’s ideas.

Mailer’s Hitler novel recapitulates his karmic unified-field theory of life in a number of ways. He consistently presented himself as an author with an important vision, one worthy of “the mind of Joyce” or Melville, since the mid-1950s, and critics debated whether he ever wrote his ''Ulysses'' or ''Moby- Dick''. Mailer’s personal ambition, however, was never in question.

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

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

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
* {{cite journal |last=Adamowski |first=T. H. |title=Demoralizing Liberalism: Lionel Trilling, Leslie Fiedler, and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=University of Toronto Quarterly |volume=75 |issue=3 |date=Summer 2006 |pages=883–904 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Bosman |first=Julie |date=December 6, 2006 |title=Literature: Do Novels Really Need Bibliographies? |url=http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061208122042/http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-date=December 8, 2006 |work=International Herald Tribune |location= |access-date=2020-09-10 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Chakrabarty |first=Dipesh |date=2007 |title=Provincializing Europe:Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference |url= |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} New edition with a new preface by the author.
* {{cite journal |last=Gubar |first=Susan |title=Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contemporaries |url= |journal=The Yale Journal of Criticism |volume=14 |issue=1 |date=Spring 2001 |pages=191–215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Lennon|first=J. Micheal|title=Mailers Cosmology |url= |journal=Modern Language Studies |volume=12 |issue=3|date=Summer 1982 |pages=18-29 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
*
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1983 |title=Ancient Evenings |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman |authormask=1 |date=1948 |title=The Naked and the Dead |url= |location=New York |publisher=Rinehart |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman| authormask=1 |date=2003 |title= Why Are We at War |url= |location= New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McCann |first=Sean |title=The Imperiled Republic:Norman Mailer and the poetics of Anti-Liberalism |url= |journal=English Literary History|volume=67 |issue=1|date=Fall 2016 |pages=293-336 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McDonald |first=Brian |title=Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s The Gospel according to the Son |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2006 |pages=78-90 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rorty |first=Richard |date=1989 |title=Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity |url= |location=New York |publisher=Cambridge UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Taylor |first=A.J.P |date=1996 |title=The Origins of the Second World War |url= |location=New York |publisher=Touchstone |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
. . .
{{Refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Their Humor Annoyed Him}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in The Castle in the Forest

2020-09-22T17:51:29Z

JPerkins: changed ref for ref three

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in ''The Castle in the Forest''}}
{{Working}}
{{MR12}}
{{Byline|last=Whalen-Bridge|first=John|abstract=Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. Mailer’s Hitler novel recapitulates his karmic unified-field theory of life in a number of ways. We cannot make sense of the last two decades of Mailer’s writing career without paying attention to the ''Castle''’s cavalier wit, which is, at its heart, almost invariably alone.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08whal}}
{{quote|“Himmler subscribed to the theory that the best human possibilities lie close to the worst.”}}

{{dc|dc=T|here is a joke about attorneys}} that goes like this: lots of people were on a boat, which sank in shark-infested waters. It was horrible. The sharks were tearing all the passengers to pieces as they tried to make it to shore. All the passengers were dying. Except one passenger, who was an attorney. He swam right to the shore. As he was shaking himself off, the bewildered people on the beach asked him, “How come the sharks did not eat you?” He said: “Professional courtesy, I suppose.” We don’t like attorneys, such a joke conveys, because they are not like us. They are like sharks, and we are like people. We laugh at the joke, if we do, to commune in our fantasy-rejection of lawyerly cruelty. But Mailer’s last novel, ''The Castle in the Forest'', is organized around a very different sort of humor. Instead of laughing at lawyers to confirm our fantasy that we ourselves are not sharks, Mailer shocks readers, methodically and skillfully, with the knowledge that they are intimately involved with so much of what they—we, I should say—resoundingly reject. The undertow of laughter in this novel won’t necessarily drag you out to sea, but it will make you ask if you share qualities with what is being held up for laughter and judgment.

Mailer’s narrator in ''The Castle in the Forest'' speaks with courtesy and intelligence.{{efn|Both Steven Poole in his ''New Statesman'' review, “[https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2007/02/norman-mailer-hitler-novel Sympathy for the Devil]” (19 February 2007) and John Freeman in his ''Independent'' review “[https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/sympathy-for-the-devil-norman-mailer-on-his-satanic-new-novel-434647.html Sympathy for the Devil: Norman Mailer on His Satanic New Novel]” (2 February 2007) connect Mailer’s novel and the Rolling Stones’ song in their titles. The Jagger/Richards song, which first appeared on the 1968 album ''Beggers Banquet'', is a dramatic monologue in which Lucifer brags about his achievements, insists on commonalities between himself and his listeners, and demands courtesy if met: he is a “man of wealth and taste,” after all. All criminals are cops, all sinners are saints, and we all killed the Kennedys.}} He calls himself “Dieter” (though it is not clear what he means to “deter”), and he has been a witness to the formation of Adolf Hitler. Dieter explains to the reader that he has been a functionary in the Third Reich, but he has been—long before he came to work for Himmler—part of the Devil’s bureaucracy, with young “Adi” as his most important case. In this way, Mailer manages to bring together the bureaucratic “banality” of evil with the attractions and powers of evil that the word banality cannot subsume.

Mailer’s final novel (2007) is a concatenation of aesthetic shocks that tells of the formation of Adolf Hitler’s character, beginning with the incestuous influences of his grandfather (about the identity of whom there has been much historical speculation), and continuing through his schooling. Ron Rosenbaum’s ''Explaining Hitler'' can fruitfully be read as a companion-text to Mailer’s novel; its central question is “When and how did Hitler become Hitler?” Mailer’s novel affirms the idea that Hitler developed sociopathic tendencies by his early teens and that these were the foundation for the subsequent obsession with eliminationist anti-Semitism that would come later—but this evolution in Hitler’s darkness is not central to Mailer’s novel. Mailer builds a Hitler to explain a person attracted to murder and deceit, but anti-Semitism is not the driving force of the life Mailer imagines. Mailer does not at all exclude the idea that everything in the novel is tuned toward the Holocaust. The title “The Castle in the Forest,” Dieter tells readers in the final pages, is the translation of a death camp called “''Schlossimwald''” by those inmates who would not, even in the face of ultimate pain and evil, surrender their sense of irony.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=465}} That irony would remain a prized possession under such circumstances will shock some readers, since the phenomena of Hitler and the Holocaust are for many the very limit of irony. In the Rortyean, postmodern, and thoroughly ironic world in which we live, the Holocaust cannot be reduced to a contingent phenomena whose meaning is entirely dependent upon the subject position of the perceiver. Such a way of thinking will earn a comparison with Holocaust deniers. Mailer not only concludes with an homage to ironic camp inmates but also has Dieter-the-demon tell us that the Devil (whom he calls “the Maestro”) is a connoisseur of irony: “All this was uttered by the Maestro with characteristic irony. We never know how serious he might be when he speaks to our mind’s ear. (His voice is a cornucopia of humors.)”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=78}} Mailer might even be describing himself in this passage.

A ''New York Times'' article paused to note that a number of recent novels had the odd feature of including bibliographies. The bibliography of ''The Castle in the Forest'' is rich with entries on bee-keeping. Readers of the novel know it is a richly over-determined metaphor, combining elements of mod- ulated brutality and great technical skill. Bee-keeping is perhaps the central metaphor of the novel, and Mailer’s bibliography lists half-a-dozen or so specialist books on the subject. Bee-keeping signifies social order, but order as understood from an awful height, that of humans looking down on potentially profitable insects, or that of God looking down on mischievous creation. The bees themselves are ruthless at maintaining order, and they eliminate all threats to the hive without hesitation. Mailer’s Alois Hitler is presented as a dedicated bee-keeper, and the narrator Dieter—while per- haps disingenuously or even seductively warning readers not to make too much of such events!—presents several scenes in which hives are gassed or burned. Readers might wonder how exactly they could ever make “too much” of such a parallel.

As important as bee-keeping is to Mailer’s larger narrative loops, it competes in the reader’s imagination with a theme that is given equal air-time but which etches the memory more ruthlessly moment for moment and image for image: transgressive sex. Mailer stays true to his fascination with the idea that God and the Devil partake in human lives through dreams and sex acts. The reader must consider a Freudian primal scene in which young Adolf witnesses Alois and Klara in the sixty-nine position, and witnessing the fictional event makes the reader equal, in some imaginative sense, to demons like Dieter who enter minds and bodies in the most intimate situations imaginable.

Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. By “epistemological realism,” I mean that we can only experience our own minds directly, unless we have supernormal pow- ers, and furthermore we can only draw inferences about other minds.{{efn|I am not using “epistemological realism” in the standard way, which refers specifically to the form of objectivism in which objects exist independently of one’s own mind in support of a correspondence theory of truth. Such objects would then, presumably, be available for apprehension by subjects from various perspectives, ameliorating the ways in which contemporary, post-Nietzschean perspectivism subverts assertions about an objective world. Mailer’s attraction to what I’m calling “epistemological realism,” on the other hand, finds ways of conflating first- and third-person perspectives—such as by resorting to the epistolary novel in the omega manuscript of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' to ensure that all perceptions are grounded in the first-person-singular perspective—precisely because Mailer’s fictions do not construct worlds out of a comfortable, objectivist epistemological realism.}} So first-person-singular narration is as close as fiction can get to what an individual person without telepathic skills can really know. Yet our success in the world depends entirely on having confidence in inferences drawn about other minds, and to develop this confidence we need to develop exactly the sort of imagination found in a convincing social novel. But in ''The Castle in the Forest'', Mailer’s narrator is a demon from hell who takes pride in his work; the associative connection Mailer develops at length does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that all human knowing is damned, but we are privy, as it were, to the intrusions of devils much, much more than we are, in Mailer’s fictional rendition, to the mind-intrusions of angels.

What are we to make of a carefully wrought fictional scene in which the Hitlers, before young Adi even comes into the world, adventure past ordinary naughty sex into pedal-to-the-metal analingus? In foregrounding sex acts of this sort in a book purportedly about radical evil, Mailer risks being discussed in terms of radical eccentricity.<ref>Rosenbaum, Ron. “The Last Temptation of Norman Mailer: What Will He Make of ‘Hitler’s
Chappaquiddick’?” Slate, posted March 6, 2007, http://www.slate.com/id/2161302/ accessed
1 August 2008.</ref> Or, one could say that approaching radical evil through sexual obscenity is artistically obscene. However we put it, the novel intentionally jars the reader just as much as ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983), and the central narrative device of ''that'' novel was an act of fellatio between two ghosts in a tomb. Here is the sex act between Alois and Klara that Mailer’s young Hitler witnesses:

We may remember that the last time we saw Alois, he was burying his nose and lips in Klara’s vulva, his tongue as long and demonic as a devil’s phallus. (Be it said: we are not without our contributions to these arts). Alois was certainly being aided by us. Never before had he given himself so completely to this exercise, and quickly he had become good at it, and so quickly that no explanation is possible unless we are given credit as well. (Which is why we speak of the Evil One when joining in the act—we do have the power to pass these lubricious gifts to men and women even when we are not attempting to convert them into clients).(98)

What shall we make of this? One possible response will be to link Mailer’s use of the Holocaust with that of Sylvia Plath.<ref>
Gubar, Susan. “Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contem- poraries.” The Yale Journal of Criticism 14.1 ~Spring 2001!: 191–215.</ref> One could say each author uses the pain of others to provide historical ballast to pain that is really individual. It would be the height of egotism to use the deaths of six million in order to hide the idiosyncrasy of one’s pain or the eccentricity of one’s ideas.

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

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

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
* {{cite journal |last=Adamowski |first=T. H. |title=Demoralizing Liberalism: Lionel Trilling, Leslie Fiedler, and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=University of Toronto Quarterly |volume=75 |issue=3 |date=Summer 2006 |pages=883–904 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Bosman |first=Julie |date=December 6, 2006 |title=Literature: Do Novels Really Need Bibliographies? |url=http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061208122042/http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-date=December 8, 2006 |work=International Herald Tribune |location= |access-date=2020-09-10 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Chakrabarty |first=Dipesh |date=2007 |title=Provincializing Europe:Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference |url= |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} New edition with a new preface by the author.
* {{cite journal |last=Gubar |first=Susan |title=Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contemporaries |url= |journal=The Yale Journal of Criticism |volume=14 |issue=1 |date=Spring 2001 |pages=191–215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Lennon|first=J. Micheal|title=Mailers Cosmology |url= |journal=Modern Language Studies |volume=12 |issue=3|date=Summer 1982 |pages=18-29 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
*
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1983 |title=Ancient Evenings |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman |authormask=1 |date=1948 |title=The Naked and the Dead |url= |location=New York |publisher=Rinehart |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman| authormask=1 |date=2003 |title= Why Are We at War |url= |location= New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McCann |first=Sean |title=The Imperiled Republic:Norman Mailer and the poetics of Anti-Liberalism |url= |journal=English Literary History|volume=67 |issue=1|date=Fall 2016 |pages=293-336 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McDonald |first=Brian |title=Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s The Gospel according to the Son |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2006 |pages=78-90 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rorty |first=Richard |date=1989 |title=Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity |url= |location=New York |publisher=Cambridge UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Taylor |first=A.J.P |date=1996 |title=The Origins of the Second World War |url= |location=New York |publisher=Touchstone |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
. . .
{{Refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Their Humor Annoyed Him}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in The Castle in the Forest

2020-09-22T17:48:29Z

JPerkins: added reference and body

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in ''The Castle in the Forest''}}
{{Working}}
{{MR12}}
{{Byline|last=Whalen-Bridge|first=John|abstract=Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. Mailer’s Hitler novel recapitulates his karmic unified-field theory of life in a number of ways. We cannot make sense of the last two decades of Mailer’s writing career without paying attention to the ''Castle''’s cavalier wit, which is, at its heart, almost invariably alone.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08whal}}
{{quote|“Himmler subscribed to the theory that the best human possibilities lie close to the worst.”}}

{{dc|dc=T|here is a joke about attorneys}} that goes like this: lots of people were on a boat, which sank in shark-infested waters. It was horrible. The sharks were tearing all the passengers to pieces as they tried to make it to shore. All the passengers were dying. Except one passenger, who was an attorney. He swam right to the shore. As he was shaking himself off, the bewildered people on the beach asked him, “How come the sharks did not eat you?” He said: “Professional courtesy, I suppose.” We don’t like attorneys, such a joke conveys, because they are not like us. They are like sharks, and we are like people. We laugh at the joke, if we do, to commune in our fantasy-rejection of lawyerly cruelty. But Mailer’s last novel, ''The Castle in the Forest'', is organized around a very different sort of humor. Instead of laughing at lawyers to confirm our fantasy that we ourselves are not sharks, Mailer shocks readers, methodically and skillfully, with the knowledge that they are intimately involved with so much of what they—we, I should say—resoundingly reject. The undertow of laughter in this novel won’t necessarily drag you out to sea, but it will make you ask if you share qualities with what is being held up for laughter and judgment.

Mailer’s narrator in ''The Castle in the Forest'' speaks with courtesy and intelligence.{{efn|Both Steven Poole in his ''New Statesman'' review, “[https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2007/02/norman-mailer-hitler-novel Sympathy for the Devil]” (19 February 2007) and John Freeman in his ''Independent'' review “[https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/sympathy-for-the-devil-norman-mailer-on-his-satanic-new-novel-434647.html Sympathy for the Devil: Norman Mailer on His Satanic New Novel]” (2 February 2007) connect Mailer’s novel and the Rolling Stones’ song in their titles. The Jagger/Richards song, which first appeared on the 1968 album ''Beggers Banquet'', is a dramatic monologue in which Lucifer brags about his achievements, insists on commonalities between himself and his listeners, and demands courtesy if met: he is a “man of wealth and taste,” after all. All criminals are cops, all sinners are saints, and we all killed the Kennedys.}} He calls himself “Dieter” (though it is not clear what he means to “deter”), and he has been a witness to the formation of Adolf Hitler. Dieter explains to the reader that he has been a functionary in the Third Reich, but he has been—long before he came to work for Himmler—part of the Devil’s bureaucracy, with young “Adi” as his most important case. In this way, Mailer manages to bring together the bureaucratic “banality” of evil with the attractions and powers of evil that the word banality cannot subsume.

Mailer’s final novel (2007) is a concatenation of aesthetic shocks that tells of the formation of Adolf Hitler’s character, beginning with the incestuous influences of his grandfather (about the identity of whom there has been much historical speculation), and continuing through his schooling. Ron Rosenbaum’s ''Explaining Hitler'' can fruitfully be read as a companion-text to Mailer’s novel; its central question is “When and how did Hitler become Hitler?” Mailer’s novel affirms the idea that Hitler developed sociopathic tendencies by his early teens and that these were the foundation for the subsequent obsession with eliminationist anti-Semitism that would come later—but this evolution in Hitler’s darkness is not central to Mailer’s novel. Mailer builds a Hitler to explain a person attracted to murder and deceit, but anti-Semitism is not the driving force of the life Mailer imagines. Mailer does not at all exclude the idea that everything in the novel is tuned toward the Holocaust. The title “The Castle in the Forest,” Dieter tells readers in the final pages, is the translation of a death camp called “''Schlossimwald''” by those inmates who would not, even in the face of ultimate pain and evil, surrender their sense of irony.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=465}} That irony would remain a prized possession under such circumstances will shock some readers, since the phenomena of Hitler and the Holocaust are for many the very limit of irony. In the Rortyean, postmodern, and thoroughly ironic world in which we live, the Holocaust cannot be reduced to a contingent phenomena whose meaning is entirely dependent upon the subject position of the perceiver. Such a way of thinking will earn a comparison with Holocaust deniers. Mailer not only concludes with an homage to ironic camp inmates but also has Dieter-the-demon tell us that the Devil (whom he calls “the Maestro”) is a connoisseur of irony: “All this was uttered by the Maestro with characteristic irony. We never know how serious he might be when he speaks to our mind’s ear. (His voice is a cornucopia of humors.)”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=78}} Mailer might even be describing himself in this passage.

A ''New York Times'' article paused to note that a number of recent novels had the odd feature of including bibliographies. The bibliography of ''The Castle in the Forest'' is rich with entries on bee-keeping. Readers of the novel know it is a richly over-determined metaphor, combining elements of mod- ulated brutality and great technical skill. Bee-keeping is perhaps the central metaphor of the novel, and Mailer’s bibliography lists half-a-dozen or so specialist books on the subject. Bee-keeping signifies social order, but order as understood from an awful height, that of humans looking down on potentially profitable insects, or that of God looking down on mischievous creation. The bees themselves are ruthless at maintaining order, and they eliminate all threats to the hive without hesitation. Mailer’s Alois Hitler is presented as a dedicated bee-keeper, and the narrator Dieter—while per- haps disingenuously or even seductively warning readers not to make too much of such events!—presents several scenes in which hives are gassed or burned. Readers might wonder how exactly they could ever make “too much” of such a parallel.

As important as bee-keeping is to Mailer’s larger narrative loops, it competes in the reader’s imagination with a theme that is given equal air-time but which etches the memory more ruthlessly moment for moment and image for image: transgressive sex. Mailer stays true to his fascination with the idea that God and the Devil partake in human lives through dreams and sex acts. The reader must consider a Freudian primal scene in which young Adolf witnesses Alois and Klara in the sixty-nine position, and witnessing the fictional event makes the reader equal, in some imaginative sense, to demons like Dieter who enter minds and bodies in the most intimate situations imaginable.

Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. By “epistemological realism,” I mean that we can only experience our own minds directly, unless we have supernormal pow- ers, and furthermore we can only draw inferences about other minds.{{efn|I am not using “epistemological realism” in the standard way, which refers specifically to the form of objectivism in which objects exist independently of one’s own mind in support of a correspondence theory of truth. Such objects would then, presumably, be available for apprehension by subjects from various perspectives, ameliorating the ways in which contemporary, post-Nietzschean perspectivism subverts assertions about an objective world. Mailer’s attraction to what I’m calling “epistemological realism,” on the other hand, finds ways of conflating first- and third-person perspectives—such as by resorting to the epistolary novel in the omega manuscript of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' to ensure that all perceptions are grounded in the first-person-singular perspective—precisely because Mailer’s fictions do not construct worlds out of a comfortable, objectivist epistemological realism.}} So first-person-singular narration is as close as fiction can get to what an individual person without telepathic skills can really know. Yet our success in the world depends entirely on having confidence in inferences drawn about other minds, and to develop this confidence we need to develop exactly the sort of imagination found in a convincing social novel. But in ''The Castle in the Forest'', Mailer’s narrator is a demon from hell who takes pride in his work; the associative connection Mailer develops at length does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that all human knowing is damned, but we are privy, as it were, to the intrusions of devils much, much more than we are, in Mailer’s fictional rendition, to the mind-intrusions of angels.

What are we to make of a carefully wrought fictional scene in which the Hitlers, before young Adi even comes into the world, adventure past ordinary naughty sex into pedal-to-the-metal analingus? In foregrounding sex acts of this sort in a book purportedly about radical evil, Mailer risks being discussed in terms of radical eccentricity.<ref>The Castle in the Forest. New York: Random House, 2007.</ref> Or, one could say that approaching radical evil through sexual obscenity is artistically obscene. However we put it, the novel intentionally jars the reader just as much as ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983), and the central narrative device of ''that'' novel was an act of fellatio between two ghosts in a tomb. Here is the sex act between Alois and Klara that Mailer’s young Hitler witnesses:

We may remember that the last time we saw Alois, he was burying his nose and lips in Klara’s vulva, his tongue as long and demonic as a devil’s phallus. (Be it said: we are not without our contributions to these arts). Alois was certainly being aided by us. Never before had he given himself so completely to this exercise, and quickly he had become good at it, and so quickly that no explanation is possible unless we are given credit as well. (Which is why we speak of the Evil One when joining in the act—we do have the power to pass these lubricious gifts to men and women even when we are not attempting to convert them into clients).(98)

What shall we make of this? One possible response will be to link Mailer’s use of the Holocaust with that of Sylvia Plath.<ref>
Gubar, Susan. “Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contem- poraries.” The Yale Journal of Criticism 14.1 ~Spring 2001!: 191–215.</ref> One could say each author uses the pain of others to provide historical ballast to pain that is really individual. It would be the height of egotism to use the deaths of six million in order to hide the idiosyncrasy of one’s pain or the eccentricity of one’s ideas.

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

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

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
* {{cite journal |last=Adamowski |first=T. H. |title=Demoralizing Liberalism: Lionel Trilling, Leslie Fiedler, and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=University of Toronto Quarterly |volume=75 |issue=3 |date=Summer 2006 |pages=883–904 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Bosman |first=Julie |date=December 6, 2006 |title=Literature: Do Novels Really Need Bibliographies? |url=http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061208122042/http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-date=December 8, 2006 |work=International Herald Tribune |location= |access-date=2020-09-10 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Chakrabarty |first=Dipesh |date=2007 |title=Provincializing Europe:Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference |url= |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} New edition with a new preface by the author.
* {{cite journal |last=Gubar |first=Susan |title=Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contemporaries |url= |journal=The Yale Journal of Criticism |volume=14 |issue=1 |date=Spring 2001 |pages=191–215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Lennon|first=J. Micheal|title=Mailers Cosmology |url= |journal=Modern Language Studies |volume=12 |issue=3|date=Summer 1982 |pages=18-29 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
*
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1983 |title=Ancient Evenings |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman |authormask=1 |date=1948 |title=The Naked and the Dead |url= |location=New York |publisher=Rinehart |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman| authormask=1 |date=2003 |title= Why Are We at War |url= |location= New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McCann |first=Sean |title=The Imperiled Republic:Norman Mailer and the poetics of Anti-Liberalism |url= |journal=English Literary History|volume=67 |issue=1|date=Fall 2016 |pages=293-336 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McDonald |first=Brian |title=Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s The Gospel according to the Son |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2006 |pages=78-90 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rorty |first=Richard |date=1989 |title=Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity |url= |location=New York |publisher=Cambridge UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Taylor |first=A.J.P |date=1996 |title=The Origins of the Second World War |url= |location=New York |publisher=Touchstone |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
. . .
{{Refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Their Humor Annoyed Him}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in The Castle in the Forest

2020-09-22T17:40:46Z

JPerkins: added body and edited parentheses

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in ''The Castle in the Forest''}}
{{Working}}
{{MR12}}
{{Byline|last=Whalen-Bridge|first=John|abstract=Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. Mailer’s Hitler novel recapitulates his karmic unified-field theory of life in a number of ways. We cannot make sense of the last two decades of Mailer’s writing career without paying attention to the ''Castle''’s cavalier wit, which is, at its heart, almost invariably alone.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08whal}}
{{quote|“Himmler subscribed to the theory that the best human possibilities lie close to the worst.”}}

{{dc|dc=T|here is a joke about attorneys}} that goes like this: lots of people were on a boat, which sank in shark-infested waters. It was horrible. The sharks were tearing all the passengers to pieces as they tried to make it to shore. All the passengers were dying. Except one passenger, who was an attorney. He swam right to the shore. As he was shaking himself off, the bewildered people on the beach asked him, “How come the sharks did not eat you?” He said: “Professional courtesy, I suppose.” We don’t like attorneys, such a joke conveys, because they are not like us. They are like sharks, and we are like people. We laugh at the joke, if we do, to commune in our fantasy-rejection of lawyerly cruelty. But Mailer’s last novel, ''The Castle in the Forest'', is organized around a very different sort of humor. Instead of laughing at lawyers to confirm our fantasy that we ourselves are not sharks, Mailer shocks readers, methodically and skillfully, with the knowledge that they are intimately involved with so much of what they—we, I should say—resoundingly reject. The undertow of laughter in this novel won’t necessarily drag you out to sea, but it will make you ask if you share qualities with what is being held up for laughter and judgment.

Mailer’s narrator in ''The Castle in the Forest'' speaks with courtesy and intelligence.{{efn|Both Steven Poole in his ''New Statesman'' review, “[https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2007/02/norman-mailer-hitler-novel Sympathy for the Devil]” (19 February 2007) and John Freeman in his ''Independent'' review “[https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/sympathy-for-the-devil-norman-mailer-on-his-satanic-new-novel-434647.html Sympathy for the Devil: Norman Mailer on His Satanic New Novel]” (2 February 2007) connect Mailer’s novel and the Rolling Stones’ song in their titles. The Jagger/Richards song, which first appeared on the 1968 album ''Beggers Banquet'', is a dramatic monologue in which Lucifer brags about his achievements, insists on commonalities between himself and his listeners, and demands courtesy if met: he is a “man of wealth and taste,” after all. All criminals are cops, all sinners are saints, and we all killed the Kennedys.}} He calls himself “Dieter” (though it is not clear what he means to “deter”), and he has been a witness to the formation of Adolf Hitler. Dieter explains to the reader that he has been a functionary in the Third Reich, but he has been—long before he came to work for Himmler—part of the Devil’s bureaucracy, with young “Adi” as his most important case. In this way, Mailer manages to bring together the bureaucratic “banality” of evil with the attractions and powers of evil that the word banality cannot subsume.

Mailer’s final novel (2007) is a concatenation of aesthetic shocks that tells of the formation of Adolf Hitler’s character, beginning with the incestuous influences of his grandfather (about the identity of whom there has been much historical speculation), and continuing through his schooling. Ron Rosenbaum’s ''Explaining Hitler'' can fruitfully be read as a companion-text to Mailer’s novel; its central question is “When and how did Hitler become Hitler?” Mailer’s novel affirms the idea that Hitler developed sociopathic tendencies by his early teens and that these were the foundation for the subsequent obsession with eliminationist anti-Semitism that would come later—but this evolution in Hitler’s darkness is not central to Mailer’s novel. Mailer builds a Hitler to explain a person attracted to murder and deceit, but anti-Semitism is not the driving force of the life Mailer imagines. Mailer does not at all exclude the idea that everything in the novel is tuned toward the Holocaust. The title “The Castle in the Forest,” Dieter tells readers in the final pages, is the translation of a death camp called “''Schlossimwald''” by those inmates who would not, even in the face of ultimate pain and evil, surrender their sense of irony.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=465}} That irony would remain a prized possession under such circumstances will shock some readers, since the phenomena of Hitler and the Holocaust are for many the very limit of irony. In the Rortyean, postmodern, and thoroughly ironic world in which we live, the Holocaust cannot be reduced to a contingent phenomena whose meaning is entirely dependent upon the subject position of the perceiver. Such a way of thinking will earn a comparison with Holocaust deniers. Mailer not only concludes with an homage to ironic camp inmates but also has Dieter-the-demon tell us that the Devil (whom he calls “the Maestro”) is a connoisseur of irony: “All this was uttered by the Maestro with characteristic irony. We never know how serious he might be when he speaks to our mind’s ear. (His voice is a cornucopia of humors.)”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=78}} Mailer might even be describing himself in this passage.

A ''New York Times'' article paused to note that a number of recent novels had the odd feature of including bibliographies. The bibliography of ''The Castle in the Forest'' is rich with entries on bee-keeping. Readers of the novel know it is a richly over-determined metaphor, combining elements of mod- ulated brutality and great technical skill. Bee-keeping is perhaps the central metaphor of the novel, and Mailer’s bibliography lists half-a-dozen or so specialist books on the subject. Bee-keeping signifies social order, but order as understood from an awful height, that of humans looking down on potentially profitable insects, or that of God looking down on mischievous creation. The bees themselves are ruthless at maintaining order, and they eliminate all threats to the hive without hesitation. Mailer’s Alois Hitler is presented as a dedicated bee-keeper, and the narrator Dieter—while per- haps disingenuously or even seductively warning readers not to make too much of such events!—presents several scenes in which hives are gassed or burned. Readers might wonder how exactly they could ever make “too much” of such a parallel.

As important as bee-keeping is to Mailer’s larger narrative loops, it competes in the reader’s imagination with a theme that is given equal air-time but which etches the memory more ruthlessly moment for moment and image for image: transgressive sex. Mailer stays true to his fascination with the idea that God and the Devil partake in human lives through dreams and sex acts. The reader must consider a Freudian primal scene in which young Adolf witnesses Alois and Klara in the sixty-nine position, and witnessing the fictional event makes the reader equal, in some imaginative sense, to demons like Dieter who enter minds and bodies in the most intimate situations imaginable.

Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. By “epistemological realism,” I mean that we can only experience our own minds directly, unless we have supernormal pow- ers, and furthermore we can only draw inferences about other minds.{{efn|I am not using “epistemological realism” in the standard way, which refers specifically to the form of objectivism in which objects exist independently of one’s own mind in support of a correspondence theory of truth. Such objects would then, presumably, be available for apprehension by subjects from various perspectives, ameliorating the ways in which contemporary, post-Nietzschean perspectivism subverts assertions about an objective world. Mailer’s attraction to what I’m calling “epistemological realism,” on the other hand, finds ways of conflating first- and third-person perspectives—such as by resorting to the epistolary novel in the omega manuscript of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' to ensure that all perceptions are grounded in the first-person-singular perspective—precisely because Mailer’s fictions do not construct worlds out of a comfortable, objectivist epistemological realism.}} So first-person-singular narration is as close as fiction can get to what an individual person without telepathic skills can really know. Yet our success in the world depends entirely on having confidence in inferences drawn about other minds, and to develop this confidence we need to develop exactly the sort of imagination found in a convincing social novel. But in ''The Castle in the Forest'', Mailer’s narrator is a demon from hell who takes pride in his work; the associative connection Mailer develops at length does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that all human knowing is damned, but we are privy, as it were, to the intrusions of devils much, much more than we are, in Mailer’s fictional rendition, to the mind-intrusions of angels.

What are we to make of a carefully wrought fictional scene in which the Hitlers, before young Adi even comes into the world, adventure past ordinary naughty sex into pedal-to-the-metal analingus? In foregrounding sex acts of this sort in a book purportedly about radical evil, Mailer risks being discussed in terms of radical eccentricity.<ref>The Castle in the Forest. New York: Random House, 2007.</ref> Or, one could say that approaching radical evil through sexual obscenity is artistically obscene. However we put it, the novel intentionally jars the reader just as much as ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983), and the central narrative device of ''that'' novel was an act of fellatio between two ghosts in a tomb. Here is the sex act between Alois and Klara that Mailer’s young Hitler witnesses:

We may remember that the last time we saw Alois, he was burying his nose and lips in Klara’s vulva, his tongue as long and demonic as a devil’s phallus. (Be it said: we are not without our contributions to these arts). Alois was certainly being aided by us. Never before had he given himself so completely to this exercise, and quickly he had become good at it, and so quickly that no explanation is possible unless we are given credit as well. (Which is why we speak of the Evil One when joining in the act—we do have the power to pass these lubricious gifts to men and women even when we are not attempting to convert them into clients).(98)

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

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

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
* {{cite journal |last=Adamowski |first=T. H. |title=Demoralizing Liberalism: Lionel Trilling, Leslie Fiedler, and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=University of Toronto Quarterly |volume=75 |issue=3 |date=Summer 2006 |pages=883–904 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Bosman |first=Julie |date=December 6, 2006 |title=Literature: Do Novels Really Need Bibliographies? |url=http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061208122042/http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-date=December 8, 2006 |work=International Herald Tribune |location= |access-date=2020-09-10 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Chakrabarty |first=Dipesh |date=2007 |title=Provincializing Europe:Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference |url= |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} New edition with a new preface by the author.
* {{cite journal |last=Gubar |first=Susan |title=Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contemporaries |url= |journal=The Yale Journal of Criticism |volume=14 |issue=1 |date=Spring 2001 |pages=191–215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Lennon|first=J. Micheal|title=Mailers Cosmology |url= |journal=Modern Language Studies |volume=12 |issue=3|date=Summer 1982 |pages=18-29 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
*
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1983 |title=Ancient Evenings |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman |authormask=1 |date=1948 |title=The Naked and the Dead |url= |location=New York |publisher=Rinehart |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman| authormask=1 |date=2003 |title= Why Are We at War |url= |location= New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McCann |first=Sean |title=The Imperiled Republic:Norman Mailer and the poetics of Anti-Liberalism |url= |journal=English Literary History|volume=67 |issue=1|date=Fall 2016 |pages=293-336 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McDonald |first=Brian |title=Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s The Gospel according to the Son |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2006 |pages=78-90 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rorty |first=Richard |date=1989 |title=Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity |url= |location=New York |publisher=Cambridge UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Taylor |first=A.J.P |date=1996 |title=The Origins of the Second World War |url= |location=New York |publisher=Touchstone |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
. . .
{{Refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Their Humor Annoyed Him}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in The Castle in the Forest

2020-09-22T17:34:32Z

JPerkins:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in ''The Castle in the Forest''}}
{{Working}}
{{MR12}}
{{Byline|last=Whalen-Bridge|first=John|abstract=Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. Mailer’s Hitler novel recapitulates his karmic unified-field theory of life in a number of ways. We cannot make sense of the last two decades of Mailer’s writing career without paying attention to the ''Castle''’s cavalier wit, which is, at its heart, almost invariably alone.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08whal}}
{{quote|“Himmler subscribed to the theory that the best human possibilities lie close to the worst.”}}

{{dc|dc=T|here is a joke about attorneys}} that goes like this: lots of people were on a boat, which sank in shark-infested waters. It was horrible. The sharks were tearing all the passengers to pieces as they tried to make it to shore. All the passengers were dying. Except one passenger, who was an attorney. He swam right to the shore. As he was shaking himself off, the bewildered people on the beach asked him, “How come the sharks did not eat you?” He said: “Professional courtesy, I suppose.” We don’t like attorneys, such a joke conveys, because they are not like us. They are like sharks, and we are like people. We laugh at the joke, if we do, to commune in our fantasy-rejection of lawyerly cruelty. But Mailer’s last novel, ''The Castle in the Forest'', is organized around a very different sort of humor. Instead of laughing at lawyers to confirm our fantasy that we ourselves are not sharks, Mailer shocks readers, methodically and skillfully, with the knowledge that they are intimately involved with so much of what they—we, I should say—resoundingly reject. The undertow of laughter in this novel won’t necessarily drag you out to sea, but it will make you ask if you share qualities with what is being held up for laughter and judgment.

Mailer’s narrator in ''The Castle in the Forest'' speaks with courtesy and intelligence.{{efn|Both Steven Poole in his ''New Statesman'' review, “[https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2007/02/norman-mailer-hitler-novel Sympathy for the Devil]” (19 February 2007) and John Freeman in his ''Independent'' review “[https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/sympathy-for-the-devil-norman-mailer-on-his-satanic-new-novel-434647.html Sympathy for the Devil: Norman Mailer on His Satanic New Novel]” (2 February 2007) connect Mailer’s novel and the Rolling Stones’ song in their titles. The Jagger/Richards song, which first appeared on the 1968 album ''Beggers Banquet'', is a dramatic monologue in which Lucifer brags about his achievements, insists on commonalities between himself and his listeners, and demands courtesy if met: he is a “man of wealth and taste,” after all. All criminals are cops, all sinners are saints, and we all killed the Kennedys.}} He calls himself “Dieter” (though it is not clear what he means to “deter”), and he has been a witness to the formation of Adolf Hitler. Dieter explains to the reader that he has been a functionary in the Third Reich, but he has been—long before he came to work for Himmler—part of the Devil’s bureaucracy, with young “Adi” as his most important case. In this way, Mailer manages to bring together the bureaucratic “banality” of evil with the attractions and powers of evil that the word banality cannot subsume.

Mailer’s final novel (2007) is a concatenation of aesthetic shocks that tells of the formation of Adolf Hitler’s character, beginning with the incestuous influences of his grandfather (about the identity of whom there has been much historical speculation), and continuing through his schooling. Ron Rosenbaum’s ''Explaining Hitler'' can fruitfully be read as a companion-text to Mailer’s novel; its central question is “When and how did Hitler become Hitler?” Mailer’s novel affirms the idea that Hitler developed sociopathic tendencies by his early teens and that these were the foundation for the subsequent obsession with eliminationist anti-Semitism that would come later—but this evolution in Hitler’s darkness is not central to Mailer’s novel. Mailer builds a Hitler to explain a person attracted to murder and deceit, but anti-Semitism is not the driving force of the life Mailer imagines. Mailer does not at all exclude the idea that everything in the novel is tuned toward the Holocaust. The title “The Castle in the Forest,” Dieter tells readers in the final pages, is the translation of a death camp called “''Schlossimwald''” by those inmates who would not, even in the face of ultimate pain and evil, surrender their sense of irony.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=465}} That irony would remain a prized possession under such circumstances will shock some readers, since the phenomena of Hitler and the Holocaust are for many the very limit of irony. In the Rortyean, postmodern, and thoroughly ironic world in which we live, the Holocaust cannot be reduced to a contingent phenomena whose meaning is entirely dependent upon the subject position of the perceiver. Such a way of thinking will earn a comparison with Holocaust deniers. Mailer not only concludes with an homage to ironic camp inmates but also has Dieter-the-demon tell us that the Devil (whom he calls “the Maestro”) is a connoisseur of irony: “All this was uttered by the Maestro with characteristic irony. We never know how serious he might be when he speaks to our mind’s ear. (His voice is a cornucopia of humors.)”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=78}} Mailer might even be describing himself in this passage.

A ''New York Times'' article paused to note that a number of recent novels had the odd feature of including bibliographies. The bibliography of ''The Castle in the Forest'' is rich with entries on bee-keeping. Readers of the novel know it is a richly over-determined metaphor, combining elements of mod- ulated brutality and great technical skill. Bee-keeping is perhaps the central metaphor of the novel, and Mailer’s bibliography lists half-a-dozen or so specialist books on the subject. Bee-keeping signifies social order, but order as understood from an awful height, that of humans looking down on potentially profitable insects, or that of God looking down on mischievous creation. The bees themselves are ruthless at maintaining order, and they eliminate all threats to the hive without hesitation. Mailer’s Alois Hitler is presented as a dedicated bee-keeper, and the narrator Dieter—while per- haps disingenuously or even seductively warning readers not to make too much of such events!—presents several scenes in which hives are gassed or burned. Readers might wonder how exactly they could ever make “too much” of such a parallel.

As important as bee-keeping is to Mailer’s larger narrative loops, it competes in the reader’s imagination with a theme that is given equal air-time but which etches the memory more ruthlessly moment for moment and image for image: transgressive sex. Mailer stays true to his fascination with the idea that God and the Devil partake in human lives through dreams and sex acts. The reader must consider a Freudian primal scene in which young Adolf witnesses Alois and Klara in the sixty-nine position, and witnessing the fictional event makes the reader equal, in some imaginative sense, to demons like Dieter who enter minds and bodies in the most intimate situations imaginable.

Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. By “epistemological realism,” I mean that we can only experience our own minds directly, unless we have supernormal pow- ers, and furthermore we can only draw inferences about other minds.{{efn|I am not using “epistemological realism” in the standard way, which refers specifically to the form of objectivism in which objects exist independently of one’s own mind in support of a correspondence theory of truth. Such objects would then, presumably, be available for apprehension by subjects from various perspectives, ameliorating the ways in which contemporary, post-Nietzschean perspectivism subverts assertions about an objective world. Mailer’s attraction to what I’m calling “epistemological realism,” on the other hand, finds ways of conflating first- and third-person perspectives—such as by resorting to the epistolary novel in the omega manuscript of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' to ensure that all perceptions are grounded in the first-person-singular perspective—precisely because Mailer’s fictions do not construct worlds out of a comfortable, objectivist epistemological realism.}} So first-person-singular narration is as close as fiction can get to what an individual person without telepathic skills can really know. Yet our success in the world depends entirely on having confidence in inferences drawn about other minds, and to develop this confidence we need to develop exactly the sort of imagination found in a convincing social novel. But in ''The Castle in the Forest'', Mailer’s narrator is a demon from hell who takes pride in his work; the associative connection Mailer develops at length does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that all human knowing is damned, but we are privy, as it were, to the intrusions of devils much, much more than we are, in Mailer’s fictional rendition, to the mind-intrusions of angels.

What are we to make of a carefully wrought fictional scene in which the Hitlers, before young Adi even comes into the world, adventure past ordinary naughty sex into pedal-to-the-metal analingus? In foregrounding sex acts of this sort in a book purportedly about radical evil, Mailer risks being discussed in terms of radical eccentricity.<ref>The Castle in the Forest. New York: Random House, 2007.</ref> Or, one could say that approaching radical evil through sexual obscenity is artistically obscene. However we put it, the novel intentionally jars the reader just as much as ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983), and the central narrative device of ''that'' novel was an act of fellatio between two ghosts in a tomb. Here is the sex act between Alois and Klara that Mailer’s young Hitler witnesses:

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

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

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
* {{cite journal |last=Adamowski |first=T. H. |title=Demoralizing Liberalism: Lionel Trilling, Leslie Fiedler, and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=University of Toronto Quarterly |volume=75 |issue=3 |date=Summer 2006 |pages=883–904 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Bosman |first=Julie |date=December 6, 2006 |title=Literature: Do Novels Really Need Bibliographies? |url=http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061208122042/http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-date=December 8, 2006 |work=International Herald Tribune |location= |access-date=2020-09-10 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Chakrabarty |first=Dipesh |date=2007 |title=Provincializing Europe:Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference |url= |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} New edition with a new preface by the author.
* {{cite journal |last=Gubar |first=Susan |title=Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contemporaries |url= |journal=The Yale Journal of Criticism |volume=14 |issue=1 |date=Spring 2001 |pages=191–215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Lennon|first=J. Micheal|title=Mailers Cosmology |url= |journal=Modern Language Studies |volume=12 |issue=3|date=Summer 1982 |pages=18-29 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
*
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1983 |title=Ancient Evenings |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman |authormask=1 |date=1948 |title=The Naked and the Dead |url= |location=New York |publisher=Rinehart |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman| authormask=1 |date=2003 |title= Why Are We at War |url= |location= New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McCann |first=Sean |title=The Imperiled Republic:Norman Mailer and the poetics of Anti-Liberalism |url= |journal=English Literary History|volume=67 |issue=1|date=Fall 2016 |pages=293-336 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McDonald |first=Brian |title=Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s The Gospel according to the Son |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2006 |pages=78-90 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rorty |first=Richard |date=1989 |title=Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity |url= |location=New York |publisher=Cambridge UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Taylor |first=A.J.P |date=1996 |title=The Origins of the Second World War |url= |location=New York |publisher=Touchstone |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
. . .
{{Refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Their Humor Annoyed Him}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in The Castle in the Forest

2020-09-22T17:32:52Z

JPerkins: added reference

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in ''The Castle in the Forest''}}
{{Working}}
{{MR12}}
{{Byline|last=Whalen-Bridge|first=John|abstract=Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. Mailer’s Hitler novel recapitulates his karmic unified-field theory of life in a number of ways. We cannot make sense of the last two decades of Mailer’s writing career without paying attention to the ''Castle''’s cavalier wit, which is, at its heart, almost invariably alone.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08whal}}
{{quote|“Himmler subscribed to the theory that the best human possibilities lie close to the worst.”}}

{{dc|dc=T|here is a joke about attorneys}} that goes like this: lots of people were on a boat, which sank in shark-infested waters. It was horrible. The sharks were tearing all the passengers to pieces as they tried to make it to shore. All the passengers were dying. Except one passenger, who was an attorney. He swam right to the shore. As he was shaking himself off, the bewildered people on the beach asked him, “How come the sharks did not eat you?” He said: “Professional courtesy, I suppose.” We don’t like attorneys, such a joke conveys, because they are not like us. They are like sharks, and we are like people. We laugh at the joke, if we do, to commune in our fantasy-rejection of lawyerly cruelty. But Mailer’s last novel, ''The Castle in the Forest'', is organized around a very different sort of humor. Instead of laughing at lawyers to confirm our fantasy that we ourselves are not sharks, Mailer shocks readers, methodically and skillfully, with the knowledge that they are intimately involved with so much of what they—we, I should say—resoundingly reject. The undertow of laughter in this novel won’t necessarily drag you out to sea, but it will make you ask if you share qualities with what is being held up for laughter and judgment.

Mailer’s narrator in ''The Castle in the Forest'' speaks with courtesy and intelligence.{{efn|Both Steven Poole in his ''New Statesman'' review, “[https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2007/02/norman-mailer-hitler-novel Sympathy for the Devil]” (19 February 2007) and John Freeman in his ''Independent'' review “[https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/sympathy-for-the-devil-norman-mailer-on-his-satanic-new-novel-434647.html Sympathy for the Devil: Norman Mailer on His Satanic New Novel]” (2 February 2007) connect Mailer’s novel and the Rolling Stones’ song in their titles. The Jagger/Richards song, which first appeared on the 1968 album ''Beggers Banquet'', is a dramatic monologue in which Lucifer brags about his achievements, insists on commonalities between himself and his listeners, and demands courtesy if met: he is a “man of wealth and taste,” after all. All criminals are cops, all sinners are saints, and we all killed the Kennedys.}} He calls himself “Dieter” (though it is not clear what he means to “deter”), and he has been a witness to the formation of Adolf Hitler. Dieter explains to the reader that he has been a functionary in the Third Reich, but he has been—long before he came to work for Himmler—part of the Devil’s bureaucracy, with young “Adi” as his most important case. In this way, Mailer manages to bring together the bureaucratic “banality” of evil with the attractions and powers of evil that the word banality cannot subsume.

Mailer’s final novel (2007) is a concatenation of aesthetic shocks that tells of the formation of Adolf Hitler’s character, beginning with the incestuous influences of his grandfather (about the identity of whom there has been much historical speculation), and continuing through his schooling. Ron Rosenbaum’s ''Explaining Hitler'' can fruitfully be read as a companion-text to Mailer’s novel; its central question is “When and how did Hitler become Hitler?” Mailer’s novel affirms the idea that Hitler developed sociopathic tendencies by his early teens and that these were the foundation for the subsequent obsession with eliminationist anti-Semitism that would come later—but this evolution in Hitler’s darkness is not central to Mailer’s novel. Mailer builds a Hitler to explain a person attracted to murder and deceit, but anti-Semitism is not the driving force of the life Mailer imagines. Mailer does not at all exclude the idea that everything in the novel is tuned toward the Holocaust. The title “The Castle in the Forest,” Dieter tells readers in the final pages, is the translation of a death camp called “''Schlossimwald''” by those inmates who would not, even in the face of ultimate pain and evil, surrender their sense of irony.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=465}} That irony would remain a prized possession under such circumstances will shock some readers, since the phenomena of Hitler and the Holocaust are for many the very limit of irony. In the Rortyean, postmodern, and thoroughly ironic world in which we live, the Holocaust cannot be reduced to a contingent phenomena whose meaning is entirely dependent upon the subject position of the perceiver. Such a way of thinking will earn a comparison with Holocaust deniers. Mailer not only concludes with an homage to ironic camp inmates but also has Dieter-the-demon tell us that the Devil (whom he calls “the Maestro”) is a connoisseur of irony: “All this was uttered by the Maestro with characteristic irony. We never know how serious he might be when he speaks to our mind’s ear. (His voice is a cornucopia of humors.)”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=78}} Mailer might even be describing himself in this passage.

A ''New York Times'' article paused to note that a number of recent novels had the odd feature of including bibliographies. The bibliography of ''The Castle in the Forest'' is rich with entries on bee-keeping. Readers of the novel know it is a richly over-determined metaphor, combining elements of mod- ulated brutality and great technical skill. Bee-keeping is perhaps the central metaphor of the novel, and Mailer’s bibliography lists half-a-dozen or so specialist books on the subject. Bee-keeping signifies social order, but order as understood from an awful height, that of humans looking down on potentially profitable insects, or that of God looking down on mischievous creation. The bees themselves are ruthless at maintaining order, and they eliminate all threats to the hive without hesitation. Mailer’s Alois Hitler is presented as a dedicated bee-keeper, and the narrator Dieter—while per- haps disingenuously or even seductively warning readers not to make too much of such events!—presents several scenes in which hives are gassed or burned. Readers might wonder how exactly they could ever make “too much” of such a parallel.

As important as bee-keeping is to Mailer’s larger narrative loops, it competes in the reader’s imagination with a theme that is given equal air-time but which etches the memory more ruthlessly moment for moment and image for image: transgressive sex. Mailer stays true to his fascination with the idea that God and the Devil partake in human lives through dreams and sex acts. The reader must consider a Freudian primal scene in which young Adolf witnesses Alois and Klara in the sixty-nine position, and witnessing the fictional event makes the reader equal, in some imaginative sense, to demons like Dieter who enter minds and bodies in the most intimate situations imaginable.

Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. By “epistemological realism,” I mean that we can only experience our own minds directly, unless we have supernormal pow- ers, and furthermore we can only draw inferences about other minds.{{efn|I am not using “epistemological realism” in the standard way, which refers specifically to the form of objectivism in which objects exist independently of one’s own mind in support of a correspondence theory of truth. Such objects would then, presumably, be available for apprehension by subjects from various perspectives, ameliorating the ways in which contemporary, post-Nietzschean perspectivism subverts assertions about an objective world. Mailer’s attraction to what I’m calling “epistemological realism,” on the other hand, finds ways of conflating first- and third-person perspectives—such as by resorting to the epistolary novel in the omega manuscript of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' to ensure that all perceptions are grounded in the first-person-singular perspective—precisely because Mailer’s fictions do not construct worlds out of a comfortable, objectivist epistemological realism.}} So first-person-singular narration is as close as fiction can get to what an individual person without telepathic skills can really know. Yet our success in the world depends entirely on having confidence in inferences drawn about other minds, and to develop this confidence we need to develop exactly the sort of imagination found in a convincing social novel. But in ''The Castle in the Forest'', Mailer’s narrator is a demon from hell who takes pride in his work; the associative connection Mailer develops at length does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that all human knowing is damned, but we are privy, as it were, to the intrusions of devils much, much more than we are, in Mailer’s fictional rendition, to the mind-intrusions of angels.

What are we to make of a carefully wrought fictional scene in which the Hitlers, before young Adi even comes into the world, adventure past ordinary naughty sex into pedal-to-the-metal analingus? In foregrounding sex acts of this sort in a book purportedly about radical evil, Mailer risks being discussed in terms of radical eccentricity.<ref>The Castle in the Forest. New York: Random House, 2007.</ref> Or, one could say that approaching radical evil through sexual obscenity is artistically obscene. However we put it, the novel intentionally jars the reader just as much as ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983)!, and the central narrative device of ''that'' novel was an act of fellatio between two ghosts in a tomb. Here is the sex act between Alois and Klara that Mailer’s young Hitler witnesses:

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

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

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
* {{cite journal |last=Adamowski |first=T. H. |title=Demoralizing Liberalism: Lionel Trilling, Leslie Fiedler, and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=University of Toronto Quarterly |volume=75 |issue=3 |date=Summer 2006 |pages=883–904 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Bosman |first=Julie |date=December 6, 2006 |title=Literature: Do Novels Really Need Bibliographies? |url=http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061208122042/http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-date=December 8, 2006 |work=International Herald Tribune |location= |access-date=2020-09-10 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Chakrabarty |first=Dipesh |date=2007 |title=Provincializing Europe:Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference |url= |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} New edition with a new preface by the author.
* {{cite journal |last=Gubar |first=Susan |title=Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contemporaries |url= |journal=The Yale Journal of Criticism |volume=14 |issue=1 |date=Spring 2001 |pages=191–215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Lennon|first=J. Micheal|title=Mailers Cosmology |url= |journal=Modern Language Studies |volume=12 |issue=3|date=Summer 1982 |pages=18-29 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
*
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1983 |title=Ancient Evenings |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman |authormask=1 |date=1948 |title=The Naked and the Dead |url= |location=New York |publisher=Rinehart |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman| authormask=1 |date=2003 |title= Why Are We at War |url= |location= New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McCann |first=Sean |title=The Imperiled Republic:Norman Mailer and the poetics of Anti-Liberalism |url= |journal=English Literary History|volume=67 |issue=1|date=Fall 2016 |pages=293-336 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McDonald |first=Brian |title=Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s The Gospel according to the Son |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2006 |pages=78-90 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rorty |first=Richard |date=1989 |title=Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity |url= |location=New York |publisher=Cambridge UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Taylor |first=A.J.P |date=1996 |title=The Origins of the Second World War |url= |location=New York |publisher=Touchstone |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
. . .
{{Refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Their Humor Annoyed Him}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in The Castle in the Forest

2020-09-22T17:29:10Z

JPerkins:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in ''The Castle in the Forest''}}
{{Working}}
{{MR12}}
{{Byline|last=Whalen-Bridge|first=John|abstract=Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. Mailer’s Hitler novel recapitulates his karmic unified-field theory of life in a number of ways. We cannot make sense of the last two decades of Mailer’s writing career without paying attention to the ''Castle''’s cavalier wit, which is, at its heart, almost invariably alone.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08whal}}
{{quote|“Himmler subscribed to the theory that the best human possibilities lie close to the worst.”}}

{{dc|dc=T|here is a joke about attorneys}} that goes like this: lots of people were on a boat, which sank in shark-infested waters. It was horrible. The sharks were tearing all the passengers to pieces as they tried to make it to shore. All the passengers were dying. Except one passenger, who was an attorney. He swam right to the shore. As he was shaking himself off, the bewildered people on the beach asked him, “How come the sharks did not eat you?” He said: “Professional courtesy, I suppose.” We don’t like attorneys, such a joke conveys, because they are not like us. They are like sharks, and we are like people. We laugh at the joke, if we do, to commune in our fantasy-rejection of lawyerly cruelty. But Mailer’s last novel, ''The Castle in the Forest'', is organized around a very different sort of humor. Instead of laughing at lawyers to confirm our fantasy that we ourselves are not sharks, Mailer shocks readers, methodically and skillfully, with the knowledge that they are intimately involved with so much of what they—we, I should say—resoundingly reject. The undertow of laughter in this novel won’t necessarily drag you out to sea, but it will make you ask if you share qualities with what is being held up for laughter and judgment.

Mailer’s narrator in ''The Castle in the Forest'' speaks with courtesy and intelligence.{{efn|Both Steven Poole in his ''New Statesman'' review, “[https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2007/02/norman-mailer-hitler-novel Sympathy for the Devil]” (19 February 2007) and John Freeman in his ''Independent'' review “[https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/sympathy-for-the-devil-norman-mailer-on-his-satanic-new-novel-434647.html Sympathy for the Devil: Norman Mailer on His Satanic New Novel]” (2 February 2007) connect Mailer’s novel and the Rolling Stones’ song in their titles. The Jagger/Richards song, which first appeared on the 1968 album ''Beggers Banquet'', is a dramatic monologue in which Lucifer brags about his achievements, insists on commonalities between himself and his listeners, and demands courtesy if met: he is a “man of wealth and taste,” after all. All criminals are cops, all sinners are saints, and we all killed the Kennedys.}} He calls himself “Dieter” (though it is not clear what he means to “deter”), and he has been a witness to the formation of Adolf Hitler. Dieter explains to the reader that he has been a functionary in the Third Reich, but he has been—long before he came to work for Himmler—part of the Devil’s bureaucracy, with young “Adi” as his most important case. In this way, Mailer manages to bring together the bureaucratic “banality” of evil with the attractions and powers of evil that the word banality cannot subsume.

Mailer’s final novel (2007) is a concatenation of aesthetic shocks that tells of the formation of Adolf Hitler’s character, beginning with the incestuous influences of his grandfather (about the identity of whom there has been much historical speculation), and continuing through his schooling. Ron Rosenbaum’s ''Explaining Hitler'' can fruitfully be read as a companion-text to Mailer’s novel; its central question is “When and how did Hitler become Hitler?” Mailer’s novel affirms the idea that Hitler developed sociopathic tendencies by his early teens and that these were the foundation for the subsequent obsession with eliminationist anti-Semitism that would come later—but this evolution in Hitler’s darkness is not central to Mailer’s novel. Mailer builds a Hitler to explain a person attracted to murder and deceit, but anti-Semitism is not the driving force of the life Mailer imagines. Mailer does not at all exclude the idea that everything in the novel is tuned toward the Holocaust. The title “The Castle in the Forest,” Dieter tells readers in the final pages, is the translation of a death camp called “''Schlossimwald''” by those inmates who would not, even in the face of ultimate pain and evil, surrender their sense of irony.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=465}} That irony would remain a prized possession under such circumstances will shock some readers, since the phenomena of Hitler and the Holocaust are for many the very limit of irony. In the Rortyean, postmodern, and thoroughly ironic world in which we live, the Holocaust cannot be reduced to a contingent phenomena whose meaning is entirely dependent upon the subject position of the perceiver. Such a way of thinking will earn a comparison with Holocaust deniers. Mailer not only concludes with an homage to ironic camp inmates but also has Dieter-the-demon tell us that the Devil (whom he calls “the Maestro”) is a connoisseur of irony: “All this was uttered by the Maestro with characteristic irony. We never know how serious he might be when he speaks to our mind’s ear. (His voice is a cornucopia of humors.)”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=78}} Mailer might even be describing himself in this passage.

A ''New York Times'' article paused to note that a number of recent novels had the odd feature of including bibliographies. The bibliography of ''The Castle in the Forest'' is rich with entries on bee-keeping. Readers of the novel know it is a richly over-determined metaphor, combining elements of mod- ulated brutality and great technical skill. Bee-keeping is perhaps the central metaphor of the novel, and Mailer’s bibliography lists half-a-dozen or so specialist books on the subject. Bee-keeping signifies social order, but order as understood from an awful height, that of humans looking down on potentially profitable insects, or that of God looking down on mischievous creation. The bees themselves are ruthless at maintaining order, and they eliminate all threats to the hive without hesitation. Mailer’s Alois Hitler is presented as a dedicated bee-keeper, and the narrator Dieter—while per- haps disingenuously or even seductively warning readers not to make too much of such events!—presents several scenes in which hives are gassed or burned. Readers might wonder how exactly they could ever make “too much” of such a parallel.

As important as bee-keeping is to Mailer’s larger narrative loops, it competes in the reader’s imagination with a theme that is given equal air-time but which etches the memory more ruthlessly moment for moment and image for image: transgressive sex. Mailer stays true to his fascination with the idea that God and the Devil partake in human lives through dreams and sex acts. The reader must consider a Freudian primal scene in which young Adolf witnesses Alois and Klara in the sixty-nine position, and witnessing the fictional event makes the reader equal, in some imaginative sense, to demons like Dieter who enter minds and bodies in the most intimate situations imaginable.

Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. By “epistemological realism,” I mean that we can only experience our own minds directly, unless we have supernormal pow- ers, and furthermore we can only draw inferences about other minds.{{efn|I am not using “epistemological realism” in the standard way, which refers specifically to the form of objectivism in which objects exist independently of one’s own mind in support of a correspondence theory of truth. Such objects would then, presumably, be available for apprehension by subjects from various perspectives, ameliorating the ways in which contemporary, post-Nietzschean perspectivism subverts assertions about an objective world. Mailer’s attraction to what I’m calling “epistemological realism,” on the other hand, finds ways of conflating first- and third-person perspectives—such as by resorting to the epistolary novel in the omega manuscript of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' to ensure that all perceptions are grounded in the first-person-singular perspective—precisely because Mailer’s fictions do not construct worlds out of a comfortable, objectivist epistemological realism.}} So first-person-singular narration is as close as fiction can get to what an individual person without telepathic skills can really know. Yet our success in the world depends entirely on having confidence in inferences drawn about other minds, and to develop this confidence we need to develop exactly the sort of imagination found in a convincing social novel. But in ''The Castle in the Forest'', Mailer’s narrator is a demon from hell who takes pride in his work; the associative connection Mailer develops at length does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that all human knowing is damned, but we are privy, as it were, to the intrusions of devils much, much more than we are, in Mailer’s fictional rendition, to the mind-intrusions of angels.

What are we to make of a carefully wrought fictional scene in which the Hitlers, before young Adi even comes into the world, adventure past ordinary naughty sex into pedal-to-the-metal analingus? In foregrounding sex acts of this sort in a book purportedly about radical evil, Mailer risks being discussed in terms of radical eccentricity.3 Or, one could say that approaching radical evil through sexual obscenity is artistically obscene. However we put it, the novel intentionally jars the reader just as much as ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983)!, and the central narrative device of ''that'' novel was an act of fellatio between two ghosts in a tomb. Here is the sex act between Alois and Klara that Mailer’s young Hitler witnesses:

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

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

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
* {{cite journal |last=Adamowski |first=T. H. |title=Demoralizing Liberalism: Lionel Trilling, Leslie Fiedler, and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=University of Toronto Quarterly |volume=75 |issue=3 |date=Summer 2006 |pages=883–904 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Bosman |first=Julie |date=December 6, 2006 |title=Literature: Do Novels Really Need Bibliographies? |url=http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061208122042/http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-date=December 8, 2006 |work=International Herald Tribune |location= |access-date=2020-09-10 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Chakrabarty |first=Dipesh |date=2007 |title=Provincializing Europe:Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference |url= |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} New edition with a new preface by the author.
* {{cite journal |last=Gubar |first=Susan |title=Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contemporaries |url= |journal=The Yale Journal of Criticism |volume=14 |issue=1 |date=Spring 2001 |pages=191–215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Lennon|first=J. Micheal|title=Mailers Cosmology |url= |journal=Modern Language Studies |volume=12 |issue=3|date=Summer 1982 |pages=18-29 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
*
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1983 |title=Ancient Evenings |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman |authormask=1 |date=1948 |title=The Naked and the Dead |url= |location=New York |publisher=Rinehart |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman| authormask=1 |date=2003 |title= Why Are We at War |url= |location= New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McCann |first=Sean |title=The Imperiled Republic:Norman Mailer and the poetics of Anti-Liberalism |url= |journal=English Literary History|volume=67 |issue=1|date=Fall 2016 |pages=293-336 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McDonald |first=Brian |title=Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s The Gospel according to the Son |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2006 |pages=78-90 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rorty |first=Richard |date=1989 |title=Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity |url= |location=New York |publisher=Cambridge UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Taylor |first=A.J.P |date=1996 |title=The Origins of the Second World War |url= |location=New York |publisher=Touchstone |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
. . .
{{Refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Their Humor Annoyed Him}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in The Castle in the Forest

2020-09-22T17:28:02Z

JPerkins:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in ''The Castle in the Forest''}}
{{Working}}
{{MR12}}
{{Byline|last=Whalen-Bridge|first=John|abstract=Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. Mailer’s Hitler novel recapitulates his karmic unified-field theory of life in a number of ways. We cannot make sense of the last two decades of Mailer’s writing career without paying attention to the ''Castle''’s cavalier wit, which is, at its heart, almost invariably alone.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08whal}}
{{quote|“Himmler subscribed to the theory that the best human possibilities lie close to the worst.”}}

{{dc|dc=T|here is a joke about attorneys}} that goes like this: lots of people were on a boat, which sank in shark-infested waters. It was horrible. The sharks were tearing all the passengers to pieces as they tried to make it to shore. All the passengers were dying. Except one passenger, who was an attorney. He swam right to the shore. As he was shaking himself off, the bewildered people on the beach asked him, “How come the sharks did not eat you?” He said: “Professional courtesy, I suppose.” We don’t like attorneys, such a joke conveys, because they are not like us. They are like sharks, and we are like people. We laugh at the joke, if we do, to commune in our fantasy-rejection of lawyerly cruelty. But Mailer’s last novel, ''The Castle in the Forest'', is organized around a very different sort of humor. Instead of laughing at lawyers to confirm our fantasy that we ourselves are not sharks, Mailer shocks readers, methodically and skillfully, with the knowledge that they are intimately involved with so much of what they—we, I should say—resoundingly reject. The undertow of laughter in this novel won’t necessarily drag you out to sea, but it will make you ask if you share qualities with what is being held up for laughter and judgment.

Mailer’s narrator in ''The Castle in the Forest'' speaks with courtesy and intelligence.{{efn|Both Steven Poole in his ''New Statesman'' review, “[https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2007/02/norman-mailer-hitler-novel Sympathy for the Devil]” (19 February 2007) and John Freeman in his ''Independent'' review “[https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/sympathy-for-the-devil-norman-mailer-on-his-satanic-new-novel-434647.html Sympathy for the Devil: Norman Mailer on His Satanic New Novel]” (2 February 2007) connect Mailer’s novel and the Rolling Stones’ song in their titles. The Jagger/Richards song, which first appeared on the 1968 album ''Beggers Banquet'', is a dramatic monologue in which Lucifer brags about his achievements, insists on commonalities between himself and his listeners, and demands courtesy if met: he is a “man of wealth and taste,” after all. All criminals are cops, all sinners are saints, and we all killed the Kennedys.}} He calls himself “Dieter” (though it is not clear what he means to “deter”), and he has been a witness to the formation of Adolf Hitler. Dieter explains to the reader that he has been a functionary in the Third Reich, but he has been—long before he came to work for Himmler—part of the Devil’s bureaucracy, with young “Adi” as his most important case. In this way, Mailer manages to bring together the bureaucratic “banality” of evil with the attractions and powers of evil that the word banality cannot subsume.

Mailer’s final novel (2007) is a concatenation of aesthetic shocks that tells of the formation of Adolf Hitler’s character, beginning with the incestuous influences of his grandfather (about the identity of whom there has been much historical speculation), and continuing through his schooling. Ron Rosenbaum’s ''Explaining Hitler'' can fruitfully be read as a companion-text to Mailer’s novel; its central question is “When and how did Hitler become Hitler?” Mailer’s novel affirms the idea that Hitler developed sociopathic tendencies by his early teens and that these were the foundation for the subsequent obsession with eliminationist anti-Semitism that would come later—but this evolution in Hitler’s darkness is not central to Mailer’s novel. Mailer builds a Hitler to explain a person attracted to murder and deceit, but anti-Semitism is not the driving force of the life Mailer imagines. Mailer does not at all exclude the idea that everything in the novel is tuned toward the Holocaust. The title “The Castle in the Forest,” Dieter tells readers in the final pages, is the translation of a death camp called “''Schlossimwald''” by those inmates who would not, even in the face of ultimate pain and evil, surrender their sense of irony.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=465}} That irony would remain a prized possession under such circumstances will shock some readers, since the phenomena of Hitler and the Holocaust are for many the very limit of irony. In the Rortyean, postmodern, and thoroughly ironic world in which we live, the Holocaust cannot be reduced to a contingent phenomena whose meaning is entirely dependent upon the subject position of the perceiver. Such a way of thinking will earn a comparison with Holocaust deniers. Mailer not only concludes with an homage to ironic camp inmates but also has Dieter-the-demon tell us that the Devil (whom he calls “the Maestro”) is a connoisseur of irony: “All this was uttered by the Maestro with characteristic irony. We never know how serious he might be when he speaks to our mind’s ear. (His voice is a cornucopia of humors.)”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=78}} Mailer might even be describing himself in this passage.

A ''New York Times'' article paused to note that a number of recent novels had the odd feature of including bibliographies. The bibliography of ''The Castle in the Forest'' is rich with entries on bee-keeping. Readers of the novel know it is a richly over-determined metaphor, combining elements of mod- ulated brutality and great technical skill. Bee-keeping is perhaps the central metaphor of the novel, and Mailer’s bibliography lists half-a-dozen or so specialist books on the subject. Bee-keeping signifies social order, but order as understood from an awful height, that of humans looking down on potentially profitable insects, or that of God looking down on mischievous creation. The bees themselves are ruthless at maintaining order, and they eliminate all threats to the hive without hesitation. Mailer’s Alois Hitler is presented as a dedicated bee-keeper, and the narrator Dieter—while per- haps disingenuously or even seductively warning readers not to make too much of such events!—presents several scenes in which hives are gassed or burned. Readers might wonder how exactly they could ever make “too much” of such a parallel.

As important as bee-keeping is to Mailer’s larger narrative loops, it competes in the reader’s imagination with a theme that is given equal air-time but which etches the memory more ruthlessly moment for moment and image for image: transgressive sex. Mailer stays true to his fascination with the idea that God and the Devil partake in human lives through dreams and sex acts. The reader must consider a Freudian primal scene in which young Adolf witnesses Alois and Klara in the sixty-nine position, and witnessing the fictional event makes the reader equal, in some imaginative sense, to demons like Dieter who enter minds and bodies in the most intimate situations imaginable.

Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. By “epistemological realism,” I mean that we can only experience our own minds directly, unless we have supernormal pow- ers, and furthermore we can only draw inferences about other minds.{{efn|I am not using “epistemological realism” in the standard way, which refers specifically to the form of objectivism in which objects exist independently of one’s own mind in support of a correspondence theory of truth. Such objects would then, presumably, be available for apprehension by subjects from various perspectives, ameliorating the ways in which contemporary, post-Nietzschean perspectivism subverts assertions about an objective world. Mailer’s attraction to what I’m calling “epistemological realism,” on the other hand, finds ways of conflating first- and third-person perspectives—such as by resorting to the epistolary novel in the omega manuscript of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' to ensure that all perceptions are grounded in the first-person-singular perspective—precisely because Mailer’s fictions do not construct worlds out of a comfortable, objectivist epistemological realism.}} So first-person-singular narration is as close as fiction can get to what an individual person without telepathic skills can really know. Yet our success in the world depends entirely on having confidence in inferences drawn about other minds, and to develop this confidence we need to develop exactly the sort of imagination found in a convincing social novel. But in ''The Castle in the Forest'', Mailer’s narrator is a demon from hell who takes pride in his work; the associative connection Mailer develops at length does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that all human knowing is damned, but we are privy, as it were, to the intrusions of devils much, much more than we are, in Mailer’s fictional rendition, to the mind-intrusions of angels.

What are we to make of a carefully wrought fictional scene in which the Hitlers, before young Adi even comes into the world, adventure past ordi- nary naughty sex into pedal-to-the-metal analingus? In foregrounding sex acts of this sort in a book purportedly about radical evil, Mailer risks being discussed in terms of radical eccentricity.3 Or, one could say that approaching radical evil through sexual obscenity is artistically obscene. However we put it, the novel intentionally jars the reader just as much as ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983)!, and the central narrative device of ''that'' novel was an act of fellatio between two ghosts in a tomb. Here is the sex act between Alois and Klara that Mailer’s young Hitler witnesses:

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

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

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
* {{cite journal |last=Adamowski |first=T. H. |title=Demoralizing Liberalism: Lionel Trilling, Leslie Fiedler, and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=University of Toronto Quarterly |volume=75 |issue=3 |date=Summer 2006 |pages=883–904 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Bosman |first=Julie |date=December 6, 2006 |title=Literature: Do Novels Really Need Bibliographies? |url=http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061208122042/http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-date=December 8, 2006 |work=International Herald Tribune |location= |access-date=2020-09-10 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Chakrabarty |first=Dipesh |date=2007 |title=Provincializing Europe:Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference |url= |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} New edition with a new preface by the author.
* {{cite journal |last=Gubar |first=Susan |title=Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contemporaries |url= |journal=The Yale Journal of Criticism |volume=14 |issue=1 |date=Spring 2001 |pages=191–215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Lennon|first=J. Micheal|title=Mailers Cosmology |url= |journal=Modern Language Studies |volume=12 |issue=3|date=Summer 1982 |pages=18-29 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
*
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1983 |title=Ancient Evenings |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman |authormask=1 |date=1948 |title=The Naked and the Dead |url= |location=New York |publisher=Rinehart |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman| authormask=1 |date=2003 |title= Why Are We at War |url= |location= New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McCann |first=Sean |title=The Imperiled Republic:Norman Mailer and the poetics of Anti-Liberalism |url= |journal=English Literary History|volume=67 |issue=1|date=Fall 2016 |pages=293-336 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McDonald |first=Brian |title=Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s The Gospel according to the Son |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2006 |pages=78-90 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rorty |first=Richard |date=1989 |title=Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity |url= |location=New York |publisher=Cambridge UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Taylor |first=A.J.P |date=1996 |title=The Origins of the Second World War |url= |location=New York |publisher=Touchstone |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
. . .
{{Refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Their Humor Annoyed Him}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in The Castle in the Forest

2020-09-22T17:25:53Z

JPerkins: added body and edited italics

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in ''The Castle in the Forest''}}
{{Working}}
{{MR12}}
{{Byline|last=Whalen-Bridge|first=John|abstract=Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. Mailer’s Hitler novel recapitulates his karmic unified-field theory of life in a number of ways. We cannot make sense of the last two decades of Mailer’s writing career without paying attention to the ''Castle''’s cavalier wit, which is, at its heart, almost invariably alone.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08whal}}
{{quote|“Himmler subscribed to the theory that the best human possibilities lie close to the worst.”}}

{{dc|dc=T|here is a joke about attorneys}} that goes like this: lots of people were on a boat, which sank in shark-infested waters. It was horrible. The sharks were tearing all the passengers to pieces as they tried to make it to shore. All the passengers were dying. Except one passenger, who was an attorney. He swam right to the shore. As he was shaking himself off, the bewildered people on the beach asked him, “How come the sharks did not eat you?” He said: “Professional courtesy, I suppose.” We don’t like attorneys, such a joke conveys, because they are not like us. They are like sharks, and we are like people. We laugh at the joke, if we do, to commune in our fantasy-rejection of lawyerly cruelty. But Mailer’s last novel, ''The Castle in the Forest'', is organized around a very different sort of humor. Instead of laughing at lawyers to confirm our fantasy that we ourselves are not sharks, Mailer shocks readers, methodically and skillfully, with the knowledge that they are intimately involved with so much of what they—we, I should say—resoundingly reject. The undertow of laughter in this novel won’t necessarily drag you out to sea, but it will make you ask if you share qualities with what is being held up for laughter and judgment.

Mailer’s narrator in ''The Castle in the Forest'' speaks with courtesy and intelligence.{{efn|Both Steven Poole in his ''New Statesman'' review, “[https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2007/02/norman-mailer-hitler-novel Sympathy for the Devil]” (19 February 2007) and John Freeman in his ''Independent'' review “[https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/sympathy-for-the-devil-norman-mailer-on-his-satanic-new-novel-434647.html Sympathy for the Devil: Norman Mailer on His Satanic New Novel]” (2 February 2007) connect Mailer’s novel and the Rolling Stones’ song in their titles. The Jagger/Richards song, which first appeared on the 1968 album ''Beggers Banquet'', is a dramatic monologue in which Lucifer brags about his achievements, insists on commonalities between himself and his listeners, and demands courtesy if met: he is a “man of wealth and taste,” after all. All criminals are cops, all sinners are saints, and we all killed the Kennedys.}} He calls himself “Dieter” (though it is not clear what he means to “deter”), and he has been a witness to the formation of Adolf Hitler. Dieter explains to the reader that he has been a functionary in the Third Reich, but he has been—long before he came to work for Himmler—part of the Devil’s bureaucracy, with young “Adi” as his most important case. In this way, Mailer manages to bring together the bureaucratic “banality” of evil with the attractions and powers of evil that the word banality cannot subsume.

Mailer’s final novel (2007) is a concatenation of aesthetic shocks that tells of the formation of Adolf Hitler’s character, beginning with the incestuous influences of his grandfather (about the identity of whom there has been much historical speculation), and continuing through his schooling. Ron Rosenbaum’s ''Explaining Hitler'' can fruitfully be read as a companion-text to Mailer’s novel; its central question is “When and how did Hitler become Hitler?” Mailer’s novel affirms the idea that Hitler developed sociopathic tendencies by his early teens and that these were the foundation for the subsequent obsession with eliminationist anti-Semitism that would come later—but this evolution in Hitler’s darkness is not central to Mailer’s novel. Mailer builds a Hitler to explain a person attracted to murder and deceit, but anti-Semitism is not the driving force of the life Mailer imagines. Mailer does not at all exclude the idea that everything in the novel is tuned toward the Holocaust. The title “The Castle in the Forest,” Dieter tells readers in the final pages, is the translation of a death camp called “''Schlossimwald''” by those inmates who would not, even in the face of ultimate pain and evil, surrender their sense of irony.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=465}} That irony would remain a prized possession under such circumstances will shock some readers, since the phenomena of Hitler and the Holocaust are for many the very limit of irony. In the Rortyean, postmodern, and thoroughly ironic world in which we live, the Holocaust cannot be reduced to a contingent phenomena whose meaning is entirely dependent upon the subject position of the perceiver. Such a way of thinking will earn a comparison with Holocaust deniers. Mailer not only concludes with an homage to ironic camp inmates but also has Dieter-the-demon tell us that the Devil (whom he calls “the Maestro”) is a connoisseur of irony: “All this was uttered by the Maestro with characteristic irony. We never know how serious he might be when he speaks to our mind’s ear. (His voice is a cornucopia of humors.)”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=78}} Mailer might even be describing himself in this passage.

A ''New York Times'' article paused to note that a number of recent novels had the odd feature of including bibliographies. The bibliography of ''The Castle in the Forest'' is rich with entries on bee-keeping. Readers of the novel know it is a richly over-determined metaphor, combining elements of mod- ulated brutality and great technical skill. Bee-keeping is perhaps the central metaphor of the novel, and Mailer’s bibliography lists half-a-dozen or so specialist books on the subject. Bee-keeping signifies social order, but order as understood from an awful height, that of humans looking down on potentially profitable insects, or that of God looking down on mischievous creation. The bees themselves are ruthless at maintaining order, and they eliminate all threats to the hive without hesitation. Mailer’s Alois Hitler is presented as a dedicated bee-keeper, and the narrator Dieter—while per- haps disingenuously or even seductively warning readers not to make too much of such events!—presents several scenes in which hives are gassed or burned. Readers might wonder how exactly they could ever make “too much” of such a parallel.

As important as bee-keeping is to Mailer’s larger narrative loops, it competes in the reader’s imagination with a theme that is given equal air-time but which etches the memory more ruthlessly moment for moment and image for image: transgressive sex. Mailer stays true to his fascination with the idea that God and the Devil partake in human lives through dreams and sex acts. The reader must consider a Freudian primal scene in which young Adolf witnesses Alois and Klara in the sixty-nine position, and witnessing the fictional event makes the reader equal, in some imaginative sense, to demons like Dieter who enter minds and bodies in the most intimate situations imaginable.

Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. By “epistemological realism,” I mean that we can only experience our own minds directly, unless we have supernormal pow- ers, and furthermore we can only draw inferences about other minds.{{efn|I am not using “epistemological realism” in the standard way, which refers specifically to the form of objectivism in which objects exist independently of one’s own mind in support of a correspondence theory of truth. Such objects would then, presumably, be available for apprehension by subjects from various perspectives, ameliorating the ways in which contemporary, post-Nietzschean perspectivism subverts assertions about an objective world. Mailer’s attraction to what I’m calling “epistemological realism,” on the other hand, finds ways of conflating first- and third-person perspectives—such as by resorting to the epistolary novel in the omega manuscript of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' to ensure that all perceptions are grounded in the first-person-singular perspective—precisely because Mailer’s fictions do not construct worlds out of a comfortable, objectivist epistemological realism.}} So first-person-singular narration is as close as fiction can get to what an individual person without telepathic skills can really know. Yet our success in the world depends entirely on having confidence in inferences drawn about other minds, and to develop this confidence we need to develop exactly the sort of imagination found in a convincing social novel. But in ''The Castle in the Forest'', Mailer’s narrator is a demon from hell who takes pride in his work; the associative connection Mailer develops at length does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that all human knowing is damned, but we are privy, as it were, to the intrusions of devils much, much more than we are, in Mailer’s fictional rendition, to the mind-intrusions of angels.

What are we to make of a carefully wrought fictional scene in which the Hitlers, before young Adi even comes into the world, adventure past ordi- nary naughty sex into pedal-to-the-metal analingus? In foregrounding sex acts of this sort in a book purportedly about radical evil, Mailer risks being discussed in terms of radical eccentricity.3 Or, one could say that approach- ing radical evil through sexual obscenity is artistically obscene. However we put it, the novel intentionally jars the reader just as much as ''Ancient Eve- nings'' ~1983!, and the central narrative device of ''that'' novel was an act of fellatio between two ghosts in a tomb. Here is the sex act between Alois and Klara that Mailer’s young Hitler witnesses:

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

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

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
* {{cite journal |last=Adamowski |first=T. H. |title=Demoralizing Liberalism: Lionel Trilling, Leslie Fiedler, and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=University of Toronto Quarterly |volume=75 |issue=3 |date=Summer 2006 |pages=883–904 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Bosman |first=Julie |date=December 6, 2006 |title=Literature: Do Novels Really Need Bibliographies? |url=http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061208122042/http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-date=December 8, 2006 |work=International Herald Tribune |location= |access-date=2020-09-10 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Chakrabarty |first=Dipesh |date=2007 |title=Provincializing Europe:Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference |url= |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} New edition with a new preface by the author.
* {{cite journal |last=Gubar |first=Susan |title=Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contemporaries |url= |journal=The Yale Journal of Criticism |volume=14 |issue=1 |date=Spring 2001 |pages=191–215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Lennon|first=J. Micheal|title=Mailers Cosmology |url= |journal=Modern Language Studies |volume=12 |issue=3|date=Summer 1982 |pages=18-29 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
*
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1983 |title=Ancient Evenings |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman |authormask=1 |date=1948 |title=The Naked and the Dead |url= |location=New York |publisher=Rinehart |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman| authormask=1 |date=2003 |title= Why Are We at War |url= |location= New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McCann |first=Sean |title=The Imperiled Republic:Norman Mailer and the poetics of Anti-Liberalism |url= |journal=English Literary History|volume=67 |issue=1|date=Fall 2016 |pages=293-336 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McDonald |first=Brian |title=Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s The Gospel according to the Son |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2006 |pages=78-90 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rorty |first=Richard |date=1989 |title=Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity |url= |location=New York |publisher=Cambridge UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Taylor |first=A.J.P |date=1996 |title=The Origins of the Second World War |url= |location=New York |publisher=Touchstone |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
. . .
{{Refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Their Humor Annoyed Him}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

Talk:The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in The Castle in the Forest

2020-09-18T18:03:41Z

JPerkins: questions

==Big red banner==
I recently added a in text citation to one of the body paragraphs, I wanted to verify that I'm editing correctly, because now I see on the articles page a big red banner --[[User:JPerkins|JPerkins]] ([[User talk:JPerkins|talk]]) 14:03, 18 September 2020 (EDT)

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in The Castle in the Forest

2020-09-18T17:54:54Z

JPerkins: added citation

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in ''The Castle in the Forest''}}
{{Working}}
{{MR12}}
{{Byline|last=Whalen-Bridge|first=John|abstract=Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. Mailer’s Hitler novel recapitulates his karmic unified-field theory of life in a number of ways. We cannot make sense of the last two decades of Mailer’s writing career without paying attention to the ''Castle''’s cavalier wit, which is, at its heart, almost invariably alone.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08whal}}
{{cquote|Himmler subscribed to the theory that the best human possibilities lie close to the worst.}}

{{start|There is a joke about attorneys}} that goes like this: lots of people were on a boat, which sank in shark-infested waters. It was horrible. The sharks were tearing all the passengers to pieces as they tried to make it to shore. All the passengers were dying. Except one passenger, who was an attorney. He swam right to the shore. As he was shaking himself off, the bewildered people on the beach asked him, “How come the sharks did not eat you?” He said: “Professional courtesy, I suppose.” We don’t like attorneys, such a joke conveys, because they are not like us. They are like sharks, and we are like people. We laugh at the joke, if we do, to commune in our fantasy-rejection of lawyerly cruelty. But Mailer’s last novel, ''The Castle in the Forest'', is organized around a very different sort of humor. Instead of laughing at lawyers to confirm our fantasy that we ourselves are not sharks, Mailer shocks readers, methodically and skillfully, with the knowledge that they are intimately involved with so much of what they—we, I should say—resoundingly reject. The undertow of laughter in this novel won’t necessarily drag you out to sea, but it will make you ask if you share qualities with what is being held up for laughter and judgment.

Mailer’s narrator in ''The Castle in the Forest'' speaks with courtesy and intelligence.{{efn|Both Steven Poole in his ''New Statesman'' review, “[https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2007/02/norman-mailer-hitler-novel Sympathy for the Devil]” (19 February 2007) and John Freeman in his ''Independent'' review “[https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/sympathy-for-the-devil-norman-mailer-on-his-satanic-new-novel-434647.html Sympathy for the Devil: Norman Mailer on His Satanic New Novel]” (2 February 2007) connect Mailer’s novel and the Rolling Stones’ song in their titles. The Jagger/Richards song, which first appeared on the 1968 album ''Beggers Banquet'', is a dramatic monologue in which Lucifer brags about his achievements, insists on commonalities between himself and his listeners, and demands courtesy if met: he is a “man of wealth and taste,” after all. All criminals are cops, all sinners are saints, and we all killed the Kennedys.}} He calls himself “Dieter” (though it is not clear what he means to “deter”), and he has been a witness to the formation of Adolf Hitler. Dieter explains to the reader that he has been a functionary in the Third Reich, but he has been—long before he came to work for Himmler—part of the Devil’s bureaucracy, with young “Adi” as his most important case. In this way, Mailer manages to bring together the bureaucratic “banality” of evil with the attractions and powers of evil that the word banality cannot subsume.

Mailer’s final novel (2007) is a concatenation of aesthetic shocks that tells of the formation of Adolf Hitler’s character, beginning with the incestuous influences of his grandfather (about the identity of whom there has been much historical speculation), and continuing through his schooling. Ron Rosenbaum’s ''Explaining Hitler'' can fruitfully be read as a companion-text to Mailer’s novel; its central question is “When and how did Hitler become Hitler?” Mailer’s novel affirms the idea that Hitler developed sociopathic tendencies by his early teens and that these were the foundation for the subsequent obsession with eliminationist anti-Semitism that would come later—but this evolution in Hitler’s darkness is not central to Mailer’s novel. Mailer builds a Hitler to explain a person attracted to murder and deceit, but anti-Semitism is not the driving force of the life Mailer imagines. Mailer does not at all exclude the idea that everything in the novel is tuned toward the Holocaust. The title “The Castle in the Forest,” Dieter tells readers in the final pages, is the translation of a death camp called “''Schlossimwald''” by those inmates who would not, even in the face of ultimate pain and evil, surrender their sense of irony.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=465}} That irony would remain a prized possession under such circumstances will shock some readers, since the phenomena of Hitler and the Holocaust are for many the very limit of irony. In the Rortyean, postmodern, and thoroughly ironic world in which we live, the Holocaust cannot be reduced to a contingent phenomena whose meaning is entirely dependent upon the subject position of the perceiver. Such a way of thinking will earn a comparison with Holocaust deniers. Mailer not only concludes with an homage to ironic camp inmates but also has Dieter-the-demon tell us that the Devil (whom he calls “the Maestro”) is a connoisseur of irony: “All this was uttered by the Maestro with characteristic irony. We never know how serious he might be when he speaks to our mind’s ear. (His voice is a cornucopia of humors.)”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=78}} Mailer might even be describing himself in this passage.

A ''New York Times'' article paused to note that a number of recent novels had the odd feature of including bibliographies. The bibliography of ''The Castle in the Forest'' is rich with entries on bee-keeping. Readers of the novel know it is a richly over-determined metaphor, combining elements of mod- ulated brutality and great technical skill. Bee-keeping is perhaps the central metaphor of the novel, and Mailer’s bibliography lists half-a-dozen or so specialist books on the subject. Bee-keeping signifies social order, but order as understood from an awful height, that of humans looking down on potentially profitable insects, or that of God looking down on mischievous creation. The bees themselves are ruthless at maintaining order, and they eliminate all threats to the hive without hesitation. Mailer’s Alois Hitler is presented as a dedicated bee-keeper, and the narrator Dieter—while per- haps disingenuously or even seductively warning readers not to make too much of such events!—presents several scenes in which hives are gassed or burned. Readers might wonder how exactly they could ever make “too much” of such a parallel.

As important as bee-keeping is to Mailer’s larger narrative loops, it competes in the reader’s imagination with a theme that is given equal air-time but which etches the memory more ruthlessly moment for moment and image for image: transgressive sex. Mailer stays true to his fascination with the idea that God and the Devil partake in human lives through dreams and sex acts. The reader must consider a Freudian primal scene in which young Adolf witnesses Alois and Klara in the sixty-nine position, and witnessing the fictional event makes the reader equal, in some imaginative sense, to demons like Dieter who enter minds and bodies in the most intimate situations imaginable.

Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. By “epistemological realism,” I mean that we can only experience our own minds directly, unless we have supernormal pow- ers, and furthermore we can only draw inferences about other minds.<ref>Bosman, Julie (December 6, 2006). "Literature: Do Novels Really Need Bibliographies?". International Herald Tribune. Archived from the original on December 8, 2006. Retrieved 2020-09-10.</ref> So first-person-singular narration is as close as fiction can get to what an individual person without telepathic skills can really know. Yet our success in the world depends entirely on having confidence in inferences drawn about other minds, and to develop this confidence we need to develop exactly the sort of imagination found in a convincing social novel. But in ''The Castle in the Forest'', Mailer’s narrator is a demon from hell who takes pride in his work; the associative connection Mailer develops at length does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that all human knowing is damned, but we are privy, as it were, to the intrusions of devils much, much more than we are, in Mailer’s fictional rendition, to the mind-intrusions of angels.

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

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

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
* {{cite journal |last=Adamowski |first=T. H. |title=Demoralizing Liberalism: Lionel Trilling, Leslie Fiedler, and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=University of Toronto Quarterly |volume=75 |issue=3 |date=Summer 2006 |pages=883–904 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Bosman |first=Julie |date=December 6, 2006 |title=Literature: Do Novels Really Need Bibliographies? |url=http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061208122042/http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/features/novels.php |archive-date=December 8, 2006 |work=International Herald Tribune |location= |access-date=2020-09-10 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Chakrabarty |first=Dipesh |date=2007 |title=Provincializing Europe:Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference |url= |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} New edition with a new preface by the author.
* {{cite journal |last=Gubar |first=Susan |title=Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contemporaries |url= |journal=The Yale Journal of Criticism |volume=14 |issue=1 |date=Spring 2001 |pages=191–215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Lennon|first=J. Micheal|title=Mailers Cosmology |url= |journal=Modern Language Studies |volume=12 |issue=3|date=Summer 1982 |pages=18-29 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
*
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1983 |title=Ancient Evenings |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman |authormask=1 |date=1948 |title=The Naked and the Dead |url= |location=New York |publisher=Rinehart |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
*{{cite book |last=Mailer |first= Norman| authormask=1 |date=2003 |title= Why Are We at War |url= |location= New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McCann |first=Sean |title=The Imperiled Republic:Norman Mailer and the poetics of Anti-Liberalism |url= |journal=English Literary History|volume=67 |issue=1|date=Fall 2016 |pages=293-336 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=McDonald |first=Brian |title=Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s The Gospel according to the Son |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2006 |pages=78-90 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rorty |first=Richard |date=1989 |title=Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity |url= |location=New York |publisher=Cambridge UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Taylor |first=A.J.P |date=1996 |title=The Origins of the Second World War |url= |location=New York |publisher=Touchstone |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
. . .
{{Refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Their Humor Annoyed Him}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in The Castle in the Forest

User:JPerkins/sandbox

2020-09-10T18:08:21Z

JPerkins: added byline to talk page

User:JPerkins

2020-09-10T17:59:19Z

JPerkins: added byline