User:KWatson/sandbox

2025-04-19T02:48:06Z

KWatson:

User:KWatson/sandbox

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

== Final edits ==
Good evening, Dr. Lucas. Below is the link to my edited article:
https://projectmailer.net/pm/User:ASpeed/sandbox

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

Based on the latest updates, [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Battles_for_Regard,_Writerly_and_Otherwise|Battles for Regard, Writerly and Otherwise]] looks good with exception of including a '''category'''.

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

[[User:ALedezma|ALedezma]] ([[User talk:ALedezma|talk]]) 21:47, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas I finished my remediation article https://projectmailer.net/index.php?title=The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman_Mailer%27s_The_Fight:_Hemingway,_Bullfighting,_and_the_Lovely_Metaphysics_of_Boxing&action=edit [[User:TWietstruk|TWietstruk]] ([[User talk:TWietstruk|talk]]) 19:44, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas I have finished my assigned remediation article: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Jive-Ass_Aficionado:_Why_Are_We_in_Vietnam%3F_and_Hemingway%27s_Moral_Code#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHemingway2003-24
Username ADear.

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

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

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

Dr. Lucas,

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

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

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

Dr. Lucas

I finished the remediation of the following article:

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

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

== Final Edit ==

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

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

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

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

[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]]

Hi Dr. Lucas,

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

I will also link the article below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Lucas,

The following article is ready for your review. Thanks.

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

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

== I am done with this ==

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

== Final Review PM Article ==

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

== Remediation Project ==

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

Thanks,

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

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

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

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

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

{{reply to|Grlucas}} I have tried everything i can think of to remove the last red error flag. I had to turn it in. I don't know that else I can do in this situation. I was given citation that did not follow any of the given formats. [[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 21:45, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation Submission ==

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

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

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

== Remediation of "Inside Norman Mailer ==

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

== Completed: Norman Mailer: Playboy Magazine ==

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

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

Greeting Dr. Lucas,

I have made the adjustment that you mentioned.

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

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

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

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

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

:{{Reply to| Grlucas}} Greetings,

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

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

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

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

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

Greetings Dr. Lucus,

My article is ready for your review. Thank you.

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Mailer%E2%80%99s_%E2%80%9CFootnote_to_Death_in_the_Afternoon%E2%80%9D)
:{{Reply to| KForeman}} it's coming along. Please ''always'' sign your talk page posts. Right up top, there are errors. Please use the real {{tl|pg}}, like all the other articles. Citations need to be fixed. All parenthetical citations must be converted. You still have quite a bit of work to do. All red sections need to be seen to and corrected. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:20, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

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

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

Hello Dr. Lucas,

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

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

== Final Edits Completed and Ready for Review ==

Dr. Lucas, I have completed my assigned remediation article: [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Looking_at_the_Past:_Nostalgia_as_Technique_in_The_Naked_and_the_Dead_and_For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls|Looking at the Past: Nostalgia as Technique in The Naked and the Dead and For Whom the Bell Tolls]]. Please review at your convenience. I enjoyed working on this assignment. I look forward to your suggestions and feedback. All the best, Danielle (DBond007)
{{Reply to| DBond007}} ok, good work. Please remove all the external links. Links to Wikipedia are not necessary, but if used, they need to be done correctly. There should be no spaces before {{tl|sfn}}. May sure all your ' and " are actually typographical apostrophes and quotation marks. Remove any superfluous spaces and line breaks; these mess up the formatting. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:29, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Completed the remediation assignment ==

Good evening Dr. Lucas,

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

I look forward to reading your feedback.

All the best,

Patrick Riley

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

Link:

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

Winnie Verna

== E.Mosley ==

Good evening, @Grlucas. I have completed my Remediation Articles[[https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/On_Reading_Mailer_Too_Young]]. The article I had was " On Reading Mailer Too Young Volume 4, 2010

== Kynndra Watson ==

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

Thank you.

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and the “Reds”

2025-04-09T02:34:08Z

KWatson:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}
{{MR04}}
{{Byline|last=Peppard|first=Victor|abstract=Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer both wrote fiction and journalism that deal with Russians (“Reds”). In Ernest Hemingway’s ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' and Norman Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost and Oswald’s Tale, Reds or communists of different types, stripes, and nationalities appear in various significant roles and guises.|url=https://projectmailer.net/pm/Victor_Peppard}}|
{{dc|dc=E|rnest Hemingway and Norman Mailer}} both wrote fiction and journalisms that deal with what I am calling here the “Reds.” In Hemingway’s ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' and in Mailer’s ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and ''Oswald’s Tale'' Reds or communists of different types, stripes, and nationalities appear in various significant roles and guises. There are several questions I would like to address, especially the following: What is it that attracted Hemingway and Mailer to write about the Reds? Even if they depict very different historical periods, can we still discern certain commonalities in their approaches to and treatment of the Reds? Further, what is the dominant image of them in the works of Hemingway and Mailer?

The fact that Hemingway and Mailer share a number of common interests and traits is no secret. Both artists dealt extensively and importantly with the horrors of war and with the ways in which people cope with war and conduct themselves in it. Both writers were preoccupied (some might even say obsessed with) macho tests of manhood that in the case of Hemingway involved balls, battles, boxing, bulls, and hunting and fishing. For Mailer balls were also always in play, but he was more of a boxer than a bullfighter, and he was always a battler whatever the arena. A corollary to this is their fascination with the stars and celebrities of American pop culture and with their own stardom and celebrity as well.

Hemingway and Mailer were deeply in love with language, and not just English, as we see in the former’s ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', which exudes his fondness for Spanish. Mailer studied German assiduously as preparation for writing ''The Castle in the Forest'', and he also worked with Russian in connection with his trips to the Soviet Union, as is evident in ''Harlot’s Ghost'',

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''Oswald’s Tale'', and ''Castle in the Forest''. Their stylistic innovations, well celebrated in Hemingway but not yet fully recognized in Mailer, are no doubt related to this love of language that they shared. Further, neither writer hesitated to tackle the burning issues of the day, in and out of their fiction.
Thus, it is no wonder they both engaged with the two most controversial and problematic “isms” of their century, Communism and Fascism.

Before examining ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' it is instructive briefly to consider Hemingway’s relationship to the Spanish Civil War, which he witnessed primarily as a journalist who wrote about the conflict. William Braasch Watson has shown how, in his attitude toward this war, Hemingway moved from a position of complete abhorrence of all war to an ardent supporter of the Republican / Loyalist / Red or Communist cause against the Fascists /Falangists / Francoists, largely under the influence of Jorvis Ivens, an avid Communist and member of the Comintern.{{sfn|Watson|1992|p=37-57}} Watson comes to the conclusion that in his enthusiasm for the Comintern / Communist cause
Hemingway distorted the truth:

<blockquote>He suppressed certain realities he knew to be true, and he promoted as realities things he must have known to be false, all in the name of winning a war whose character the Communists had largely defined. In this respect Hemingway had become an effective propagandist . . . . He genuinely admired the Communists for their commitment and for their proven ability to organize and fight the war. But partly too his transformation was the product of a conscious effort on the part of the Communists to gain his confidence and to enlist his support. {{sfn|Watson|1992|p=53}}</blockquote>

It should be stressed that Watson is writing about Hemingway’s journalism and not his fiction. Naturally, one has to ask whether in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' Hemingway continues to portray the Spanish Civil War in the same fashion as Watson describes. I believe that in the novel Hemingway’s treatment of the Reds does indeed include a measure of admiration, but it also contains a much fuller depiction of them and their conduct of the war that includes both direct and indirect condemnation of certain communist actors and their acts. Let me quickly say that in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls,'' despite an open sympathy for the Loyalist-Red cause, Hemingway complicates the actual conduct of the war by both sides, as well as the associated moral

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questions, to a degree that renders any pat conclusions about these matters more than problematic.

What Hemingway describes in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' has some interesting correspondences with the depiction of the Russian civil war by Russian writers such as Isaac Babel, Vasily Grossman, Vsevolod Ivanov, Nikolai Nikitin, Boris Pil’niak, and Andrei Platonov in their works of the early and mid 1920s and, in the case of Grossman, the early 1930s. These Russian authors portray the atrocities of the Reds, Whites, Greens, anarchists such as Makhno, and assorted marauding bands in graphic scenes of brutality, cruelty, and above all violence. Frequently, the various principals of the war mostly, but not just the Reds and Whites—alternate in taking over towns and villages, and it is usually impossible to distinguish their violent methods from one another. Furthermore, the local villagers and townsfolk are invariably clueless about the great issues of ideology and policy history has associated with the Russian Civil War, and they struggle to understand what is happening to and around them in terms of the cultural practices the past has given them. At the same time, the Russian fiction of this period, such as Babel’s stories in ''Red Cavalry'' (''Konarmiia''), 1926, often exhibit a certain “revolutionary romanticism” that treats the Civil War not so much as a struggle rooted in politics or ideology but as a great force of nature sweeping across the land.

I mention this because Hemingway read some of these Russian authors, including Platonov, and because his treatment of the Spanish Civil War has, as I am claiming, significant points of contact with their work. For example, in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' the Reds’ takeover of a town, so brutally led by Pablo and so eloquently described by Pilar, is followed three days later by a fascist takeover that was even worse{{sfn|Hemingway|1940|p=129}}. Judging by both Hemingway and the Russian authors mentioned here, these horrific cyclical reigns the combatants inflict on towns, villages, and cities appear to be an inevitable phenomenon of any civil war.

The tendency throughout ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', as we see in the case of the town just mentioned, that Robert A. Martin has identified as Ronda in Malaga Province {{sfn|Martin|1992|p=63}} is for each of the sides to match or exceed each other in the commission of atrocities. For instance, the beheading of Sordo and his men that the fascist Lt. Burrendo orders is followed shortly by Pablo’s execution of several men he has recruited to help with the blowing up of the bridge. When reflecting on Pilar’s story, Robert Jordan admits to himself

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that he always knew that the side he was fighting for behaved as she described and that however much he hates this “that damned woman made me see it
as though I had been there”{{sfn|Martin|1992|p=135}}.

In a number of places in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' it is clear that the loyalists are executing non-fascists, perhaps most dramatically in the case of Don Guillermo, who is killed, as H. R. Stoneback points out, because of his loyalty to his wife whose religiosity was taken as proof she is a fascist{{sfn|Stoneback|1992|p=106}}. Robert Jordan wonders at times about the real commitment of his erstwhile enemies to the fascist cause, in particular that of a boy he has killed in battle{{sfn|Hemingway|1940|p=304}}. Here Jordan concludes that he simply has to kill whether it is wrong or not.

Robert Jordan’s band of battlers for the Republic, not unlike many of the characters in Russian fiction of the 1920s, are shown at various levels of commitment to and belief in the cause. Pilar is no doubt the most avid devotee
of the new red atheism, as we see when she declares that “before we had religion and other nonsense. Now for everyone there should be someone to whom one can speak frankly” {{sfn|Hemingway|1940|p=89}}. Yet even Pilar can waver in her faith in atheism as when she says, “There probably still is God after all, although we have abolished him” {{sfn|Hemingway|1940|p=88}}. For all of its many ironies, I do not see a great deal of humor in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', but this example is surely an exception. It is also a most effective way to capture the ambivalence the Spanish Reds experience as they try out their newfound atheism.

Pablo is someone whose beliefs, if any, are most mercurial and murky, but at one point he invokes God and the Virgen(sic). This prompts Pilar, acting in her role as law giver, to rebuke him for talking that way {{sfn|Hemingway|1940|p=90}}. In moments of crisis, as when Joaquín prays to the Virgin Mary at death, and when Maria prays for Robert Jordan’s safety, Republicans of various degrees of redness tend to revert back to their traditional cultural practices.

The case of Robert Jordan is special for a number of reasons, primarily of course because he is an American who is taking orders from a Soviet general, but also because he is a fascinating combination of stubborn commitment to what he sees as his duty and his far ranging and sensitive introspection and contemplation. In the early passages of the novel Jordan might be easily mistaken for a hero straight out of Soviet Socialist Realism—not just because he agrees to the highly questionable orders of Soviet General Golz, but because his virtues are so strong, and his motives are so pure. Over the course of the novel, however, Robert Jordan grows ever richer, more complex and

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elusive as a character. In this sense, ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' is a concentrated case of a ''Bildungsroman'' that covers not an extended period of maturation but only about seventy hours, the last hours of Jordan’s life. In the end, Jordan, for all of his attachment to the Republican cause, tells himself that he is “not a red Marxist” and not to “kid yourself with too many dialectics"{{sfn|Hemingway|1940|p=305}}. It is here that he undergoes the revelation that his love for Maria is the most important thing in his life and that such love is indeed the most important part of life. I would claim also (allowing for the fact that there were indeed genuine American communists such as Jorvis Ivens) that Jordan’s “non-party” commitment to the Red/Republican cause is characteristically American in his lack of interest in the specifics of its ideology.

Hemingway’s Soviet Russian characters play important parts in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' and they are problematic in a number of ways and on a number of levels. First, the names of General Golz and the journalist Karkov look as though they are real Russian names, but they are not. This is my own (virtual native speaker’s) reaction to these surnames that I have confirmed with actual native speakers of Russian. Kashkin, however, could be a genuine Russian family name. He is a double to Jordan, as they are both explosives experts. Kashkin’s lack of resolve reflects the side of Robert Jordan that is sometimes subject to indecisiveness. The link between the fates of these two is made explicit when we learn that Robert Jordan killed the wounded Kashkin in an act of mercy so that Kashkin would not be tortured by the fascists. Kashkin’s demise is also a foreshadowing of Jordan’s who, as he lies with a broken left thigh, fights off the temptation to take his own life in order to avoid the sort of torture by the fascists he has spared Kashkin.

General Golz has formulated a strategy for winning a battle with the fascists that includes the plan to blow up the bridge, the central, culminating act toward which the plot of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' inexorably moves. This plan, however, is fraught with danger for Robert Jordan and the others who are supposed to carry it out. If Golz’s indifference to the likely loss of life on the part of those carrying out his orders is on a certain level contemptible, it is more than convincing as a motivation for a general bent on victory at all costs. In one of the many passages of the novel that are so psychologically persuasive, Golz watches the Republican planes take off for battle. Golz, has learned from Robert Jordan via Andrés that the surprise attack he had conceived is no longer a surprise and that “it would be one famous balls up

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more” {{sfn|Hemingway|1940|p=429}} and allows himself to bask in the false glow of what might have been.

<blockquote>All he heard was the roar of the planes and he thought, now, maybe this time, listen to them come, maybe the bombers will blow them all off, maybe we will get a break-though, maybe he will get the reserves he asked for, maybe this is it, maybe this is the time.{{sfn|Hemingway|1940|p=430}}</blockquote>

Although this passage openly broaches the fact that the Loyalist side made strategic mistakes, it is nothing like an overall critique of its conduct of the
war. A far more damning instance that lays bare the cynical, opportunistic
side of the International / Red / Republican project in the Spanish Civil War
is found in the confrontation between the Soviet journalist Karkov and
André Marty, the Frenchman who is a member of the Comintern. As Robert A. Martin shows, Karkov is drawn on the model of Stalin’s personal journalist Koltsov, whereas Marty, also an actual historical figure, retains his own name in the novel{{sfn|Martin|1992|p=62}}. Marty, for whom, as Martin writes, Hemingway had “an intense personal animosity” {{sfn|Martin|1992|p=61}} appears in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' as a paranoid, deranged careerist who is eager and willing to have executed anyone on his own side about whom he has the least suspicion. He is the embodiment of the worst side of the Comintern’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War. He is also a prescient if unintentional portrait of many of Stalin’s salient character traits, especially in his obsession with rooting out imaginary enemies.

Karkov-Koltsov, like Hemingway, detests Marty, who for all of his misdeeds has somehow remained untouchable, and he is determined to find Marty’s “weakness” and expose it{{sfn|Hemigway|1940|p=418}}. When Karkov-Kolstsov forces Marty to release unharmed Gomez and Andrés, who have brought the news from Robert Jordan that the fascists can no longer be subject to a surprise attack, he is asserting his role as the chief do-gooder of the Soviet contingent. Hemingway draws him as the righteous one who uses his privileged status as journalist and Stalin’s right-hand man to make things right in both Spain and the Soviet Union. I have to say that I find this portrait of Karkov-Koltsov to be naïve at best. It is the one place in the novel where Hemingway comes closest to the realm of Socialist Realism, where the heroes
are all too good and too true to the cause to be true.

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Lest anyone think I am about to attempt a deconstruction of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', let me say that whatever its minor faults may be I find the novel to be a work of real genius. (I will let specialists in American literature continue their battle over its rank among Hemingway’s and America’s great novels.) In addition to this multi-leveled novel’s masterfully constructed plot and its superb development of a whole range of disparate characters, several of whom are imbued with the kinds of mythic qualities Robert E. Gajdusek attributes to them{{sfn|Gajdusek|1992|p=133-30}}, I find that Hemingway’s use of Spanish is both innovative and effective. Although he translates many of the Spanish passages, he lets others stand in the original, trusting the reader who does not know the language to deduce the meaning from the context. Furthermore, Hemingway’s use of Spanish phraseology in English, as in “the woman of Pablo,” and “What passes with thee?” and “thou askest” creates a kind of linguistic estrangement, a kind of “Inglespañol” that effectively conveys the Spanish speaking milieu of the novel as well as the point of view of the Spanish speaking hero Robert Jordan, who is a Spanish instructor at the University Montana in Missoula.

Much more could be said about language and style here, but I will add only one more comment. As Thomas E. Gould demonstrates, the American linguistic Puritanism of the
1930s would not permit Hemingway to use the obscenities his characters spoke in, nor would it permit explicit description of sexual acts{{sfn|Gould|1992|p=67-81}}. This last prohibition might be construed to have had one positive outcome with respect to Hemingway’s description of the love making of Robert Jordan and Maria, because rather than describing their actions directly Hemingway uses a rich repertoire of metaphors. Hemingway’s depiction of the third and final time Jordan and Maria make love, when together they reach “la gloria,” is highly original and moving.

<blockquote>There is no other one but one now, one, going now, rising now, sailing now, leaving now, wheeling now, soaring now, away now, all the way now, all of all the way now, one and one is one, is one, is one, is one ...is one in goodness, is one to cherish, is one now on earth with elbows against the cut and slept-on branches of the pine tree with the smell of the pine boughs and the night; to earth conclusively now, and with the morning of the day to come.{{sfn|Hemingway|1940|p=379}}</blockquote>

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I find this passage doubly noteworthy because its rhythmic, flowing, repetitive intonations are so unlike the straight-forward, gruff and blunt style Hemingway often employs. Here Hemingway also evokes the bond between nature and the characters, especially Robert Jordan, that he develops throughout the novel.

Over the course of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' we learn that not only do both sides commit the same atrocities on each other, but that they both pray to the same Virgin Mary. We further see that participants on both sides are appalled by the war itself. Agustin, who is one of the several mouthpieces in the novel for the senselessness of war says, “In this war there is an idiocy without bounds” {{sfn|Hemingway|1940|p=94}}.The fascist Lt. Burrendo comes to a similar conclusion, but his statement is redolent of unconscious irony and hypocrisy when he says, “what a bad thing war is” just after ordering the beheading of Sordo’s men{{sfn|Hemingway|1940|p=322}}. At the very end of the novel, Robert Jordan has Burrendo in his sights at twenty yards away, a range at which he can hardly miss his target. Jordan does not know of Burrendo’s previous perfidy; he only knows that he is the leader of the detachment of fascists who are hot on his trail and that of his companions—I should say comrades—after the bridge has been blown up. But we see that the author has a plan in mind for the fascist lieutenant to receive a poetically appropriate payback for his deeds. The novel ends before Robert Jordan shoots Burrendo, but Hemingway leaves no doubt that this will happen.

With all of the balancing and matching Hemingway does between the Republican and Fascist sides, we may conclude that with respect to the conduct of the war itself the warring parties are virtually equal in their employment of brutality and violence—including the execution of members of their own side who for whatever reason happened to displease someone such as Marty or Pablo. If there is any “romance” left over in Hemingway’s description of the Spanish Civil War, it has more to do with Spain than with the war. Even given the cynicism, corruption, and brutality of the Reds and Republicans that Hemingway exposes with much(o) gusto,
he is still fundamentally in sympathy with their cause, the preservation of the
Republic, for whatever else they are, they are not fascists.

Here, then, is my segue to Norman Mailer, who also uses Communism and Fascism as measures of each other. In 1984 Mailer made his first trip to Russia and the Soviet Union. This brief visit helped lay the groundwork for a much longer one in which he researched material and interviewed many

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Soviet citizens in pursuit of material for Oswald’s Tale. I should add here that Mailer had a built in, so to speak, predisposition to visit Russia, since as J.
Michael Lennon, Mailer’s authorized biographer, has pointed out to me, all
four of his grandparents were from there. Mailer wrote an interesting article for the Times of London about the first trip in which he questions Ronald Reagan’s famous declaration that the Soviet Union was “an evil empire” and also makes a plea for a more nuanced and mature relationship on the part of the US with the USSR. In addition to some perceptive observations on the life of the USSR at that time and comparisons with the US, Mailer writes,

<blockquote>American leaders are invariably ready to accept fascism in other
countries and do business with it. Since fascism is the foul disease of the rich when capitalism breaks down, so our leaders can understand it. Communism, however, terrifies the American rich. After all, it is the tyranny of the poor when society breaks up altogether ...It is significant that we have forgiven Nazi Germany for its concentration camps and the million people the Nazis exterminated. We do great business with Germany, but we still do not exculpate the Russians for their gulags.{{sfn|Mailer|1984|p=38}}</blockquote>

One could certainly debate Mailer’s conclusions, the sort of sweeping, summative analysis he was fond of making on the large questions of politics and life, but that is not the object here. My point is that forty-four years after the publication of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', for all of the differences in the
contexts and the details, Mailer is using the F-ism to test and partially justify the C-ism in a way that is not unlike Hemingway’s approach to the same question. And like Hemingway, Mailer comes down on the side of the now former Reds partly because they are not fascists.

We can say former Reds now not just because there is no longer a Soviet Union, but also because in Russia the word itself has long since lost the edge it possessed in the early years of the establishment of the Soviet state. Of course, the word remains in such terms as the Red Army, but there it is in a vestigial role, not the provocative one it once had. Similarly, by the time Mailer began visiting the Soviet Union the energy of the 1930s, its frenzied “socialist building" had flowed over the dams of all those hydroelectric plants, flown up through the stacks of all the steel mills, and become frozen in the gray cement of the resulting Soviet concrete colossus. During Harry

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Hubbard’s visits to Moscow in Harlot’s Ghost, Oswald’s strange stay in the USSR chronicled in Oswald’s Tale, and Mailer’s own visit just mentioned, the overall impression one gets is that of hum-drum routine. The human energy that was voluntarily and forcibly put into the building of the new state’s infrastructure was long since spent. I say forcibly because prisoners of the Gulag were used as laborers on many major and minor projects, including the building of the Moscow Metro, the extensive system of waterways linking Moscow with Leningrad-Petersburg, and the Belomor (White Sea) Canal. The romance associated with the Soviet intervention in Spain, amplified by cultural visits such as the one made by a Basque soccer team in 1937, was also long gone. Even if in the mid 1980s the Soviet Union was still a police state, Stalin’s terror of the 1930s was over as well, and dissidents were, as Mailer wrote in 1984 “ostracized . . . but no longer pulled out of their beds at three in the morning” {{sfn|Mailer|1984|p=36}}.By the mid 1980s, a Soviet version of the middle class had long since formed (at least in the cities) that provided its citizens a stable and predictable way of life. When Hubbard visits the Metropol Hotel in Moscow with “aged parquet that buckled like cheap linoleum when you stepped on it” (Harlot’s, 99), he cannot believe that this is the place where the Bolsheviks gathered before and after the Revolution. “I was furious suddenly at I knew not what. How did these people presume to be our greatest enemy on earth? They did not even have the wherewithal to be evil” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=107}}.

Hubbard shortly backs away from this apparently definitive repost to the Reagan doctrine when he reflects that “Communism might well be evil. That is an awesome and terrible thesis, but then the simple can reign over the complex” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=103}}. Even the statue of fearsome Felix Dzerzhinsky in Lyubanka Square and the Lyubanka prison itself fail to “stir adrenaline” in Hubbard, who knows he might wind up there{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=104}}. When he walks out onto Red Square, whose ancient name means Beautiful Square in Russian, Hubbard is struck by his impression that “[e]ven the young had an air of relinquishment that speaks of middle age” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=105}}.

Throughout Harlot’s Ghost Mailer describes how the CIA and the KGB engaged in competition with each other in both Latin America, especially Uruguay, and in Berlin. (Mailer also describes the CIA’s and Hubbard’s activities in “Red” Cuba that led to the Bay of Pigs fiasco.) Even with the understanding that over all of this hung the possibility of some overzealous fool on either side making a fatal blunder that could have led to a nuclear exchange, I hope that we have now reached a time when we can look

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back and say, as I believe Mailer shows us, that all of the hugger-mugger, derring-do, tunnel digging, and various forms of cat and mouse the CIA and KGB engaged in were just so much silliness. We do so of course in the full recognition that much of this nonsense still goes on in the post-Soviet present.

At the end of ''Harlot’s Ghost'', Hubbard, using a fake passport, makes a second visit to Moscow to see whether Harlot has defected from the CIA to the KGB and there by become an American version of the British spy Kim Philby. If this were found to be the case, it would of course be an enormous defeat and embarrassment for the CIA and a personal trauma for Hubbard as well, since Harlot was variously his surrogate father, mentor, and rival in romance. Here Hubbard’s rage at the Soviet Union is in full cry when in contemplation of the bad coffee he will drink in the Metropol, he exclaims that it is an “[a]ccursed country of whole incapacities!”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=982}} What I take from ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is that on one hand the US-USSR rivalry is still a good platform for the sort of mystery Mailer is creating in the novel, especially with regard to the fate of Harlot himself that is left unresolved. On the other hand, the middle-aged, middle-class Soviets are no longer really Red anymore, and the system they have created, however formidable militarily, is rent with glaring faults and failures, many of which are in plain sight for all to see.

In Mailer’s description of the pre-revolutionary period in Russia in The Castle in the Forest there is virtually no mention of the Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries, for his interest is all in Nicholas, Alexandra, Rasputin, and
his narrator Dieter’s professed manipulations of events. Had Mailer finished the future Russian project he forecasts in Castle; he would certainly have dealt with the Reds. My own hunch is that he could not have resisted the temptation to give his own characterization of Lenin. Leaving aside such moot points, I find that Mailer, for all of his attention to politics on a national level, is greatly more interested in the inner workings of the personalities of his characters than in their politics.

And the same may be said of Hemingway, who largely on account of his time at the Hotel Gaylord in Madrid, where he met with a number of Soviet participants in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side, was exceptionally well informed about what was going on in the Soviet Union of the late 1930s. He knew about the purges, especially of the Red Army’s officer corps, including that of Tukachevsky. He also knew buzz words and phrases, such as “liquidated” and “enemy of the people,” and he knew about political

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commissars. I am not claiming that his Soviet sources revealed to Hemingway everything they knew about the darker sides of Soviet life, particularly Stalin’s terror, for they would have been unlikely to risk being found out as Hemingway’s source of such information since he was known to them as a famous writer and journalist. However, Hemingway, one way or another did crack some of the Soviets’ seamier secrets, as we see in Robert Jordan’s ruminations on the fate of the Russian poet Mayakovsky who, according to Jordan, was guilty of the sin of Bohemianism, but now that he is dead, he is a “saint” {{sfn|Hemigway|1940|p=164}}. I understand this to mean that Hemingway was concerned about the fates of Soviet Russian writers and that Jordan’s irony shows that he understood they were subject to the vagaries of the state’s ever shifting attitudes toward them. I have to say here parenthetically that among the writers of his time Mayakovsky was certainly the reddest of them all, and his leftist proclivities outlasted even those of the regime itself. For all of Robert Jordan’s political awareness and involvement, he is no party’s man, and ultimately, we judge him not on his politics but on his character. Likewise, I believe that we should judge Hemingway by the character of his prose and not his politics.

It seems clear that the red connections of Hemingway and Mailer are sometimes linked with their interest in things Russian and sometimes not.
Moreover, both writers are bound up with Russian literature in a number of substantial, one might even say formative ways. To put it briefly, Hemingway
was clearly well read in Chekhov and he also read authors of the Soviet period. As Clarence Brown points out, Hemingway’s praise of Andrei Platonov to Soviet journalists helped spur the Soviets to resume publication of this writer of exceptional and original talent{{sfn|Brown|1993|p=116}}. It was during the 1960s that Hemingway experienced a surge of popularity among Russian readers. Indeed, I remember vividly a young man I met in Kiev in 1969 who had literally read all of Hemingway that was available in Russian translation at that time and who knew by heart the plots of many of his stories and novels. There is not space here adequately to describe what voracious readers of fiction Russians are except to say that they—from professional intellectuals to professional bus drivers—often know well not just the “classics” of their own literature but those of world literature, including of course Hemingway. Furthermore, some of the Russian writers who are often associated with a loose grouping from the 1960s called “Young Prose,” for example Yury Kazakov, show the unmistakable hand of Hemingway in their manner of writing. So

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we see that the relations between Hemingway and Russian writers form a two-way street.

I have made a case for what I consider to be Norman Mailer’s seminal relationship with Russian literature in the 2009 edition of ''The Mailer Review'' {{sfn|Peppard|2009|p=173-211}}, and some of his best-known works, such as ''An American Dream'', have been translated into Russian. A more thorough investigation of his reception in Russia, however, remains to be done.

==Citations==
{{Reflist}}

===Works Cited===

{{Refbegin}}

* {{cite book |last=Babel |first=Isaac |date=2002 |title=The Complete Works of Isaac Babel. |url= |location=New York, NY |publisher=Norton |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Brown |first=Clarence |date=1993 |title=The Viking Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader |url= |location=New York, NY |publisher=Penguin Books |pages=116 |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Gajdusek |first=Robert E. |title=Pilar’s Tale: The Myth and the Message |url= |journal=Blowing the Bridge: Essays on Hemingway and For Whom the Bell Tolls. |volume= |issue= |date=1992 |pages=113-30 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Gould |first=Thomas E. |date=1992 |title=.“A Tiny Operation with Great Effect: Authorial Revision and Editorial Emasculation in the Manuscript of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.” |url= |location=New York |publisher= Greenwood Press |pages=67-81 |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |date=1940 |title=For Whom the Bell Tolls |url= |location=New York |publisher=Charles Scribner’s Sons |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{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 |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1991 |title=Harlot’s Ghost |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date= 4 Nov 1984 |title=Mailer in Moscow. |url= |magazine=The Sunday Times Magazine |location= |publisher= |access-date=}}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1995 |title=Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Martin |first=Robert A. |title=. “Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls: Fact into Fiction.” |url= |journal=Blowing the Bridge:Essays on Hemingway and For Whom the Bell Tolls. |volume= |issue= |date=1992 |pages=59-66 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Peppard |first=Victor |title=.“Norman Mailer in the Light of Russian Literature.” |url= |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=3.1 |issue= |date=2009 |pages=173-211 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Stoneback |first=H.R. |title=.“The Priest Did Not Answer: Hemingway, the Church, the Party, and For Whom the Bell Tolls.” |url= |journal=Blowing the Bridge: Essays on Hemingway and For Whom the Bell Tolls. |volume= |issue= |date=1992 |pages=99-112 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Watson |first=William Braasch |title=.“Joris Ivens and the Communists: Bringing Hemingway into the Spanish Civil War.” |url= |journal= Blowing the Bridge: Essays on Hemingway and For Whom the Bell Tolls |volume= |issue= |date=1992 |pages=37-57 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
{{refend}}

{{Review}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hemingway, Mailer, and The "Reds"}}
[[Category:Book Reviews (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness: Norman Mailer’s Voice in Wild 90 and Beyond the Law

2025-04-09T02:31:51Z

KWatson:

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{{Byline|last=Cohen|first=Sarah Jo|abstract=A discussion of Mailer’s career, interrelating Mailer’s ethnicity with his corpus of work, with special attention to his cinematic work.|url=https://projectmailer.net/pm/Sara_Jo_Cohen}}

{{dc|dc=N|ORMAN MAILER’S SIZABLE FBI FILE BEGINS WITH HIS VOICE.}} The 165 pages of Mailer’s 171-page file available to the public cover fifteen years of observation and surveillance, and includes materials ranging from endless notes tracking Mailer’s passport applications and international travel, to FBI agents’ reviews of Miami and the Siege of Chicago (with meticulous notes about each mention of the FBI), and even a letter from a high school teacher asking J. Edgar Hoover for permission to teach ''The Naked and the Dead''{{efn|In a letter dated March 18, 1964, also included in Mailer’s file, Hoover wrote back telling the teacher that this request was beyond his area of jurisdiction because the FBI “neither makes evaluations nor draws conclusions as to the character of integrity of any organization, publication, or individual,” and because Hoover has made it a habit “not to comment on any material not prepared by the FBI.”}}. 1 The file begins, however, with a clipping from ''The Washington Post'', a June 6,1962, George Sokolsky column called “These Days,” that moved J. Edgar Hoover to leave a note for his staff reading, “Let me have memo on Mailer” {{sfn|The Federal Bureau of Investigation|1967-1975|}}. Sokolsky’s article responds to an ''Esquire'' piece Mailer wrote about then first lady Jackie Kennedy that describes Mrs. Kennedy’s voice as “a quiet parody of the sort of voice one hears on the radio late at night, dropped softly into the ear by girls who sell soft mattresses, depilatories, or creams to brighten the skin” {{sfn|Sokolsky|1962|}}. Sokolsky takes offense at Mailer’s mockery of Mrs. Kennedy and scrutiny of her voice, responding, “[A] person’s voice is what it is. I never heard Norman Mailer’s voice but whatever the Lord gave him, baritone or tenor, soprano or bass, it is what it is, and he can thank the good Lord that he does not suffer from cerebral palsy or some such thing” {{sfn|Sokolsky|1962|}}. Mailer’s voice, however, much like his persona, is not at all God-given and never “is what it is.” Rather, Mailer’s

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voice is a deliberate construction pieced together from bits of others’ voices
in order to mask the adenoidal voice of his childhood.

Mailer reflects briefly upon his voice in his chronicle of the October 1967 March on the Pentagon, ''The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History'', written in the third person with himself as its main character. Part IV of ''Armies'' begins with an apology from Mailer for bringing the story of the March on the Pentagon to a climax and then launching into a diversion about his relationship to film and the cameras following him through the melee of the march. Mailer writes of his relationship to film: “he had on screen in this first documentary a fatal taint, a last remaining speck of the one personality he found absolutely insupportable—the nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn. Something in his adenoids gave it away—he had the softness of a man early accustomed to mother-love” {{sfn|Mailer|1968|pg=152}}. For Mailer, the paradoxical experience of seeing his voice undermines the masculinities he works to materialize in his career as a writer and public intellectual, which he goes on to enumerate: “warrior, presumptive general, ex-political candidate, embattled aging enfant terrible of the literary world, wise father of six children, radical intellectual, existential philosopher, hard-working author, champion of obscenity, husband of four battling sweet wives, amiable bar drinker, and much exaggerated street fighter, party giver, hostess insulter.” As a result of feeling outed on film as a “nice Jewish boy,” “accustomed to mother love,” our presumptive general and champion of obscenity vows to “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself” {{sfn|Mailer|1968|pg=152}}.

The problem of Mailer’s voice is intimately connected with both sexuality and masculinity. The adenoids, after all, are located in the nose, a stereo typical marker of Jewish otherness and degeneracy. We do not need Sander Gilman to tell us, although he does in the chapter of ''The Jew’s Body'' entitled “The Jewish Nose,” that the Jewish nose is the locus of redirected anxiety about the Jewish penis—both are body parts that develop and take shape at puberty—the latter of which is a threat to national purity through its potential to increase the Jewish population. The adenoidal voice signals a kind of impotence for Mailer, revealing him as accustomed to mother love, and functions as “the acoustic mirror in which the male subject hears all the repudiated elements of his infantile babble” {{sfn|Silverman|1988|pg=81}}. The infantile babble here, the mother tongue of the mother’s voice, is Yiddish{{efn|Mary V. Dearborn writes that Mailer picked up Yiddish at home from his parents, “enough so that many years later, in Germany, he was able to ask for directions in this language and be understood”{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|}}}}. 2 Kaja Silverman writes that the voice of the mother resonates in the male subject and that “the male subject frequently ‘refines’ his ‘own’ voice by projecting onto the

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mother’s voice all that is unassimilable to the paternal position” {{sfn|Silverman|1988|pg=81}}. Mailer is a case study in this relationship to the maternal voice; when Mailer first sees himself on film, he hears the adenoidal, Jewish, maternal voice within himself. Because the paternal position Mailer strives to create is distinctly not Jewish, or at least one that allies itself with Jewishness without performing it, the mother’s voice becomes unassimilable (or in his words, “unsupportable”) to his identity. Thus, while Mailer asserts that he will “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself,” he returns to film as both actor and director in order to refine his voice by expunging its maternal layers.

Norman Mailer’s film career, often dismissed as vulgar and/or irrelevant, was short but intense; he directed four films, two of which were released in 1968, ''Wild''
and ''Beyond the Law'', one in 1970, ''Maidstone'', and, after a long break, ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' was released in 1987{{efn|Mailer was also featured in several documentaries during these years, including Dick Fontaine’s ''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?'' (1968) and ''Norman Mailer vs. Fun City U.S.A.''
(1970); the former is a filmic companion to Armies, documenting Mailer’s actions during the March on the Pentagon, and the latter produces a record of Mailer’s
New York City mayoral campaign. Mailer was also documented in Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s ''Town Bloody Hall'', a film of the debate between Mailer and Germaine Greer about women’s liberation at Town Hall in New York City.}}. Mailer’s first three films were largely influenced by John Cassavetes, although Mailer predictably argues that his mastery of what he calls “existential acting” makes him a much better filmmaker than Cassavetes {{sfn|Mailer|2006|}}. In his essay, “Some Dirt in the Talk,” Mailer defines existential acting by addressing each of the terms that comprise the phrase. He notes that existentialism and acting exist at two opposite “poles,” writing, ''“If existentialism is ultimately concerned with the attractions of the unknown, acting is one of the surviving rituals of invocation, repetition, and ceremony—of propitiation to the gods”'' {{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=104}}{{efn| It is quite possible that Mailer is thinking in part of Kenneth Anger here, the word “invocation” invoking Anger’s ''Invocation of My Demon Brother''(1969), as well as the ritual and ceremony of highly-stylized films like ''Kustom Kar Kommandos''(1965) and ''Scorpio Rising''(1964). Incidentally, in the Boulenger interview, a copy of Anger’s book Hollywood ''Babylon'' can be see on the bookshelf over Mailer’s shoulder, almost like a cartoon devil egging him on.}} His theory of existential acting, then, strives to collapse these two poles, freeing acting from repetition and ceremony, and liberating his actors (and himself) from the propitiation of the gods. Existential acting, he argues, works because in our daily lives we always pretend, lie, and act, and works by more effectively representing the chaos and “complexity of our century” than mainstream Hollywood cinema {{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=90,108}}. Unsurprisingly, from the man who gave us the genre-bending history as novel/novel as history, the true life novel, and the novel biography{{efn|''The Armies of the Night'', ''The Executioner’s Song'', and ''Marilyn'', respectively.}} existential acting collapses the cinema and the outside world, documentary and fiction, acting and existentialism, and masculinity and performance, the last of which Mailer explicitly connects, writing: “There is hardly a guy alive who is not an actor to the hilt—for the simplest of reasons. He cannot be tough all the time...[s]o he acts to fill the gaps” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=90-1}}. Thus, armed with the theory and methodology of existential acting, Mailer returns to the cinema as a filmmaker for the same reason he considers turning away from it after his

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experience in the above passage: at the same time the camera exposes one’s frailties and the identities one attempts to disguise; it bolsters the masquerade of masculinity by imprinting its performance in celluloid. The same voice that undermines Mailer’s masculinity becomes his primary means of constructing it.

In his first documentary Mailer sees “something in his adenoids” in a moment of slippage that renders the aural a visual prop. The experience of seeing his voice disrupts Mailer’s viewing experience by first troubling the traditional assumption that film is a visual medium and then forcing Mailer to confront himself as both image and sound. Mladen Dolar provides a means of understanding the revolutionary and revelatory potential of sound, in the form of the voice, in relation to both identity and film, as he writes:

<blockquote>|[T]he visible world presents relative stability, permanence, distinctiveness, and a location at a distance, the audible presents fluidity, passing, a certain inchoate, amorphous character and a lack of distance. The voice is elusive, always changing, becoming, elapsing, with unclear contours, as opposed to the relative permanence, solidity, durability of the seen. {{sfn|Dolar|2006|pg=79}}.</blockquote>

Here the visible is associated with stability, permanence, and distinctiveness—terms that are crucial to our understanding of cinema, but that mirror the ways we come to understand ourselves as selves. In film, the visible is assumed to guarantee presence, an assumption that stems from, among other things, the historical and philosophical privileging of the visual as a primary quality, and the problem of the voiceovers and voice-offs of sound film—which are often disembodied, absent, and coming from beyond the grave or before birth. Because the visual has historically been the privileged epistemological order through which we understand both film and identity, by focusing on sound, which is dynamic and playful, we can begin to dis
mantle both identity and film.{{efn|At this point in time, there is, of course, a well-established tradition of discussing sound and the voice on film—Pascal Bonitzer’s “The Silences of the Voice”(1975 ), Christian Metz’s “Aural Objects” (1980), Mary Anne Doane’s “The Voice in the Cinema”(1982), and Silverman’s ''Acoustic Mirror'' (1988, just to name a few. It seems important for our purposes, however, to rehash the stakes of this discussion, especially in relation to deconstructing/reconstructing/constructing Mailer’s masculinity.}} As Mailer sees his voice, witnessing his in sides (in the form of his adenoids) undermining his outsides, the visual and audible come together, undoing the binary oppositions between seeing and hearing, insides and outsides.

Dolar contrasts the visible to the audible, arguing that the latter is associated with a lack of distance, a lack of distance perhaps best embodied by the uterine envelope created by the mother’s voice. This lack of distance with

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regard to the sound of the voice stems from the fact that the voice is simultaneously sent and delivered, thus folding back on itself and troubling the
boundaries between self and other. This lack of distance is also precisely what Mailer experiences when he sees himself in his first documentary, at once spoken and heard. While Christian Metz dismisses seeing oneself on screen as an impossibility{{efn|In ''Imaginary Signifier'', Metz writes that “there is one thing and one thing only that is never reflected in [the screen]: the spectator’s own body”{{Metz|Lennon|1982|p=61}}.}}, feminist film theory calls attention to the discomfort that comes from not being granted the distance that the visible demands. In “Film and the Masquerade,” Mary Anne Doane argues that the female spectator goes largely untheorized because the historical “imbrication of the cinematic image and the representation of the woman” leaves her too close to the image {{sfn|Doane|1982|pg=76}}. Doane theorizes that in order to achieve the distance necessary to watch and appreciate film, female spectators assume a metaphorical feminine mask, which “in flaunting femininity, holds it at a distance” {{sfn|Doane|1982|pg=81}}. Doane then briefly considers why men do not have to masquerade as more masculine spectators, writing, “The very fact that we can speak of a woman ‘using’ her sex or ‘using’ her body for particular gains is highly significant—it is not that a man cannot use his body in this way but that he doesn’t have to” {{sfn|Doane|1982|pg=82}}.

But using his body for particular gains is precisely what Mailer does, as exemplified in Diane Arbus’s photograph of Mailer. If, as Mailer quipped, “Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like giving a hand grenade to a baby,” this hand grenade caught an image that exemplifies how Mailer flaunts his masculinity by holding it at a distance {{sfn|Hagberg|2008|pg=211}}. In this photograph, we see Mailer is in his standard three-piece suit, sprawled out in a writerly looking high-backed chair. His right hand looks as though clasping an invisible cigarette, or pen, or as if gesturing to emphasize a point. His forehead is wrinkled in thought, and his blue eyes glow even in black and white. While his clothing, his chair, his furrowed brow, and his mouth, slightly agape in apparent mid-sentence, add up to an image we would expect of a great writer, his posture suggests otherwise; immediately, our attention is drawn to Mailer’s crotch. Thus, this image reveals both Mailer’s efforts to underscore his masculinity, placing his crotch front and center, and the vulnerability of this masculinity—in this moment, we wouldn’t need a grenade to cause Mailer a great deal of pain; a swift kick would suffice. The simultaneous power and vulnerability of Mailer’s crotch underscores his efforts to use the visibility of his body to counteract the invisibility of his voice, and his

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hidden adenoids. We see Mailer engaged in a manly masquerade, as his proximity to the image allows him to manipulate it.

So male spectators need to masquerade as well—especially male spectators who find themselves closer to the image than they would like. The Jewish male is one such figure, as a result of a history of anti-Semitic visual representations of Jews in both scientific and popular media. Sander Gilman argues that such visual representations are internalized by contemporary Jewish-American writers, registering most prominently in repeated anxiety about sounding too Jewish {{sfn|Gilman|1991|pg=10-37}}. Mailer’s anxiety about his adenoids is decisively Jewish, both because the adenoids are located in the nose and because they give the Jewish voice its stereotypical nasal quality. Mailer’s attempt to work through this anxiety in his films is twofold. First, he gets on the other side of the camera in order to see rather than be seen, and when he is seen (as actor), it is under his own direction. Second, Mailer employs his voice in order to intervene, destabilize, and distance himself from the power of the image.

''Wild 90'', as it repeatedly calls attention to issues of seeing and visibility,
provides the best examples of Mailer’s effort to seize control of his visual
representation in order to produce a record of his masculinity. Mailer accomplishes this task not only by “writing,”{{efn|The word “writing” is in quotes in this sentence because while Mailer is given credit for writing the film, for example on the ''Internet Movie Database'', existential acting relies on improvisation and thus has no script, per se.}} editing, and directing the film, but also, by playing a boxer in league with mafiosi, who have the police under their control. In this film the Maf Boys, three men who spend the film holed up in a Brooklyn warehouse, watch over the New York Police Department, a position emphasized by their location many stories above the city street. The NYPD, however, asserts that the Maf Boys would not have lived past thirteen had the Irish and Jewish cops not been watching out for them—so a network of interlaced looks, and interlaced ethnicities, emerges. But perhaps the most striking look is Mailer’s own. As a character known as “the Prince,” Mailer is perpetually at the mirror, greasing up his hair and combing out its kinky curls. This position is crucial to Mailer’s management of his visual representation: from the mirror, much as in his position as director, Mailer can see both himself and the actors behind him; he can also control his image, making sure his mane and signature sneer are exactly as he wants
them to appear. The metaphorical significance of Mailer’s mirror scenes almost goes without saying—at these times we are treated to moments of silence rare in his film (or writing, or political) career in which Mailer uses the visuality of film to construct and maintain the visibility of identity, to register

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his transformation here from nice Jewish boy to badass boxer. Despite this love affair with his image, Mailer shatters the filmic mirror when, at the conclusion of ''Wild 90'', the Prince demands to speak to the audience, breaking the fourth wall, and informing the audience that the CIA{{efn|Mailer had a strong distaste for the CIA, an organization that he saw as the paragon of both surveillance culture and WASP culture. Mailer’s-plus-page novel ''Harlot’s Ghost'' provides an extended though indirect glimpse into his dislike for the CIA and is almost agonizing to read because its narrator, Harry Hubbard, is a boring, WASPy, CIA agent. It’s also worth noting that Hubbard refers to the one Jewish agent in the CIA, Reed Arnold Rosen, as “adenoidal” (61).}} is watching all of us. He then goes on to tell us, in his garbled, drunken voice that his favorite author is Norman Mailer—presumably, because he is both his creator and a substantial part of his self.

Mailer’s appearance, particularly in the mirror scenes of ''Wild 90'', is crucial to his efforts to make masculinity and unmake Jewishness, two concepts at odds because of the internalization of a long history of popular representations and stereotypes of the weak Jew. While Mailer combats this weakness in part through his tough guy exterior—carefully cultivated through hard-drinking, hard-talking, and hard-fighting in an effort to make himself out as a latter-day Hemingway—Mailer’s voice registers this construction as well. In the notes taken during my first screenings of ''Beyond the Law'' and ''Wild 90'', I repeatedly try to describe the voice of the characters he portrays. In my notes on Beyond the Law, I wrote that the poor sound quality of the film combines with Mailer’s voice to create the effect of almost incomprehensible yelling from Lt. Francis Xavier Pope for an hour and twenty-four minutes. My notes on Mailer’s gangster voice as the Prince of ''Wild 90'' remark that his accent makes him sound like a cross between Marlon Brando and Fred Flintstone with marbles in his mouth. In my second viewing, I crossed out this assessment and wrote that he sounded more like Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion from the ''Wizard of Oz''. I am not alone in trying to describe Mailer’s voice. Michael Mewshaw describes Mailer’s voice as “the Irish brogue of a whiskey priest” coming from the body of a man who “looked about as threatening as a teddy bear” {{sfn|Mewshaw|2002|pg=14}}, and Jane O’Reilly notes that “words rumble and bubble and jump out, in a variety of accents: New York, faintly southern, all g’s dropped (as in ‘Ah’m talkin’) when he is particularly shy”{{sfn|o'Reilly|1974|pg=198}}{{efn| Salman Rushdie describes Bert Lahr’s lion voice is strikingly similar words, “all elongated vowel sounds (''Put ’emuuuuuuuup''),”and the Cowardly Lion’s personality as one that sounds a lot like Mailer’s: “transparent bravado and huge, operatic, tail-tugging, blubbing terror”{{sfn|Rushdie|1992|}}. More recently, in an article about the New York Mailer retrospective, A.O. Scott describes Mailer’s voice as a “rapid, forceful stream of half-baked nostrums and brilliant ''aperçus'' delivered in that inimitable accent, an audible palimpsest of Mr. Mailer’s Brooklyn childhood, his Ivy League education and his World War II combat service in an Army unit composed mainly of Texans and Southerners.”

All of this is to say that the voices of Mailer’s characters (including the character “Norman Mailer,” who becomes a formal entity in ''The Armies of''

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''the Night'', but who was roaming the streets of America and Europe at least since the publication of ''The Naked and the Dead'') are a response to the anxiety of sounding too Jewish. The adenoidal voice Mailer hears in his first documentary, the unsure voice of the Brooklyn Jew, transforms into a cacophony of accents—Southern, Irish, Italian, Brooklyn—which together make Mailer’s voice the voice of immigrant America. Paul Breines writes that discursive constructions of Jewish weakness arise from and refer to the rootlessness of the Diaspora {{sfn|Breines|1995|pg=195}}. For Breines, tough Jewishness is a performance on the part of secular Jews that is largely associated with Zionism, and its creation first of tough Jewish pioneers, and then, after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, of tough Israeli soldiers {{sfn|Breines|1995|pg=195}}. Mailer, however, described his relationship to Judaism in this way: “I am a Jew out of loyalty to the underdog. I would never say I was not a Jew, but I took no strength from the fact” {{sfn|Dearborn|1999|pg=14}}. With this in mind, Mailer’s voice is a tough Jewish voice, but one that revises Breines’ toughness by drawing strength from a composite of immigrant voices, rooted, if at all, in American soil rather than Israeli. Mailer brings these immigrant voices together to construct a hybrid masculinity that is not only part white Negro and part tough Jew, but that is also comprised of Italian American, Irish American, Southern, and Texan parts, among others. Thus, Mailer simultaneously makes and unmakes Jewish masculinity by borrowing from other masculinities in the process of making himself into a palimpsest.

Mailer’s essay, “The White Negro,” is the site most often returned to in order to discuss his contribution to the theories of tough Jewish discourse and of masculinity.{{efn|See Levine and Damon. Damon pithily writes that “The White Negro” “claims to be about how the white man envies the Black man’s sexuality and thus tries to emulate his style, but [its] subtext is about how the Jewish man envies and wants to emulate the gentile man’s sexuality, but can’t say so”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=337-358}}.}} This essay, which argues that the hipster’s existential, psychopathic masculinity is particularly well-suited for the Cold War political climate, is infamous not only because it espouses Reichian connections between sex and violence, but also because it argues that “the Negro,” who “relinquish[es] the pleasures of the mind for the more obligatory pleasures of the body,” provides a model for how to live violently and sexually {{sfn|Mailer|1959|pg=341}}. Both because of and despite its racist enlistment of African American men, Mailer’s essay celebrates and identifies with black masculinity as a means of embracing otherness without admitting Jewishness. With its repeated references to the figure of “the psychopath,” who “murders—if he has the courage,” however, Mailer’s essay is also about criminality, which is a crucial source of his on-screen tough Jewish persona {{sfn|Mailer|1959|pg=347}}. While this persona borrows its style and hipness from African Americans, it

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almost literally ventriloquizes through the voices of Irish Americans and Italian Americans, particularly those of Hollywood cops and crooks.

Forging a criminal enterprise, and/or performing criminal masculinity, is a traditional means of assimilation for immigrant populations in America, which for the second wave of European immigrants begins with the Irish in the 1850s and is then passed on to Italian and Jewish immigrants two generations later.{{efn|A classic example appears in Sergio Leone’s Jewish gangster film,''Once Upon a Time in
America''—which stars the perpetually ethnicity-crossing Robert De Niro and for which Mailer flew to Rome 1976 in to work on the screenplay{{sfn|Mewshaw|2018|}}.For a recent example, see Stern’s ''The Frozen Rabbi'', a comic whirlwind tour through the history of American Jewry that follows one family from the Russian Pale to Memphis, Tennessee, with a stop in New York, where one family member, Ruby “Kid” Karp, becomes a notorious gangster.}} While criminality provided immigrant gangsters with increased notoriety and power, immigrant groups who became police officers saw a similar rise in status—and much like criminals, in part because it was hoped that they could infiltrate the criminal scenes of their brethren, it was the Irish who were cops first, followed by Italians and Jews {{sfn|Fried|1993|pg=xv}}. While this history suggests discrete ethnic groups who cross paths but not cultures, cinematic representations of the outlaw capitalism of mobsters often star Jewish immigrants in the role of Italian immigrants and thus demonstrate ethnic crossings similar to those in Mailer’s films. The results register in the voice; in ''Little Caesar'' {{sfn|Little Ceasar|1931|}} Edward G. Robinson, né Emanuel Goldenberg, stars as the adenoidal Cesar Enrico Bandello, and in ''Scarface'' {{sfn|Scarface|1932|}}, Paul Muni, né Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund, stars as Antonio Camonte whose Italian accent has a near Yiddish lilt.

In a letter to William F. Buckley, a man whose mid-century faux British accent made his voice almost as strange and remarkable as Mailer’s[[efn|Buckley is also both WASPy and a former CIA agent. See William F. Buckley, Jr., “Who Did What?”}} Mailer hands the crown of “most hated man in American life” over to Buckley. The letter responds to Buckley’s recent speech before the Holy Name Society, an annual gathering of Catholic police officers, in which Buckley criticized the news media for overemphasizing police brutality during the recent civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama {{sfn|Tanenhouse|2005|}}. When the ''Herald Tribune'' and civil rights activists caught wind of these remarks, and the rumors that the assembled police officers laughed and applauded upon hearing them, a media frenzy ensued which elicited a letter from Mailer, weighing in on Buckley’s speech by clarifying his own relationship to the boys in blue:

<blockquote>|I’m not the cop-hater I’m reputed to be, and in fact police fascinate me. But this is because I think their natures are very complex, not simple at all, and what I would object to ...is that you made a one-for-one correspondence between the need to maintain law and order and the nature of the men who would main-

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tain it. The policeman has I think an extraordinarily tortured psyche. He is perhaps more tortured than the criminal. {{sfn|Mailer|2008|p=8}}</blockquote>

Perhaps as a result of their tortured psyches, Mailer repeatedly turns to cops and crooks as the focus of and source of conflict in his oeuvre. For Mailer, cops are men in power who are repeatedly outwitted by clever, hypermasculine, criminals: think Stephen Rojack and Gary Gilmore, the respective heroes of ''An American Dream'' and ''The Executioner’s Song'', who commit numerous crimes in single volumes, and the Norman Mailer of ''The Armies of the Night'', arrested by U.S. Marshalls for crossing a police line at the Pentagon. There is also the Norman Mailer who stabbed his second wife, and the one who nearly lost an eye after fighting a group of hoodlums who insinuated that his dog was a “faggot” {{sfn|Hitchens|2007|}}. Mailer, as his art and life suggest, sees the tension between cops and criminals as one that is inside of everyone. In a discussion of ''Beyond the Law'' in an interview with Gilles Boulenger, Mailer reveals that the film “had a notion at the core of it that worked— which is that everybody has a cop or a criminal in them” and that, “when you put people together—one playing a cop and one playing a crook—you get the dynamism that comes from the fact that every cop in real life has a potential criminal in him and every criminal in real life, or almost every criminal in real life, has a potential cop within their soul {{sfn|Mailer|2006|}}.”

Mailer sees the conflict between cops and crooks as one that inhabits the film set as well. In “A Course on Film-Making,” he describes cameramen and union grips, who “usually dress like cops off duty and are built like cops (with the same heavy meat in the shoulders, same bellies oiled in beer), which is not surprising for they are also in surveillance upon a criminal activity: people are forging emotions under bright lights… [l]ike cops they see through every fake move and hardly care” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=133}}. Here the crew, who are equated with cops, are set up in opposition to the actors whom they put under surveillance and, more indirectly, to the director, who for Mailer is always an outlaw resisting the tyranny of the image, striving to disrupt the conventions of polite cinema through a refusal to use a script, and insisting upon including as much verbal and auditory obscenity as humanly possible. Thus, even when Mailer plays a cop in ''Beyond the Law'', this portrayal becomes an effort similar to that of the director whose film tramples upon respectability. Mailer’s Lieutenant Pope inhabits the body of the cop in order

{{pg|192|193}}

to mock him and to illustrate a psyche more tortured than that of the criminal.

In ''Beyond the Law'', as Mailer takes on the role of a cop, anxieties about Jewishness, being seen, and the voice come together. Beyond the Law tells the story of one night in a police precinct in which a number of criminals are interrogated, ranging from a motorcycle gang, to a man who murdered his wife with an axe, to the members of a sadomasochistic whipping club. The film takes us back and forth between the precinct, where we see the cops in action, and a bar, where we see the cops off-duty, having drinks. Toward the film’s conclusion, these spaces intersect as Lieutenant Pope brings one of the women from the whipping club, a stunning Syrian woman named Lee Ray Rogers, to the bar. Rogers’ tripartite name, cobbled together from pieces of Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray{{efn|The name also refers to Republican luminary and soon to be Nixon Administration Secretary of State William P. Rogers, who would go on to negotiate an Arab-Israeli peace treaty in 1973”}}, suggests that she too will be an assassin of sorts, or at least that she will bring the little death of orgasm to Lieutenant Pope. Just before Rogers arrives, Pope (Mailer’s Irish-American cop, whose rank and name suggest that he is only slightly less than the Bishop of Rome) and Mickey Berk (Mickey Knox’s Jewish-American cop, feminized through a last name that is cockney rhyming slang for cunt),{{efn|See also entry for “Berk” on ''London Slang.com: “Rhyming Slang'', short for ‘Berkshire Hunt’, meaning ‘cunt’. Most people go around calling people ‘berks’ for years not realizing that it is slang for one of the strongest swear words in the English language.”}}, have a heart to heart in the men’s room in which Pope remarks, “I used to have no respect for the Jewish cops until the Israelis showed the Arabs where to go. And then I said to myself, maybe Berk has more than even I thought.” Pope then mutters under his breath for a couple of minutes, and quietly says to himself, “The Irish never won a war."

Once Rogers arrives, Pope asks the other officers to leave them alone. An intimate conversation follows, during which the two imagine an S &M scene and Pope refers to his penis as “the avenger.” A difficult to obtain “blue” version of the film exists in which we presumably see Pope’s avenger in action. For our purposes, however, it is even more striking to see him ''voicing'' his potency and sexuality, while Mailer’s voice revealed him as soft in his first documentary, Pope tells us here that he is hard. Pope expresses the ethnic crossing that facilitates his hardness in this conversation as well, as he tells Rogers, “You bring out the Italian in me.” Ultimately, Pope’s blonde wife arrives at the bar, cramping his style, and commands him to end this conversation. Thus the film concludes with Pope at the nexus of several ethnicities: pitted against an Arab dominatrix and an emasculating ''shiksa'', the Irish Pope arms himself with an Italian libido, and metaphorically whips out his

{{pg|193|194}}

avenger in the name of both the Jews, who showed the Arabs where to go, and the Irish who never won a war.

In “A Course in Filmmaking,” Mailer argues that after the advent of sound, film started to mimic theater, and that the work of film should be to get away from this mimicry in order to accomplish things that can only be accomplished on film. As films that are uniquely filmic, Mailer gives the example of ''The Maltese Falcon'', but also of the Marx Brothers’ films, in which the brothers “stampeded over every line of a script and tore off in enough directions to leave concepts fluttering like ticker tape on the mysterious nature of the movie art” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=129}}. The Marx brothers are important ancestors in Mailer’s filmic genealogy, in part because they too are Jews who remix ethnicity on film, as Chico becomes Italian and Zeppo becomes the brothers’ WASPy foil. And like Mailer’s films, much of the chaos and anarchy that unfurls in the Marx Brothers’ films stems from sound, in the form of elaborate musical numbers, Groucho’s wordplay, Chico’s Italian accent and piano playing, Harpo’s horn-honking, and even his silence. For both the Marx Brothers and Mailer, the work of cinema is to unravel itself, to make and unmake a universe in the same space, to challenge conventions. Where the Marx brothers wreak havoc, for example, upon the university in ''Horse feathers'', and upon dictatorship in ''Duck Soup'', Mailer wreaks havoc upon language and good taste as he attempts to create the film with the most “repetitive pervasive obscenity of any film ever made” with ''Wild, 90'' and upon both his own voice and the human eardrum with the perpetual yelling of Lt. Pope in ''Beyond the Law''. Mailer even tells us, “''Wild 90'' seems close to nothing so much as the Marx Brothers doing improvisations on ''Little Caesar'' with the addition of a free run of obscenity equal to ''Naked Lunch'' or ''Why Are We in Vietnam?''” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=90}}. It is as though Mailer sees ''Wild 90'' as an almost unimaginable supplement to the Marx Brothers’ oeuvre—a vision of what their tough Jewish contribution to cinema would look like had they ever assumed the roles of mafiosi.

In Mailer’s universe, the borders between Mailer and his characters are always fragile. He tells us in the Boulenger interview that in the making of ''Beyond the Law'' he would torture the actors playing the crooks, who were all friends of his, by interrogating them about things they had done in their real lives.{{efn|The best example of this existential interrogation occurs as Mailer’s Lieutenant Pope interrogates Peter Rosoff, whom Mailer asserts was a closeted homosexual, accusing him of soliciting sex in a subway men’s room {{sfn|Mailer|2018|p=25}}.}} In his writing and his introductory remarks included on the French DVDs of his films, Mailer repeatedly tells us that the goal of existential acting is to create a fictional documentary {{sfn|Mailer|2006|}}. Here is an ex-

{{pg|195|196}}

ample, taken from his discussion of the successes and failures of ''cinéma vérité'' in “A Course on Filmmaking”: “It was as if there was a law that a person could not be himself in front of a camera unless he pretended to be someone other than himself. By that logic, ''cinéma vérité'' would work if it photographed a performer in the midst of his performance” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=147}}. Mailer’s films elaborate upon his ideas about existential filmmaking: it is only in the act of performing as a character (Lieutenant Pope) that the actor reveals himself (Norman Mailer). Pope/Mailer’s sarcastic comment about not respecting the Jews until they showed the Arabs their military might is a line almost directly out of Breines’ ''Tough Jews'', or vice versa, Pope/Mailer’s comment is part of the discourse surrounding the 1968 war that inspired ''Tough Jews''. Either way, with this line, Mailer introduces himself into the lineage of tough Jews but with his own spin. When Pope tells us that Lee Ray Rogers brings out the Italian in him, he speaks for Mailer as well. Because Jewish masculinity for Mailer is always borrowed from and channeled through other ethnic masculinities, Pope’s words are as good as Mailer’s saying that Rogers brings out the Jew in him, and Mailer’s (via Pope’s) tough Jew is always already fighting, whether he is pushing Arabs out of Palestine or fighting to defend his dog’s honor. Thus, much as Mailer helped to unmake cinema as he made it, Mailer makes Jewishness as he unmakes it— masculinity unravels as the film does the same, moving from real to reel.

=== Notes ===

{{notelist}}

==Citations==
{{Reflist}}

===Works Cited===

{{Refbegin}}

* {{cite book |last=Brienes |first=Paul |date=1990 |title=''Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewry.'' |url= |location=New York |publisher=Basic Books |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Buckley |first=William F. |date=2005 |title= “Who Did What?” |url= |magazine=''National Review'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Damom |first=Maria |title=“Triangulated Desire and Tactical Silences in the Beat Hipscape: Bob Kaufman and Others.” |url= |journal=College Literature |volume=27.1 |issue= |date=Winter 2000 |pages=139-157 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary V. |date=1999 |title=''Mailer: A Biography'' |url= |location=New York |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Doane |first=Mary Ann |date=1981 |title=“Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator.” |url= |location=''Screen 23'' |publisher= |pages=74-87 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dolar |first=Mladen |date=2006 |title=''A Voice and Nothing More'' |url= |location=Cambridge |publisher= MIT P |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Fried |first=Albert |date=1993 |title=''The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America'' |url= |location=New York |publisher=Columbia UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Gilman |first=Sander |date=1991 |title=The Jewish Voice: Chicken Soup or the Penalties of Sounding too Jewish. |url= |magazine= |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hagberg |first=Gary |date=2008 |title=''Art and Ethical Criticism.'' |url= |location=Malden, MA |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Hitchens |first=Christopher |date=2007 |title=Remembering the Pint-Size Jewish Fireplug. |url= |magazine=''Slate'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Levine |first=Andrea |title=“The Jewish White Negro: Norman Mailer’s Racialized Bodies.” |url= |journal=''MELUS'' |volume=28.2 |issue= |date= |pages=59-81 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Elmer |first=Clifton |date=1931 |title=''Little Caesar.'' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1968 |title='' The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History'' |url= |location=New York |publisher= New American Library |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1968 |title=''Beyond the Law'' |url= |work= |location=Supreme Mix Productions |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |title=“A Course in Film-Making.” |url= |journal=''Existential Errands'' |volume= |issue= |date=1972 |pages=123-168 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1991 |title=''Harlot’s Ghost.'' |url= |location= |publisher=Random House, |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2008 |title=“In the Ring: Grappling with the Twentieth Century.” |url= |magazine=''The New Yorker.'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2006 |title=“Interview by Gilles Boulenger.” |url= |work= |location=Cinémalta |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |title=.“Some Dirt in the Talk.” |url= |journal=''Existential Errands.'' |volume= |issue= |date=1972 |pages=89-123 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date= |title=The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster. |url= |magazine=''Advertisements for Myself'' |pages=337-358 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date= |title=''Wild 90'' |url= |work= |location=Supreme Mix Productions |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Metz |first=Christian |date=1982 |title=''Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema'' |url= |location=Bloomington |publisher=Indiana UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mewshaw |first=Michael |title=“Vidal and Mailer” |url= |journal=''South Central Review'' |volume=4-14 |issue= |date=2002 |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Fontaine |first=Dir. Dick |date=1970 |title=''Norman Mailer vs. Fun City U.S.A.'' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=O'Reilly |first=Jane |date=1974 |title=“Diary of a Mailer Trailer.” |url= |magazine=''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?'' |pages=195-215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rushdie |first=Salman |date=1992 |title='' The Wizard of Oz'' |url= |location=London |publisher=BFI |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Hawkes |first=Dir. Howard |date= |title=''Scarface.'' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Scott |first=A.O. |date=2007 |title=“Norman Mailer Unbound and On Film: Revisiting His Bigger-Than-Life-Selves.” |url= |magazine=''The New York Times'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Silverman |first=Kaja |date=1988 |title=''The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and the Cinema.'' |url= |location=Bloomington |publisher=Indiana UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Sokolsky |first=George E. |date=1962 |title=“These Days: The First Lady.” |url= |magazine=''The Washington Post'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Stern |first=Steve |date=2010 |title=''The Frozen Rabbi'' |url= |location=Chapel Hill |publisher=Algonquin P |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Stevens |first=Joe |date=2008 |title=“The FBI’s-Year Campaign to Ferret Out Norman Mailer.” |url= |magazine=''The Washington Post'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Tanenhouse |first=Sam |date=2005 |title=“TheBuckley Effect” |url= |magazine=''New York Times'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Pennebaker |first= Dir D.A |date= |title=''Town Bloody Hall.'' |url= |work= |location=Pennebaker Hegedus Films |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=United States Federal Bureau of Investigation |first= J. Edgar Hoover |date=1962-1975 |title=“Memo to Staff” |url= |work= |location=''File on Norman Kingsley Mailer'' |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Fontaine |first=Dir. Dick |date=1968 |title=''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up? '' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{Refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:MAKING MASCULINITY AND UNMAKING JEWISHNESS: NORMAN MAILER’S VOICE IN
''WILD 90'' AND ''BEYOND THE LAW''}}
[[Category:Book Reviews (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness: Norman Mailer’s Voice in Wild 90 and Beyond the Law

2025-04-09T02:28:47Z

KWatson:

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{{Working}}
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{{Byline|last=Cohen|first=Sarah Jo|abstract=A discussion of Mailer’s career, interrelating Mailer’s ethnicity with his corpus of work, with special attention to his cinematic work.|url=https://projectmailer.net/pm/Sara_Jo_Cohen}}

NORMAN MAILER’S SIZABLE FBI FILE BEGINS WITH HIS VOICE. The 165 pages of Mailer’s 171-page file available to the public cover fifteen years of observation and surveillance, and includes materials ranging from endless notes tracking Mailer’s passport applications and international travel, to FBI agents’ reviews of Miami and the Siege of Chicago (with meticulous notes about each mention of the FBI), and even a letter from a high school teacher asking J. Edgar Hoover for permission to teach ''The Naked and the Dead''{{efn|In a letter dated March 18, 1964, also included in Mailer’s file, Hoover wrote back telling the teacher that this request was beyond his area of jurisdiction because the FBI “neither makes evaluations nor draws conclusions as to the character of integrity of any organization, publication, or individual,” and because Hoover has made it a habit “not to comment on any material not prepared by the FBI.”}}. 1 The file begins, however, with a clipping from ''The Washington Post'', a June 6,1962, George Sokolsky column called “These Days,” that moved J. Edgar Hoover to leave a note for his staff reading, “Let me have memo on Mailer” {{sfn|The Federal Bureau of Investigation|1967-1975|}}. Sokolsky’s article responds to an ''Esquire'' piece Mailer wrote about then first lady Jackie Kennedy that describes Mrs. Kennedy’s voice as “a quiet parody of the sort of voice one hears on the radio late at night, dropped softly into the ear by girls who sell soft mattresses, depilatories, or creams to brighten the skin” {{sfn|Sokolsky|1962|}}. Sokolsky takes offense at Mailer’s mockery of Mrs. Kennedy and scrutiny of her voice, responding, “[A] person’s voice is what it is. I never heard Norman Mailer’s voice but whatever the Lord gave him, baritone or tenor, soprano or bass, it is what it is, and he can thank the good Lord that he does not suffer from cerebral palsy or some such thing” {{sfn|Sokolsky|1962|}}. Mailer’s voice, however, much like his persona, is not at all God-given and never “is what it is.” Rather, Mailer’s

{{pg|183|184}}

voice is a deliberate construction pieced together from bits of others’ voices
in order to mask the adenoidal voice of his childhood.

Mailer reflects briefly upon his voice in his chronicle of the October 1967 March on the Pentagon, ''The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History'', written in the third person with himself as its main character. Part IV of ''Armies'' begins with an apology from Mailer for bringing the story of the March on the Pentagon to a climax and then launching into a diversion about his relationship to film and the cameras following him through the melee of the march. Mailer writes of his relationship to film: “he had on screen in this first documentary a fatal taint, a last remaining speck of the one personality he found absolutely insupportable—the nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn. Something in his adenoids gave it away—he had the softness of a man early accustomed to mother-love” {{sfn|Mailer|1968|pg=152}}. For Mailer, the paradoxical experience of seeing his voice undermines the masculinities he works to materialize in his career as a writer and public intellectual, which he goes on to enumerate: “warrior, presumptive general, ex-political candidate, embattled aging enfant terrible of the literary world, wise father of six children, radical intellectual, existential philosopher, hard-working author, champion of obscenity, husband of four battling sweet wives, amiable bar drinker, and much exaggerated street fighter, party giver, hostess insulter.” As a result of feeling outed on film as a “nice Jewish boy,” “accustomed to mother love,” our presumptive general and champion of obscenity vows to “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself” {{sfn|Mailer|1968|pg=152}}.

The problem of Mailer’s voice is intimately connected with both sexuality and masculinity. The adenoids, after all, are located in the nose, a stereo typical marker of Jewish otherness and degeneracy. We do not need Sander Gilman to tell us, although he does in the chapter of ''The Jew’s Body'' entitled “The Jewish Nose,” that the Jewish nose is the locus of redirected anxiety about the Jewish penis—both are body parts that develop and take shape at puberty—the latter of which is a threat to national purity through its potential to increase the Jewish population. The adenoidal voice signals a kind of impotence for Mailer, revealing him as accustomed to mother love, and functions as “the acoustic mirror in which the male subject hears all the repudiated elements of his infantile babble” {{sfn|Silverman|1988|pg=81}}. The infantile babble here, the mother tongue of the mother’s voice, is Yiddish{{efn|Mary V. Dearborn writes that Mailer picked up Yiddish at home from his parents, “enough so that many years later, in Germany, he was able to ask for directions in this language and be understood”{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|}}}}. 2 Kaja Silverman writes that the voice of the mother resonates in the male subject and that “the male subject frequently ‘refines’ his ‘own’ voice by projecting onto the

{{pg|184|185}}

mother’s voice all that is unassimilable to the paternal position” {{sfn|Silverman|1988|pg=81}}. Mailer is a case study in this relationship to the maternal voice; when Mailer first sees himself on film, he hears the adenoidal, Jewish, maternal voice within himself. Because the paternal position Mailer strives to create is distinctly not Jewish, or at least one that allies itself with Jewishness without performing it, the mother’s voice becomes unassimilable (or in his words, “unsupportable”) to his identity. Thus, while Mailer asserts that he will “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself,” he returns to film as both actor and director in order to refine his voice by expunging its maternal layers.

Norman Mailer’s film career, often dismissed as vulgar and/or irrelevant, was short but intense; he directed four films, two of which were released in 1968, ''Wild''
and ''Beyond the Law'', one in 1970, ''Maidstone'', and, after a long break, ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' was released in 1987{{efn|Mailer was also featured in several documentaries during these years, including Dick Fontaine’s ''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?'' (1968) and ''Norman Mailer vs. Fun City U.S.A.''
(1970); the former is a filmic companion to Armies, documenting Mailer’s actions during the March on the Pentagon, and the latter produces a record of Mailer’s
New York City mayoral campaign. Mailer was also documented in Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s ''Town Bloody Hall'', a film of the debate between Mailer and Germaine Greer about women’s liberation at Town Hall in New York City.}}. Mailer’s first three films were largely influenced by John Cassavetes, although Mailer predictably argues that his mastery of what he calls “existential acting” makes him a much better filmmaker than Cassavetes {{sfn|Mailer|2006|}}. In his essay, “Some Dirt in the Talk,” Mailer defines existential acting by addressing each of the terms that comprise the phrase. He notes that existentialism and acting exist at two opposite “poles,” writing, ''“If existentialism is ultimately concerned with the attractions of the unknown, acting is one of the surviving rituals of invocation, repetition, and ceremony—of propitiation to the gods”'' {{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=104}}{{efn| It is quite possible that Mailer is thinking in part of Kenneth Anger here, the word “invocation” invoking Anger’s ''Invocation of My Demon Brother''(1969), as well as the ritual and ceremony of highly-stylized films like ''Kustom Kar Kommandos''(1965) and ''Scorpio Rising''(1964). Incidentally, in the Boulenger interview, a copy of Anger’s book Hollywood ''Babylon'' can be see on the bookshelf over Mailer’s shoulder, almost like a cartoon devil egging him on.}} His theory of existential acting, then, strives to collapse these two poles, freeing acting from repetition and ceremony, and liberating his actors (and himself) from the propitiation of the gods. Existential acting, he argues, works because in our daily lives we always pretend, lie, and act, and works by more effectively representing the chaos and “complexity of our century” than mainstream Hollywood cinema {{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=90,108}}. Unsurprisingly, from the man who gave us the genre-bending history as novel/novel as history, the true life novel, and the novel biography{{efn|''The Armies of the Night'', ''The Executioner’s Song'', and ''Marilyn'', respectively.}} existential acting collapses the cinema and the outside world, documentary and fiction, acting and existentialism, and masculinity and performance, the last of which Mailer explicitly connects, writing: “There is hardly a guy alive who is not an actor to the hilt—for the simplest of reasons. He cannot be tough all the time...[s]o he acts to fill the gaps” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=90-1}}. Thus, armed with the theory and methodology of existential acting, Mailer returns to the cinema as a filmmaker for the same reason he considers turning away from it after his

{{pg|185|186}}

experience in the above passage: at the same time the camera exposes one’s frailties and the identities one attempts to disguise; it bolsters the masquerade of masculinity by imprinting its performance in celluloid. The same voice that undermines Mailer’s masculinity becomes his primary means of constructing it.

In his first documentary Mailer sees “something in his adenoids” in a moment of slippage that renders the aural a visual prop. The experience of seeing his voice disrupts Mailer’s viewing experience by first troubling the traditional assumption that film is a visual medium and then forcing Mailer to confront himself as both image and sound. Mladen Dolar provides a means of understanding the revolutionary and revelatory potential of sound, in the form of the voice, in relation to both identity and film, as he writes:

<blockquote>|[T]he visible world presents relative stability, permanence, distinctiveness, and a location at a distance, the audible presents fluidity, passing, a certain inchoate, amorphous character and a lack of distance. The voice is elusive, always changing, becoming, elapsing, with unclear contours, as opposed to the relative permanence, solidity, durability of the seen. {{sfn|Dolar|2006|pg=79}}.</blockquote>

Here the visible is associated with stability, permanence, and distinctiveness—terms that are crucial to our understanding of cinema, but that mirror the ways we come to understand ourselves as selves. In film, the visible is assumed to guarantee presence, an assumption that stems from, among other things, the historical and philosophical privileging of the visual as a primary quality, and the problem of the voiceovers and voice-offs of sound film—which are often disembodied, absent, and coming from beyond the grave or before birth. Because the visual has historically been the privileged epistemological order through which we understand both film and identity, by focusing on sound, which is dynamic and playful, we can begin to dis
mantle both identity and film.{{efn|At this point in time, there is, of course, a well-established tradition of discussing sound and the voice on film—Pascal Bonitzer’s “The Silences of the Voice”(1975 ), Christian Metz’s “Aural Objects” (1980), Mary Anne Doane’s “The Voice in the Cinema”(1982), and Silverman’s ''Acoustic Mirror'' (1988, just to name a few. It seems important for our purposes, however, to rehash the stakes of this discussion, especially in relation to deconstructing/reconstructing/constructing Mailer’s masculinity.}} As Mailer sees his voice, witnessing his in sides (in the form of his adenoids) undermining his outsides, the visual and audible come together, undoing the binary oppositions between seeing and hearing, insides and outsides.

Dolar contrasts the visible to the audible, arguing that the latter is associated with a lack of distance, a lack of distance perhaps best embodied by the uterine envelope created by the mother’s voice. This lack of distance with

{{pg|186|187}}

regard to the sound of the voice stems from the fact that the voice is simultaneously sent and delivered, thus folding back on itself and troubling the
boundaries between self and other. This lack of distance is also precisely what Mailer experiences when he sees himself in his first documentary, at once spoken and heard. While Christian Metz dismisses seeing oneself on screen as an impossibility{{efn|In ''Imaginary Signifier'', Metz writes that “there is one thing and one thing only that is never reflected in [the screen]: the spectator’s own body”{{Metz|Lennon|1982|p=61}}.}}, feminist film theory calls attention to the discomfort that comes from not being granted the distance that the visible demands. In “Film and the Masquerade,” Mary Anne Doane argues that the female spectator goes largely untheorized because the historical “imbrication of the cinematic image and the representation of the woman” leaves her too close to the image {{sfn|Doane|1982|pg=76}}. Doane theorizes that in order to achieve the distance necessary to watch and appreciate film, female spectators assume a metaphorical feminine mask, which “in flaunting femininity, holds it at a distance” {{sfn|Doane|1982|pg=81}}. Doane then briefly considers why men do not have to masquerade as more masculine spectators, writing, “The very fact that we can speak of a woman ‘using’ her sex or ‘using’ her body for particular gains is highly significant—it is not that a man cannot use his body in this way but that he doesn’t have to” {{sfn|Doane|1982|pg=82}}.

But using his body for particular gains is precisely what Mailer does, as exemplified in Diane Arbus’s photograph of Mailer. If, as Mailer quipped, “Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like giving a hand grenade to a baby,” this hand grenade caught an image that exemplifies how Mailer flaunts his masculinity by holding it at a distance {{sfn|Hagberg|2008|pg=211}}. In this photograph, we see Mailer is in his standard three-piece suit, sprawled out in a writerly looking high-backed chair. His right hand looks as though clasping an invisible cigarette, or pen, or as if gesturing to emphasize a point. His forehead is wrinkled in thought, and his blue eyes glow even in black and white. While his clothing, his chair, his furrowed brow, and his mouth, slightly agape in apparent mid-sentence, add up to an image we would expect of a great writer, his posture suggests otherwise; immediately, our attention is drawn to Mailer’s crotch. Thus, this image reveals both Mailer’s efforts to underscore his masculinity, placing his crotch front and center, and the vulnerability of this masculinity—in this moment, we wouldn’t need a grenade to cause Mailer a great deal of pain; a swift kick would suffice. The simultaneous power and vulnerability of Mailer’s crotch underscores his efforts to use the visibility of his body to counteract the invisibility of his voice, and his

{{pg|187|188}}

hidden adenoids. We see Mailer engaged in a manly masquerade, as his proximity to the image allows him to manipulate it.

So male spectators need to masquerade as well—especially male spectators who find themselves closer to the image than they would like. The Jewish male is one such figure, as a result of a history of anti-Semitic visual representations of Jews in both scientific and popular media. Sander Gilman argues that such visual representations are internalized by contemporary Jewish-American writers, registering most prominently in repeated anxiety about sounding too Jewish {{sfn|Gilman|1991|pg=10-37}}. Mailer’s anxiety about his adenoids is decisively Jewish, both because the adenoids are located in the nose and because they give the Jewish voice its stereotypical nasal quality. Mailer’s attempt to work through this anxiety in his films is twofold. First, he gets on the other side of the camera in order to see rather than be seen, and when he is seen (as actor), it is under his own direction. Second, Mailer employs his voice in order to intervene, destabilize, and distance himself from the power of the image.

''Wild 90'', as it repeatedly calls attention to issues of seeing and visibility,
provides the best examples of Mailer’s effort to seize control of his visual
representation in order to produce a record of his masculinity. Mailer accomplishes this task not only by “writing,”{{efn|The word “writing” is in quotes in this sentence because while Mailer is given credit for writing the film, for example on the ''Internet Movie Database'', existential acting relies on improvisation and thus has no script, per se.}} editing, and directing the film, but also, by playing a boxer in league with mafiosi, who have the police under their control. In this film the Maf Boys, three men who spend the film holed up in a Brooklyn warehouse, watch over the New York Police Department, a position emphasized by their location many stories above the city street. The NYPD, however, asserts that the Maf Boys would not have lived past thirteen had the Irish and Jewish cops not been watching out for them—so a network of interlaced looks, and interlaced ethnicities, emerges. But perhaps the most striking look is Mailer’s own. As a character known as “the Prince,” Mailer is perpetually at the mirror, greasing up his hair and combing out its kinky curls. This position is crucial to Mailer’s management of his visual representation: from the mirror, much as in his position as director, Mailer can see both himself and the actors behind him; he can also control his image, making sure his mane and signature sneer are exactly as he wants
them to appear. The metaphorical significance of Mailer’s mirror scenes almost goes without saying—at these times we are treated to moments of silence rare in his film (or writing, or political) career in which Mailer uses the visuality of film to construct and maintain the visibility of identity, to register

{{pg|188|189}}

his transformation here from nice Jewish boy to badass boxer. Despite this love affair with his image, Mailer shatters the filmic mirror when, at the conclusion of ''Wild 90'', the Prince demands to speak to the audience, breaking the fourth wall, and informing the audience that the CIA{{efn|Mailer had a strong distaste for the CIA, an organization that he saw as the paragon of both surveillance culture and WASP culture. Mailer’s-plus-page novel ''Harlot’s Ghost'' provides an extended though indirect glimpse into his dislike for the CIA and is almost agonizing to read because its narrator, Harry Hubbard, is a boring, WASPy, CIA agent. It’s also worth noting that Hubbard refers to the one Jewish agent in the CIA, Reed Arnold Rosen, as “adenoidal” (61).}} is watching all of us. He then goes on to tell us, in his garbled, drunken voice that his favorite author is Norman Mailer—presumably, because he is both his creator and a substantial part of his self.

Mailer’s appearance, particularly in the mirror scenes of ''Wild 90'', is crucial to his efforts to make masculinity and unmake Jewishness, two concepts at odds because of the internalization of a long history of popular representations and stereotypes of the weak Jew. While Mailer combats this weakness in part through his tough guy exterior—carefully cultivated through hard-drinking, hard-talking, and hard-fighting in an effort to make himself out as a latter-day Hemingway—Mailer’s voice registers this construction as well. In the notes taken during my first screenings of ''Beyond the Law'' and ''Wild 90'', I repeatedly try to describe the voice of the characters he portrays. In my notes on Beyond the Law, I wrote that the poor sound quality of the film combines with Mailer’s voice to create the effect of almost incomprehensible yelling from Lt. Francis Xavier Pope for an hour and twenty-four minutes. My notes on Mailer’s gangster voice as the Prince of ''Wild 90'' remark that his accent makes him sound like a cross between Marlon Brando and Fred Flintstone with marbles in his mouth. In my second viewing, I crossed out this assessment and wrote that he sounded more like Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion from the ''Wizard of Oz''. I am not alone in trying to describe Mailer’s voice. Michael Mewshaw describes Mailer’s voice as “the Irish brogue of a whiskey priest” coming from the body of a man who “looked about as threatening as a teddy bear” {{sfn|Mewshaw|2002|pg=14}}, and Jane O’Reilly notes that “words rumble and bubble and jump out, in a variety of accents: New York, faintly southern, all g’s dropped (as in ‘Ah’m talkin’) when he is particularly shy”{{sfn|o'Reilly|1974|pg=198}}{{efn| Salman Rushdie describes Bert Lahr’s lion voice is strikingly similar words, “all elongated vowel sounds (''Put ’emuuuuuuuup''),”and the Cowardly Lion’s personality as one that sounds a lot like Mailer’s: “transparent bravado and huge, operatic, tail-tugging, blubbing terror”{{sfn|Rushdie|1992|}}. More recently, in an article about the New York Mailer retrospective, A.O. Scott describes Mailer’s voice as a “rapid, forceful stream of half-baked nostrums and brilliant ''aperçus'' delivered in that inimitable accent, an audible palimpsest of Mr. Mailer’s Brooklyn childhood, his Ivy League education and his World War II combat service in an Army unit composed mainly of Texans and Southerners.”

All of this is to say that the voices of Mailer’s characters (including the character “Norman Mailer,” who becomes a formal entity in ''The Armies of''

{{pg|189|190}}

''the Night'', but who was roaming the streets of America and Europe at least since the publication of ''The Naked and the Dead'') are a response to the anxiety of sounding too Jewish. The adenoidal voice Mailer hears in his first documentary, the unsure voice of the Brooklyn Jew, transforms into a cacophony of accents—Southern, Irish, Italian, Brooklyn—which together make Mailer’s voice the voice of immigrant America. Paul Breines writes that discursive constructions of Jewish weakness arise from and refer to the rootlessness of the Diaspora {{sfn|Breines|1995|pg=195}}. For Breines, tough Jewishness is a performance on the part of secular Jews that is largely associated with Zionism, and its creation first of tough Jewish pioneers, and then, after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, of tough Israeli soldiers {{sfn|Breines|1995|pg=195}}. Mailer, however, described his relationship to Judaism in this way: “I am a Jew out of loyalty to the underdog. I would never say I was not a Jew, but I took no strength from the fact” {{sfn|Dearborn|1999|pg=14}}. With this in mind, Mailer’s voice is a tough Jewish voice, but one that revises Breines’ toughness by drawing strength from a composite of immigrant voices, rooted, if at all, in American soil rather than Israeli. Mailer brings these immigrant voices together to construct a hybrid masculinity that is not only part white Negro and part tough Jew, but that is also comprised of Italian American, Irish American, Southern, and Texan parts, among others. Thus, Mailer simultaneously makes and unmakes Jewish masculinity by borrowing from other masculinities in the process of making himself into a palimpsest.

Mailer’s essay, “The White Negro,” is the site most often returned to in order to discuss his contribution to the theories of tough Jewish discourse and of masculinity.{{efn|See Levine and Damon. Damon pithily writes that “The White Negro” “claims to be about how the white man envies the Black man’s sexuality and thus tries to emulate his style, but [its] subtext is about how the Jewish man envies and wants to emulate the gentile man’s sexuality, but can’t say so”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=337-358}}.}} This essay, which argues that the hipster’s existential, psychopathic masculinity is particularly well-suited for the Cold War political climate, is infamous not only because it espouses Reichian connections between sex and violence, but also because it argues that “the Negro,” who “relinquish[es] the pleasures of the mind for the more obligatory pleasures of the body,” provides a model for how to live violently and sexually {{sfn|Mailer|1959|pg=341}}. Both because of and despite its racist enlistment of African American men, Mailer’s essay celebrates and identifies with black masculinity as a means of embracing otherness without admitting Jewishness. With its repeated references to the figure of “the psychopath,” who “murders—if he has the courage,” however, Mailer’s essay is also about criminality, which is a crucial source of his on-screen tough Jewish persona {{sfn|Mailer|1959|pg=347}}. While this persona borrows its style and hipness from African Americans, it

{{pg|190|191}}

almost literally ventriloquizes through the voices of Irish Americans and Italian Americans, particularly those of Hollywood cops and crooks.

Forging a criminal enterprise, and/or performing criminal masculinity, is a traditional means of assimilation for immigrant populations in America, which for the second wave of European immigrants begins with the Irish in the 1850s and is then passed on to Italian and Jewish immigrants two generations later.{{efn|A classic example appears in Sergio Leone’s Jewish gangster film,''Once Upon a Time in
America''—which stars the perpetually ethnicity-crossing Robert De Niro and for which Mailer flew to Rome 1976 in to work on the screenplay{{sfn|Mewshaw|2018|}}.For a recent example, see Stern’s ''The Frozen Rabbi'', a comic whirlwind tour through the history of American Jewry that follows one family from the Russian Pale to Memphis, Tennessee, with a stop in New York, where one family member, Ruby “Kid” Karp, becomes a notorious gangster.}} While criminality provided immigrant gangsters with increased notoriety and power, immigrant groups who became police officers saw a similar rise in status—and much like criminals, in part because it was hoped that they could infiltrate the criminal scenes of their brethren, it was the Irish who were cops first, followed by Italians and Jews {{sfn|Fried|1993|pg=xv}}. While this history suggests discrete ethnic groups who cross paths but not cultures, cinematic representations of the outlaw capitalism of mobsters often star Jewish immigrants in the role of Italian immigrants and thus demonstrate ethnic crossings similar to those in Mailer’s films. The results register in the voice; in ''Little Caesar'' {{sfn|Little Ceasar|1931|}} Edward G. Robinson, né Emanuel Goldenberg, stars as the adenoidal Cesar Enrico Bandello, and in ''Scarface'' {{sfn|Scarface|1932|}}, Paul Muni, né Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund, stars as Antonio Camonte whose Italian accent has a near Yiddish lilt.

In a letter to William F. Buckley, a man whose mid-century faux British accent made his voice almost as strange and remarkable as Mailer’s[[efn|Buckley is also both WASPy and a former CIA agent. See William F. Buckley, Jr., “Who Did What?”}} Mailer hands the crown of “most hated man in American life” over to Buckley. The letter responds to Buckley’s recent speech before the Holy Name Society, an annual gathering of Catholic police officers, in which Buckley criticized the news media for overemphasizing police brutality during the recent civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama {{sfn|Tanenhouse|2005|}}. When the ''Herald Tribune'' and civil rights activists caught wind of these remarks, and the rumors that the assembled police officers laughed and applauded upon hearing them, a media frenzy ensued which elicited a letter from Mailer, weighing in on Buckley’s speech by clarifying his own relationship to the boys in blue:

<blockquote>|I’m not the cop-hater I’m reputed to be, and in fact police fascinate me. But this is because I think their natures are very complex, not simple at all, and what I would object to ...is that you made a one-for-one correspondence between the need to maintain law and order and the nature of the men who would main-

{{pg|191|192}}

tain it. The policeman has I think an extraordinarily tortured psyche. He is perhaps more tortured than the criminal. {{sfn|Mailer|2008|p=8}}</blockquote>

Perhaps as a result of their tortured psyches, Mailer repeatedly turns to cops and crooks as the focus of and source of conflict in his oeuvre. For Mailer, cops are men in power who are repeatedly outwitted by clever, hypermasculine, criminals: think Stephen Rojack and Gary Gilmore, the respective heroes of ''An American Dream'' and ''The Executioner’s Song'', who commit numerous crimes in single volumes, and the Norman Mailer of ''The Armies of the Night'', arrested by U.S. Marshalls for crossing a police line at the Pentagon. There is also the Norman Mailer who stabbed his second wife, and the one who nearly lost an eye after fighting a group of hoodlums who insinuated that his dog was a “faggot” {{sfn|Hitchens|2007|}}. Mailer, as his art and life suggest, sees the tension between cops and criminals as one that is inside of everyone. In a discussion of ''Beyond the Law'' in an interview with Gilles Boulenger, Mailer reveals that the film “had a notion at the core of it that worked— which is that everybody has a cop or a criminal in them” and that, “when you put people together—one playing a cop and one playing a crook—you get the dynamism that comes from the fact that every cop in real life has a potential criminal in him and every criminal in real life, or almost every criminal in real life, has a potential cop within their soul {{sfn|Mailer|2006|}}.”

Mailer sees the conflict between cops and crooks as one that inhabits the film set as well. In “A Course on Film-Making,” he describes cameramen and union grips, who “usually dress like cops off duty and are built like cops (with the same heavy meat in the shoulders, same bellies oiled in beer), which is not surprising for they are also in surveillance upon a criminal activity: people are forging emotions under bright lights… [l]ike cops they see through every fake move and hardly care” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=133}}. Here the crew, who are equated with cops, are set up in opposition to the actors whom they put under surveillance and, more indirectly, to the director, who for Mailer is always an outlaw resisting the tyranny of the image, striving to disrupt the conventions of polite cinema through a refusal to use a script, and insisting upon including as much verbal and auditory obscenity as humanly possible. Thus, even when Mailer plays a cop in ''Beyond the Law'', this portrayal becomes an effort similar to that of the director whose film tramples upon respectability. Mailer’s Lieutenant Pope inhabits the body of the cop in order

{{pg|192|193}}

to mock him and to illustrate a psyche more tortured than that of the criminal.

In ''Beyond the Law'', as Mailer takes on the role of a cop, anxieties about Jewishness, being seen, and the voice come together. Beyond the Law tells the story of one night in a police precinct in which a number of criminals are interrogated, ranging from a motorcycle gang, to a man who murdered his wife with an axe, to the members of a sadomasochistic whipping club. The film takes us back and forth between the precinct, where we see the cops in action, and a bar, where we see the cops off-duty, having drinks. Toward the film’s conclusion, these spaces intersect as Lieutenant Pope brings one of the women from the whipping club, a stunning Syrian woman named Lee Ray Rogers, to the bar. Rogers’ tripartite name, cobbled together from pieces of Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray{{efn|The name also refers to Republican luminary and soon to be Nixon Administration Secretary of State William P. Rogers, who would go on to negotiate an Arab-Israeli peace treaty in 1973”}}, suggests that she too will be an assassin of sorts, or at least that she will bring the little death of orgasm to Lieutenant Pope. Just before Rogers arrives, Pope (Mailer’s Irish-American cop, whose rank and name suggest that he is only slightly less than the Bishop of Rome) and Mickey Berk (Mickey Knox’s Jewish-American cop, feminized through a last name that is cockney rhyming slang for cunt),{{efn|See also entry for “Berk” on ''London Slang.com: “Rhyming Slang'', short for ‘Berkshire Hunt’, meaning ‘cunt’. Most people go around calling people ‘berks’ for years not realizing that it is slang for one of the strongest swear words in the English language.”}}, have a heart to heart in the men’s room in which Pope remarks, “I used to have no respect for the Jewish cops until the Israelis showed the Arabs where to go. And then I said to myself, maybe Berk has more than even I thought.” Pope then mutters under his breath for a couple of minutes, and quietly says to himself, “The Irish never won a war."

Once Rogers arrives, Pope asks the other officers to leave them alone. An intimate conversation follows, during which the two imagine an S &M scene and Pope refers to his penis as “the avenger.” A difficult to obtain “blue” version of the film exists in which we presumably see Pope’s avenger in action. For our purposes, however, it is even more striking to see him ''voicing'' his potency and sexuality, while Mailer’s voice revealed him as soft in his first documentary, Pope tells us here that he is hard. Pope expresses the ethnic crossing that facilitates his hardness in this conversation as well, as he tells Rogers, “You bring out the Italian in me.” Ultimately, Pope’s blonde wife arrives at the bar, cramping his style, and commands him to end this conversation. Thus the film concludes with Pope at the nexus of several ethnicities: pitted against an Arab dominatrix and an emasculating ''shiksa'', the Irish Pope arms himself with an Italian libido, and metaphorically whips out his

{{pg|193|194}}

avenger in the name of both the Jews, who showed the Arabs where to go, and the Irish who never won a war.

In “A Course in Filmmaking,” Mailer argues that after the advent of sound, film started to mimic theater, and that the work of film should be to get away from this mimicry in order to accomplish things that can only be accomplished on film. As films that are uniquely filmic, Mailer gives the example of ''The Maltese Falcon'', but also of the Marx Brothers’ films, in which the brothers “stampeded over every line of a script and tore off in enough directions to leave concepts fluttering like ticker tape on the mysterious nature of the movie art” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=129}}. The Marx brothers are important ancestors in Mailer’s filmic genealogy, in part because they too are Jews who remix ethnicity on film, as Chico becomes Italian and Zeppo becomes the brothers’ WASPy foil. And like Mailer’s films, much of the chaos and anarchy that unfurls in the Marx Brothers’ films stems from sound, in the form of elaborate musical numbers, Groucho’s wordplay, Chico’s Italian accent and piano playing, Harpo’s horn-honking, and even his silence. For both the Marx Brothers and Mailer, the work of cinema is to unravel itself, to make and unmake a universe in the same space, to challenge conventions. Where the Marx brothers wreak havoc, for example, upon the university in ''Horse feathers'', and upon dictatorship in ''Duck Soup'', Mailer wreaks havoc upon language and good taste as he attempts to create the film with the most “repetitive pervasive obscenity of any film ever made” with ''Wild, 90'' and upon both his own voice and the human eardrum with the perpetual yelling of Lt. Pope in ''Beyond the Law''. Mailer even tells us, “''Wild 90'' seems close to nothing so much as the Marx Brothers doing improvisations on ''Little Caesar'' with the addition of a free run of obscenity equal to ''Naked Lunch'' or ''Why Are We in Vietnam?''” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=90}}. It is as though Mailer sees ''Wild 90'' as an almost unimaginable supplement to the Marx Brothers’ oeuvre—a vision of what their tough Jewish contribution to cinema would look like had they ever assumed the roles of mafiosi.

In Mailer’s universe, the borders between Mailer and his characters are always fragile. He tells us in the Boulenger interview that in the making of ''Beyond the Law'' he would torture the actors playing the crooks, who were all friends of his, by interrogating them about things they had done in their real lives.{{efn|The best example of this existential interrogation occurs as Mailer’s Lieutenant Pope interrogates Peter Rosoff, whom Mailer asserts was a closeted homosexual, accusing him of soliciting sex in a subway men’s room {{sfn|Mailer|2018|p=25}}.}} In his writing and his introductory remarks included on the French DVDs of his films, Mailer repeatedly tells us that the goal of existential acting is to create a fictional documentary {{sfn|Mailer|2006|}}. Here is an ex-

{{pg|195|196}}

ample, taken from his discussion of the successes and failures of ''cinéma vérité'' in “A Course on Filmmaking”: “It was as if there was a law that a person could not be himself in front of a camera unless he pretended to be someone other than himself. By that logic, ''cinéma vérité'' would work if it photographed a performer in the midst of his performance” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=147}}. Mailer’s films elaborate upon his ideas about existential filmmaking: it is only in the act of performing as a character (Lieutenant Pope) that the actor reveals himself (Norman Mailer). Pope/Mailer’s sarcastic comment about not respecting the Jews until they showed the Arabs their military might is a line almost directly out of Breines’ ''Tough Jews'', or vice versa, Pope/Mailer’s comment is part of the discourse surrounding the 1968 war that inspired ''Tough Jews''. Either way, with this line, Mailer introduces himself into the lineage of tough Jews but with his own spin. When Pope tells us that Lee Ray Rogers brings out the Italian in him, he speaks for Mailer as well. Because Jewish masculinity for Mailer is always borrowed from and channeled through other ethnic masculinities, Pope’s words are as good as Mailer’s saying that Rogers brings out the Jew in him, and Mailer’s (via Pope’s) tough Jew is always already fighting, whether he is pushing Arabs out of Palestine or fighting to defend his dog’s honor. Thus, much as Mailer helped to unmake cinema as he made it, Mailer makes Jewishness as he unmakes it— masculinity unravels as the film does the same, moving from real to reel.

=== Notes ===

{{notelist}}

==Citations==
{{Reflist}}

===Works Cited===

{{Refbegin}}

* {{cite book |last=Brienes |first=Paul |date=1990 |title=''Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewry.'' |url= |location=New York |publisher=Basic Books |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Buckley |first=William F. |date=2005 |title= “Who Did What?” |url= |magazine=''National Review'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Damom |first=Maria |title=“Triangulated Desire and Tactical Silences in the Beat Hipscape: Bob Kaufman and Others.” |url= |journal=College Literature |volume=27.1 |issue= |date=Winter 2000 |pages=139-157 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary V. |date=1999 |title=''Mailer: A Biography'' |url= |location=New York |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Doane |first=Mary Ann |date=1981 |title=“Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator.” |url= |location=''Screen 23'' |publisher= |pages=74-87 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dolar |first=Mladen |date=2006 |title=''A Voice and Nothing More'' |url= |location=Cambridge |publisher= MIT P |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Fried |first=Albert |date=1993 |title=''The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America'' |url= |location=New York |publisher=Columbia UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Gilman |first=Sander |date=1991 |title=The Jewish Voice: Chicken Soup or the Penalties of Sounding too Jewish. |url= |magazine= |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hagberg |first=Gary |date=2008 |title=''Art and Ethical Criticism.'' |url= |location=Malden, MA |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Hitchens |first=Christopher |date=2007 |title=Remembering the Pint-Size Jewish Fireplug. |url= |magazine=''Slate'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Levine |first=Andrea |title=“The Jewish White Negro: Norman Mailer’s Racialized Bodies.” |url= |journal=''MELUS'' |volume=28.2 |issue= |date= |pages=59-81 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Elmer |first=Clifton |date=1931 |title=''Little Caesar.'' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1968 |title='' The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History'' |url= |location=New York |publisher= New American Library |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1968 |title=''Beyond the Law'' |url= |work= |location=Supreme Mix Productions |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |title=“A Course in Film-Making.” |url= |journal=''Existential Errands'' |volume= |issue= |date=1972 |pages=123-168 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1991 |title=''Harlot’s Ghost.'' |url= |location= |publisher=Random House, |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2008 |title=“In the Ring: Grappling with the Twentieth Century.” |url= |magazine=''The New Yorker.'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2006 |title=“Interview by Gilles Boulenger.” |url= |work= |location=Cinémalta |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |title=.“Some Dirt in the Talk.” |url= |journal=''Existential Errands.'' |volume= |issue= |date=1972 |pages=89-123 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date= |title=The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster. |url= |magazine=''Advertisements for Myself'' |pages=337-358 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date= |title=''Wild 90'' |url= |work= |location=Supreme Mix Productions |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Metz |first=Christian |date=1982 |title=''Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema'' |url= |location=Bloomington |publisher=Indiana UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mewshaw |first=Michael |title=“Vidal and Mailer” |url= |journal=''South Central Review'' |volume=4-14 |issue= |date=2002 |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Fontaine |first=Dir. Dick |date=1970 |title=''Norman Mailer vs. Fun City U.S.A.'' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=O'Reilly |first=Jane |date=1974 |title=“Diary of a Mailer Trailer.” |url= |magazine=''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?'' |pages=195-215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rushdie |first=Salman |date=1992 |title='' The Wizard of Oz'' |url= |location=London |publisher=BFI |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Hawkes |first=Dir. Howard |date= |title=''Scarface.'' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Scott |first=A.O. |date=2007 |title=“Norman Mailer Unbound and On Film: Revisiting His Bigger-Than-Life-Selves.” |url= |magazine=''The New York Times'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Silverman |first=Kaja |date=1988 |title=''The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and the Cinema.'' |url= |location=Bloomington |publisher=Indiana UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Sokolsky |first=George E. |date=1962 |title=“These Days: The First Lady.” |url= |magazine=''The Washington Post'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Stern |first=Steve |date=2010 |title=''The Frozen Rabbi'' |url= |location=Chapel Hill |publisher=Algonquin P |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Stevens |first=Joe |date=2008 |title=“The FBI’s-Year Campaign to Ferret Out Norman Mailer.” |url= |magazine=''The Washington Post'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Tanenhouse |first=Sam |date=2005 |title=“TheBuckley Effect” |url= |magazine=''New York Times'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Pennebaker |first= Dir D.A |date= |title=''Town Bloody Hall.'' |url= |work= |location=Pennebaker Hegedus Films |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=United States Federal Bureau of Investigation |first= J. Edgar Hoover |date=1962-1975 |title=“Memo to Staff” |url= |work= |location=''File on Norman Kingsley Mailer'' |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Fontaine |first=Dir. Dick |date=1968 |title=''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up? '' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{Refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:MAKING MASCULINITY AND UNMAKING JEWISHNESS: NORMAN MAILER’S VOICE IN
''WILD 90'' AND ''BEYOND THE LAW''}}
[[Category:Book Reviews (MR)]]

2025-04-09T02:17:26Z

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2025-04-09T02:14:43Z

KWatson:

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{{Byline|last=Cohen|first=Sarah Jo|abstract=A discussion of Mailer’s career, interrelating Mailer’s ethnicity with his corpus of work, with special attention to his cinematic work.|url=https://projectmailer.net/pm/Sara_Jo_Cohen}}

NORMAN MAILER’S SIZABLE FBI FILE BEGINS WITH HIS VOICE. The 165 pages of Mailer’s 171-page file available to the public cover fifteen years of observation and surveillance, and includes materials ranging from endless notes tracking Mailer’s passport applications and international travel, to FBI agents’ reviews of Miami and the Siege of Chicago (with meticulous notes about each mention of the FBI), and even a letter from a high school teacher asking J. Edgar Hoover for permission to teach ''The Naked and the Dead''{{efn|In a letter dated March 18, 1964, also included in Mailer’s file, Hoover wrote back telling the teacher that this request was beyond his area of jurisdiction because the FBI “neither makes evaluations nor draws conclusions as to the character of integrity of any organization, publication, or individual,” and because Hoover has made it a habit “not to comment on any material not prepared by the FBI.”}}. 1 The file begins, however, with a clipping from ''The Washington Post'', a June 6,1962, George Sokolsky column called “These Days,” that moved J. Edgar Hoover to leave a note for his staff reading, “Let me have memo on Mailer” {{sfn|The Federal Bureau of Investigation|1967-1975|}}. Sokolsky’s article responds to an ''Esquire'' piece Mailer wrote about then first lady Jackie Kennedy that describes Mrs. Kennedy’s voice as “a quiet parody of the sort of voice one hears on the radio late at night, dropped softly into the ear by girls who sell soft mattresses, depilatories, or creams to brighten the skin” {{sfn|Sokolsky|1962|}}. Sokolsky takes offense at Mailer’s mockery of Mrs. Kennedy and scrutiny of her voice, responding, “[A] person’s voice is what it is. I never heard Norman Mailer’s voice but whatever the Lord gave him, baritone or tenor, soprano or bass, it is what it is, and he can thank the good Lord that he does not suffer from cerebral palsy or some such thing” {{sfn|Sokolsky|1962|}}. Mailer’s voice, however, much like his persona, is not at all God-given and never “is what it is.” Rather, Mailer’s

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voice is a deliberate construction pieced together from bits of others’ voices
in order to mask the adenoidal voice of his childhood.

Mailer reflects briefly upon his voice in his chronicle of the October 1967 March on the Pentagon, ''The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History'', written in the third person with himself as its main character. Part IV of ''Armies'' begins with an apology from Mailer for bringing the story of the March on the Pentagon to a climax and then launching into a diversion about his relationship to film and the cameras following him through the melee of the march. Mailer writes of his relationship to film: “he had on screen in this first documentary a fatal taint, a last remaining speck of the one personality he found absolutely insupportable—the nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn. Something in his adenoids gave it away—he had the softness of a man early accustomed to mother-love” {{sfn|Mailer|1968|pg=152}}. For Mailer, the paradoxical experience of seeing his voice undermines the masculinities he works to materialize in his career as a writer and public intellectual, which he goes on to enumerate: “warrior, presumptive general, ex-political candidate, embattled aging enfant terrible of the literary world, wise father of six children, radical intellectual, existential philosopher, hard-working author, champion of obscenity, husband of four battling sweet wives, amiable bar drinker, and much exaggerated street fighter, party giver, hostess insulter.” As a result of feeling outed on film as a “nice Jewish boy,” “accustomed to mother love,” our presumptive general and champion of obscenity vows to “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself” {{sfn|Mailer|1968|pg=152}}.

The problem of Mailer’s voice is intimately connected with both sexuality and masculinity. The adenoids, after all, are located in the nose, a stereo typical marker of Jewish otherness and degeneracy. We do not need Sander Gilman to tell us, although he does in the chapter of ''The Jew’s Body'' entitled “The Jewish Nose,” that the Jewish nose is the locus of redirected anxiety about the Jewish penis—both are body parts that develop and take shape at puberty—the latter of which is a threat to national purity through its potential to increase the Jewish population. The adenoidal voice signals a kind of impotence for Mailer, revealing him as accustomed to mother love, and functions as “the acoustic mirror in which the male subject hears all the repudiated elements of his infantile babble” {{sfn|Silverman|1988|pg=81}}. The infantile babble here, the mother tongue of the mother’s voice, is Yiddish{{efn|Mary V. Dearborn writes that Mailer picked up Yiddish at home from his parents, “enough so that many years later, in Germany, he was able to ask for directions in this language and be understood”{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|}}}}. 2 Kaja Silverman writes that the voice of the mother resonates in the male subject and that “the male subject frequently ‘refines’ his ‘own’ voice by projecting onto the

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mother’s voice all that is unassimilable to the paternal position” {{sfn|Silverman|1988|pg=81}}. Mailer is a case study in this relationship to the maternal voice; when Mailer first sees himself on film, he hears the adenoidal, Jewish, maternal voice within himself. Because the paternal position Mailer strives to create is distinctly not Jewish, or at least one that allies itself with Jewishness without performing it, the mother’s voice becomes unassimilable (or in his words, “unsupportable”) to his identity. Thus, while Mailer asserts that he will “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself,” he returns to film as both actor and director in order to refine his voice by expunging its maternal layers.

Norman Mailer’s film career, often dismissed as vulgar and/or irrelevant, was short but intense; he directed four films, two of which were released in 1968, ''Wild''
and ''Beyond the Law'', one in 1970, ''Maidstone'', and, after a long break, ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' was released in 1987{{efn|Mailer was also featured in several documentaries during these years, including Dick Fontaine’s ''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?'' (1968) and ''Norman Mailer vs. Fun City U.S.A.''
(1970); the former is a filmic companion to Armies, documenting Mailer’s actions during the March on the Pentagon, and the latter produces a record of Mailer’s
New York City mayoral campaign. Mailer was also documented in Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s ''Town Bloody Hall'', a film of the debate between Mailer and Germaine Greer about women’s liberation at Town Hall in New York City.}}. Mailer’s first three films were largely influenced by John Cassavetes, although Mailer predictably argues that his mastery of what he calls “existential acting” makes him a much better filmmaker than Cassavetes {{sfn|Mailer|2006|}}. In his essay, “Some Dirt in the Talk,” Mailer defines existential acting by addressing each of the terms that comprise the phrase. He notes that existentialism and acting exist at two opposite “poles,” writing, ''“If existentialism is ultimately concerned with the attractions of the unknown, acting is one of the surviving rituals of invocation, repetition, and ceremony—of propitiation to the gods”'' {{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=104}}{{efn| It is quite possible that Mailer is thinking in part of Kenneth Anger here, the word “invocation” invoking Anger’s ''Invocation of My Demon Brother''(1969), as well as the ritual and ceremony of highly-stylized films like ''Kustom Kar Kommandos''(1965) and ''Scorpio Rising''(1964). Incidentally, in the Boulenger interview, a copy of Anger’s book Hollywood ''Babylon'' can be see on the bookshelf over Mailer’s shoulder, almost like a cartoon devil egging him on.}} His theory of existential acting, then, strives to collapse these two poles, freeing acting from repetition and ceremony, and liberating his actors (and himself) from the propitiation of the gods. Existential acting, he argues, works because in our daily lives we always pretend, lie, and act, and works by more effectively representing the chaos and “complexity of our century” than mainstream Hollywood cinema {{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=90,108}}. Unsurprisingly, from the man who gave us the genre-bending history as novel/novel as history, the true life novel, and the novel biography{{efn|''The Armies of the Night'', ''The Executioner’s Song'', and ''Marilyn'', respectively.}} existential acting collapses the cinema and the outside world, documentary and fiction, acting and existentialism, and masculinity and performance, the last of which Mailer explicitly connects, writing: “There is hardly a guy alive who is not an actor to the hilt—for the simplest of reasons. He cannot be tough all the time...[s]o he acts to fill the gaps” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=90-1}}. Thus, armed with the theory and methodology of existential acting, Mailer returns to the cinema as a filmmaker for the same reason he considers turning away from it after his

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experience in the above passage: at the same time the camera exposes one’s frailties and the identities one attempts to disguise; it bolsters the masquerade of masculinity by imprinting its performance in celluloid. The same voice that undermines Mailer’s masculinity becomes his primary means of constructing it.

In his first documentary Mailer sees “something in his adenoids” in a moment of slippage that renders the aural a visual prop. The experience of seeing his voice disrupts Mailer’s viewing experience by first troubling the traditional assumption that film is a visual medium and then forcing Mailer to confront himself as both image and sound. Mladen Dolar provides a means of understanding the revolutionary and revelatory potential of sound, in the form of the voice, in relation to both identity and film, as he writes:

<blockquote>|[T]he visible world presents relative stability, permanence, distinctiveness, and a location at a distance, the audible presents fluidity, passing, a certain inchoate, amorphous character and a lack of distance. The voice is elusive, always changing, becoming, elapsing, with unclear contours, as opposed to the relative permanence, solidity, durability of the seen. {{sfn|Dolar|2006|pg=79}}.</blockquote>

Here the visible is associated with stability, permanence, and distinctiveness—terms that are crucial to our understanding of cinema, but that mirror the ways we come to understand ourselves as selves. In film, the visible is assumed to guarantee presence, an assumption that stems from, among other things, the historical and philosophical privileging of the visual as a primary quality, and the problem of the voiceovers and voice-offs of sound film—which are often disembodied, absent, and coming from beyond the grave or before birth. Because the visual has historically been the privileged epistemological order through which we understand both film and identity, by focusing on sound, which is dynamic and playful, we can begin to dis
mantle both identity and film.{{efn|At this point in time, there is, of course, a well-established tradition of discussing sound and the voice on film—Pascal Bonitzer’s “The Silences of the Voice”(1975 ), Christian Metz’s “Aural Objects” (1980), Mary Anne Doane’s “The Voice in the Cinema”(1982), and Silverman’s ''Acoustic Mirror'' (1988, just to name a few. It seems important for our purposes, however, to rehash the stakes of this discussion, especially in relation to deconstructing/reconstructing/constructing Mailer’s masculinity.}} As Mailer sees his voice, witnessing his in sides (in the form of his adenoids) undermining his outsides, the visual and audible come together, undoing the binary oppositions between seeing and hearing, insides and outsides.

Dolar contrasts the visible to the audible, arguing that the latter is associated with a lack of distance, a lack of distance perhaps best embodied by the uterine envelope created by the mother’s voice. This lack of distance with

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regard to the sound of the voice stems from the fact that the voice is simultaneously sent and delivered, thus folding back on itself and troubling the
boundaries between self and other. This lack of distance is also precisely what Mailer experiences when he sees himself in his first documentary, at once spoken and heard. While Christian Metz dismisses seeing oneself on screen as an impossibility{{efn|In ''Imaginary Signifier'', Metz writes that “there is one thing and one thing only that is never reflected in [the screen]: the spectator’s own body”{{Metz|Lennon|1982|p=61}}.}}, feminist film theory calls attention to the discomfort that comes from not being granted the distance that the visible demands. In “Film and the Masquerade,” Mary Anne Doane argues that the female spectator goes largely untheorized because the historical “imbrication of the cinematic image and the representation of the woman” leaves her too close to the image {{sfn|Doane|1982|pg=76}}. Doane theorizes that in order to achieve the distance necessary to watch and appreciate film, female spectators assume a metaphorical feminine mask, which “in flaunting femininity, holds it at a distance” {{sfn|Doane|1982|pg=81}}. Doane then briefly considers why men do not have to masquerade as more masculine spectators, writing, “The very fact that we can speak of a woman ‘using’ her sex or ‘using’ her body for particular gains is highly significant—it is not that a man cannot use his body in this way but that he doesn’t have to” {{sfn|Doane|1982|pg=82}}.

But using his body for particular gains is precisely what Mailer does, as exemplified in Diane Arbus’s photograph of Mailer. If, as Mailer quipped, “Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like giving a hand grenade to a baby,” this hand grenade caught an image that exemplifies how Mailer flaunts his masculinity by holding it at a distance {{sfn|Hagberg|2008|pg=211}}. In this photograph, we see Mailer is in his standard three-piece suit, sprawled out in a writerly looking high-backed chair. His right hand looks as though clasping an invisible cigarette, or pen, or as if gesturing to emphasize a point. His forehead is wrinkled in thought, and his blue eyes glow even in black and white. While his clothing, his chair, his furrowed brow, and his mouth, slightly agape in apparent mid-sentence, add up to an image we would expect of a great writer, his posture suggests otherwise; immediately, our attention is drawn to Mailer’s crotch. Thus, this image reveals both Mailer’s efforts to underscore his masculinity, placing his crotch front and center, and the vulnerability of this masculinity—in this moment, we wouldn’t need a grenade to cause Mailer a great deal of pain; a swift kick would suffice. The simultaneous power and vulnerability of Mailer’s crotch underscores his efforts to use the visibility of his body to counteract the invisibility of his voice, and his

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hidden adenoids. We see Mailer engaged in a manly masquerade, as his proximity to the image allows him to manipulate it.

So male spectators need to masquerade as well—especially male spectators who find themselves closer to the image than they would like. The Jewish male is one such figure, as a result of a history of anti-Semitic visual representations of Jews in both scientific and popular media. Sander Gilman argues that such visual representations are internalized by contemporary Jewish-American writers, registering most prominently in repeated anxiety about sounding too Jewish {{sfn|Gilman|1991|pg=10-37}}. Mailer’s anxiety about his adenoids is decisively Jewish, both because the adenoids are located in the nose and because they give the Jewish voice its stereotypical nasal quality. Mailer’s attempt to work through this anxiety in his films is twofold. First, he gets on the other side of the camera in order to see rather than be seen, and when he is seen (as actor), it is under his own direction. Second, Mailer employs his voice in order to intervene, destabilize, and distance himself from the power of the image.

''Wild 90'', as it repeatedly calls attention to issues of seeing and visibility,
provides the best examples of Mailer’s effort to seize control of his visual
representation in order to produce a record of his masculinity. Mailer accomplishes this task not only by “writing,”{{efn|The word “writing” is in quotes in this sentence because while Mailer is given credit for writing the film, for example on the ''Internet Movie Database'', existential acting relies on improvisation and thus has no script, per se.}} editing, and directing the film, but also, by playing a boxer in league with mafiosi, who have the police under their control. In this film the Maf Boys, three men who spend the film holed up in a Brooklyn warehouse, watch over the New York Police Department, a position emphasized by their location many stories above the city street. The NYPD, however, asserts that the Maf Boys would not have lived past thirteen had the Irish and Jewish cops not been watching out for them—so a network of interlaced looks, and interlaced ethnicities, emerges. But perhaps the most striking look is Mailer’s own. As a character known as “the Prince,” Mailer is perpetually at the mirror, greasing up his hair and combing out its kinky curls. This position is crucial to Mailer’s management of his visual representation: from the mirror, much as in his position as director, Mailer can see both himself and the actors behind him; he can also control his image, making sure his mane and signature sneer are exactly as he wants
them to appear. The metaphorical significance of Mailer’s mirror scenes almost goes without saying—at these times we are treated to moments of silence rare in his film (or writing, or political) career in which Mailer uses the visuality of film to construct and maintain the visibility of identity, to register

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his transformation here from nice Jewish boy to badass boxer. Despite this love affair with his image, Mailer shatters the filmic mirror when, at the conclusion of ''Wild 90'', the Prince demands to speak to the audience, breaking the fourth wall, and informing the audience that the CIA{{efn|Mailer had a strong distaste for the CIA, an organization that he saw as the paragon of both surveillance culture and WASP culture. Mailer’s-plus-page novel ''Harlot’s Ghost'' provides an extended though indirect glimpse into his dislike for the CIA and is almost agonizing to read because its narrator, Harry Hubbard, is a boring, WASPy, CIA agent. It’s also worth noting that Hubbard refers to the one Jewish agent in the CIA, Reed Arnold Rosen, as “adenoidal” (61).}} is watching all of us. He then goes on to tell us, in his garbled, drunken voice that his favorite author is Norman Mailer—presumably, because he is both his creator and a substantial part of his self.

Mailer’s appearance, particularly in the mirror scenes of ''Wild 90'', is crucial to his efforts to make masculinity and unmake Jewishness, two concepts at odds because of the internalization of a long history of popular representations and stereotypes of the weak Jew. While Mailer combats this weakness in part through his tough guy exterior—carefully cultivated through hard-drinking, hard-talking, and hard-fighting in an effort to make himself out as a latter-day Hemingway—Mailer’s voice registers this construction as well. In the notes taken during my first screenings of ''Beyond the Law'' and ''Wild 90'', I repeatedly try to describe the voice of the characters he portrays. In my notes on Beyond the Law, I wrote that the poor sound quality of the film combines with Mailer’s voice to create the effect of almost incomprehensible yelling from Lt. Francis Xavier Pope for an hour and twenty-four minutes. My notes on Mailer’s gangster voice as the Prince of ''Wild 90'' remark that his accent makes him sound like a cross between Marlon Brando and Fred Flintstone with marbles in his mouth. In my second viewing, I crossed out this assessment and wrote that he sounded more like Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion from the ''Wizard of Oz''. I am not alone in trying to describe Mailer’s voice. Michael Mewshaw describes Mailer’s voice as “the Irish brogue of a whiskey priest” coming from the body of a man who “looked about as threatening as a teddy bear” {{sfn|Mewshaw|2002|pg=14}}, and Jane O’Reilly notes that “words rumble and bubble and jump out, in a variety of accents: New York, faintly southern, all g’s dropped (as in ‘Ah’m talkin’) when he is particularly shy”{{sfn|o'Reilly|1974|pg=198}}{{efn| Salman Rushdie describes Bert Lahr’s lion voice is strikingly similar words, “all elongated vowel sounds (''Put ’emuuuuuuuup''),”and the Cowardly Lion’s personality as one that sounds a lot like Mailer’s: “transparent bravado and huge, operatic, tail-tugging, blubbing terror”{{sfn|Rushdie|1992|}}. More recently, in an article about the New York Mailer retrospective, A.O. Scott describes Mailer’s voice as a “rapid, forceful stream of half-baked nostrums and brilliant ''aperçus'' delivered in that inimitable accent, an audible palimpsest of Mr. Mailer’s Brooklyn childhood, his Ivy League education and his World War II combat service in an Army unit composed mainly of Texans and Southerners.”

All of this is to say that the voices of Mailer’s characters (including the character “Norman Mailer,” who becomes a formal entity in ''The Armies of''

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''the Night'', but who was roaming the streets of America and Europe at least since the publication of ''The Naked and the Dead'') are a response to the anxiety of sounding too Jewish. The adenoidal voice Mailer hears in his first documentary, the unsure voice of the Brooklyn Jew, transforms into a cacophony of accents—Southern, Irish, Italian, Brooklyn—which together make Mailer’s voice the voice of immigrant America. Paul Breines writes that discursive constructions of Jewish weakness arise from and refer to the rootlessness of the Diaspora {{sfn|Breines|1995|pg=195}}. For Breines, tough Jewishness is a performance on the part of secular Jews that is largely associated with Zionism, and its creation first of tough Jewish pioneers, and then, after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, of tough Israeli soldiers {{sfn|Breines|1995|pg=195}}. Mailer, however, described his relationship to Judaism in this way: “I am a Jew out of loyalty to the underdog. I would never say I was not a Jew, but I took no strength from the fact” {{sfn|Dearborn|1999|pg=14}}. With this in mind, Mailer’s voice is a tough Jewish voice, but one that revises Breines’ toughness by drawing strength from a composite of immigrant voices, rooted, if at all, in American soil rather than Israeli. Mailer brings these immigrant voices together to construct a hybrid masculinity that is not only part white Negro and part tough Jew, but that is also comprised of Italian American, Irish American, Southern, and Texan parts, among others. Thus, Mailer simultaneously makes and unmakes Jewish masculinity by borrowing from other masculinities in the process of making himself into a palimpsest.

Mailer’s essay, “The White Negro,” is the site most often returned to in order to discuss his contribution to the theories of tough Jewish discourse and of masculinity.{{efn|See Levine and Damon. Damon pithily writes that “The White Negro” “claims to be about how the white man envies the Black man’s sexuality and thus tries to emulate his style, but [its] subtext is about how the Jewish man envies and wants to emulate the gentile man’s sexuality, but can’t say so”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=337-358}}.}} This essay, which argues that the hipster’s existential, psychopathic masculinity is particularly well-suited for the Cold War political climate, is infamous not only because it espouses Reichian connections between sex and violence, but also because it argues that “the Negro,” who “relinquish[es] the pleasures of the mind for the more obligatory pleasures of the body,” provides a model for how to live violently and sexually {{sfn|Mailer|1959|pg=341}}. Both because of and despite its racist enlistment of African American men, Mailer’s essay celebrates and identifies with black masculinity as a means of embracing otherness without admitting Jewishness. With its repeated references to the figure of “the psychopath,” who “murders—if he has the courage,” however, Mailer’s essay is also about criminality, which is a crucial source of his on-screen tough Jewish persona {{sfn|Mailer|1959|pg=347}}. While this persona borrows its style and hipness from African Americans, it

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almost literally ventriloquizes through the voices of Irish Americans and Italian Americans, particularly those of Hollywood cops and crooks.

Forging a criminal enterprise, and/or performing criminal masculinity, is a traditional means of assimilation for immigrant populations in America, which for the second wave of European immigrants begins with the Irish in the 1850s and is then passed on to Italian and Jewish immigrants two generations later.{{efn|A classic example appears in Sergio Leone’s Jewish gangster film,''Once Upon a Time in
America''—which stars the perpetually ethnicity-crossing Robert De Niro and for which Mailer flew to Rome 1976 in to work on the screenplay{{sfn|Mewshaw|2018|}}.For a recent example, see Stern’s ''The Frozen Rabbi'', a comic whirlwind tour through the history of American Jewry that follows one family from the Russian Pale to Memphis, Tennessee, with a stop in New York, where one family member, Ruby “Kid” Karp, becomes a notorious gangster.}} While criminality provided immigrant gangsters with increased notoriety and power, immigrant groups who became police officers saw a similar rise in status—and much like criminals, in part because it was hoped that they could infiltrate the criminal scenes of their brethren, it was the Irish who were cops first, followed by Italians and Jews {{sfn|Fried|1993|pg=xv}}. While this history suggests discrete ethnic groups who cross paths but not cultures, cinematic representations of the outlaw capitalism of mobsters often star Jewish immigrants in the role of Italian immigrants and thus demonstrate ethnic crossings similar to those in Mailer’s films. The results register in the voice; in ''Little Caesar'' {{sfn|Little Ceasar|1931|}} Edward G. Robinson, né Emanuel Goldenberg, stars as the adenoidal Cesar Enrico Bandello, and in ''Scarface'' {{sfn|Scarface|1932|}}, Paul Muni, né Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund, stars as Antonio Camonte whose Italian accent has a near Yiddish lilt.

In a letter to William F. Buckley, a man whose mid-century faux British accent made his voice almost as strange and remarkable as Mailer’s[[efn|Buckley is also both WASPy and a former CIA agent. See William F. Buckley, Jr., “Who Did What?”}} Mailer hands the crown of “most hated man in American life” over to Buckley. The letter responds to Buckley’s recent speech before the Holy Name Society, an annual gathering of Catholic police officers, in which Buckley criticized the news media for overemphasizing police brutality during the recent civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama {{sfn|Tanenhouse|2005|}}. When the ''Herald Tribune'' and civil rights activists caught wind of these remarks, and the rumors that the assembled police officers laughed and applauded upon hearing them, a media frenzy ensued which elicited a letter from Mailer, weighing in on Buckley’s speech by clarifying his own relationship to the boys in blue:

<blockquote>|I’m not the cop-hater I’m reputed to be, and in fact police fascinate me. But this is because I think their natures are very complex, not simple at all, and what I would object to ...is that you made a one-for-one correspondence between the need to maintain law and order and the nature of the men who would main-

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tain it. The policeman has I think an extraordinarily tortured psyche. He is perhaps more tortured than the criminal. {{sfn|Mailer|2008|p=8}}</blockquote>

Perhaps as a result of their tortured psyches, Mailer repeatedly turns to cops and crooks as the focus of and source of conflict in his oeuvre. For Mailer, cops are men in power who are repeatedly outwitted by clever, hypermasculine, criminals: think Stephen Rojack and Gary Gilmore, the respective heroes of ''An American Dream'' and ''The Executioner’s Song'', who commit numerous crimes in single volumes, and the Norman Mailer of ''The Armies of the Night'', arrested by U.S. Marshalls for crossing a police line at the Pentagon. There is also the Norman Mailer who stabbed his second wife, and the one who nearly lost an eye after fighting a group of hoodlums who insinuated that his dog was a “faggot” {{sfn|Hitchens|2007|}}. Mailer, as his art and life suggest, sees the tension between cops and criminals as one that is inside of everyone. In a discussion of ''Beyond the Law'' in an interview with Gilles Boulenger, Mailer reveals that the film “had a notion at the core of it that worked— which is that everybody has a cop or a criminal in them” and that, “when you put people together—one playing a cop and one playing a crook—you get the dynamism that comes from the fact that every cop in real life has a potential criminal in him and every criminal in real life, or almost every criminal in real life, has a potential cop within their soul {{sfn|Mailer|2006|}}.”

Mailer sees the conflict between cops and crooks as one that inhabits the film set as well. In “A Course on Film-Making,” he describes cameramen and union grips, who “usually dress like cops off duty and are built like cops (with the same heavy meat in the shoulders, same bellies oiled in beer), which is not surprising for they are also in surveillance upon a criminal activity: people are forging emotions under bright lights… [l]ike cops they see through every fake move and hardly care” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=133}}. Here the crew, who are equated with cops, are set up in opposition to the actors whom they put under surveillance and, more indirectly, to the director, who for Mailer is always an outlaw resisting the tyranny of the image, striving to disrupt the conventions of polite cinema through a refusal to use a script, and insisting upon including as much verbal and auditory obscenity as humanly possible. Thus, even when Mailer plays a cop in ''Beyond the Law'', this portrayal becomes an effort similar to that of the director whose film tramples upon respectability. Mailer’s Lieutenant Pope inhabits the body of the cop in order

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to mock him and to illustrate a psyche more tortured than that of the criminal.

In ''Beyond the Law'', as Mailer takes on the role of a cop, anxieties about Jewishness, being seen, and the voice come together. Beyond the Law tells the story of one night in a police precinct in which a number of criminals are interrogated, ranging from a motorcycle gang, to a man who murdered his wife with an axe, to the members of a sadomasochistic whipping club. The film takes us back and forth between the precinct, where we see the cops in action, and a bar, where we see the cops off-duty, having drinks. Toward the film’s conclusion, these spaces intersect as Lieutenant Pope brings one of the women from the whipping club, a stunning Syrian woman named Lee Ray Rogers, to the bar. Rogers’ tripartite name, cobbled together from pieces of Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray{{efn|The name also refers to Republican luminary and soon to be Nixon Administration Secretary of State William P. Rogers, who would go on to negotiate an Arab-Israeli peace treaty in 1973”}}, suggests that she too will be an assassin of sorts, or at least that she will bring the little death of orgasm to Lieutenant Pope. Just before Rogers arrives, Pope (Mailer’s Irish-American cop, whose rank and name suggest that he is only slightly less than the Bishop of Rome) and Mickey Berk (Mickey Knox’s Jewish-American cop, feminized through a last name that is cockney rhyming slang for cunt),{{efn|See also entry for “Berk” on ''London Slang.com: “Rhyming Slang'', short for ‘Berkshire Hunt’, meaning ‘cunt’. Most people go around calling people ‘berks’ for years not realizing that it is slang for one of the strongest swear words in the English language.”}}, have a heart to heart in the men’s room in which Pope remarks, “I used to have no respect for the Jewish cops until the Israelis showed the Arabs where to go. And then I said to myself, maybe Berk has more than even I thought.” Pope then mutters under his breath for a couple of minutes, and quietly says to himself, “The Irish never won a war."

Once Rogers arrives, Pope asks the other officers to leave them alone. An intimate conversation follows, during which the two imagine an S &M scene and Pope refers to his penis as “the avenger.” A difficult to obtain “blue” version of the film exists in which we presumably see Pope’s avenger in action. For our purposes, however, it is even more striking to see him ''voicing'' his potency and sexuality, while Mailer’s voice revealed him as soft in his first documentary, Pope tells us here that he is hard. Pope expresses the ethnic crossing that facilitates his hardness in this conversation as well, as he tells Rogers, “You bring out the Italian in me.” Ultimately, Pope’s blonde wife arrives at the bar, cramping his style, and commands him to end this conversation. Thus the film concludes with Pope at the nexus of several ethnicities: pitted against an Arab dominatrix and an emasculating ''shiksa'', the Irish Pope arms himself with an Italian libido, and metaphorically whips out his

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avenger in the name of both the Jews, who showed the Arabs where to go, and the Irish who never won a war.

In “A Course in Filmmaking,” Mailer argues that after the advent of sound, film started to mimic theater, and that the work of film should be to get away from this mimicry in order to accomplish things that can only be accomplished on film. As films that are uniquely filmic, Mailer gives the example of ''The Maltese Falcon'', but also of the Marx Brothers’ films, in which the brothers “stampeded over every line of a script and tore off in enough directions to leave concepts fluttering like ticker tape on the mysterious nature of the movie art” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=129}}. The Marx brothers are important ancestors in Mailer’s filmic genealogy, in part because they too are Jews who remix ethnicity on film, as Chico becomes Italian and Zeppo becomes the brothers’ WASPy foil. And like Mailer’s films, much of the chaos and anarchy that unfurls in the Marx Brothers’ films stems from sound, in the form of elaborate musical numbers, Groucho’s wordplay, Chico’s Italian accent and piano playing, Harpo’s horn-honking, and even his silence. For both the Marx Brothers and Mailer, the work of cinema is to unravel itself, to make and unmake a universe in the same space, to challenge conventions. Where the Marx brothers wreak havoc, for example, upon the university in ''Horse feathers'', and upon dictatorship in ''Duck Soup'', Mailer wreaks havoc upon language and good taste as he attempts to create the film with the most “repetitive pervasive obscenity of any film ever made” with ''Wild, 90'' and upon both his own voice and the human eardrum with the perpetual yelling of Lt. Pope in ''Beyond the Law''. Mailer even tells us, “''Wild 90'' seems close to nothing so much as the Marx Brothers doing improvisations on ''Little Caesar'' with the addition of a free run of obscenity equal to ''Naked Lunch'' or ''Why Are We in Vietnam?''” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=90}}. It is as though Mailer sees ''Wild 90'' as an almost unimaginable supplement to the Marx Brothers’ oeuvre—a vision of what their tough Jewish contribution to cinema would look like had they ever assumed the roles of mafiosi.

In Mailer’s universe, the borders between Mailer and his characters are always fragile. He tells us in the Boulenger interview that in the making of ''Beyond the Law'' he would torture the actors playing the crooks, who were all friends of his, by interrogating them about things they had done in their real lives.{{efn|The best example of this existential interrogation occurs as Mailer’s Lieutenant Pope interrogates Peter Rosoff, whom Mailer asserts was a closeted homosexual, accusing him of soliciting sex in a subway men’s room {{sfn|Mailer|2018|p=25}}.}} In his writing and his introductory remarks included on the French DVDs of his films, Mailer repeatedly tells us that the goal of existential acting is to create a fictional documentary {{sfn|Mailer|2006|}}. Here is an ex-

{{pg|195|196}}

ample, taken from his discussion of the successes and failures of ''cinéma vérité'' in “A Course on Filmmaking”: “It was as if there was a law that a person could not be himself in front of a camera unless he pretended to be someone other than himself. By that logic, ''cinéma vérité'' would work if it photographed a performer in the midst of his performance” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=147}}. Mailer’s films elaborate upon his ideas about existential filmmaking: it is only in the act of performing as a character (Lieutenant Pope) that the actor reveals himself (Norman Mailer). Pope/Mailer’s sarcastic comment about not respecting the Jews until they showed the Arabs their military might is a line almost directly out of Breines’ ''Tough Jews'', or vice versa, Pope/Mailer’s comment is part of the discourse surrounding the 1968 war that inspired ''Tough Jews''. Either way, with this line, Mailer introduces himself into the lineage of tough Jews but with his own spin. When Pope tells us that Lee Ray Rogers brings out the Italian in him, he speaks for Mailer as well. Because Jewish masculinity for Mailer is always borrowed from and channeled through other ethnic masculinities, Pope’s words are as good as Mailer’s saying that Rogers brings out the Jew in him, and Mailer’s (via Pope’s) tough Jew is always already fighting, whether he is pushing Arabs out of Palestine or fighting to defend his dog’s honor. Thus, much as Mailer helped to unmake cinema as he made it, Mailer makes Jewishness as he unmakes it— masculinity unravels as the film does the same, moving from real to reel.

=== Notes ===

{{notelist}}

==Citations==
{{Reflist}}

===Works Cited===

{{Refbegin}}

* {{cite book |last=Brienes |first=Paul |date=1990 |title=''Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewry.'' |url= |location=New York |publisher=Basic Books |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Buckley |first=William F. |date=2005 |title= “Who Did What?” |url= |magazine=''National Review'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Damom |first=Maria |title=“Triangulated Desire and Tactical Silences in the Beat Hipscape: Bob Kaufman and Others.” |url= |journal=College Literature |volume=27.1 |issue= |date=Winter 2000 |pages=139-157 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary V. |date=1999 |title=''Mailer: A Biography'' |url= |location=New York |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Doane |first=Mary Ann |date=1981 |title=“Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator.” |url= |location=''Screen 23'' |publisher= |pages=74-87 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dolar |first=Mladen |date=2006 |title=''A Voice and Nothing More'' |url= |location=Cambridge |publisher= MIT P |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Fried |first=Albert |date=1993 |title=''The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America'' |url= |location=New York |publisher=Columbia UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Gilman |first=Sander |date=1991 |title=The Jewish Voice: Chicken Soup or the Penalties of Sounding too Jewish. |url= |magazine= |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hagberg |first=Gary |date=2008 |title=''Art and Ethical Criticism.'' |url= |location=Malden, MA |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Hitchens |first=Christopher |date=2007 |title=Remembering the Pint-Size Jewish Fireplug. |url= |magazine=''Slate'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Levine |first=Andrea |title=“The Jewish White Negro: Norman Mailer’s Racialized Bodies.” |url= |journal=''MELUS'' |volume=28.2 |issue= |date= |pages=59-81 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Elmer |first=Clifton |date=1931 |title=''Little Caesar.'' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1968 |title='' The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History'' |url= |location=New York |publisher= New American Library |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1968 |title=''Beyond the Law'' |url= |work= |location=Supreme Mix Productions |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |title=“A Course in Film-Making.” |url= |journal=''Existential Errands'' |volume= |issue= |date=1972 |pages=123-168 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1991 |title=''Harlot’s Ghost.'' |url= |location= |publisher=Random House, |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2008 |title=“In the Ring: Grappling with the Twentieth Century.” |url= |magazine=''The New Yorker.'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2006 |title=“Interview by Gilles Boulenger.” |url= |work= |location=Cinémalta |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |title=.“Some Dirt in the Talk.” |url= |journal=''Existential Errands.'' |volume= |issue= |date=1972 |pages=89-123 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date= |title=The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster. |url= |magazine=''Advertisements for Myself'' |pages=337-358 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date= |title=''Wild 90'' |url= |work= |location=Supreme Mix Productions |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Metz |first=Christian |date=1982 |title=''Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema'' |url= |location=Bloomington |publisher=Indiana UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mewshaw |first=Michael |title=“Vidal and Mailer” |url= |journal=''South Central Review'' |volume=4-14 |issue= |date=2002 |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Fontaine |first=Dir. Dick |date=1970 |title=''Norman Mailer vs. Fun City U.S.A.'' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=O'Reilly |first=Jane |date=1974 |title=“Diary of a Mailer Trailer.” |url= |magazine=''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?'' |pages=195-215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rushdie |first=Salman |date=1992 |title='' The Wizard of Oz'' |url= |location=London |publisher=BFI |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Hawkes |first=Dir. Howard |date= |title=''Scarface.'' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Scott |first=A.O. |date=2007 |title=“Norman Mailer Unbound and On Film: Revisiting His Bigger-Than-Life-Selves.” |url= |magazine=''The New York Times'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Silverman |first=Kaja |date=1988 |title=''The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and the Cinema.'' |url= |location=Bloomington |publisher=Indiana UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Sokolsky |first=George E. |date=1962 |title=“These Days: The First Lady.” |url= |magazine=''The Washington Post'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Stern |first=Steve |date=2010 |title=''The Frozen Rabbi'' |url= |location=Chapel Hill |publisher=Algonquin P |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Stevens |first=Joe |date=2008 |title=“The FBI’s-Year Campaign to Ferret Out Norman Mailer.” |url= |magazine=''The Washington Post'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Tanenhouse |first=Sam |date=2005 |title=“TheBuckley Effect” |url= |magazine=''New York Times'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Pennebaker |first= Dir D.A |date= |title=''Town Bloody Hall.'' |url= |work= |location=Pennebaker Hegedus Films |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=United States Federal Bureau of Investigation |first= J. Edgar Hoover |date=1962-1975 |title=“Memo to Staff” |url= |work= |location=''File on Norman Kingsley Mailer'' |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Fontaine |first=Dir. Dick |date=1968 |title=''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up? '' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{Refend}}

{{Review}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:MAKING MASCULINITY AND UNMAKING JEWISHNESS: NORMAN MAILER’S VOICE IN
''WILD 90'' AND ''BEYOND THE LAW''}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

2025-04-09T00:13:32Z

KWatson:

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{{Working}}
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{{Byline|last=Cohen|first=Sarah Jo|abstract=A discussion of Mailer’s career, interrelating Mailer’s ethnicity with his corpus of work, with special attention to his cinematic work.|url=https://projectmailer.net/pm/Sara_Jo_Cohen}}

NORMAN MAILER’S SIZABLE FBI FILE BEGINS WITH HIS VOICE. The 165 pages of Mailer’s 171-page file available to the public cover fifteen years of observation and surveillance, and includes materials ranging from endless notes tracking Mailer’s passport applications and international travel, to FBI agents’ reviews of Miami and the Siege of Chicago (with meticulous notes about each mention of the FBI), and even a letter from a high school teacher asking J. Edgar Hoover for permission to teach ''The Naked and the Dead''. 1 The file begins, however, with a clipping from ''The Washington Post'', a June 6,1962, George Sokolsky column called “These Days,” that moved J. Edgar Hoover to leave a note for his staff reading, “Let me have memo on Mailer” {{sfn|The Federal Bureau of Investigation|1967-1975|}}. Sokolsky’s article responds to an ''Esquire'' piece Mailer wrote about then first lady Jackie Kennedy that describes Mrs. Kennedy’s voice as “a quiet parody of the sort of voice one hears on the radio late at night, dropped softly into the ear by girls who sell soft mattresses, depilatories, or creams to brighten the skin” {{sfn|Sokolsky|1962|}}. Sokolsky takes offense at Mailer’s mockery of Mrs. Kennedy and scrutiny of her voice, responding, “[A] person’s voice is what it is. I never heard Norman Mailer’s voice but whatever the Lord gave him, baritone or tenor, soprano or bass, it is what it is, and he can thank the good Lord that he does not suffer from cerebral palsy or some such thing” {{sfn|Sokolsky|1962|}}. Mailer’s voice, however, much like his persona, is not at all God-given and never “is what it is.” Rather, Mailer’s

{{pg|183|184}}

voice is a deliberate construction pieced together from bits of others’ voices
in order to mask the adenoidal voice of his childhood.

Mailer reflects briefly upon his voice in his chronicle of the October 1967 March on the Pentagon, ''The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History'', written in the third person with himself as its main character. Part IV of ''Armies'' begins with an apology from Mailer for bringing the story of the March on the Pentagon to a climax and then launching into a diversion about his relationship to film and the cameras following him through the melee of the march. Mailer writes of his relationship to film: “he had on screen in this first documentary a fatal taint, a last remaining speck of the one personality he found absolutely insupportable—the nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn. Something in his adenoids gave it away—he had the softness of a man early accustomed to mother-love” {{sfn|Mailer|1968|pg=152}}. For Mailer, the paradoxical experience of seeing his voice undermines the masculinities he works to materialize in his career as a writer and public intellectual, which he goes on to enumerate: “warrior, presumptive general, ex-political candidate, embattled aging enfant terrible of the literary world, wise father of six children, radical intellectual, existential philosopher, hard-working author, champion of obscenity, husband of four battling sweet wives, amiable bar drinker, and much exaggerated street fighter, party giver, hostess insulter.” As a result of feeling outed on film as a “nice Jewish boy,” “accustomed to mother love,” our presumptive general and champion of obscenity vows to “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself” {{sfn|Mailer|1968|pg=152}}.

The problem of Mailer’s voice is intimately connected with both sexuality and masculinity. The adenoids, after all, are located in the nose, a stereo typical marker of Jewish otherness and degeneracy. We do not need Sander Gilman to tell us, although he does in the chapter of ''The Jew’s Body'' entitled “The Jewish Nose,” that the Jewish nose is the locus of redirected anxiety about the Jewish penis—both are body parts that develop and take shape at puberty—the latter of which is a threat to national purity through its potential to increase the Jewish population. The adenoidal voice signals a kind of impotence for Mailer, revealing him as accustomed to mother love, and functions as “the acoustic mirror in which the male subject hears all the repudiated elements of his infantile babble” {{sfn|Silverman|1988|pg=81}}. The infantile babble here, the mother tongue of the mother’s voice, is Yiddish. 2 Kaja Silverman writes that the voice of the mother resonates in the male subject and that “the male subject frequently ‘refines’ his ‘own’ voice by projecting onto the

{{pg|184|185}}

mother’s voice all that is unassimilable to the paternal position” {{sfn|Silverman|1988|pg=81}}. Mailer is a case study in this relationship to the maternal voice; when Mailer first sees himself on film, he hears the adenoidal, Jewish, maternal voice within himself. Because the paternal position Mailer strives to create is distinctly not Jewish, or at least one that allies itself with Jewishness without performing it, the mother’s voice becomes unassimilable (or in his words, “unsupportable”) to his identity. Thus, while Mailer asserts that he will “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself,” he returns to film as both actor and director in order to refine his voice by expunging its maternal layers.

Norman Mailer’s film career, often dismissed as vulgar and/or irrelevant, was short but intense; he directed four films, two of which were released in 1968, ''Wild''
and ''Beyond the Law'', one in 1970, ''Maidstone'', and, after a long break, ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' was released in 1987. Mailer’s first three films were largely influenced by John Cassavetes, although Mailer predictably argues that his mastery of what he calls “existential acting” makes him a much better filmmaker than Cassavetes {{sfn|Mailer|2006|}}. In his essay, “Some Dirt in the Talk,” Mailer defines existential acting by addressing each of the terms that comprise the phrase. He notes that existentialism and acting exist at two opposite “poles,” writing, ''“If existentialism is ultimately concerned with the attractions of the unknown, acting is one of the surviving rituals of invocation, repetition, and ceremony—of propitiation to the gods”'' {{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=104}}. His theory of existential acting, then, strives to collapse these two poles, freeing acting from repetition and ceremony, and liberating his actors (and himself) from the propitiation of the gods. Existential acting, he argues, works because in our daily lives we always pretend, lie, and act, and works by more effectively representing the chaos and “complexity of our century” than mainstream Hollywood cinema {{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=90,108}}. Unsurprisingly, from the man who gave us the genre-bending history as novel/novel as history, the true life novel, and the novel biography,5 existential acting collapses the cinema and the outside world, documentary and fiction, acting and existentialism, and masculinity and performance, the last of which Mailer explicitly connects, writing: “There is hardly a guy alive who is not an actor to
the hilt—for the simplest of reasons. He cannot be tough all the time...[s]o he acts to fill the gaps” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=90-1}}. Thus, armed with the theory and methodology of existential acting, Mailer returns to the cinema as a film
maker for the same reason he considers turning away from it after his

{{pg|185|186}}

experience in the above passage: at the same time the camera exposes one’s frailties and the identities one attempts to disguise; it bolsters the masquerade of masculinity by imprinting its performance in celluloid. The same voice that undermines Mailer’s masculinity becomes his primary means of constructing it.

In his first documentary Mailer sees “something in his adenoids” in a moment of slippage that renders the aural a visual prop. The experience of seeing his voice disrupts Mailer’s viewing experience by first troubling the traditional assumption that film is a visual medium and then forcing Mailer to confront himself as both image and sound. Mladen Dolar provides a means of understanding the revolutionary and revelatory potential of sound, in the form of the voice, in relation to both identity and film, as he writes:

<blockquote>|[T]he visible world presents relative stability, permanence, distinctiveness, and a location at a distance, the audible presents fluidity, passing, a certain inchoate, amorphous character and a lack of distance. The voice is elusive, always changing, becoming, elapsing, with unclear contours, as opposed to the relative permanence, solidity, durability of the seen. {{sfn|Dolar|2006|pg=79}}.</blockquote>

Here the visible is associated with stability, permanence, and distinctiveness—terms that are crucial to our understanding of cinema, but that mirror the ways we come to understand ourselves as selves. In film, the visible is assumed to guarantee presence, an assumption that stems from, among other things, the historical and philosophical privileging of the visual as a primary quality, and the problem of the voiceovers and voice-offs of sound film—which are often disembodied, absent, and coming from beyond the grave or before birth. Because the visual has historically been the privileged epistemological order through which we understand both film and identity, by focusing on sound, which is dynamic and playful, we can begin to dis
mantle both identity and film. As Mailer sees his voice, witnessing his in sides (in the form of his adenoids) undermining his outsides, the visual and audible come together, undoing the binary oppositions between seeing and hearing, insides and outsides.

Dolar contrasts the visible to the audible, arguing that the latter is associated with a lack of distance, a lack of distance perhaps best embodied by the uterine envelope created by the mother’s voice. This lack of distance with

{{pg|186|187}}

regard to the sound of the voice stems from the fact that the voice is simultaneously sent and delivered, thus folding back on itself and troubling the
boundaries between self and other. This lack of distance is also precisely what Mailer experiences when he sees himself in his first documentary, at once spoken and heard. While Christian Metz dismisses seeing oneself on screen as an impossibility, 7 feminist film theory calls attention to the discomfort that comes from not being granted the distance that the visible demands. In “Film and the Masquerade,” Mary Anne Doane argues that the female spectator goes largely untheorized because the historical “imbrication of the cinematic image and the representation of the woman” leaves her too close to the image {{sfn|Doane|1982|pg=76}}. Doane theorizes that in order to achieve the distance necessary to watch and appreciate film, female spectators assume a metaphorical feminine mask, which “in flaunting femininity, holds it at a distance” {{sfn|Doane|1982|pg=81}}. Doane then briefly considers why men do not have to masquerade as more masculine spectators, writing, “The very fact that we can speak of a woman ‘using’ her sex or ‘using’ her body for particular gains is highly significant—it is not that a man cannot use his body in this way but that he doesn’t have to” {{sfn|Doane|1982|pg=82}}.

But using his body for particular gains is precisely what Mailer does, as exemplified in Diane Arbus’s photograph of Mailer. If, as Mailer quipped, “Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like giving a hand grenade to a baby,” this hand grenade caught an image that exemplifies how Mailer flaunts his masculinity by holding it at a distance {{sfn|Hagberg|2008|pg=211}}. In this photograph, we see Mailer is in his standard three-piece suit, sprawled out in a writerly looking high-backed chair. His right hand looks as though clasping an invisible cigarette, or pen, or as if gesturing to emphasize a point. His forehead is wrinkled in thought, and his blue eyes glow even in black and white. While his clothing, his chair, his furrowed brow, and his mouth, slightly agape in apparent mid-sentence, add up to an image we would expect of a great writer, his posture suggests otherwise; immediately, our attention is drawn to Mailer’s crotch. Thus, this image reveals both Mailer’s efforts to underscore his masculinity, placing his crotch front and center, and the vulnerability of this masculinity—in this moment, we wouldn’t need a grenade to cause Mailer a great deal of pain; a swift kick would suffice. The simultaneous power and vulnerability of Mailer’s crotch underscores his efforts to use the visibility of his body to counteract the invisibility of his voice, and his

{{pg|187|188}}

hidden adenoids. We see Mailer engaged in a manly masquerade, as his proximity to the image allows him to manipulate it.

So male spectators need to masquerade as well—especially male spectators who find themselves closer to the image than they would like. The Jewish male is one such figure, as a result of a history of anti-Semitic visual representations of Jews in both scientific and popular media. Sander Gilman argues that such visual representations are internalized by contemporary Jewish-American writers, registering most prominently in repeated anxiety about sounding too Jewish {{sfn|Gilman|1991|pg=10-37}}. Mailer’s anxiety about his adenoids is decisively Jewish, both because the adenoids are located in the nose and because they give the Jewish voice its stereotypical nasal quality. Mailer’s attempt to work through this anxiety in his films is twofold. First, he gets on the other side of the camera in order to see rather than be seen, and when he is seen (as actor), it is under his own direction. Second, Mailer employs his voice in order to intervene, destabilize, and distance himself from the power of the image.

''Wild 90'', as it repeatedly calls attention to issues of seeing and visibility,
provides the best examples of Mailer’s effort to seize control of his visual
representation in order to produce a record of his masculinity. Mailer accomplishes this task not only by “writing,” 8 editing, and directing the film, but also, by playing a boxer in league with mafiosi, who have the police under their control. In this film the Maf Boys, three men who spend the film holed up in a Brooklyn warehouse, watch over the New York Police Department, a position emphasized by their location many stories above the city street. The NYPD, however, asserts that the Maf Boys would not have lived past thirteen had the Irish and Jewish cops not been watching out for them—so a network of interlaced looks, and interlaced ethnicities, emerges. But perhaps the most striking look is Mailer’s own. As a character known as “the Prince,” Mailer is perpetually at the mirror, greasing up his hair and combing out its kinky curls. This position is crucial to Mailer’s management of his visual representation: from the mirror, much as in his position as director, Mailer can see both himself and the actors behind him; he can also control his image, making sure his mane and signature sneer are exactly as he wants
them to appear. The metaphorical significance of Mailer’s mirror scenes almost goes without saying—at these times we are treated to moments of silence rare in his film (or writing, or political) career in which Mailer uses the visuality of film to construct and maintain the visibility of identity, to register

{{pg|188|189}}

his transformation here from nice Jewish boy to badass boxer. Despite this love affair with his image, Mailer shatters the filmic mirror when, at the conclusion of ''Wild 90'', the Prince demands to speak to the audience, breaking the fourth wall, and informing the audience that the CIA9 is watching all of us. He then goes on to tell us, in his garbled, drunken voice that his favorite author is Norman Mailer—presumably, because he is both his creator and a substantial part of his self.

Mailer’s appearance, particularly in the mirror scenes of ''Wild 90'', is crucial to his efforts to make masculinity and unmake Jewishness, two concepts at odds because of the internalization of a long history of popular representations and stereotypes of the weak Jew. While Mailer combats this weakness in part through his tough guy exterior—carefully cultivated through hard-drinking, hard-talking, and hard-fighting in an effort to make himself out as a latter-day Hemingway—Mailer’s voice registers this construction as well. In the notes taken during my first screenings of ''Beyond the Law'' and ''Wild 90'', I repeatedly try to describe the voice of the characters he portrays. In my notes on Beyond the Law, I wrote that the poor sound quality of the film combines with Mailer’s voice to create the effect of almost incomprehensible yelling from Lt. Francis Xavier Pope for an hour and twenty-four minutes. My notes on Mailer’s gangster voice as the Prince of ''Wild 90'' remark that his accent makes him sound like a cross between Marlon Brando and Fred Flintstone with marbles in his mouth. In my second viewing, I crossed out this assessment and wrote that he sounded more like Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion from the ''Wizard of Oz''. I am not alone in trying to describe Mailer’s voice. Michael Mewshaw describes Mailer’s voice as “the Irish brogue of a whiskey priest” coming from the body of a man who “looked about as threatening as a teddy bear” {{sfn|Mewshaw|2002|pg=14}}, and Jane O’Reilly notes that “words rumble and bubble and jump out, in a variety of accents: New York, faintly southern, all g’s dropped (as in ‘Ah’m talkin’) when he is particularly shy”{{sfn|o'Reilly|1974|pg=198}}.10 More recently, in an article about the New York Mailer retrospective, A.O. Scott describes Mailer’s voice as a “rapid, forceful stream of half-baked nostrums and brilliant ''aperçus'' delivered in that inimitable accent, an audible palimpsest of Mr. Mailer’s Brooklyn childhood, his Ivy League education and his World War II combat service in an Army unit composed mainly of Texans and Southerners.”

All of this is to say that the voices of Mailer’s characters (including the character “Norman Mailer,” who becomes a formal entity in ''The Armies of''

{{pg|189|190}}

''the Night'', but who was roaming the streets of America and Europe at least since the publication of ''The Naked and the Dead'') are a response to the anxiety of sounding too Jewish. The adenoidal voice Mailer hears in his first documentary, the unsure voice of the Brooklyn Jew, transforms into a cacophony of accents—Southern, Irish, Italian, Brooklyn—which together make Mailer’s voice the voice of immigrant America. Paul Breines writes that discursive constructions of Jewish weakness arise from and refer to the rootlessness of the Diaspora {{sfn|Breines|1995|pg=195}}. For Breines, tough Jewishness is a performance on the part of secular Jews that is largely associated with Zionism, and its creation first of tough Jewish pioneers, and then, after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, of tough Israeli soldiers {{sfn|Breines|1995|pg=195}}. Mailer, however, described his relationship to Judaism in this way: “I am a Jew out of loyalty to the underdog. I would never say I was not a Jew, but I took no strength from the fact” {{sfn|Dearborn|1999|pg=14}}. With this in mind, Mailer’s voice is a tough Jewish voice, but one that revises Breines’ toughness by drawing strength from a composite of immigrant voices, rooted, if at all, in American soil rather than Israeli. Mailer brings these immigrant voices together to construct a hybrid masculinity that is not only part white Negro and part tough Jew, but that is also comprised of Italian American, Irish American, Southern, and Texan parts, among others. Thus, Mailer simultaneously makes and unmakes Jewish masculinity by borrowing from other masculinities in the process of making himself into a palimpsest.

Mailer’s essay, “The White Negro,” is the site most often returned to in order to discuss his contribution to the theories of tough Jewish discourse and of masculinity. 11 This essay, which argues that the hipster’s existential, psychopathic masculinity is particularly well-suited for the Cold War political climate, is infamous not only because it espouses Reichian connections between sex and violence, but also because it argues that “the Negro,” who “relinquish[es] the pleasures of the mind for the more obligatory pleasures of the body,” provides a model for how to live violently and sexually {{sfn|Mailer|1959|pg=341}}. Both because of and despite its racist enlistment of African American men, Mailer’s essay celebrates and identifies with black masculinity as a means of embracing otherness without admitting Jewishness. With its repeated references to the figure of “the psychopath,” who “murders—if he has the courage,” however, Mailer’s essay is also about criminality, which is a crucial source of his on-screen tough Jewish persona {{sfn|Mailer|1959|pg=347}}. While this persona borrows its style and hipness from African Americans, it

{{pg|190|191}}

almost literally ventriloquizes through the voices of Irish Americans and Italian Americans, particularly those of Hollywood cops and crooks.

Forging a criminal enterprise, and/or performing criminal masculinity, is a traditional means of assimilation for immigrant populations in America, which for the second wave of European immigrants begins with the Irish in the 1850s and is then passed on to Italian and Jewish immigrants two generations later. 12 While criminality provided immigrant gangsters with increased notoriety and power, immigrant groups who became police officers saw a similar rise in status—and much like criminals, in part because it was hoped that they could infiltrate the criminal scenes of their brethren, it was the Irish who were cops first, followed by Italians and Jews {{sfn|Fried|1993|pg=xv}}. While this history suggests discrete ethnic groups who cross paths but not cultures, cinematic representations of the outlaw capitalism of mobsters often star Jewish immigrants in the role of Italian immigrants and thus demonstrate ethnic crossings similar to those in Mailer’s films. The results register in the voice; in ''Little Caesar'' {{sfn|Little Ceasar|1931|}} Edward G. Robinson, né Emanuel Goldenberg, stars as the adenoidal Cesar Enrico Bandello, and in ''Scarface'' {{sfn|Scarface|1932|}}, Paul Muni, né Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund, stars as Antonio Camonte whose Italian accent has a near Yiddish lilt.

In a letter to William F. Buckley, a man whose mid-century faux British accent made his voice almost as strange and remarkable as Mailer’s,13 Mailer hands the crown of “most hated man in American life” over to Buckley. The letter responds to Buckley’s recent speech before the Holy Name Society, an annual gathering of Catholic police officers, in which Buckley criticized the news media for overemphasizing police brutality during the recent civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama {{sfn|Tanenhouse|2005|}}. When the ''Herald Tribune'' and civil rights activists caught wind of these remarks, and the rumors that the assembled police officers laughed and applauded upon hearing them, a media frenzy ensued which elicited a letter from Mailer, weighing in on Buckley’s speech by clarifying his own relationship to the boys in blue:

<blockquote>|I’m not the cop-hater I’m reputed to be, and in fact police fascinate me. But this is because I think their natures are very complex, not simple at all, and what I would object to ...is that you made a one-for-one correspondence between the need to maintain law and order and the nature of the men who would main-

{{pg|191|192}}

tain it. The policeman has I think an extraordinarily tortured psyche. He is perhaps more tortured than the criminal. {{sfn|Mailer|2008|p=8}}</blockquote>

Perhaps as a result of their tortured psyches, Mailer repeatedly turns to cops and crooks as the focus of and source of conflict in his oeuvre. For Mailer, cops are men in power who are repeatedly outwitted by clever, hypermasculine, criminals: think Stephen Rojack and Gary Gilmore, the respective heroes of ''An American Dream'' and ''The Executioner’s Song'', who commit numerous crimes in single volumes, and the Norman Mailer of ''The Armies of the Night'', arrested by U.S. Marshalls for crossing a police line at the Pentagon. There is also the Norman Mailer who stabbed his second wife, and the one who nearly lost an eye after fighting a group of hoodlums who insinuated that his dog was a “faggot” {{sfn|Hitchens|2007|}}. Mailer, as his art and life suggest, sees the tension between cops and criminals as one that is inside of everyone. In a discussion of ''Beyond the Law'' in an interview with Gilles Boulenger, Mailer reveals that the film “had a notion at the core of it that worked— which is that everybody has a cop or a criminal in them” and that, “when you put people together—one playing a cop and one playing a crook—you get the dynamism that comes from the fact that every cop in real life has a potential criminal in him and every criminal in real life, or almost every criminal in real life, has a potential cop within their soul {{sfn|Mailer|2006|}}.”

Mailer sees the conflict between cops and crooks as one that inhabits the film set as well. In “A Course on Film-Making,” he describes cameramen and union grips, who “usually dress like cops off duty and are built like cops (with the same heavy meat in the shoulders, same bellies oiled in beer), which is not surprising for they are also in surveillance upon a criminal activity: people are forging emotions under bright lights… [l]ike cops they see through every fake move and hardly care” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=133}}. Here the crew, who are equated with cops, are set up in opposition to the actors whom they put under surveillance and, more indirectly, to the director, who for Mailer is always an outlaw resisting the tyranny of the image, striving to disrupt the conventions of polite cinema through a refusal to use a script, and insisting upon including as much verbal and auditory obscenity as humanly possible. Thus, even when Mailer plays a cop in ''Beyond the Law'', this portrayal becomes an effort similar to that of the director whose film tramples upon respectability. Mailer’s Lieutenant Pope inhabits the body of the cop in order

{{pg|192|193}}

to mock him and to illustrate a psyche more tortured than that of the criminal.

In ''Beyond the Law'', as Mailer takes on the role of a cop, anxieties about Jewishness, being seen, and the voice come together. Beyond the Law tells the story of one night in a police precinct in which a number of criminals are interrogated, ranging from a motorcycle gang, to a man who murdered his wife with an axe, to the members of a sadomasochistic whipping club. The film takes us back and forth between the precinct, where we see the cops in action, and a bar, where we see the cops off-duty, having drinks. Toward the film’s conclusion, these spaces intersect as Lieutenant Pope brings one of the women from the whipping club, a stunning Syrian woman named Lee Ray Rogers, to the bar. Rogers’ tripartite name, cobbled together from pieces of Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray, 14 suggests that she too will be an assassin of sorts, or at least that she will bring the little death of orgasm to Lieutenant Pope. Just before Rogers arrives, Pope (Mailer’s Irish-American cop, whose rank and name suggest that he is only slightly less than the Bishop of Rome) and Mickey Berk (Mickey Knox’s Jewish-American cop, feminized through a last name that is cockney rhyming slang for cunt)15 have a heart to heart in the men’s room in which Pope remarks, “I used to have no respect for the Jewish cops until the Israelis showed the Arabs where to go. And then I said to myself, maybe Berk has more than even I thought.” Pope then mutters under his breath for a couple of minutes, and quietly says to himself, “The Irish never won a war."

Once Rogers arrives, Pope asks the other officers to leave them alone. An intimate conversation follows, during which the two imagine an S &M scene and Pope refers to his penis as “the avenger.” A difficult to obtain “blue” version of the film exists in which we presumably see Pope’s avenger in action. For our purposes, however, it is even more striking to see him ''voicing'' his potency and sexuality, while Mailer’s voice revealed him as soft in his first documentary, Pope tells us here that he is hard. Pope expresses the ethnic crossing that facilitates his hardness in this conversation as well, as he tells Rogers, “You bring out the Italian in me.” Ultimately, Pope’s blonde wife arrives at the bar, cramping his style, and commands him to end this conversation. Thus the film concludes with Pope at the nexus of several ethnicities: pitted against an Arab dominatrix and an emasculating ''shiksa'', the Irish Pope arms himself with an Italian libido, and metaphorically whips out his

{{pg|193|194}}

avenger in the name of both the Jews, who showed the Arabs where to go, and the Irish who never won a war.

In “A Course in Filmmaking,” Mailer argues that after the advent of sound, film started to mimic theater, and that the work of film should be to get away from this mimicry in order to accomplish things that can only be accomplished on film. As films that are uniquely filmic, Mailer gives the example of ''The Maltese Falcon'', but also of the Marx Brothers’ films, in which the brothers “stampeded over every line of a script and tore off in enough directions to leave concepts fluttering like ticker tape on the mysterious nature of the movie art” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=129}}. The Marx brothers are important ancestors in Mailer’s filmic genealogy, in part because they too are Jews who remix ethnicity on film, as Chico becomes Italian and Zeppo becomes the brothers’ WASPy foil. And like Mailer’s films, much of the chaos and anarchy that unfurls in the Marx Brothers’ films stems from sound, in the form of elaborate musical numbers, Groucho’s wordplay, Chico’s Italian accent and piano playing, Harpo’s horn-honking, and even his silence. For both the Marx Brothers and Mailer, the work of cinema is to unravel itself, to make and unmake a universe in the same space, to challenge conventions. Where the Marx brothers wreak havoc, for example, upon the university in ''Horse feathers'', and upon dictatorship in ''Duck Soup'', Mailer wreaks havoc upon language and good taste as he attempts to create the film with the most “repetitive pervasive obscenity of any film ever made” with ''Wild, 90'' and upon both his own voice and the human eardrum with the perpetual yelling of Lt. Pope in ''Beyond the Law''. Mailer even tells us, “''Wild 90'' seems close to nothing so much as the Marx Brothers doing improvisations on ''Little Caesar'' with the addition of a free run of obscenity equal to ''Naked Lunch'' or ''Why Are We in Vietnam?''” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=90}}. It is as though Mailer sees ''Wild 90'' as an almost unimaginable supplement to the Marx Brothers’ oeuvre—a vision of what their tough Jewish contribution to cinema would look like had they ever assumed the roles of mafiosi.

In Mailer’s universe, the borders between Mailer and his characters are always fragile. He tells us in the Boulenger interview that in the making of ''Beyond the Law'' he would torture the actors playing the crooks, who were all friends of his, by interrogating them about things they had done in their real lives. 16 In his writing and his introductory remarks included on the French DVDs of his films, Mailer repeatedly tells us that the goal of existential acting is to create a fictional documentary {{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=107,109}}. Here is an ex-

{{pg|195|196}}

ample, taken from his discussion of the successes and failures of ''cinéma vérité'' in “A Course on Filmmaking”: “It was as if there was a law that a person could not be himself in front of a camera unless he pretended to be someone other than himself. By that logic, ''cinéma vérité'' would work if it photographed a performer in the midst of his performance” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=147}}. Mailer’s films elaborate upon his ideas about existential filmmaking: it is only in the act of performing as a character (Lieutenant Pope) that the actor reveals himself (Norman Mailer). Pope/Mailer’s sarcastic comment about not respecting the Jews until they showed the Arabs their military might is a line almost directly out of Breines’ ''Tough Jews'', or vice versa, Pope/Mailer’s comment is part of the discourse surrounding the 1968 war that inspired ''Tough Jews''. Either way, with this line, Mailer introduces himself into the lineage of tough Jews but with his own spin. When Pope tells us that Lee Ray Rogers brings out the Italian in him, he speaks for Mailer as well. Because Jewish masculinity for Mailer is always borrowed from and channeled through other ethnic masculinities, Pope’s words are as good as Mailer’s saying that Rogers brings out the Jew in him, and Mailer’s (via Pope’s) tough Jew is always already fighting, whether he is pushing Arabs out of Palestine or fighting to defend his dog’s honor. Thus, much as Mailer helped to unmake cinema as he made it, Mailer makes Jewishness as he unmakes it— masculinity unravels as the film does the same, moving from real to reel.

=== Notes ===

{{notelist}}

{{efn|a. In a letter dated March 18, 1964, also included in Mailer’s file, Hoover wrote back telling the teacher that this request was beyond his area of jurisdiction because the FBI “neither makes evaluations nor draws conclusions as to the character of integrity of any organization, publication, or individual,” and because Hoover has made it a habit “not to comment on any material not prepared by the FBI.”}}

{{efn|b. Mary V. Dearborn writes that Mailer picked up Yiddish at home from his parents, “enough so that many years later, in Germany, he was able to ask for directions in this language and be understood” (14).}}

==Citations==
{{Reflist}}

===Works Cited===

{{Refbegin}}

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* {{cite magazine |last=Buckley |first=William F. |date=2005 |title= “Who Did What?” |url= |magazine=''National Review'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Damom |first=Maria |title=“Triangulated Desire and Tactical Silences in the Beat Hipscape: Bob Kaufman and Others.” |url= |journal=College Literature |volume=27.1 |issue= |date=Winter 2000 |pages=139-157 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary V. |date=1999 |title=''Mailer: A Biography'' |url= |location=New York |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Doane |first=Mary Ann |date=1981 |title=“Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator.” |url= |location=''Screen 23'' |publisher= |pages=74-87 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dolar |first=Mladen |date=2006 |title=''A Voice and Nothing More'' |url= |location=Cambridge |publisher= MIT P |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Fried |first=Albert |date=1993 |title=''The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America'' |url= |location=New York |publisher=Columbia UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Gilman |first=Sander |date=1991 |title=The Jewish Voice: Chicken Soup or the Penalties of Sounding too Jewish. |url= |magazine= |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hagberg |first=Gary |date=2008 |title=''Art and Ethical Criticism.'' |url= |location=Malden, MA |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Hitchens |first=Christopher |date=2007 |title=Remembering the Pint-Size Jewish Fireplug. |url= |magazine=''Slate'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Levine |first=Andrea |title=“The Jewish White Negro: Norman Mailer’s Racialized Bodies.” |url= |journal=''MELUS'' |volume=28.2 |issue= |date= |pages=59-81 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Elmer |first=Clifton |date=1931 |title=''Little Caesar.'' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1968 |title='' The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History'' |url= |location=New York |publisher= New American Library |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1968 |title=''Beyond the Law'' |url= |work= |location=Supreme Mix Productions |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |title=“A Course in Film-Making.” |url= |journal=''Existential Errands'' |volume= |issue= |date=1972 |pages=123-168 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1991 |title=''Harlot’s Ghost.'' |url= |location= |publisher=Random House, |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2008 |title=“In the Ring: Grappling with the Twentieth Century.” |url= |magazine=''The New Yorker.'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2006 |title=“Interview by Gilles Boulenger.” |url= |work= |location=Cinémalta |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |title=.“Some Dirt in the Talk.” |url= |journal=''Existential Errands.'' |volume= |issue= |date=1972 |pages=89-123 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date= |title=The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster. |url= |magazine=''Advertisements for Myself'' |pages=337-358 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date= |title=''Wild 90'' |url= |work= |location=Supreme Mix Productions |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Metz |first=Christian |date=1982 |title=''Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema'' |url= |location=Bloomington |publisher=Indiana UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mewshaw |first=Michael |title=“Vidal and Mailer” |url= |journal=''South Central Review'' |volume=4-14 |issue= |date=2002 |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Fontaine |first=Dir. Dick |date=1970 |title=''Norman Mailer vs. Fun City U.S.A.'' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=O'Reilly |first=Jane |date=1974 |title=“Diary of a Mailer Trailer.” |url= |magazine=''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?'' |pages=195-215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rushdie |first=Salman |date=1992 |title='' The Wizard of Oz'' |url= |location=London |publisher=BFI |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Hawkes |first=Dir. Howard |date= |title=''Scarface.'' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Scott |first=A.O. |date=2007 |title=“Norman Mailer Unbound and On Film: Revisiting His Bigger-Than-Life-Selves.” |url= |magazine=''The New York Times'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Silverman |first=Kaja |date=1988 |title=''The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and the Cinema.'' |url= |location=Bloomington |publisher=Indiana UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Sokolsky |first=George E. |date=1962 |title=“These Days: The First Lady.” |url= |magazine=''The Washington Post'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}