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

2025-04-16T01:06:51Z

Kamyers: Fix title, added harvtxt to notes, added some numbers, fixed a few spaces, corrected some name spellings in Work Cited

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness: Norman Mailer’s Voice in ''Wild 90'' and ''Beyond the Law''}}
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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=http://prmlr.us/mr05coh }}

{{dc|dc=N|orman Mailer’s sizable FBI file begins with his voice.}} The 165 pages of Mailer’s 171-page file available to the public cover fifteen years of observation and surveillance, and includes materials ranging from endless notes tracking Mailer’s passport applications and international travel, to FBI agents’ reviews of Miami and the Siege of Chicago (with meticulous notes about each mention of the FBI), and even a letter from a high school teacher asking J. Edgar Hoover for permission to teach ''The Naked and the Dead.''{{efn|In a letter dated March 18, 1964, also included in Mailer’s file, Hoover wrote back telling the teacher that this request was beyond his area of jurisdiction because the FBI “neither makes evaluations nor draws conclusions as to the character of integrity of any organization, publication, or individual,” and because Hoover has made it a habit “not to comment on any material not prepared by the FBI.”}} The file begins, however, with a clipping from ''The Washington Post'', a June 6, 1962, George Sokolsky column called “These Days,” that moved J. Edgar Hoover to leave a note for his staff reading, “Let me have memo on Mailer.”{{sfn|United States Federal Bureau of Investigation|1962–1975}} Sokolsky’s article responds to an ''Esquire'' piece Mailer wrote about then first lady Jackie Kennedy that describes Mrs. Kennedy’s voice as “a quiet parody of the sort of voice one hears on the radio late at night, dropped softly into the ear by girls who sell soft mattresses, depilatories, or creams to brighten the skin.”{{sfn|Sokolsky|1962|}} 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 stereotypical marker of Jewish otherness and degeneracy. We do not need Sander Gilman to tell us, although he does in the chapter of ''The Jew’s Body'' entitled “The Jewish Nose,” that the Jewish nose is the locus of redirected anxiety about the Jewish penis—both are body parts that develop and take shape at puberty—the latter of which is a threat to national purity through its potential to increase the Jewish population. The adenoidal voice signals a kind of impotence for Mailer, revealing him as accustomed to mother love, and functions as “the acoustic mirror in which the male subject hears all the repudiated elements of his infantile babble.”{{sfn|Silverman|1988|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.” {{harvtxt|Dearborn|1999|p=14}}}} 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 90'' and ''Beyond the Law'', one in 1970, ''Maidstone'', and, after a long break, ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' was released in 1987.{{efn|Mailer was also featured in several documentaries during these years, including Dick Fontaine’s ''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?'' (1968) and ''Norman Mailer vs. Fun City U.S.A.'' (1970); the former is a filmic companion to ''Armies'', documenting Mailer’s actions during the March on the Pentagon, and the latter produces a record of Mailer’s 1969 New York City mayoral campaign. Mailer was also documented in Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s ''Town Bloody Hall'', a film of the 1971 debate between Mailer and Germaine Greer about women’s liberation at Town Hall in New York City.}} Mailer’s first three films were largely influenced by John Cassavetes, although Mailer predictably argues that his mastery of what he calls “existential acting” makes him a much better filmmaker than Cassavetes.{{sfn|Mailer|2006|}} In his essay, “Some Dirt in the Talk,” Mailer defines existential acting by addressing each of the terms that comprise the phrase. He notes that existentialism and acting exist at two opposite “poles,” writing, ''“If existentialism is ultimately concerned with the attractions of the unknown, acting is one of the surviving rituals of invocation, repetition, and ceremony—of propitiation to the gods.”''{{sfn|Mailer|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 dismantle both identity and film.{{efn|At this point in time, there is, of course, a well-established tradition of discussing sound and the voice on film—Pascal Bonitzer’s “The Silences of the Voice” (1975), Christian Metz’s “Aural Objects” (1980), Mary Anne Doane’s “The Voice in the Cinema” (1982), Michel Chion’s ''The Voice in Cinema'' (1982), and Silverman’s ''Acoustic Mirror'' (1988), just to name a few. It seems important for our purposes, however, to rehash the stakes of this discussion, especially in relation to deconstructing/reconstructing/constructing Mailer’s masculinity.}} As Mailer sees his voice, witnessing his insides (in the form of his adenoids) undermining his outsides, the visual and audible come together, undoing the binary oppositions between seeing and hearing, insides and outsides.

Dolar contrasts the visible to the audible, arguing that the latter is associated with a lack of distance, a lack of distance perhaps best embodied by the uterine envelope created by the mother’s voice. This lack of distance with{{pg|186|187}}

regard to the sound of the voice stems from the fact that the voice is simultaneously sent and delivered, thus folding back on itself and troubling the boundaries between self and other. This lack of distance is also precisely what Mailer experiences when he sees himself in his first documentary, at once spoken and heard. While Christian Metz dismisses seeing oneself on screen as an impossibility,{{efn|In ''Imaginary Signifier'', Metz writes that “there is one thing and one thing only that is never reflected in [the screen]: the spectator’s own body.” {{harvtxt|Metz|1982|p=45}}}} feminist film theory calls attention to the discomfort that comes from not being granted the distance that the visible demands. In “Film and the Masquerade,” Mary Anne Doane argues that the female spectator goes largely untheorized because the historical “imbrication of the cinematic image and the representation of the woman” leaves her too close to the image.{{sfn|Doane|1981|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|1981|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|1981|pg=82}}

But using his body for particular gains is precisely what Mailer does, as exemplified in Diane Arbus’s 1963 photograph of Mailer. If, as Mailer quipped, “Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like giving a hand grenade to a baby,” this hand grenade caught an image that exemplifies how Mailer flaunts his masculinity by holding it at a distance.{{sfn|Hagberg|2008|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 reg-{{pg|188|189}}

ister his transformation here from nice Jewish boy to badass boxer. Despite this love affair with his image, Mailer shatters the filmic mirror when, at the conclusion of ''Wild 90'', the Prince demands to speak to the audience, breaking the fourth wall, and informing the audience that the CIA{{efn|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 1300-plus-page novel ''Harlot’s Ghost'' provides an extended though indirect glimpse into his dislike for the CIA and is almost agonizing to read because its narrator, Harry Hubbard, is a boring, WASPy, CIA agent. It’s also worth noting that Hubbard refers to the one Jewish agent in the CIA, Reed Arnold Rosen, as “adenoidal” {{harvtxt|Mailer|1991|p=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|p=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.” {{harvtxt|Rushdie|1992|p=48}}}} More recently, in an article about the New York Mailer retrospective, A.O. Scott describes Mailer’s voice as a “rapid, forceful stream of half-baked nostrums and brilliant ''aperçus'' delivered in that inimitable accent, an audible palimpsest of Mr. Mailer’s Brooklyn childhood, his Ivy League education and his World War II combat service in an Army unit composed mainly of Texans and Southerners.”

All of this is to say that the voices of Mailer’s characters (including the character “Norman Mailer,” who becomes a formal entity in ''The Armies of''{{pg|189|190}}

''the Night'', but who was roaming the streets of America and Europe at least since the publication of ''The Naked and the Dead'') are a response to the anxiety of sounding too Jewish. The adenoidal voice Mailer hears in his first documentary, the unsure voice of the Brooklyn Jew, transforms into a cacophony of accents—Southern, Irish, Italian, Brooklyn—which together make Mailer’s voice the voice of immigrant America. Paul Breines writes that discursive constructions of Jewish weakness arise from and refer to the rootlessness of the Diaspora.{{sfn|Breines|1990|p=195}} For Breines, tough Jewishness is a performance on the part of secular Jews that is largely associated with Zionism, and its creation first of tough Jewish pioneers, and then, after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, of tough Israeli soldiers.{{sfn|Breines|1990|p=195}} Mailer, however, described his relationship to Judaism in this way: “I am a Jew out of loyalty to the underdog. I would never say I was not a Jew, but I took no strength from the fact.{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|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.” {{harvtxt|Damon|2000|p=149}}}} 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. {{harvtxt|Mewshaw|2002|p=14}} For a recent example, see Stern’s ''The Frozen Rabbi'', a comic whirlwind tour through the history of American Jewry that follows one family from the Russian Pale to Memphis, Tennessee, with a stop in New York, where one family member, Ruby “Kid” Karp, becomes a notorious gangster.}} While criminality provided immigrant gangsters with increased notoriety and power, immigrant groups who became police officers saw a similar rise in status—and much like criminals, in part because it was hoped that they could infiltrate the criminal scenes of their brethren, it was the Irish who were cops first, followed by Italians and Jews.{{sfn|Fried|1993|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|Elmer|1931}} Edward G. Robinson, né Emanuel Goldenberg, stars as the adenoidal Cesar Enrico Bandello, and in ''Scarface'',{{sfn|Hawks|1932}} Paul Muni, né Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund, stars as Antonio Camonte whose Italian accent has a near Yiddish lilt.

In a 1965 letter to William F. Buckley, a man whose mid-century faux British accent made his voice almost as strange and remarkable as Mailer’s{{efn|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. {{harvtxt|Mailer|2006}}}} 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|indent=1|20em}}
* {{cite book |last=Breines |first=Paul |date=1990 |title=''Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewry.'' |url= |location=New York |publisher=Basic Books |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Buckley |first=William F. |date=2005 |title= Who Did What? |url= |magazine=''National Review'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Damon |first=Maria |title=Triangulated Desire and Tactical Silences in the Beat Hipscape: Bob Kaufman and Others. |url= |journal=College Literature |volume=27.1 |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 Anne |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 news |last=Fontaine |first=Dir. Dick |date=1968 |title=''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up? '' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |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=1959 |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 AV media| last = Hawks| first = Howard| title = Scarface| date = 1932| type = Film| 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 report |author=United States Federal Bureau of Investigation |date=1962–1975 |title=Memo to Staff |work=File on Norman Kingsley Mailer |publisher=Federal Bureau of Investigation |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

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

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Death, Art, and the Disturbing: Hemingway and Mailer and the Art of Writing

2025-04-15T14:21:17Z

Kamyers: added a couple of pages of formatting

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{{Byline|last=Sanders|first=J’aimé L. |abstract=An exploration of Hemingway’s influence on Mailer’s existentialism and his philosophy of art, focusing on the aspects of their commensurate interest in the violent and disturbing as it relates to their philosophies of writing and art, and reveals how both writers put their existentially founded philosophies in motion in order to teach readers how to live in the highly modern and post-modernized consumer culture both authors question and reject throughout their canon of works. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr04san}}

{{dc|dc=I|n a 1964 interview published in ''The Paris Review''}}, Norman Mailer cites the authors he has been influenced most by as James Farrell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, E.M. Forster, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, Thomas Wolfe, and, of course, Ernest Hemingway (43). Significantly, almost twenty years later, Mailer admits in a 1982 interview for The New York Times that his “ambition” as a writer is no longer to “try to reach Americans with a book the way Hemingway could reach them with a book, because I believe that’s beyond my powers”; “Hemingway’s style” he says, “affected whole generations of us. . . . I don’t have that kind of talent” (3). In these interviews Mailer does not elaborate on how Hemingway’s style and technique “affected whole generations” of writers or his own art, yet a closer look at Mailer’s philosophy of writing and his self-proclaimed American brand of existentialism reveals that Hemingway’s influence on Mailer’s art reaches far beyond the realm of style and technique. In fact, just as Hemingway’s philosophy of writing and art correlates to what has been labeled as Hemingway’s own, self-developed “characteristic philosophy” of life, Mailer’s philosophy of writing and his self-created brand of existentialism are also inevitably intertwined (de Madariaga 18). Yet in order to fully understand the depths and dimensions of Hemingway’s influence on Mailer’s art and thought, it is essential to first examine what founds each author’s philosophy of writing and artistic goals, then examine how they put their philosophy in motion in the form of literary art.{{pg|351|352}}

===='''HONEST, TRUE AND PURE: HEMINGWAY AND MAILER’S ART OF WRITING'''====
At their core, the art of writing both Hemingway and Mailer espouse is founded in their aspirations to, as Hemingway puts it, “tell honestly the things I have found true.”(Death 1) Echoing Hemingway’s standards, Mailer believes a writer must write “to the limit of one’s honesty.”(“Hazards” 399) But what exactly does this mean? Consider Hemingway’s advice to friend and contemporary writer John Dos Passos in a March 1932 letter. Hemingway writes, “Keep them people, people, people, and don’t let them get to be symbols . . . Keep on showing it as it is. If you can show it as it really is you will do good.” (354) According to Hemingway’s standards, good writing is achieved by writing honestly and thus capturing life “as it really is.” (354) Mailer expresses a similar standard for good writing: “It proves amazing,”
Mailer writes,

{{quote|how many evil reviews one can digest if there is a confidence that one has done one’s best on a book, written to the limit of one’s honesty, even scraped off a little of one’s dishonesty. Get to that point of purity and your royalties may be injured by a small welcome, but not your working morale. (“Hazards” 399)}}

If one achieves this level of honesty Mailer refers to, this “point of purity,” the author succeeds in showing life “as it really is.”(“Letter to John” 354) Significantly, Hemingway also addresses this idea of honest writing reaching a “point of purity” when he defines what he calls “the real thing”in the opening pages of ''Death in the Afternoon''. (2) Hemingway writes,

{{quote|In writing for a newspaper you told what happened and, with one trick and another,you communicated the emotion aided by the element of timeliness which gives a certain emotion to any account of something that has happened on that day; but the real thing,the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always, was beyond me and I was working very hard to try to get it. (2)}}

Hemingway makes an important distinction between his journalism and his art and suggests that if a writer-artist depicts life honestly, states it “purely{{pg|352|353}}

enough,” captures the “motion and fact” of life as it really happens, then honest, real, universal, and enduring emotions and experience will be conveyed to the reader. (2) Yet, for both Mailer and Hemingway, honest writing not only provides the foundation for good writing, but founds the morality of their philosophy of art, a sentiment reflected in Mailer’s statement that “we might quit [this discussion on writing] with the agreeable moral instruction that one must do one’s best to be honest.” (“Hazards” 399) Similarly, Hemingway tell readers in the opening pages of ''Death in the Afternoon'' that although they must create their own standards—ranging from moral to artistic—he strives in his writing “only to tell honestly those things I have found true about it”—it referring to the Spanish bullfight and, correlatively, art and writing, life and death, and the violence, brutality, and cruelty of the bullfight and life. (2)

Honest writing is the foundation for good writing by Hemingway and Mailer standards, yet both authors have been accused by critics of being obsessed with death, violence, and the darker aspects of life. Hemingway answers: in order to write honestly and convey life “as it really is”

{{quote|You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can’t believe in it. Things aren’t that way. It is only by showing both sides—3 dimensions and if possible 4 that you can write the way I want to. (qtd. in Baker 135)}}

The way he wants to write? Hemingway explains this directly in the following description of his goals as a writer: “I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing.” (qtd. in Baker 153) Similarly, Mailer defends his focus on “the bad and the ugly” in his writing as bound to his purpose and goals as an artist. Mailer writes,

{{quote|I suppose that the virtue I should like most to achieve as a writer is to be genuinely disturbing and by this I mean no easy reliance upon material which is shocking or brutal in itself, but rather effects which come from being truly radical, from going to the root of what is written about, so that life—which I believe is always}}{{pg|353|354}}

{{quote|disturbing if it is indeed seen—may serve as a gadfly to complacency, institution, and the dead weight of public taste. (qtd. in Foster 40)}}

Mailer’s admission that he tries to capture the“disturbing”by“going to the root of what is written about”and capturing life“as it really is”(Hemingway, “Letter to John”)—which“is always disturbing if it is indeed seen”—not only echoes Hemingway’s philosophy of portraying“the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful”(qtd. in Baker ), but Mailer’s focus on broadening readers’perceptions through art also recalls Hemingway’s focus on teaching his readers how to see the “danger,” “cruelty,” and the emotional experience of “life and death”in the bullfight as mere“parts”of the“whole” of the art of Spanish bullfighting (Hemingway, Death –). For both Hemingway and Mailer, writing honestly not only assists in the creation of the emotional experience the writer hopes to capture or convey in his/her writing, honest writing can also alter readers’ perceptions, “serve as a gadfly to complacency, institution, and . . . public taste,” and thus bring readers to a heightened awareness of self and world (qtd. in Foster ). Here we find what is at the core of Mailer and Hemingway’s artistic purposes: to shake us, wake us up, make us think, and make us change.
According to both Hemingway and Mailer, their focus on the disturbing aspects of life—including war, death, violence, murder, suicide, and animalistic brutality—stands at the core of both authors’philosophies of writing and of their artistic goals as writers. They strive to shake readers out of their normal ways of seeing, feeling, thinking, and being. In fact, they strive to get to the core, “the root,”“the purity,”“the real thing,” and present the “disturbing” (qtd. in Foster) and real in order to capture the “motion and fact”(Hemingway, Death ) that creates the emotion, bring readers to experience the thing for themselves,and thus bring readers to see life,themselves, and their worlds more “clearly” and as a “whole” (–).
Writers, as Hemingway and Mailer suggest, have a responsibility to their art, their“working morale,”and their readers to try to get to the core of experience and show readers how to see self, world, life, and even art more clearly, honestly, and truly—without illusions (Mailer, “Hazards” ). In fact,in the opening pages of Death in the Afternoon,Hemingway urges readers to rely on their own “experience and observation,” to “only feel those things they actually feel and not the things they think they should feel” (, ), to feel “what you really felt, rather than what you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel” (), to create their own standards—both moral and aesthetic—and come to see the bullfight (and correlatively life, death, and art) more“clearly”and as a“whole”(, –). Significantly, Hemingway’s focus on the writer’s purpose as clarifying Americans’vision of self and world is Mailer’s stated artistic purpose as well.In Cannibals and Christians, Mailer succinctly states this Hemingwayesque philosophy in his claim that the highest purpose of literature is“to clarify a nation’s vision of itself” (). Mailer writes,
It is, I believe, the highest function a writer may serve, to see life (no matter by what means or form or experiment) as others do not see it, or only partially see it, and therefore open for the reader that literary experience which comes uniquely from the novel—the sense of having one’s perceptions deepened, and one’s illusions about oneself rendered even more untenable. For me, this is the highest function of art, precisely that it is disturbing, that it does not let man rest,and therefore forces him so far as art may force anything to enlarge the horizons of his life. (qtd. in Foster )
Both Hemingway and Mailer’s goal of clarifying “a nation’s vision of itself” is consciously focused on capturing and conveying real emotion and experience that shakes readers out of their normal ways of thinking and being. This, according to Hemingway and Mailer, opens readers to differing perspectives, forces them to be honest with themselves,and helps them to break all illusions of self and world (Mailer, Cannibals ). Yet this philosophy of writing in which the author takes responsibility for enlarging readers’“horizons” through presenting life honestly,“as it really is” (Hemingway,“Letter to John”), is not exclusively bound to Hemingway or Mailer’s own, selfdeveloped philosophy of writing and art.
Hemingway and Mailer’s philosophy of writing and their artistic striving to make, as Mailer puts it,“a revolution in the consciousness of our time,”is founded in existential notions of creating art and becoming an artist (Advertisements ). For existentialists, to become an artist, an individual must break through all illusions,see self and world more clearly,get to the core or “root” of life, and thus see life “as it really is” (Hemingway,“Letter to John” ).The catalyst for this perceptual shift,according to existentialists,is profound emotional experience. Specifically, the existentialists’ study of the intense emotional experience that accompanies facing death, an experience that shakes individuals out of their normal ways of being, seeing, feeling, and thinking, is an essential part of their philosophy of creating art and becoming an artist.
According to the existentialists, it is through the study of death that individuals recognize the importance of seeing life “clearly” and as a “whole” (Hemingway, Death , ) and come to understand the urgent necessity, as Hemingway puts it,of making“something of his own,”of creating“art”and becoming “artist” () or “author” of one’s own life, meaning, structure, content, and commitments (Yalom –). The study of death reveals to individuals, according to existential scholar Charles Guignon, the importance of seeing their lives as a “whole” (Hemingway, Death ) and the importance of“creating their lives as‘works of art’”(Guignon xxxv).Significantly, the profound emotional experience that brings individuals to see their lives as a “whole” is bound to the realization that the structure of human nature is a synthesis between the temporal and the eternal—what Hemingway refers to as “the feeling of life and death and mortality and immortality” (Hemingway, Death )—in which the individual moments of one’s life (the temporal or parts) require an overarching unity or meaning (the eternal or whole) to give authentic meaning to one’s life and/or work ().It is through facing up to one’s own certain death—and the uncertain hour and day of one’s death—that the individual comes to the realization that he/she is responsible for creating his/her life and work as art by expressing the eternal in his/her nature, something Hemingway envisions as the enduring emotional experience of the bullfight, something he strives to convey through his writing and an essential aspect of his existential-oriented philosophy of creating art.This existential focus on the study of death,the realization of the temporal and eternal nature of human existence, and the profound emotional experiences that bring individuals to the realization that they must express the eternal in their nature form the basis of both Hemingway and Mailer’s philosophy of writing and their goals as writer-artists.
HEMINGWAY AND MAILER: THE ART OF WRITING EXISTENTIALLY
Where Hemingway seeks to express the eternal through his art by capturing
“the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be valid . . . if you stated it purely enough, always”(Death ),Mailer envisions as“the existential state,of the novel writer”in which the writer-artist strives to capture and convey enduring emotion and experience and is constantly faced with the death of his art (“Hazards”).Whether it is the death of the writer’s abilities, the death of his art via his critics, or the actual “existential state” the writer-artist must enter to capture and convey the eternal through his/her art, for Mailer, and as we can see in Death in the Afternoon, for Hemingway, the professional writer-artist, like Hemingway’s matador, must face up to his/her own death—albeit existential death—on a daily basis in order to create art.
As both Hemingway and Mailer directly and indirectly tell their readers, their philosophy of writing is an existential one; it is a philosophy of art in which the writer-artist strives to write honestly and show life“as it really is” by presenting the“genuinely disturbing”and“the bad and ugly”in order to express eternal, enduring human emotion and experience through their art (“Letter to John”; qtd.in Foster ; qtd.in Baker ).If they write“purely enough”(Hemingway, Death ), according to Hemingway and Mailer, what they present in their art will be felt by readers—and correlatively their fellow writers and artists—and bring them to the realization that they, too, must take responsibility for what their lives and their work or “art” are adding up to.Importantly,imbedded in both authors’philosophy of writing is a social-mindedness and a focus on individual responsibility not normally attributed to these writers. But both Hemingway and Mailer do present a philosophy of writing and a philosophy of life through which they attempt to teach readers to learn “how to live in it”—in the increasingly modernized, post-war culture that favors conformity over individual expression and thwarts the development of the creative spirit—by presenting an art of living for their times (Hemingway, Sun ).
Considering Hemingway and Mailer’s didactic focus on clarifying Americans’ visions of themselves and their aspirations to make“a revolution in the consciousness” of their times, it is not surprising that both authors were often disappointed when critics accused them of being morbidly obsessed with death and of endorsing violence through their works (qtd. in Glenday ).“Hemingway,” according to Carlos Baker,“was dismayed that many reviewers found Death in the Afternoon marred by a morbid ‘preoccupation with fatality’ and a tendency to ‘he-manish posturing’” (). Mailer was frustrated by critics of An American Dream, who accused him of being “no more than an American pornographer, socially irresponsible, and acutely immoral”(Wenke ).What these critics miss is that it is this death-obsessed view that founds their philosophies of writing and life and their aspirations as existentialist artists. The artist, in Hemingway and Mailer’s view, must strive to convey real, disturbing emotions and experiences in order to shake readers out of their everyday ways of being.Like the existentialists who“rose in revulsion against the corruption of values in capitalist society”and whose “basic conviction was that the evils it perceived were to be ascribed to the very concept and existence of society,” Hemingway and Mailer expose the inadequacy of American capitalism in an increasingly commercial and consumer culture and reject the capitalistic values, identities, and norms prescribed by and reinforced through the increasingly oppressive social and political structures of American culture (Finkelstein –).Therefore,both Hemingway and Mailer’s choice of “disturbing” and “ugly” subjects taken alongside their existential-oriented philosophy of writing and art not only points to these authors’ intense concern for how war, death, and violence have changed the face and heart of their native nation, but reveals a socialmindedness often overlooked in their art (qtd. in Foster ; qtd. in Baker
).
To this day critics still denounce Hemingway and Mailer’s choice of subjects—war, murder, rape, violence, madness, suicide, and senseless brutality—when, in fact, their choice of these subjects is consistent with existential philosophy of art and the concerns of the existential artist.In short, what Hemingway and Mailer’s philosophy of writing reveals is that they are intensely concerned with the direction our increasingly conformist and inauthentic American culture is headed: towards the death of the individual, the death of individualism,and the death of the vitality of the creative spirit (Adams ). Their philosophies focus on how to combat the feelings and forces that oppress the individual psyche and thwart individual growth and development. They show and tell readers to break from all illusions of self and world—they try to “clarify” our vision—and show us that we must refuse to be complicit.What they present is an art of writing that is also an art of living for their times, one in which the individual or artist must take responsibility first for what his/her life or art is adding up to, and then for what his/her culture is and is becoming. Nowhere is this more evident than in Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon and Mailer’s An American Dream, works a handful of critics—including Lawrence Broer, John Killinger, Kurt Muller, Michael Reynolds, Laura Adams, Michael Glenday and Richard Poirier—argue represent a shift in each author’s art and reflect the creation of their own,self-developed philosophies of life and death,philosophies that they will carry with them throughout the rest of their lives. These works, taken together, provide a key to the depth of Hemingway’s influence on Mailer’s art and thought.Throughout An American Dream Mailer subtly references and invokes Hemingway, the man, Hemingway’s characters, and espouses what is at the core of the philosophy of life,death and art Hemingway focuses on throughout his manifesto on bullfight, art and writing, Death in the Afternoon.
An American Dream not only reveals Mailer’s indebtedness to Hemingway’s existential-oriented philosophy of life, death, and art, but also reveals how Mailer puts this philosophy in novelistic motion is consistent with Hemingway’s philosophy and approach to art.For example,Mailer employs the “ice-berg” theory of writing Hemingway espouses and enacts throughout Death in the Afternoon (Death ). What we find below the surface is Mailer’s creation of a Hemingwayesque character—Stephen Richards “Rojack”—whose war experience,study of death,and attempts to create the feeling of “life and death” recall and reverberate the characteristic philosophy on life, death, and art Hemingway espouses in Death in the Afternoon (). In the opening pages of An American Dream, Mailer invokes both Hemingway and Mailer’s characters and reveals his indebtedness to both Hemingway’s art and his early brand of existentialism by presenting Rojack’s view toward death,his study of violent death,and of his own wounding and near-death experience as a continuation of Hemingway’s study of life and death in Death in the Afternoon.
BELOW THE SURFACE: THE DEPTHS OF HEMINGWAY IN ANAMERICANDREAM
From the opening pages of An American Dream, Hemingway is there. It begins with Rojack’s reference to his World War II wounding on “a particular hill in Italy” (Mailer, American ), an experience that echoes Hemingway’s own war experience on the Italian front,as well as that of Hemingway’s Jake Barnes (The Sun Also Rises) and A Farewell to Arms’Frederick Henry’s neardeath experiences and woundings on the Italian front.Rojack’s wounds—to his thigh and pelvis—are the wounds Frederick Henry, Jake Barnes, and
Hemingway himself received during their World War I service in Italy.
Rojack’s injury—“a minor crack and small split in the girdle of the pelvis”— recalls Jake Barnes’groin wound,in particular ().Yet,unlike Barnes’wound, Rojack’s wound does not leave him physically impotent, although Rojack admits that his wounding leaves him psychologically and existentially impotent. Rojack writes, “Where many another young athlete or hero might have had a vast and continuing recreation with sex, I was lost in a private kaleidoscope of death”(). Significantly, Rojack’s pelvis is split, which is not only suggestive of Rojack’s split selves—what he distinguishes as his “public” and his “lost in a private kaleidoscope of death” selves—but his is a wound, unlike that of Barnes’ wound, which can heal.
Part of Rojak’s public self is formed after Rojack returns from the war, is awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, and is “used” by the Army as a “public relations”agent ().Rojack,like Hemingway,who is awarded an Italian Medal for Valor, returns from the war to a hero’s welcome bearing the “trace of a distinguished limp” and, like Hemingway, the first American wounded on the Italian front. Rojack, too,“was a curiosity after all, a most special product; I was the one intellectual in America’s history with a DSC and I spoke in public with a modest warrior’s charm”().But Rojack admits that years later he still“could not forget the fourth soldier”he killed in Italy.
Rojack writes,
His eyes had come to see what was waiting on the other side,and they told me then that death was a creation more dangerous than life. I could have had a career in politics if only I had been able to think that death was zero,death was everyone’s emptiness.But I knew it was not. I remained an actor. My personality was built upon a void. ()
Rojack’s realization that during his time in politics,“Congressman Stephen Richards Rojack, Democrat from New York,”he was merely“a young actor” playing a“part”and he must“depart from politics before [he] was separated from [myself] forever,”suggests that Rojack comes to the realization that his “personality was built upon a void” (). As existential scholar Charles Guignon puts it,“our social roles are really anonymous,‘anyone-roles’”; we see that in“playing our normal public roles, we are not really ourselves”and that we are ultimately“responsible for making something of our own lives” (). Although Rojack does not specify when he became a student of existential ideology,he suggests his need to understand and face up to his war experience and face up to his role as an “actor” for the Army, his “role” as a Congressman (Mailer, American ), and as an actor in a marriage he envisions to be“a five-act play”(), which is the catalyst for his examination of his own life and death and his Hemingwayesque study of death via the forum of the executioner.
Like Hemingway, the death-haunted Rojack not only studies his own near-death experience and repeatedly faces up to the possibility of his own death via his suicidal impulses, but he, like Hemingway, also publishes a study of violent death.Hemingway chooses the bullring,since it is“the only place where you could see life and death—that is, violent death now that the wars were over,”whereas Rojack chooses to study violent death in the forum of the executioner, the only place Rojack can study death now that his war is over (Hemingway, Death ). It is no coincidence that Rojack’s study of violent death focuses on differing forms of execution. It is a means of violent death that Hemingway mentions he would like to study in the opening pages of Death in the Afternoon. After telling readers he never had the opportunity to study“an execution by firing squad,or a hanging,”Hemingway writes that he had “never been able to study them as a man might, for instance, study the death of his father or the hanging of some one, say, that he did not know and would not have to write of immediately after for the first edition of an afternoon newspaper” (). Rojack’s study, “a psychological study of the styles of execution in different states and nations—death by guillotine, firing squad, by rope, by electric chair, by gas pellets,” is an extension of Hemingway’s study of violent death in the bullring in Death in the Afternoon (Mailer, American ). Further, Hemingway’s mention of his desire to “study the death of his father,” or more accurately, the violent death by suicide of his father, lies just below the surface of Rojack’s study of his own suicidal impulses throughout An American Dream (Death ). Particularly in light of Hemingway’s violent death by suicide, which Mailer himself struggled to understand, Rojack seems to be haunted by the same demons Mailer imagined as Hemingway’s. Yet, what it most significant about Rojack’s study of violent death and suicide is the implication that he,like Hemingway, seeks a place where he can see, study, understand, and write about “the feeling of life and death and mortality and immortality” he first experienced during the war (Hemingway, Death ).
Rojack’s study of violent death via the executioner and his study of existential psychology taken together are the basis for Rojack’s “thesis that magic, dread, and the perception of death were the roots of motivation” (Mailer, American ). Although Rojack’s belief in “magic” is a variation on Hemingway’s and the existentialist’s philosophy of death, the concepts of existential dread or anxiety over facing up to one’s own certain future death and the resulting impact the study of one’s own death has on life and art are consistent with both Hemingway and the existential vision of life,death,and art. Because the study of death, to use Søren Kierkegaard’s words, gives the individual’s “life force as nothing else does,” death teaches the individual “not to fear those who kill the body but to fear for himself and fear having his life in vanity, in the moment, in imagination”(Kierkegaard , ). This “fear”of having lived an inauthentic life—the reason Rojack sees himself as a“failure”—is the unspoken catalyst for Rojack’s realization that he is merely an“actor,”that his“personality was built upon a void,”and that if he does not struggle free from his public roles, he will be “separated from” his self “forever” (Mailer,American ).This urgency to live life more authentically points to the impact the thought of death has on one’s life and work. It brings the individual to the realization that the individual is wholly“responsible for— that is, is the author of—his or her own world, life design, choices, and actions.” It motivates the individual to create his/her life and work as “art” (Yalom –).It is this existential awareness that Rojack has lived life“in vanity” (Kierkegaard ), falsely, by American standards of happiness and success, that brings Rojack to conclude that he “had come to the end of a very long street.Call it an avenue.For I had come to decide I was finally a failure” (Mailer, American ).
Rojack’s realization that he is a“failure”brings him to the admission that his “parts” did not add up to a self-authored, authentic “whole” (Mailer, American ), and sentiment that recalls Hemingway’s view that each“part” of the bullfight—and correlatively of one’s art and one’s life—“if made truly” will reflect the “whole” (Death –, ). Rojack writes,
At any rate, such were my parts. Without Deborah they did not add to any more than another name for the bars and gossip columns of NewYork.With her beside me,I had leverage ...But for myself the evidence made no good case: probably I did not have the strength to stand alone. ()
For the existentialists, as well as Hemingway and Rojack, each part signifies each separate moment of our lives or the temporal aspects of our lives. The “whole” signifies the overarching unity and meaning we give to our lives— the eternal. It is the expression of the eternal in our lives that is not only difficult, but it “comes only with a struggle” (Guignon ). This struggle is envisioned by some existential thinkers as a violent process through which an individual must wrench him/her “self” free from the cultural and social forces that thwart and corrupt identity, smother individuals in conformity, and destroy the individual’s creative spirit. Significantly, Rojack suggests throughout the opening chapter of An American Dream that Deborah is this inauthentic force, his unifying structure, his“whole,”which he envisions to be “fused” at the “center” of his being (Mailer ).
What Rojack suggests through his realization that Deborah—the embodiment of the corrupt, oppressive force of American culture—is “fused” at the“center”of his being is that with Deborah as his“center,”life is merely “a series of means-end strategies” (Guignon ). That is, Deborah serves and has served as the means to Rojack’s inauthentic dreams.“I thought the road to President,” Rojack writes,“might begin at the entrance to her Irish heart” (Mailer, American ). Her money, status, power, family, and connections are the basis from which all of his successes, post-war, stem. As his “center”—at the “center” of Rojack’s dreams and aspirations in life—Deborah, like the culture Rojack is beginning to reject,threatens annihilation of Rojack’s true“self.”Rojack couples this fear of annihilation of his“self”with his literal fear of Deborah on the night Rojack visits Deborah in her bedroom: Rojack tell us she“was violent”(), and“I was afraid of her. She was not incapable of murdering me” ().
Thus Rojack’s crisis over Deborah occupying his“center”is an existential crisis, a fear of existential annihilation of the “self.” He knows he must wrench himself free—which“comes only with a struggle”; he knows he must free his“self”from its false, unifying force: Deborah and the inauthentic aspects of the culture she represents (Guignon ). This existential fear of the death of the self, like Rojack’s fear that he is not able to wrench himself free from Deborah, becomes a literal fear of death when they engage in a physical struggle during which enraged Deborah charges Rojack “like a bull” (Mailer, American ).
MAN VERSUS BULL: ROJACK AS HEMINGWAY’S MATADOR
The most direct and most obvious reference to Hemingway in An American Dream is in the scene when Deborah admits to Rojack of a bullfighter lover in her past.Significantly,Deborah’s admission that she was once in love with a bullfighter comes at the end of Deborah’s almost methodical attempt to psychologically emasculate Rojack.
“God, you’re a whimperer,” said Deborah. “Sometimes I lie here and wonder how you ever became a hero. You’re such a bloody whimperer. I suppose the Germans were whimpering even worse than you.It must have been quite a sight.You whimpering and they whimpering, and you going pop pop pop with your little gun.” ()
After Deborah calls him a “whimperer,” questions his courage, and questions his masculinity for having an affair with a weak woman, a “sparrow” (),she confesses to sex acts with other lovers,then boasts of her affair with a great man—a bullfighter, she says (). Deborah admits,
“There was one man I never told you about. I never told anyone about him. Although once, somebody guessed.”
“Who was the man?”
“He was a bullfighter. Marvelous ripe man.”
“You’re lying.”
“Have it your way.”
“It wasn’t a bullfighter.”
“No,it wasn’t.It was someone far better than a bullfighter,far greater. . . . As a matter of fact, it was the finest and most extraordinary man I ever knew. Delicious. Just a marvelous wild feast of things. I tried to make him jealous once and lost him.” ()
Those familiar with Hemingway’s canon will recall Brett Ashley’s affair with bullfighter Pedro Romero and Jake Barnes’ physical emasculation. But Rojack, unlike Barnes, suggests he cannot “take it” and slaps Deborah in the face. “[T]he blow,” Rojack writes, “caught her on the side of the ear and knocked her half out of bed.”Deborah’s response,Rojack writes,“She was up like a bull and like a bull she charged” (). Here, Deborah’s psychological emasculation of Rojack escalates to a physical threat when Deborah tries, as Rojack puts it,“to find my root and mangle me”(). Faced with existential and literal emasculation, Rojack, like the matador, delivers a “cold chop” to “the back of the neck,”which drops Deborah, like the bull,“to a knee”().
Rojack then hooks his arm around her neck, yet Deborah, Rojack tells us, “had almost the strength to force herself up to her feet and lift me in the air,” an image that recalls Hemingway’s description of the bull tossing the matador ().At this moment Rojack kills Deborah like a bull: he cracks her neck like the bull’s spinal column is severed in what Hemingway describes as a clean kill (Hemingway, Death , ). This clean kill brings Rojack, like the matador, to transcend the material world, which Rojack suggests through his vision of “heaven,” the “new grace,” and the “honorable fatigue” he describes (Mailer, American –).
Because Deborah threatens Rojack’s “self” literally and existentially, he violently struggles with her in order to wrench himself free from the world in which he has been complicity absorbed and struggles to free himself from his absorption in the “they”—from the corrupt and oppressive American cultural values, identities, and norms Deborah represents—and free himself from her oppressive,corrupting,and pervasive force.He must reclaim his “self,”his“center”().Existential scholar Jon Mills envisions this process of freeing one’s self from the“they”as a“struggle,”a“violent process”through which the authentic self “finds itself in its lostness” and recovers “its authenticity in its freedom.” Rojack not only illustrates this process, but during his literal physical struggle with Deborah he feels he must kill her to reclaim his“center,”achieve his freedom,and thus begin to form his own,authentic basis for being ().
Throughout Rojack’s description of his physical struggle with Deborah, what Rojack experiences is a struggle for his freedom.He describes the mental picture he sees as his arm tightens around her neck: “I had the mental image I was pushing with my shoulder against an enormous door which would give inch by inch to the effort” (). Rojack writes,
I released the pressure on her throat, and the door I had been opening began to close. But I had had a view of what was on the other side of the door, and heaven was there . . . and I thrust against the door . . . and crack the door flew open and the wire tore in her throat, and I was through the door, hatred passing from me in wave after wave, illness as well, rot and pestilence, nausea,a bleak string of salts.I was floating.I was as far into myself as I had ever been and universes wheeled in a dream. ()
What Rojack sees on the other side of the door—“heaven”—is his freedom from the “they” and from Deborah who stands at the “center” of his Being (, ).What he catches a glimpse of is his freedom from his lostness in the “they.” What he sees is “heaven”—his freedom from earthly forces and constraints—and the authentic possibilities for the“self”that transcends its thrownness in a corrupt, oppressive and stifling culture (). Hemingway describes this feeling and this experience occurring at“the moment of truth” in the Spanish bullfight, the moment when life and death exist simultaneously for the audience and the matador to feel and see (Death ).
Rojack’s description of the “feeling of life and death,” his vision of “heaven,” and the feeling of freedom he achieves, recalls the spiritual experience Hemingway describes of the “moment of truth” or the “moment of killing” in the Spanish bullfight. According to Hemingway, this moment in the bullfight is charged with “emotional and spiritual intensity,” and “takes a man out of himself . . . makes him feel immortal while it is proceeding . . . [and] gives him an ecstasy, that is, while momentary, as profound as any religious ecstasy”().It leaves you,Hemingway writes,“as empty,as changed and as sad as any major emotion will leave you” (). Rojack suggests a commensurate feeling and experience in his description of coming out of himself as“floating”and emptying himself as“wave after wave”of“hatred . . . illness . . . rot and pestilence”leave him (Mailer, American ). He tells us he was“as far into”himself as he“had ever been”() and his“flesh seemed new” (), since by freeing himself from his false “center”—Deborah—he transcends his inauthentic, everyday ways of being by literally killing what is fused at his“center”and frees himself to form his own basis for Being (). Further, Rojack envisions his experience as a religious one, an extension of what Hemingway describes as “the feeling of life and death” (Death ) charged with emotional and “spiritual intensity” that reaches “religious ecstasy” (), a feeling that becomes a vision of “heaven” in Rojack’s experience (Mailer, American ). It is this feeling“of life and death and mortality and immortality” that Rojack and the matador, as well as Hemingway and Mailer,strive to create in their life and art (Hemingway,Death ).Throughout the novel,Rojack is in the midst of this process,and his struggle for freedom is the life and death struggle of Hemingway’s matador, an artist who faces literal and existential death on almost a daily basis. Whether Rojack is studying executions, struggling with Deborah, or poised on a balcony or parapet over the abyss of meaninglessness that is the American city below, Rojack repeatedly faces death in an attempt to create and study the intense emotional and spiritual experience he first felt during the war, an experience, many critics argue, that founds Hemingway’s own intense interest in the study of death in general, and the bullfight, in particular.
Significantly, An American Dream both begins and ends on a Hemingwayesque note: after many attempts to create authentic meaning for his life by making a commitment—as husband to Cherry and father to their imagined child—Rojack wanders the desert mourning Cherry’s death and the loss of authentic possibilities for himself.Without a viable base for meaning in his life and without a base from which Rojack can begin to build an authentic community in America now that Cherry is dead, Rojack leaves America— the vast wasteland of the desert and the corrupting American cities, the only environments in America now that the frontier is closed—and heads for an environment capable of nurturing growth and expression of the creative spirit. He departs for the green breast of Guatemala and the Yucatan. Like Hemingway,who favors Spanish culture,the national art of the Spanish bullfight, and the virgin land of Spain to the overcrowded, modernized face of America and American culture, Rojack heads for Guatemala, another home of the bullfight, and toward the unspoiled jungles of the Yucatan.
Although few critics may agree, An American Dream ends optimistically, at least for the individual, but America does not fare as well. Rojack rejects the increasingly empty and materialistic values of his culture, shows us that he refuses to be complicit anymore, and becomes an artist, a writer, the author of his own story in the form of An American Dream. But the America that stands in both Rojack and Mailer’s imagination seems hopelessly lost to continue to stifle individual desire and expression and smother individuals in conformity until they can no longer act in any moral way. For Mailer, America is destined to continue to make individuals “think there’s something wrong”with them if they are“not on the big capitalist team”(The Big Empty ).In Mailer’s works,his disdain for the inauthentic parts of American culture sound loud, but you can often hear Hemingway’s whisper in the background.
Considering how influential Hemingway was on Mailer’s art and thought, it is surprising that Mailer gave up on trying to “reach Americans with a book the way Hemingway”did (Mailer,“Mailer”), when Mailer’s philosophy of art, his own brand of existentialism, and An American Dream, in particular,meet all of Hemingway’s criteria for what makes an artist a“great artist” (Hemingway, Death ). Hemingway writes,
The individual, the great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him,rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own. ()
Although Mailer’s philosophy of art and his existentialism are indebted in their foundations to Hemingway’s philosophy of life, death, and art, Mailer “goes beyond”the founding philosophies Hemingway espouses and creates “something of his own” (): he creates a religiously charged, American brand of existentialism suited to meet the needs of his historic moment and creates an art that is social-minded and didactic with aspirations to both shock and heal his readers. As Hemingway does for his generation, Mailer presents an art of living for his times through which he attempts to shake us, wake us up, and teach us “how to live in it” (Hemingway, Sun ).
Thedecadesof criticismandpraiseHemingwayhasreceivedforcreatinghis own characteristic philosophy, his own philosophy of life, death and art and for trying to teach readers“how to live in it”() has earned Hemingway the titles of “guide” for his generation (Kvam ) and “prophet of those who are without faith”().Although Mailer’s philosophy and art are heavily indebted to Hemingway’s existential vision of art,life,andAmerican culture,Mailer,as Hemingwayadvises,“useseverythingthathasbeendiscoveredorknownabout his art” and creates “something of his own”: he creates his own Americanbased existentialism and puts it in motion in the form of literary art.By Hemingway’s standards,Mailer becomes,with An American Dream in particular,a “great artist” (Hemingway, Death ). In my estimation, this earns Mailer a place next to Hemingway as a seer and a healer, as a “guide” and a “prophet” for his post-war, post-modern lost generation (Kvam , ).
NOTES
. Rojack,like Hemingway,finds a forum in which he can study death now that his war is over.Both study“killers”: Hemingway studies the matador and Rojack, the executioner. Roajck’s choice to study execution is not explained, but it is suggested that he studies death in an attempt to see, feel, and understand the emotional experience of life and death, the “real thing” which is conveyed, as Hemingway tells us, to the audience in the bullring, and which Rojack and the audience can observe during differing styles of execution (Death ).
. Rojack’s claim that his study of death would“turn Freud on his head”echoes what Susuan Beegel identifies as Hemingway’s rejection of Freudian interpretations of the Spanish bullfight in Death in the Afternoon in favor of an existential interpretation of the experience of death and of the Spanish bullfight (Mailer, American ).
. Hemingway suggests an association between the matador and suicide, and Rojack expands his “study”to include his own inclinations toward suicide (Death ).The key for both Hemingway and Rojack: the study of death is essential to the creation of art and life as art. Like Hemingway describes the matador, Rojack faces death on a daily basis and attempts to create“the feeling of life and death”(). In the wake of Hemingway’s suicide, it is not coincidence that Rojack is suicidal. Plus, now that the war is over, the only place Rojack can study death in America is by climbing onto a balcony.
WORKS CITED
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Baker, Carlos. Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. New York: Scribner, . Print.
Beegel, Susan F. Hemingway’s Craft of Omission. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, . Print.
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The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness: Norman Mailer’s Voice in Wild 90 and Beyond the Law

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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=http://prmlr.us/mr05coh }}

{{dc|dc=N|orman Mailer’s sizable FBI file begins with his voice.}} The 165 pages of Mailer’s 171-page file available to the public cover fifteen years of observation and surveillance, and includes materials ranging from endless notes tracking Mailer’s passport applications and international travel, to FBI agents’ reviews of Miami and the Siege of Chicago (with meticulous notes about each mention of the FBI), and even a letter from a high school teacher asking J. Edgar Hoover for permission to teach ''The Naked and the Dead.''{{efn|In a letter dated March 18, 1964, also included in Mailer’s file, Hoover wrote back telling the teacher that this request was beyond his area of jurisdiction because the FBI “neither makes evaluations nor draws conclusions as to the character of integrity of any organization, publication, or individual,” and because Hoover has made it a habit “not to comment on any material not prepared by the FBI.”}} The file begins, however, with a clipping from ''The Washington Post'', a June 6,1962, George Sokolsky column called “These Days,” that moved J. Edgar Hoover to leave a note for his staff reading, “Let me have memo on Mailer.”{{sfn|United States Federal Bureau of Investigation|1962–1975}} Sokolsky’s article responds to an ''Esquire'' piece Mailer wrote about then first lady Jackie Kennedy that describes Mrs. Kennedy’s voice as “a quiet parody of the sort of voice one hears on the radio late at night, dropped softly into the ear by girls who sell soft mattresses, depilatories, or creams to brighten the skin.”{{sfn|Sokolsky|1962|}} 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 stereotypical marker of Jewish otherness and degeneracy. We do not need Sander Gilman to tell us, although he does in the chapter of ''The Jew’s Body'' entitled “The Jewish Nose,” that the Jewish nose is the locus of redirected anxiety about the Jewish penis—both are body parts that develop and take shape at puberty—the latter of which is a threat to national purity through its potential to increase the Jewish population. The adenoidal voice signals a kind of impotence for Mailer, revealing him as accustomed to mother love, and functions as “the acoustic mirror in which the male subject hears all the repudiated elements of his infantile babble.”{{sfn|Silverman|1988|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|}}}} 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 1969 New York City mayoral campaign. Mailer was also documented in Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s ''Town Bloody Hall'', a film of the 1971 debate between Mailer and Germaine Greer about women’s liberation at Town Hall in New York City.}} Mailer’s first three films were largely influenced by John Cassavetes, although Mailer predictably argues that his mastery of what he calls “existential acting” makes him a much better filmmaker than Cassavetes.{{sfn|Mailer|2006|}} In his essay, “Some Dirt in the Talk,” Mailer defines existential acting by addressing each of the terms that comprise the phrase. He notes that existentialism and acting exist at two opposite “poles,” writing, ''“If existentialism is ultimately concerned with the attractions of the unknown, acting is one of the surviving rituals of invocation, repetition, and ceremony—of propitiation to the gods.”''{{sfn|Mailer|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 dismantle both identity and film.{{efn|At this point in time, there is, of course, a well-established tradition of discussing sound and the voice on film—Pascal Bonitzer’s “The Silences of the Voice” (1975), Christian Metz’s “Aural Objects” (1980), Mary Anne Doane’s “The Voice in the Cinema” (1982), Michel Chion’s ''The Voice
in Cinema'' (1982), and Silverman’s ''Acoustic Mirror'' (1988), just to name a few. It seems important for our purposes, however, to rehash the stakes of this discussion, especially in relation to deconstructing/reconstructing/constructing Mailer’s masculinity.}} As Mailer sees his voice, witnessing his 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.”{{sfn|Metz|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|1981|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|1981|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|1981|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 reg-{{pg|188|189}}

ister his transformation here from nice Jewish boy to badass boxer. Despite this love affair with his image, Mailer shatters the filmic mirror when, at the conclusion of ''Wild 90'', the Prince demands to speak to the audience, breaking the fourth wall, and informing the audience that the CIA{{efn|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 1300-plus-page novel ''Harlot’s Ghost'' provides an extended though indirect glimpse into his dislike for the CIA and is almost agonizing to read because its narrator, Harry Hubbard, is a boring, WASPy, CIA agent. It’s also worth noting that Hubbard refers to the one Jewish agent in the CIA, Reed Arnold Rosen, as “adenoidal” (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|p=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|Brienes|1990|p=195}} For Brienes, 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|Brienes|1990|p=195}} Mailer, however, described his relationship to Judaism in this way: “I am a Jew out of loyalty to the underdog. I would never say I was not a Jew, but I took no strength from the fact.”{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|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|2002}} 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|Elmer|1931}} Edward G. Robinson, né Emanuel Goldenberg, stars as the adenoidal Cesar Enrico Bandello, and in ''Scarface'',{{sfn|Hawks|1932}} Paul Muni, né Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund, stars as Antonio Camonte whose Italian accent has a near Yiddish lilt.

In a 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|2006|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|indent=1|20em}}
* {{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 news |last=Fontaine |first=Dir. Dick |date=1968 |title=''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up? '' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |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=1959 |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 AV media| last = Hawks| first = Howard| title = Scarface| date = 1932| type = Film| 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 report |author=United States Federal Bureau of Investigation |date=1962–1975 |title=Memo to Staff |work=File on Norman Kingsley Mailer |publisher=Federal Bureau of Investigation |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

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

User talk:Grlucas

2025-04-13T14:27:40Z

Kamyers: Note for article review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Lucas I finished my remediation article https://projectmailer.net/index.php?title=The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman_Mailer%27s_The_Fight:_Hemingway,_Bullfighting,_and_the_Lovely_Metaphysics_of_Boxing&action=edit [[User:TWietstruk|TWietstruk]] ([[User talk:TWietstruk|talk]]) 19:44, 8 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| TWietstruk}} good work so far, but there is more to do: placement of footnotes (eliminate spaces around them and punctuation always goes ''before'' the footnote.); proofread for typos; fix all red errors at the bottom (most of these are from errors in sourcing); works cited entries should be bulleted list and eliminate space between entries. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:05, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

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

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

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

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

Dr. Lucas,

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

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

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

Dr. Lucas

I finished the remediation of the following article:

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

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

== Final Edit ==

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

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

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

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

[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]]

Hi Dr. Lucas,

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

I will also link the article below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Lucas,

The following article is ready for your review. Thanks.

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

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

== I am done with this ==

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

== Final Review PM Article ==

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

== Remediation Project ==

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

Thanks,

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

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

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

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

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

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

== Remediation Submission ==

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

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

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

== Remediation of "Inside Norman Mailer ==

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

== Completed: Norman Mailer: Playboy Magazine ==

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

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

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

Greeting Dr. Lucas,

I have made the adjustment that you mentioned.

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

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

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

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

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

:{{Reply to| Grlucas}} Greetings,

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

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

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

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

:{{Reply to| Grlucas}} Greetings,

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

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

I have also fixed the quotations.

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

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

Greetings Dr. Lucus,

My article is ready for your review. Thank you.

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

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

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

Hello Dr. Lucas,

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

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

== Final Edits Completed and Ready for Review ==

Dr. Lucas, I have completed my assigned remediation article: [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Looking_at_the_Past:_Nostalgia_as_Technique_in_The_Naked_and_the_Dead_and_For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls|Looking at the Past: Nostalgia as Technique in The Naked and the Dead and For Whom the Bell Tolls]]. Please review at your convenience. I enjoyed working on this assignment. I look forward to your suggestions and feedback. All the best, Danielle (DBond007)
:{{Reply to| DBond007}} ok, good work. Please remove all the external links. Links to Wikipedia are not necessary, but if used, they need to be done correctly. There should be no spaces before {{tl|sfn}}. May sure all your ' and " are actually typographical apostrophes and quotation marks. Remove any superfluous spaces and line breaks; these mess up the formatting. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:29, 8 April 2025 (EDT)
::{{Reply to| Grlucas}} Thank you. I will get started on these revisions immediately. Thanks for the feedback and your time. :)[[User:DBond007|DBond007]] ([[User talk:DBond007|talk]]) 11:30, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
::{{Reply to| Grlucas}} I have completed all the requested revisions and ready for review round 2. Thank you again![[User:DBond007|DBond007]] ([[User talk:DBond007|talk]]) 12:10, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
:::{{Reply to|DBond007}} looking better! There are still items to be seen to, like titles on novels and magazines need to appear like they do in the original: if it's italicized in the PDF, it must be italicized on the web. I added the epigram for you and corrected that pesky citation. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:41, 12 April 2025 (EDT)

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

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

Link:

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

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

== E.Mosley ==

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

== Kynndra Watson ==

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

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

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

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

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

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

== "Rise Above It" Tribute Remediation ==

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

== Completed Additional Articles ==

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

== Submission notification sent 29 March ==

@grlucas

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

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

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

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

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

== Red Error-Gone ==

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

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

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

== "Remembering Norris" Tribute Remediation ==

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

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

Dr. Lucas,

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

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

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

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tolls of War: Mailerian Sub-Texts in For Whom the Bell Tolls

2025-04-13T14:13:46Z

Kamyers: Added URL

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/Tolls of War: Mailerian Sub-Texts in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''}}
{{Working}}
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{{BookReview
| title = Hemingway’s SecondWar: Bearing Witness to the Spanish CivilWar | author = Alex Vernon
| location = Iowa City
| pub = University of Iowa Pres
| date = 2011
| pages = 323
| type = Paperback
| price = 29.95
| first = Lawrence R.
| last = Broer
| link = https://www.uiowapress.org}}

{{dc|dc=A|t a party for Norman Mailer,}} I pried the author away from a covey of adoring coeds long enough to ask him how he thought Hemingway, notoriously disdainful of politics, would have responded to his protégé’s turn from straight fiction to the new journalism of ''Armies of the Night'' and ''Of a Fire on the Moon''. I was teaching both books and hoped to return to class armed with personal, invigorating insights from the author himself. Clearly annoyed at the distraction, Mailer replied, “What does it matter?”

Had I struck a nerve? Despite my enthusiasm for both writers, did Mailer interpret my remark as implied criticism? Never mind, if only indirectly, Alex Vernon’s lively and carefully researched study of Hemingway’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War reminds us of the political sophistication of both writers. Moreover, in Vernon’s discussion of the way Hemingway’s personal experience as a war correspondent fed and shaped the writing of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', we see Hemingway anticipating the New Journalism Mailer perfected—their mutual recognition of the fictional possibilities of and strategies for merging fact and fiction. Showing us how Hemingway’s {{pg|451|452}}

dispatches verge on becoming stories, how, for instance, he employs the second person as a way of bringing the reader along for the ride, Vernon accentuates the nature of literary truth both writers were after. Vernon describes Mailer and Hemingway as writers committed to “eye-witness” standards, yet journalistic writing whose “essence” is “not information” but personal truth, “optimistic, heroic, human interest work.”

Vernon’s discourse unfolds in three parts: discussions of Hemingway’s early participation as war correspondent, his contributions to the Republican documentaries “Spain in Flames” and “The Spanish Earth,” and Hemingway’s evolved, more critical thinking about the war and the Spanish people as portrayed in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''. It is toward the latter that all else builds that constitutes Vernon’s main achievement. Much of what Vernon tells us in the early chapters is well known.{{efn|Vernon’s scholarship is prodigious and adroitly employed to bolster or to offer critical counterpoint to his own interpretation of the cunningly problematic moral issues of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''. As a companion text to the war in general, I suggest the variety of critical perspectives in John Beals Romeiser’s earlier, multifaceted study, ''Red Flags, Black Flags: Critical Essays on the Literature of the Spanish Civil War (Madrid, Scripta Humanistica, 1982)''. Referring as they do to over 800 novels written from 1936 to the present, these essays attest to the extraordinary attraction the war has had for writers worldwide. The painful question these writers ask returns us immediately and in even a more broadly informed way to Vernon’s book and to ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'': how in such a fratricidal, bloody, and agonizing war, Spaniards could have come to such extremes. Vernon has it right: “the analysis of it is never done.” In my own discussion of the war in ''Hemingway’s Spanish Tragedy'' (U. of Alabama Press, 1973), I discuss the way Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset and other prominent critics of Spanish culture explain the internal struggle taking place within the mind and heart of the Spaniard—a belligerent independence and aversion to authority and order that predetermined the tragic consequence of the war.}} But his examples of Hemingway’s famous understated style in the author’s reports to NANA, the North American Newspaper Alliance, “paradoxically objective and subjective,” show us how the demands of reporting and Hemingway’s fictional gifts work as one: pithy, incongruous juxtapositions that highlight the grotesqueness of battle—soldiers so mutilated “they did not rate stretchers,” a decaying corpse whose left arm hangs “stiffly in air as if even in death he tried to make fascist salute,” an old woman returning home from market, “one leg suddenly detached whirling against the wall of an adjoining house,” a driver lurching from his motor car, “his scalp hanging down over his eyes, to sit down on the sidewalk.” Hemingway’s stark, unsentimental prose shocks us with horrors in the midst of the commonplace, even, Vernon says, “seeing beauty where one shouldn’t.” It challenges us “as gruesome photographs do, our repulsion to the obscene violence clashing with our appreciation of its perfected expression.”

Central to Hemingway’s intentions in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', Vernon focuses on ways the journalism anticipates and explains the humanity and art of the author’s Spanish novel. Eschewing easy dualisms, Hemingway’s consistent reporting of the war as brutal and savage on both sides reflects his respect and sympathy for the common soldier, regardless of allegiance. Despite his fervent support of the Republican cause, Hemingway’s portrayals of the suffering and even the heroism of Franco’s fascists are no less admiring than those of the Republican fallen. He wishes somebody would turn over the bodies of the working-class and poor Italian infantry who died fighting for the wrong cause, to face and commune with mother earth, the source of{{pg|452|453}}

their lives and of their true allegiance. In ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', Jordan recognizes that the absurdity of war requires killing people labeled “enemy” that one otherwise might befriend, divided only by arbitrary political alignments. Andres reasons that if his father had not been a Republican, both he and his brother would be soldiers now with the fascists. Anselmo observes about the Fascists at the bridge, “I have watched them all day and they are the same as we are.”

While both the journalism and the fiction stress the general inhumanity of war, Vernon credibly argues that understanding their difference illustrates not only the process of invention that transforms fact to fiction, but indicates marked moral growth on the author’s part. While history and ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' tell us that Republican soldiers were as guilty of cruelty and brutality as their fascist counterparts, Vernon explains that Hemingway’s commitment to the Republican cause was so profoundly deep and personal that his journalistic accounts become not only deceptively optimistic but hyperbolic in their support. Like Mailer’s Marxist theorist, William McCloud in ''Barbary Shore'', Hemingway/Jordan believe that the war in Spain was a battle for civilization itself, the point on which the future of the human race might turn, and that winning the war there might prevent the war to come. Citing the following example as a synecdoche for Hemingway’s “running optimistic commentary” on the entire war, Vernon refers to Hemingway’s report about a battle certain to be lost: “Today, you see the extent and seriousness of the Government resistance. It is not over yet by a long shot, and one thing that has been learned in this Spanish war is that anything can happen and the experts are always wrong.” Vernon concludes that what in his pro-loyalist dispatches and essays Hemingway truly understood about Republican betrayals and atrocities, and to what extent he might have turned to a more truthful cynicism, is a question for the ages. Neither is it possible, Vernon says, to determine the extent of the author’s “blind acceptance” of the Republican, and sometimes the Comintern line, versus the deep insight and pragmatism of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''.

What we know for certain about Hemingway’s more evolved and honest political thinking in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' constitutes the most telling way the journalism bears on the fiction of both Hemingway and Mailer. While much of James Brookfield’s 2009 overview of Mailer’s work reflects a woefully superficial view of Mailer’s literary gifts in general and his late work in particular, his praise of ''Barbary Shore'' evokes Vernon’s primary argument in {{pg|453|454}}

''Hemingway’s Second War''. Referring to the Stalinist agent McLeod’s apologia for his political crimes during the Spanish Civil War, Brookfield observes that Mailer seriously addresses one of the most complex political phenomena of the modern world—the emergence of Stalinism, and the tragic schism in the minds of thinking people like William McLeod and Hemingway’s Robert Jordan—torn between hopes for socialist reforms and the evolving barbarism of Russian political oppression. Brookfield evokes the agonizing inner war of both men when he wonders about the intense toll communism’s contradictions took on so many who began their literary careers as idealistic people, “grappling” from the point of view of optimism born of socialist ideals, and bitter disappointment at its failures. Though unlike McLeod, Jordan claims not to be a real Marxist, yet he understands its dialectics well, and like the narrator of ''Barbary Shore'', Mikey Lovett, he sympathizes with its capitalistic critique and humanitarian goals. As well, Jordan argues that the communists offer the “best discipline and the soundest and sanest for the prosecution of the war.” {{efn|For an excellent discussion of the factual account of both writers’ relationship to Soviet Russia, see Victor Peppard’s “Hemingway, Mailer, and the ‘Reds.’” (''The Mailer Review'', Fall 2010).}}

McLeod’s faith in the socialist ideals for which the war was fought registers when he says, “It is my hope that a revolutionary determination, the life of which has never been seen before will sweep the earth, and these theses, difficult, recondite, and often incomprehensible, will match the experience of even the most inarticulate peasant, so that the socialist theorist will once again find language to reach the many.” If Jordan is less politically doctrinaire than McLeod, and certainly less garrulous, his hope for universal brotherhood, his commitment to the struggle for freedom and equality in Spain prove equally strong: He tells himself, “This ideal gave you a part in something you could believe in wholly and completely and in which you felt an absolute brotherhood with the others who were engaged in it. It was something that you have never known before but that you had experienced now and you gave such importance to it and the reason for it that your own death seemed of complete unimportance.”

Ultimately, the failure of the wider human community McLeod and Jordan seek produces heartbreak and despair—the “toll” of which Brookfield speaks, the main subject of Vernon’s book, and the primary drama of ''Barbary Shore'' and ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''. Reflective of what Vernon calls the Republic’s history of “internal dysfunction,” the fractious acrimony and discord inside McLeod’s boarding house and Jordan’s mountain cave mirror the larger disharmony of temperamental, cultural, and political differences that dooms{{pg|454|455}}

the Civil War from the start, and that makes prospects for universal order and peace seem increasingly remote and naïve. Divided painfully by their own doubt, as McLeod puts it, Mailer and Hemingway’s failed, despairing idealists face a similar crisis of faith: the effort to remain hopeful and loyal to dreams of freedom and equality, “love for every man our brother,” versus feelings of defeat born of the divisive selfishness and disunity of those around them that augur the futility of the struggle. What results are extreme mental suffering and feelings of guilt, and the agonizing conflict of warring forces—cynicism and withdrawal versus love and engagement—that creates the powerful source of tension within both protagonists.{{efn|Vernon suggests that in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', it is far more than the complexities of the Spanish Civil War to which Hemingway bears witness. Drawing from psycho-sexual studies by Mark Spilka, Carl Eby, Debra Moddelmog, and Kenneth Lynn, Vernon’s concluding chapters, “Pilar and Maria,” and From “Frederic Henry to Robert Jordan” extend these critics’ argument that Henry’s and Jordan’s gender and sexual anxieties constitute the deepest, most personal and guarded part of the author’s famous iceberg. Reading Henry and Jordan’s feminine or androgynous feelings together, Vernon sees Hemingway seeking release from the strict gender boundaries of his conventional Oak Park upbringing, exploring buried homoerotic and incestuous desires that anticipate the taboo gender games of ''The Garden of Eden''.}}

When Vernon says it is as if Hemingway were battling his own “conscience,” he identifies both Jordan’s inner war and the special, even allegorical relationship of McLeod and his novelist socialist apprentice, William Lovett, a version of McLeod’s younger self McLeod calls “conscience.” Lovett senses McCloud across the hall staring at the ceiling as he does and dreaming his dreams. Just as within the psychic interplay of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', Jordan’s more honest, self-critical, and hopeful self battles fatalism, an unnerving authoritarian manner, and proclivities to violence he feels he will have to atone for later, McLeod exists as a father-confessor figure to Lovett, from whom Lovett can always expect an honest response, whose kindly solicitations help Lovett heal psychic war wounds, fortify his idealism, sharpen his thinking, and encourage his work—the self-begetting novel we are reading. The more McLeod speaks of mental, moral and physical crimes of war that he shares with Lovett, the more Lovett remembers his own concealed transgressions. The analytical McLeod instructs Lovett in negotiating the space between “personal desire” and “political possibility.” In turn Lovett listens to McLeod’s own sins, rekindles McLeod’s flagging socialist fervor—the part of himself that McLeod says remains hopeful as the “machine” grows bigger—and his devotion to the older, wiser man allows McLeod the grace to transmit, as McLeod says, “the intellectual conclusions of my life, and thus give dignity to my experience.”

Rather than offer final solutions to their protagonists’ inner war, the authors deny us the complacency of closure and provoke us to debate the struggle of conscience within ourselves. Like their characters, we are positioned in between what Lovett calls an “antipathetic past and a moot future.” The futility of Lannie Madison in ''Barbary Shore'' reminds us of Mailer’s warning in ''Why Are We at War'' that “Freedom has to be kept alive everyday of our{{pg|455|456}}

existence, because we can all be swallowed by our misery . . . become weary, give up.” Evoking the gas chambers of World War II, Madison calls McLeod and Lovett fools for continuing to believe in a better world, concluding “there’s no new world to make, for the world devours.” All the characters of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' and ''Barbary Shore'' are in fact broken in various ways and prone to defeatism. “Vast armies,” McCloud says, continue to mount themselves toward endless war. Yet it is Jordan’s and McLeod/Lovett’s mutual existential faith in life as a process of becoming that sustains their belief in a saner, more orderly world.

Jordan knows that he must make difficult moral choices that are always subjective and personal, what Kierkegaard calls the existentialist’s “earnestness.” He hates to leave this world but determines it is one worth sacrificing and even dying for.{{efn|Contrary to this existential reading, Vernon suggests that by contriving to be killed, Jordan assumes an inauthentic pose, relieving himself of the necessity of further choice-making. The most original and startling aspect of Vernon’s hypothesis is that compounding the toll of multiple wars, the author’s emasculating gender insecurities contribute to the author’s death wish, the “suicidal sub-text” motivating both ''A Farewell to Arms'' and ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''. Rather than be “dragged reluctantly into fatherhood,” Henry and Jordan commit suicide to avoid the complications of family life and “domestic entrapment” from which the Hemingway hero has always been in flight. Vernon cites Gerry Brenner’s view that Henry commits suicide after he finishes narrating his story. Neither protagonist’s relationships, Vernon says, will ever “fall prey to babies, nor to finances nor the numbing effect of ordinary life.” In this vein Vernon disputes the conventional view of the novel’s ending as ennobling. Citing Mussolini’s definition of fascism as a belief in “holiness and heroism,” Vernon suggests that Jordan’s death not only removes him from actual social obligations, allowing him to avoid family life and all it might involve and symbolize, but ironically has a fascist tint to it. It follows that rather than redemptive, Jordan’s relationship with Maria also has fascist implications, confirming a traditional gender hierarchy that undermines the cause of freedom and independence for which Jordan fights. The overthrow of the class system, Vernon posits, should mean the end of the patriarchal system as well. Jordan’s voice “eclipses Maria’s, excludes hers, silences hers,” as he satisfies his own psychic needs. Though he suggests that Hemingway is warning the reader against accepting Jordan’s “self-serving perspectives,” Vernon is never timid about critiquing Hemingway’s personal morality, objecting, for instance, to the author’s “fetishing” of the “primitive” and “romanticizing” of Maria’s erotic albeit spiritual animality. Vernon concludes this lucid, provocative study by asserting that connecting Henry’s and Jordan’s gender and sexual anxieties with their suicidal natures is only a hypothesis, agreeing with Thomas Strychacz and Allen Josephs that Hemingway’s complex aesthetics require that we no more insist on one reading of this richly problematic text than another. 

If I may venture an advertisement for myself, considering the turbulence of Mailer and Hemingway’s work and inner life, along with Kurt Vonnegut’s as the scene of constant warfare, Vernon’s reference to Paul Fussel’s line, “My war is synonymous with my life” would have made the ideal prescript for my forthcoming study of Hemingway: ''Vonnegut and Hemingway: Writers at War'' (U. of South Carolina Press, 2011).}} In turn, McLeod declares that he depends upon “potentiality” that possibilities are limited only by the human mind. Despite that McLeod dies (like Jordan), in the words he scribbles at the bottom of his will he bequeaths to Lovett what the newborn writer calls the “rudiments of selfless friendship, the heritage of love and sacrifice” Jordan passes on to Maria: “And may he be alive to see the rising of the Phoenix.” As a free man, virtually without a social or economic past, Lovett may author his own identity, which as narrator of Mailer’s story is exactly what he does.

=== Notes ===

{{notelist}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tolls of War: Mailerian Sub-Texts in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''}}
[[Category:Book Reviews (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/All You Need is Glove

2025-04-13T13:19:07Z

Kamyers: removed the word box from Book Review

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/All You Need is Glove}}
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{{BookReview
| title = Fighters and Writers
| author = John G. Rodwan, Jr.
| location= Norman, OK
| pub = Mongrel Empire Press
| date = 2010
| pages = 222 pp.
| type = Paperback
| price = 18.00
| note =
| first = Sal
| last = Cetrano
| link =
| url =
}}

Clichés walk a long road. They don’t start out the sorry, threadbare creatures we finally make some out to be, bumbling and clutching at straws, but once were young and thoroughly of their time, cracking wise at parties and stoking dying talk. That boxers and journalists are somehow cut from the same cloth or share some wild atavistic gene has stoked individual imagination and shaped American popular culture, occasionally touching upon history, for better than a century, a long, if not unbroken, line.

In his essentially titled collection of essays, ''Fighters and Writers,'' John Rodwan Jr., a veteran observer of the boxing scene, as well as a respected commentator on jazz and American social change, leads us on such a wide-ranging expedition, through the parallel histories and changing roles of these sometimes-glamorous, sometimes-infamous occupations, as seen from forefronts of masculinity and violence, race and identity, image and reality.

Byron and Keats were boxing fans. Conan Doyle made Sherlock Holmes an amateur pugilist. Jack London led a search for a “Great White Hope.” George Orwell, who would have much to say about violence, was a schoolboy boxer, and Albert Camus a capable amateur. George Bernard Shaw, Dashiell Hammett, Charles Bukowski ... the roster of boxing’s bedazzled is both pedigreed and diverse.

There are, of course, the familiar exploits of those who themselves famously laced up the gloves: Hemingway, A.J.Liebling, Plimpton, and Mailer.
Scott Fitzgerald, object of platonic passion, manages to bruise a hapless Papa, head and heart, without tossing a punch, and even Oscar Wilde makes an unexpected appearance.

''The Ali Act,'' not surprisingly, is Rodwan’s starting point, an acknowledgment of that magical confluence of a phenomenal boxer and one of the most turbulent eras in American history. Before rap music’s arid syntax of bluster and threat, greed and lust, spastic id and unwarranted ego, Ali gushed flowers, effortless as waterfall, always of the moment, even his harshest invective laced with poetry, and always that wicked motherlove smile.

Principally through the duelling biographical attitudes of several dons of “Ali Studies,” Rodwan conducts the flood of critical opinion surrounding Ali, from opprobrium to adulation. Mark Kram questions Ali’s intelligence and incisive wit. A fatigued Michael Arkush cannot finally see past Ali’s façade, distinguish hero from hype. Mike Marquesee sees the champ as humanist and iconoclast, a deft and instinctive molder of attitudes. Thomas Hauser goes one better: Ali “changed the experience of being black.”

Whether as “emblem of black pride,” “embodiment of rebellion,” or “surest sign of capitalism’s capacity to transform almost anything into a commodity,” Rodwan leads us through the measured schizophrenia of America embracing a separationist Civil Rights hero and pacifist warrior, simple poet and disturbingly complex thinker.
In the end as much a product of self-promoter supreme Gorgeous George as of either Angelo Dundee or Malcolm X, Ali becomes symbolic of a myriad of things to a myriad of observers with different axes to grind, until in danger of becoming “a generic representative of greatness.”

Rodwan helps to sort out this heavyweight welter of sport, politics, celebrity and pop psychology in which so many were able to see exactly what they wanted to see (a McLuhanism comes to mind: “I wouldn‘t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it”): prismatic Ali the apparent envy of scribes less facile at persuasive charm, guile and misdirection, without which narrative does not dance, but sags into the canvas.
E. M. Forster used the phrase “the beast and the monk” to describe man’s unsettling duality. (Feel free to insert the author of your choice here.) We are given a prime example of this in ''Seeing Stars,'' where James Toback’s dark film portrait ''Tyson'' is examined. Tyson, as iconic of his time as Ali of a flowery, more dramatic era, was arguably as adept at the concept of creating and inhabiting roles as Ali, but without what Rodman identifies as the successful fighter or writer’s aspirational ability to adapt and control.

We gawk in ''Tyson'' at a haunted man, strange yet familiar, his remorse and self-loathing convincing beyond craft, bizarrely framed by a filmmaker more arch than artist. The savage mauler of memory sits stonily in mood-lit profile, Hamlet as Elephant Man, and fed doctored reflections.
Veteran fight fans will remember the bashful, wounded boy and respectful student of boxing history that Tyson, under the nurture of Cus D’Amato and Jimmy Jacobs, once was. For a strange, brief time the confident, self proclaimed “master of skullduggery,” Tyson’s eyes now wander past the camera into the dark, onto the blank page of his next incarnation, and you sense the wordless terror at the gaping task of filling it.

Rodwan reminds us that Iron Mike “enjoyed outsmarting others as a criminal,” but we are also reminded of the boy “living in constant fear” of being bullied in the “horrific” streets of Brownsville. At root of the baleful, psyche-shrinking legend, that of the rapacious, baby-eating ''bête noire,'' is the frightened child-man still in the process of growing up. Yet when D’Amato tells him that it was Ali’s personality that made him a great fighter, Tyson does not understand. Ali, Rodwan tells us, perfected the writerly capacity “for ceaseless reinvention.” The contrast here with Tyson is, in the strictest sense of the word, pathetic. It is pure ''schadenfreude,'' with not a penny’s worth of difference between the most depraved ringsider screaming for blood and the armchair moralist deriving satisfaction at the ''auto de fé'' of this tragic soul.

In ''The Cinderella Man Fairytale,'' Rodwan brings to earth the myth of James J.Braddock, “a strong but limited fighter” who succeeded little in life’s basic tests, but rode an inspirational wave as one of the first to tap a boxer’s “special capacity to become emblematic figures of their time.” Rodwan echoes the familiar—and cinematic—notion that certain eras in history cry out for heroes, searching for the genuine and admirable in the contrasting personalities of the prosaic stevedore Braddock and the flashy but lackadaisical Max Baer, who presaged the media-milkers to come more than the laconic Louis, who was soon to stand colossus-like astride a rare, exhilarating confluence of fistic spectacle and world history.

Although Braddock biographer Jeremy Shaap’s assertion that “great champions usually are fashioned by adversity” serves as stirring paean to all who fashioned lives beneath the Great Depression’s boot, Rodwan reels this in as “far too simplistic.” Both in fiction and the ring, the buffered version “Hard times don’t create heroes; they reveal them” is probably nearer the truth. “''The Cinderella Man'' Fairytale,” sets the stage for later champions whose adversities will be measured on wholly different scales.

Although a bit disjointed—the essays are neither closely connected nor presented as such—Rodwan is steadily engaging. Some of Rodwan’s personal essays, as much of life’s soft parade, are trivial. In ''Weight Loss: A Love Story,'' Rodwan weds logic to romance through the scrupulous gleaning of the proper foods for his hypoglycemic wife, while providing quixotic inspiration through his own gut-busting exertions. We get the practical appreciation of a fighter’s heart in a slightly-saggy everyman’s body. Boxing, the author maintains, being a sport where a fighter’s inattention to his weight can have fell consequence, gave him “a perspective on size, one that I found changed as my body did.” The equation between self-image and exercise as a habit, then, defines the price of admission to the boxer’s world.
Rodwan’s peregrinations are wide: from weight loss to Melville’s use of what Liebling termed “labyrinthine digressions” in ''Moby-Dick;'' what book dedications apparent and lesser known (''Fighters and Writers'' is dedicated to Jose Torres, whom only death could KO)reveal about the headwaters of creation; the “tribal” fractiousness of state boxing commissions in ''There Are No Easy Answers'' to the futility of “health and safety” measures in a sport bent on focused destruction in—whatelse— ''Health & Safety;''the habits of jaguars or James Bond girls, or the use of repetition in the bodies of authors’ work.

Wander as he might, Rodwan is an effective gate-keeper, no musing too far from his unifying thesis: that boxing is a significant window on both the human condition and pivotal historic events.

''A First Class Sport'' is a breath of fresh air along Rodman’s promenade. The phrase was coined by everybody’s favorite tough-guy president, Teddy Roosevelt, who as New York’s police commissioner, when cops still rode horses, staunchly averred that “the establishment of a boxing club in a tough neighborhood always tended to do away with knifing and gun-fighting among the young fellows who would otherwise have been in murderous gangs.” First as governor, then as president, he would occasionally don the gloves, not leery of making a bad impression.

Trainer and boxing commentator Teddy Atlas traces his long career to “boxing in an old laundry room in a rough project.” Boxing programs, he insists, give kids “care, direction, instruction, discipline, accountability and dreams.” Katherine Dunn maintains that women as well as men stand to benefit from the sport’s contributions to an “individual’s reflexes, stamina and strength.” Linked as it is to the survival instinct, she sees “the aggressiveness of boxing as a positive good.”

A twelve-year-old Cassius Clay’s first trainer is a policeman in a neighborhood gym, where the pumped-up boy has come to report a stolen bicycle. Larry Holmes, who before following Ali as heavyweight champion had been a petty criminal and drug dealer, boxes first as a boy in PAL-organized bouts in Pennsylvania. Few writers could more eloquently express than the stolid ex-champion why he found himself through boxing, or the sport’s broader significance: “People express themselves differently. Painters paint, writers write, dancers dance. I discovered I needed physical contact to let what was in me come out.”

The mantra is repeated, old hand after old hand: how boxing helps young men “overcome long odds, just to be strong and functional.” Where else might young men hone these qualities today? It is a sobering thought.

It is perhaps useful to view writers of Rodwan’s age—and, if we’re fortunate, scholarship—as a bridge between journalistic generations, as the grand, insipid machinations explored in “Is Martin Amos Serious?”, a cautionary tale of polysyllabic bitch-slapping between effete critic and self-appointed social visionary in the post-Vietnam era, might seem truly other-worldly to a masculinity cut of the Hemingway-Miller-Mailer model or the Runyunesque romanticism of just-plain, tabloid-reading guys and dolls.

In so many Depression era movies—think ''His Girl Friday'' or ''Kid Dynamite''—there is a hairy vitality in which words are punches, clever dialogue the bob and weave. A choice put-down is comparable to a jab, a prolonged exchange—often between man and woman—a promoter’s dream of well-matched battlers. Reporters are scoop-driven individualists, resourceful and combative, or cigar-chomping cynics, sparring with snappy gangster patter. Writers romanticized, or were romanticized by, action in barroom, alley or ring, in corrida or on safari.

Over the years, muscular exercises in ribald badinage such as Pat and Mike and ''The Philadelphia Story'' established a salutary pugilism between clever men and women, toothsome adversaries, bent on loosing kindred angels from first row to balcony. Violence was mostly theatrical, and the theater had walls.

No more.

The journalist, however intrepid or self-possessed, confronting what Amis calls “a world of perfect terror and perfect boredom,” is faced with the same dilemma as the other-directed, would-be reader. He is caught in a world where the numbing possibility of extreme, sudden violence is all around, while incidents of personal involvement with violence and tests of imminent physical danger become ever fewer, an inexpressible irony no poultice of gadgetry and spattered crimson image can mollify.

There is no stylistic shortcut for the writer who would wear Hemingway’s hat. How to convey, in Mailer’s words, “not only the fear of getting hurt, which is profound in more men than will admit to it, but . . . the opposite panic, equally unadmitted, of hurting others” without having drunk of both fountains? Charlatan! Fop! Poseur!

If, then, few of us face real violence on an imminent basis in a sanitized, secularized, keep-everybody-alive, everybody’s-a-star world, what then are “life-and-death” or “fight-or-flight” but desiccated phrases in lives passively and dutifully led? Boxing has all but disappeared from the public eye today. “Mixed martial arts,” with its gladiatorial setting, heightened ceiling of violence and ignominious possibility of “submission,” has at least temporarily cornered the attention of erstwhile boxing fans. Motion pictures, replete with superheroes who neither sweat nor bleed, facile special effects and editing friendly to the goldfish attention span of a generation raised on television, have largely replaced the novel as the preferred vehicle of narrative expression. Newspapers are an endangered species, with a surfeit of commentators clinging jealously to odd perches in the blogosphere, desperate to attract attention.

Were Hemingway to rise from the dead, would anybody notice?

There is in Rodwan the suggestion that today’s writer, self-appointed priest in a vanishing church of print, wears uneasily a burden of responsibility to taste life at its extremes, the better to proffer menus to the meek. The parallel between fighter and writer becomes more the whimsical conceit of the writer, anxious of the masculinity of his chosen bread and butter, sublimating with virtuosity what cannot be shown in action.

Rodwan offers the familiar premise: it is boxing’s skill, honed in solitude through training and discipline, together with an inner strength that separates champion from journeyman, contender from “opponent.” “Fighters,” he avers, “are athletes, not brutes.” What, then, of those who presume to explain them?

Although he likens the “artful evisceration” of critics trying to “outshine Amis’s authorial flair” to “a degraded version of Ali’s style of taunting his opponents,” it is clear that the tenuous metaphor between boxing and violence has come under considerable strain, with ad hominem and hyperbole increasingly the arsenal of the infuriated and morally outraged, where pointed plain speaking once sufficed. Fathers who did not dance have sons who play air guitar. While the spectacle of boxing has, to be sure, changed little, the nature of violence, as Amis insists in his “The Second Plane,” has.

“The Fighting Life” looks at the use of boxing in the fiction of two literary giants, Philip Roth and Norman Mailer. In “The Human Stain,” Roth’s Coleman Silk, a light-skinned black who succeeds in convincing the world, including a wife, that he is a nappy-haired, sallow-skinned Jew, flowers a lifelong self-image based on boxing metaphors: “the pleasures and uses of concealment” . . . “taking the measure of every last situation,” “heeding the internal voice that counsels.” These dovetail nicely with “the boxer’s tough guy code” often espoused by Mailer: disguising intentions, never letting your thoughts be known or your guard down, self-knowledge as power, all to be found in Mailer’s ''tour de force'' of baroque violence, ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' and epic ''The Fight.''

Silk’s personal struggle for identity is mirrored in and magnified by the national catharsis of Joe Louis’s symbolic slaying of Nazism’s vaunted ''übermensch''—poor, kindly Max Schmeling, a man who would later befriend Louis, even pay for his burial—as fully conflating Max Baer’s “situational” Jewishness to democracy as Mailer later does blackness to boxing.

As Rodman’s many-voiced analysis of this episode infers, the lippy Ali and the laconic Louis each jogged people free of preconceptions, but did it in different ways. To some extent each was a helpless fulcrum for forces playing out about them. Louis, by and large, had only to go with history’s flow, Fate having provided no lesser dragon than Hitler for him to slay. Before even entering the ring for Louis-Schmeling II, Louis was a champion on multiple levels. He was not, as Jack Johnson had been, the black fighting the white; he was the American fighting the German.

The wind that blew at Louis’s back was comparable in intensity to the evil inexorably rising in Europe, a conception eagerly reinforced by patriotic journalists, awash in the infinite possibilities of good versus evil, light versus dark, slavery versus liberation. Silk, a classics professor, tells his students that “all of European literature springs from a fight,” referring to ''The Iliad’s'' “barroom brawl between Achilles and Agamemnon.” He finds integrity in the inner consistency of his life of misdirection and disguise, just as “Mailer forged a fighter’s persona for himself” which even caustic critics unwittingly bolstered to the writer’s ongoing advantage.

You can almost hear Mailer chuckling when, in ''The Spooky Art,'' he refers to his being provided “a false legend of much machismo.” Yet, as one who had the pleasure of sharing a ring with the man, I can tell you it is true: when style failed, Norman would just block a punch or three with his face, bearing down, relentless, clubbing like a Kodiak bear. Those jealous of his galling facility with language, as with Amis’s detractors, will conveniently question the manhood behind the words. In the case of Norman Mailer, there was nothing false about it.

In “George and Me,” a duly reverential Rodwan echoes the view of countless readers first enthralled by ''Animal Farm'' of a saintly, prescient Orwell against a charge leveled at him, long after his death, that he had raped a woman. It is an interesting story, one I’d not heard before, and I’ll not give up the ending.

Particulars aside, we are served a meaty example—feel free to fill in your own—of how “accomplished writers may have led less than exemplary lives.” Long after high ideals emphasized in the writing “have come to be associated with the man,” to what degree can a writer’s persona be separated from his work? Should a single incident forever jaundice a gift of vision?

Recognizing that pernicious streak in man that delights in finding inconsistencies in those we hate—or grudgingly admire—Rodwan asks, “Was Orwell, decency’s advocate, merely a fraud?” The author, plainly troubled that the reputation of one synonymous with clarity and justice might be vitiated by even the rumor of a single incongruous ugliness, finds himself poring over Orwell’s collected work for any clues about his attitudes toward women. In the end,he bemoans “the inevitability of failure in reaching complete truth.”

Incidents of “justifiable violence” in the writer’s life, including a bloody involvement in the Spanish Civil War, moral crucible for a virtual squadron of writers and artists, ironically seem to buttress both sides of the dark possibility. Again citing Amis’s critics, he revisits the thin line between certain pacifists and an admiration for totalitarianism, finding there the same sort of narrowmindedness that would sully a career so esteemed as Orwell’s for the questionable goal of striking a vein of inconsistency in a mountain of verity.

The title essay in ''Fighters and Writers'' offers a last hurrah to all working stiffs blessed to have just enough Mickey Spillane in the blood to hear their romantic inner drummer over the clatter of the morning commute. It opens with a banner on the wall of Gleason’s Gym—from Virgil: “Now, whoever has courage and a strong and collected spirit in his breast let him come forward, lace on the gloves and put his hands up.”

That ordinary men (let alone those blessed with a touch of imagination and the price of a pencil) should find in the spectacle of humans fighting “something akin to their own efforts,” gives nuance to every action so illumined. “To write about boxing,” says Joyce Carol Oates, as heavyweight a mind as ever weighed in on the subject, “is to write about oneself—however elliptically, and unintentionally.” What dark parentheses the writer may insert in either life or work speak of something other than pure perception, and therein lie all tales. Misogyny, racial hatred, brutality, deception, intolerance: all inhabit niches of boxing’s dark side as surely as courage, tenacity, resourcefulness and skill do the light. When heroes have faults, we share their pain; when they are assholes, we look twice in the mirror.

“Boxers are liars,” quotes Rodman of Jose Torres. So, too, then are lovers. In either case, it keeps you alive.

Boxing is about violence, the ability to inflict and withstand, impulses old as man from instincts even older. On one side of what we might call the Oates/Mailer Scale is the myth-nipping conviction that boxing is not a sport, has nothing playful about it, consumes the excellence it displays, damages the body, brain and spirit, and presents a stylized image of man’s collectivized aggression, while in the white corner stand endless protean metaphors for dialectics in manhood, sex, race, personal identity and, yes, even literary style. Writers, at best imperious directors of the play of their imaginings, see fighters in “straightforward pursuits of victory under the unmediated imposition of their wills.”

For all, ugliness and beauty blur in the beholder’s fevered eye. In arenas of dreams, you pays your money and you takes your chance.

In covering Sonny Liston’s 1962 knock-out of Floyd Patterson, Mailer describes boxing as “a murderous and sensitive religion that mocks the effort of understanding to approach it.” We may be thankful that the likes of John Rodwan still make the effort. ''Fighters and Writers'' is superbly referenced grist for the ringside scholar’s mill.

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:All You Need is Glove}}
[[Category:Book Reviews (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tolls of War: Mailerian Sub-Texts in For Whom the Bell Tolls

2025-04-13T13:08:26Z

Kamyers: Added review and sort

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/Tolls of War: Mailerian Sub-Texts in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''}}
{{Working}}
{{MR05}}
{{BookReview
| title = Hemingway’s SecondWar: Bearing Witness to the Spanish CivilWar | author = Alex Vernon
| location = Iowa City
| pub = University of Iowa Pres
| date = 2011
| pages = 323 pp.
| type = Paperback
| price = 29.95
| first = Lawrence R.
| last = Broer
| link = }}

{{dc|dc=A|t a party for Norman Mailer,}} I pried the author away from a covey of adoring coeds long enough to ask him how he thought Hemingway, notoriously disdainful of politics, would have responded to his protégé’s turn from straight fiction to the new journalism of ''Armies of the Night'' and ''Of a Fire on the Moon''. I was teaching both books and hoped to return to class armed with personal, invigorating insights from the author himself. Clearly annoyed at the distraction, Mailer replied, “What does it matter?”

Had I struck a nerve? Despite my enthusiasm for both writers, did Mailer interpret my remark as implied criticism? Never mind, if only indirectly, Alex Vernon’s lively and carefully researched study of Hemingway’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War reminds us of the political sophistication of both writers. Moreover, in Vernon’s discussion of the way Hemingway’s personal experience as a war correspondent fed and shaped the writing of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', we see Hemingway anticipating the New Journalism Mailer perfected—their mutual recognition of the fictional possibilities of and strategies for merging fact and fiction. Showing us how Hemingway’s {{pg|451|452}}

dispatches verge on becoming stories, how, for instance, he employs the second person as a way of bringing the reader along for the ride, Vernon accentuates the nature of literary truth both writers were after. Vernon describes Mailer and Hemingway as writers committed to “eye-witness” standards, yet journalistic writing whose “essence” is “not information” but personal truth, “optimistic, heroic, human interest work.”

Vernon’s discourse unfolds in three parts: discussions of Hemingway’s early participation as war correspondent, his contributions to the Republican documentaries “Spain in Flames” and “The Spanish Earth,” and Hemingway’s evolved, more critical thinking about the war and the Spanish people as portrayed in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''. It is toward the latter that all else builds that constitutes Vernon’s main achievement. Much of what Vernon tells us in the early chapters is well known.{{efn|Vernon’s scholarship is prodigious and adroitly employed to bolster or to offer critical counterpoint to his own interpretation of the cunningly problematic moral issues of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''. As a companion text to the war in general, I suggest the variety of critical perspectives in John Beals Romeiser’s earlier, multifaceted study, ''Red Flags, Black Flags: Critical Essays on the Literature of the Spanish Civil War (Madrid, Scripta Humanistica, 1982)''. Referring as they do to over 800 novels written from 1936 to the present, these essays attest to the extraordinary attraction the war has had for writers worldwide. The painful question these writers ask returns us immediately and in even a more broadly informed way to Vernon’s book and to ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'': how in such a fratricidal, bloody, and agonizing war, Spaniards could have come to such extremes. Vernon has it right: “the analysis of it is never done.” In my own discussion of the war in ''Hemingway’s Spanish Tragedy'' (U. of Alabama Press, 1973), I discuss the way Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset and other prominent critics of Spanish culture explain the internal struggle taking place within the mind and heart of the Spaniard—a belligerent independence and aversion to authority and order that predetermined the tragic consequence of the war.}} But his examples of Hemingway’s famous understated style in the author’s reports to NANA, the North American Newspaper Alliance, “paradoxically objective and subjective,” show us how the demands of reporting and Hemingway’s fictional gifts work as one: pithy, incongruous juxtapositions that highlight the grotesqueness of battle—soldiers so mutilated “they did not rate stretchers,” a decaying corpse whose left arm hangs “stiffly in air as if even in death he tried to make fascist salute,” an old woman returning home from market, “one leg suddenly detached whirling against the wall of an adjoining house,” a driver lurching from his motor car, “his scalp hanging down over his eyes, to sit down on the sidewalk.” Hemingway’s stark, unsentimental prose shocks us with horrors in the midst of the commonplace, even, Vernon says, “seeing beauty where one shouldn’t.” It challenges us “as gruesome photographs do, our repulsion to the obscene violence clashing with our appreciation of its perfected expression.”

Central to Hemingway’s intentions in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', Vernon focuses on ways the journalism anticipates and explains the humanity and art of the author’s Spanish novel. Eschewing easy dualisms, Hemingway’s consistent reporting of the war as brutal and savage on both sides reflects his respect and sympathy for the common soldier, regardless of allegiance. Despite his fervent support of the Republican cause, Hemingway’s portrayals of the suffering and even the heroism of Franco’s fascists are no less admiring than those of the Republican fallen. He wishes somebody would turn over the bodies of the working-class and poor Italian infantry who died fighting for the wrong cause, to face and commune with mother earth, the source of{{pg|452|453}}

their lives and of their true allegiance. In ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', Jordan recognizes that the absurdity of war requires killing people labeled “enemy” that one otherwise might befriend, divided only by arbitrary political alignments. Andres reasons that if his father had not been a Republican, both he and his brother would be soldiers now with the fascists. Anselmo observes about the Fascists at the bridge, “I have watched them all day and they are the same as we are.”

While both the journalism and the fiction stress the general inhumanity of war, Vernon credibly argues that understanding their difference illustrates not only the process of invention that transforms fact to fiction, but indicates marked moral growth on the author’s part. While history and ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' tell us that Republican soldiers were as guilty of cruelty and brutality as their fascist counterparts, Vernon explains that Hemingway’s commitment to the Republican cause was so profoundly deep and personal that his journalistic accounts become not only deceptively optimistic but hyperbolic in their support. Like Mailer’s Marxist theorist, William McCloud in ''Barbary Shore'', Hemingway/Jordan believe that the war in Spain was a battle for civilization itself, the point on which the future of the human race might turn, and that winning the war there might prevent the war to come. Citing the following example as a synecdoche for Hemingway’s “running optimistic commentary” on the entire war, Vernon refers to Hemingway’s report about a battle certain to be lost: “Today, you see the extent and seriousness of the Government resistance. It is not over yet by a long shot, and one thing that has been learned in this Spanish war is that anything can happen and the experts are always wrong.” Vernon concludes that what in his pro-loyalist dispatches and essays Hemingway truly understood about Republican betrayals and atrocities, and to what extent he might have turned to a more truthful cynicism, is a question for the ages. Neither is it possible, Vernon says, to determine the extent of the author’s “blind acceptance” of the Republican, and sometimes the Comintern line, versus the deep insight and pragmatism of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''.

What we know for certain about Hemingway’s more evolved and honest political thinking in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' constitutes the most telling way the journalism bears on the fiction of both Hemingway and Mailer. While much of James Brookfield’s 2009 overview of Mailer’s work reflects a woefully superficial view of Mailer’s literary gifts in general and his late work in particular, his praise of ''Barbary Shore'' evokes Vernon’s primary argument in {{pg|453|454}}

''Hemingway’s Second War''. Referring to the Stalinist agent McLeod’s apologia for his political crimes during the Spanish Civil War, Brookfield observes that Mailer seriously addresses one of the most complex political phenomena of the modern world—the emergence of Stalinism, and the tragic schism in the minds of thinking people like William McLeod and Hemingway’s Robert Jordan—torn between hopes for socialist reforms and the evolving barbarism of Russian political oppression. Brookfield evokes the agonizing inner war of both men when he wonders about the intense toll communism’s contradictions took on so many who began their literary careers as idealistic people, “grappling” from the point of view of optimism born of socialist ideals, and bitter disappointment at its failures. Though unlike McLeod, Jordan claims not to be a real Marxist, yet he understands its dialectics well, and like the narrator of ''Barbary Shore'', Mikey Lovett, he sympathizes with its capitalistic critique and humanitarian goals. As well, Jordan argues that the communists offer the “best discipline and the soundest and sanest for the prosecution of the war.” {{efn|For an excellent discussion of the factual account of both writers’ relationship to Soviet Russia, see Victor Peppard’s “Hemingway, Mailer, and the ‘Reds.’” (''The Mailer Review'', Fall 2010).}}

McLeod’s faith in the socialist ideals for which the war was fought registers when he says, “It is my hope that a revolutionary determination, the life of which has never been seen before will sweep the earth, and these theses, difficult, recondite, and often incomprehensible, will match the experience of even the most inarticulate peasant, so that the socialist theorist will once again find language to reach the many.” If Jordan is less politically doctrinaire than McLeod, and certainly less garrulous, his hope for universal brotherhood, his commitment to the struggle for freedom and equality in Spain prove equally strong: He tells himself, “This ideal gave you a part in something you could believe in wholly and completely and in which you felt an absolute brotherhood with the others who were engaged in it. It was something that you have never known before but that you had experienced now and you gave such importance to it and the reason for it that your own death seemed of complete unimportance.”

Ultimately, the failure of the wider human community McLeod and Jordan seek produces heartbreak and despair—the “toll” of which Brookfield speaks, the main subject of Vernon’s book, and the primary drama of ''Barbary Shore'' and ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''. Reflective of what Vernon calls the Republic’s history of “internal dysfunction,” the fractious acrimony and discord inside McLeod’s boarding house and Jordan’s mountain cave mirror the larger disharmony of temperamental, cultural, and political differences that dooms{{pg|454|455}}

the Civil War from the start, and that makes prospects for universal order and peace seem increasingly remote and naïve. Divided painfully by their own doubt, as McLeod puts it, Mailer and Hemingway’s failed, despairing idealists face a similar crisis of faith: the effort to remain hopeful and loyal to dreams of freedom and equality, “love for every man our brother,” versus feelings of defeat born of the divisive selfishness and disunity of those around them that augur the futility of the struggle. What results are extreme mental suffering and feelings of guilt, and the agonizing conflict of warring forces—cynicism and withdrawal versus love and engagement—that creates the powerful source of tension within both protagonists.{{efn|Vernon suggests that in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', it is far more than the complexities of the Spanish Civil War to which Hemingway bears witness. Drawing from psycho-sexual studies by Mark Spilka, Carl Eby, Debra Moddelmog, and Kenneth Lynn, Vernon’s concluding chapters, “Pilar and Maria,” and From “Frederic Henry to Robert Jordan” extend these critics’ argument that Henry’s and Jordan’s gender and sexual anxieties constitute the deepest, most personal and guarded part of the author’s famous iceberg. Reading Henry and Jordan’s feminine or androgynous feelings together, Vernon sees Hemingway seeking release from the strict gender boundaries of his conventional Oak Park upbringing, exploring buried homoerotic and incestuous desires that anticipate the taboo gender games of ''The Garden of Eden''.}}

When Vernon says it is as if Hemingway were battling his own “conscience,” he identifies both Jordan’s inner war and the special, even allegorical relationship of McLeod and his novelist socialist apprentice, William Lovett, a version of McLeod’s younger self McLeod calls “conscience.” Lovett senses McCloud across the hall staring at the ceiling as he does and dreaming his dreams. Just as within the psychic interplay of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', Jordan’s more honest, self-critical, and hopeful self battles fatalism, an unnerving authoritarian manner, and proclivities to violence he feels he will have to atone for later, McLeod exists as a father-confessor figure to Lovett, from whom Lovett can always expect an honest response, whose kindly solicitations help Lovett heal psychic war wounds, fortify his idealism, sharpen his thinking, and encourage his work—the self-begetting novel we are reading. The more McLeod speaks of mental, moral and physical crimes of war that he shares with Lovett, the more Lovett remembers his own concealed transgressions. The analytical McLeod instructs Lovett in negotiating the space between “personal desire” and “political possibility.” In turn Lovett listens to McLeod’s own sins, rekindles McLeod’s flagging socialist fervor—the part of himself that McLeod says remains hopeful as the “machine” grows bigger—and his devotion to the older, wiser man allows McLeod the grace to transmit, as McLeod says, “the intellectual conclusions of my life, and thus give dignity to my experience.”

Rather than offer final solutions to their protagonists’ inner war, the authors deny us the complacency of closure and provoke us to debate the struggle of conscience within ourselves. Like their characters, we are positioned in between what Lovett calls an “antipathetic past and a moot future.” The futility of Lannie Madison in ''Barbary Shore'' reminds us of Mailer’s warning in ''Why Are We at War'' that “Freedom has to be kept alive everyday of our{{pg|455|456}}

existence, because we can all be swallowed by our misery . . . become weary, give up.” Evoking the gas chambers of World War II, Madison calls McLeod and Lovett fools for continuing to believe in a better world, concluding “there’s no new world to make, for the world devours.” All the characters of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' and ''Barbary Shore'' are in fact broken in various ways and prone to defeatism. “Vast armies,” McCloud says, continue to mount themselves toward endless war. Yet it is Jordan’s and McLeod/Lovett’s mutual existential faith in life as a process of becoming that sustains their belief in a saner, more orderly world.

Jordan knows that he must make difficult moral choices that are always subjective and personal, what Kierkegaard calls the existentialist’s “earnestness.” He hates to leave this world but determines it is one worth sacrificing and even dying for.{{efn|Contrary to this existential reading, Vernon suggests that by contriving to be killed, Jordan assumes an inauthentic pose, relieving himself of the necessity of further choice-making. The most original and startling aspect of Vernon’s hypothesis is that compounding the toll of multiple wars, the author’s emasculating gender insecurities contribute to the author’s death wish, the “suicidal sub-text” motivating both ''A Farewell to Arms'' and ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''. Rather than be “dragged reluctantly into fatherhood,” Henry and Jordan commit suicide to avoid the complications of family life and “domestic entrapment” from which the Hemingway hero has always been in flight. Vernon cites Gerry Brenner’s view that Henry commits suicide after he finishes narrating his story. Neither protagonist’s relationships, Vernon says, will ever “fall prey to babies, nor to finances nor the numbing effect of ordinary life.” In this vein Vernon disputes the conventional view of the novel’s ending as ennobling. Citing Mussolini’s definition of fascism as a belief in “holiness and heroism,” Vernon suggests that Jordan’s death not only removes him from actual social obligations, allowing him to avoid family life and all it might involve and symbolize, but ironically has a fascist tint to it. It follows that rather than redemptive, Jordan’s relationship with Maria also has fascist implications, confirming a traditional gender hierarchy that undermines the cause of freedom and independence for which Jordan fights. The overthrow of the class system, Vernon posits, should mean the end of the patriarchal system as well. Jordan’s voice “eclipses Maria’s, excludes hers, silences hers,” as he satisfies his own psychic needs. Though he suggests that Hemingway is warning the reader against accepting Jordan’s “self-serving perspectives,” Vernon is never timid about critiquing Hemingway’s personal morality, objecting, for instance, to the author’s “fetishing” of the “primitive” and “romanticizing” of Maria’s erotic albeit spiritual animality. Vernon concludes this lucid, provocative study by asserting that connecting Henry’s and Jordan’s gender and sexual anxieties with their suicidal natures is only a hypothesis, agreeing with Thomas Strychacz and Allen Josephs that Hemingway’s complex aesthetics require that we no more insist on one reading of this richly problematic text than another. 

If I may venture an advertisement for myself, considering the turbulence of Mailer and Hemingway’s work and inner life, along with Kurt Vonnegut’s as the scene of constant warfare, Vernon’s reference to Paul Fussel’s line, “My war is synonymous with my life” would have made the ideal prescript for my forthcoming study of Hemingway: ''Vonnegut and Hemingway: Writers at War'' (U. of South Carolina Press, 2011).}} In turn, McLeod declares that he depends upon “potentiality” that possibilities are limited only by the human mind. Despite that McLeod dies (like Jordan), in the words he scribbles at the bottom of his will he bequeaths to Lovett what the newborn writer calls the “rudiments of selfless friendship, the heritage of love and sacrifice” Jordan passes on to Maria: “And may he be alive to see the rising of the Phoenix.” As a free man, virtually without a social or economic past, Lovett may author his own identity, which as narrator of Mailer’s story is exactly what he does.

=== Notes ===

{{notelist}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tolls of War: Mailerian Sub-Texts in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''}}
[[Category:Book Reviews (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tolls of War: Mailerian Sub-Texts in For Whom the Bell Tolls

2025-04-13T03:03:45Z

Kamyers: added last pages

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/Tolls of War: Mailerian Sub-Texts in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''}}
{{Working}}
{{MR05}}
{{BookReview
| title = Hemingway’s SecondWar: Bearing Witness to the Spanish CivilWar | author = Alex Vernon
| location = Iowa City
| pub = University of Iowa Pres
| date = 2011
| pages = 323 pp.
| type = Paperback
| price = 29.95
| first = Lawrence R.
| last = Broer
| link = }}

{{dc|dc=A|t a party for Norman Mailer,}} I pried the author away from a covey of adoring coeds long enough to ask him how he thought Hemingway, notoriously disdainful of politics, would have responded to his protégé’s turn from straight fiction to the new journalism of ''Armies of the Night'' and ''Of a Fire on the Moon''. I was teaching both books and hoped to return to class armed with personal, invigorating insights from the author himself. Clearly annoyed at the distraction, Mailer replied, “What does it matter?”

Had I struck a nerve? Despite my enthusiasm for both writers, did Mailer interpret my remark as implied criticism? Never mind, if only indirectly, Alex Vernon’s lively and carefully researched study of Hemingway’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War reminds us of the political sophistication of both writers. Moreover, in Vernon’s discussion of the way Hemingway’s personal experience as a war correspondent fed and shaped the writing of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', we see Hemingway anticipating the New Journalism Mailer perfected—their mutual recognition of the fictional possibilities of and strategies for merging fact and fiction. Showing us how Hemingway’s {{pg|451|452}}

dispatches verge on becoming stories, how, for instance, he employs the second person as a way of bringing the reader along for the ride, Vernon accentuates the nature of literary truth both writers were after. Vernon describes Mailer and Hemingway as writers committed to “eye-witness” standards, yet journalistic writing whose “essence” is “not information” but personal truth, “optimistic, heroic, human interest work.”

Vernon’s discourse unfolds in three parts: discussions of Hemingway’s early participation as war correspondent, his contributions to the Republican documentaries “Spain in Flames” and “The Spanish Earth,” and Hemingway’s evolved, more critical thinking about the war and the Spanish people as portrayed in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''. It is toward the latter that all else builds that constitutes Vernon’s main achievement. Much of what Vernon tells us in the early chapters is well known.{{efn|Vernon’s scholarship is prodigious and adroitly employed to bolster or to offer critical counterpoint to his own interpretation of the cunningly problematic moral issues of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''. As a companion text to the war in general, I suggest the variety of critical perspectives in John Beals Romeiser’s earlier, multifaceted study, ''Red Flags, Black Flags: Critical Essays on the Literature of the Spanish Civil War (Madrid, Scripta Humanistica, 1982)''. Referring as they do to over 800 novels written from 1936 to the present, these essays attest to the extraordinary attraction the war has had for writers worldwide. The painful question these writers ask returns us immediately and in even a more broadly informed way to Vernon’s book and to ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'': how in such a fratricidal, bloody, and agonizing war, Spaniards could have come to such extremes. Vernon has it right: “the analysis of it is never done.” In my own discussion of the war in ''Hemingway’s Spanish Tragedy'' (U. of Alabama Press, 1973), I discuss the way Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset and other prominent critics of Spanish culture explain the internal struggle taking place within the mind and heart of the Spaniard—a belligerent independence and aversion to authority and order that predetermined the tragic consequence of the war.}} But his examples of Hemingway’s famous understated style in the author’s reports to NANA, the North American Newspaper Alliance, “paradoxically objective and subjective,” show us how the demands of reporting and Hemingway’s fictional gifts work as one: pithy, incongruous juxtapositions that highlight the grotesqueness of battle—soldiers so mutilated “they did not rate stretchers,” a decaying corpse whose left arm hangs “stiffly in air as if even in death he tried to make fascist salute,” an old woman returning home from market, “one leg suddenly detached whirling against the wall of an adjoining house,” a driver lurching from his motor car, “his scalp hanging down over his eyes, to sit down on the sidewalk.” Hemingway’s stark, unsentimental prose shocks us with horrors in the midst of the commonplace, even, Vernon says, “seeing beauty where one shouldn’t.” It challenges us “as gruesome photographs do, our repulsion to the obscene violence clashing with our appreciation of its perfected expression.”

Central to Hemingway’s intentions in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', Vernon focuses on ways the journalism anticipates and explains the humanity and art of the author’s Spanish novel. Eschewing easy dualisms, Hemingway’s consistent reporting of the war as brutal and savage on both sides reflects his respect and sympathy for the common soldier, regardless of allegiance. Despite his fervent support of the Republican cause, Hemingway’s portrayals of the suffering and even the heroism of Franco’s fascists are no less admiring than those of the Republican fallen. He wishes somebody would turn over the bodies of the working-class and poor Italian infantry who died fighting for the wrong cause, to face and commune with mother earth, the source of{{pg|452|453}}

their lives and of their true allegiance. In ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', Jordan recognizes that the absurdity of war requires killing people labeled “enemy” that one otherwise might befriend, divided only by arbitrary political alignments. Andres reasons that if his father had not been a Republican, both he and his brother would be soldiers now with the fascists. Anselmo observes about the Fascists at the bridge, “I have watched them all day and they are the same as we are.”

While both the journalism and the fiction stress the general inhumanity of war, Vernon credibly argues that understanding their difference illustrates not only the process of invention that transforms fact to fiction, but indicates marked moral growth on the author’s part. While history and ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' tell us that Republican soldiers were as guilty of cruelty and brutality as their fascist counterparts, Vernon explains that Hemingway’s commitment to the Republican cause was so profoundly deep and personal that his journalistic accounts become not only deceptively optimistic but hyperbolic in their support. Like Mailer’s Marxist theorist, William McCloud in ''Barbary Shore'', Hemingway/Jordan believe that the war in Spain was a battle for civilization itself, the point on which the future of the human race might turn, and that winning the war there might prevent the war to come. Citing the following example as a synecdoche for Hemingway’s “running optimistic commentary” on the entire war, Vernon refers to Hemingway’s report about a battle certain to be lost: “Today, you see the extent and seriousness of the Government resistance. It is not over yet by a long shot, and one thing that has been learned in this Spanish war is that anything can happen and the experts are always wrong.” Vernon concludes that what in his pro-loyalist dispatches and essays Hemingway truly understood about Republican betrayals and atrocities, and to what extent he might have turned to a more truthful cynicism, is a question for the ages. Neither is it possible, Vernon says, to determine the extent of the author’s “blind acceptance” of the Republican, and sometimes the Comintern line, versus the deep insight and pragmatism of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''.

What we know for certain about Hemingway’s more evolved and honest political thinking in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' constitutes the most telling way the journalism bears on the fiction of both Hemingway and Mailer. While much of James Brookfield’s 2009 overview of Mailer’s work reflects a woefully superficial view of Mailer’s literary gifts in general and his late work in particular, his praise of ''Barbary Shore'' evokes Vernon’s primary argument in {{pg|453|454}}

''Hemingway’s Second War''. Referring to the Stalinist agent McLeod’s apologia for his political crimes during the Spanish Civil War, Brookfield observes that Mailer seriously addresses one of the most complex political phenomena of the modern world—the emergence of Stalinism, and the tragic schism in the minds of thinking people like William McLeod and Hemingway’s Robert Jordan—torn between hopes for socialist reforms and the evolving barbarism of Russian political oppression. Brookfield evokes the agonizing inner war of both men when he wonders about the intense toll communism’s contradictions took on so many who began their literary careers as idealistic people, “grappling” from the point of view of optimism born of socialist ideals, and bitter disappointment at its failures. Though unlike McLeod, Jordan claims not to be a real Marxist, yet he understands its dialectics well, and like the narrator of ''Barbary Shore'', Mikey Lovett, he sympathizes with its capitalistic critique and humanitarian goals. As well, Jordan argues that the communists offer the “best discipline and the soundest and sanest for the prosecution of the war.” {{efn|For an excellent discussion of the factual account of both writers’ relationship to Soviet Russia, see Victor Peppard’s “Hemingway, Mailer, and the ‘Reds.’” (''The Mailer Review'', Fall 2010).}}

McLeod’s faith in the socialist ideals for which the war was fought registers when he says, “It is my hope that a revolutionary determination, the life of which has never been seen before will sweep the earth, and these theses, difficult, recondite, and often incomprehensible, will match the experience of even the most inarticulate peasant, so that the socialist theorist will once again find language to reach the many.” If Jordan is less politically doctrinaire than McLeod, and certainly less garrulous, his hope for universal brotherhood, his commitment to the struggle for freedom and equality in Spain prove equally strong: He tells himself, “This ideal gave you a part in something you could believe in wholly and completely and in which you felt an absolute brotherhood with the others who were engaged in it. It was something that you have never known before but that you had experienced now and you gave such importance to it and the reason for it that your own death seemed of complete unimportance.”

Ultimately, the failure of the wider human community McLeod and Jordan seek produces heartbreak and despair—the “toll” of which Brookfield speaks, the main subject of Vernon’s book, and the primary drama of ''Barbary Shore'' and ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''. Reflective of what Vernon calls the Republic’s history of “internal dysfunction,” the fractious acrimony and discord inside McLeod’s boarding house and Jordan’s mountain cave mirror the larger disharmony of temperamental, cultural, and political differences that dooms{{pg|454|455}}

the Civil War from the start, and that makes prospects for universal order and peace seem increasingly remote and naïve. Divided painfully by their own doubt, as McLeod puts it, Mailer and Hemingway’s failed, despairing idealists face a similar crisis of faith: the effort to remain hopeful and loyal to dreams of freedom and equality, “love for every man our brother,” versus feelings of defeat born of the divisive selfishness and disunity of those around them that augur the futility of the struggle. What results are extreme mental suffering and feelings of guilt, and the agonizing conflict of warring forces—cynicism and withdrawal versus love and engagement—that creates the powerful source of tension within both protagonists.{{efn|Vernon suggests that in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', it is far more than the complexities of the Spanish Civil War to which Hemingway bears witness. Drawing from psycho-sexual studies by Mark Spilka, Carl Eby, Debra Moddelmog, and Kenneth Lynn, Vernon’s concluding chapters, “Pilar and Maria,” and From “Frederic Henry to Robert Jordan” extend these critics’ argument that Henry’s and Jordan’s gender and sexual anxieties constitute the deepest, most personal and guarded part of the author’s famous iceberg. Reading Henry and Jordan’s feminine or androgynous feelings together, Vernon sees Hemingway seeking release from the strict gender boundaries of his conventional Oak Park upbringing, exploring buried homoerotic and incestuous desires that anticipate the taboo gender games of ''The Garden of Eden''.}}

When Vernon says it is as if Hemingway were battling his own “conscience,” he identifies both Jordan’s inner war and the special, even allegorical relationship of McLeod and his novelist socialist apprentice, William Lovett, a version of McLeod’s younger self McLeod calls “conscience.” Lovett senses McCloud across the hall staring at the ceiling as he does and dreaming his dreams. Just as within the psychic interplay of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', Jordan’s more honest, self-critical, and hopeful self battles fatalism, an unnerving authoritarian manner, and proclivities to violence he feels he will have to atone for later, McLeod exists as a father-confessor figure to Lovett, from whom Lovett can always expect an honest response, whose kindly solicitations help Lovett heal psychic war wounds, fortify his idealism, sharpen his thinking, and encourage his work—the self-begetting novel we are reading. The more McLeod speaks of mental, moral and physical crimes of war that he shares with Lovett, the more Lovett remembers his own concealed transgressions. The analytical McLeod instructs Lovett in negotiating the space between “personal desire” and “political possibility.” In turn Lovett listens to McLeod’s own sins, rekindles McLeod’s flagging socialist fervor—the part of himself that McLeod says remains hopeful as the “machine” grows bigger—and his devotion to the older, wiser man allows McLeod the grace to transmit, as McLeod says, “the intellectual conclusions of my life, and thus give dignity to my experience.”

Rather than offer final solutions to their protagonists’ inner war, the authors deny us the complacency of closure and provoke us to debate the struggle of conscience within ourselves. Like their characters, we are positioned in between what Lovett calls an “antipathetic past and a moot future.” The futility of Lannie Madison in ''Barbary Shore'' reminds us of Mailer’s warning in ''Why Are We at War'' that “Freedom has to be kept alive everyday of our{{pg|455|456}}

existence, because we can all be swallowed by our misery . . . become weary, give up.” Evoking the gas chambers of World War II, Madison calls McLeod and Lovett fools for continuing to believe in a better world, concluding “there’s no new world to make, for the world devours.” All the characters of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' and ''Barbary Shore'' are in fact broken in various ways and prone to defeatism. “Vast armies,” McCloud says, continue to mount themselves toward endless war. Yet it is Jordan’s and McLeod/Lovett’s mutual existential faith in life as a process of becoming that sustains their belief in a saner, more orderly world.

Jordan knows that he must make difficult moral choices that are always subjective and personal, what Kierkegaard calls the existentialist’s “earnestness.” He hates to leave this world but determines it is one worth sacrificing and even dying for.{{efn|Contrary to this existential reading, Vernon suggests that by contriving to be killed, Jordan assumes an inauthentic pose, relieving himself of the necessity of further choice-making. The most original and startling aspect of Vernon’s hypothesis is that compounding the toll of multiple wars, the author’s emasculating gender insecurities contribute to the author’s death wish, the “suicidal sub-text” motivating both ''A Farewell to Arms'' and ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''. Rather than be “dragged reluctantly into fatherhood,” Henry and Jordan commit suicide to avoid the complications of family life and “domestic entrapment” from which the Hemingway hero has always been in flight. Vernon cites Gerry Brenner’s view that Henry commits suicide after he finishes narrating his story. Neither protagonist’s relationships, Vernon says, will ever “fall prey to babies, nor to finances nor the numbing effect of ordinary life.” In this vein Vernon disputes the conventional view of the novel’s ending as ennobling. Citing Mussolini’s definition of fascism as a belief in “holiness and heroism,” Vernon suggests that Jordan’s death not only removes him from actual social obligations, allowing him to avoid family life and all it might involve and symbolize, but ironically has a fascist tint to it. It follows that rather than redemptive, Jordan’s relationship with Maria also has fascist implications, confirming a traditional gender hierarchy that undermines the cause of freedom and independence for which Jordan fights. The overthrow of the class system, Vernon posits, should mean the end of the patriarchal system as well. Jordan’s voice “eclipses Maria’s, excludes hers, silences hers,” as he satisfies his own psychic needs. Though he suggests that Hemingway is warning the reader against accepting Jordan’s “self-serving perspectives,” Vernon is never timid about critiquing Hemingway’s personal morality, objecting, for instance, to the author’s “fetishing” of the “primitive” and “romanticizing” of Maria’s erotic albeit spiritual animality. Vernon concludes this lucid, provocative study by asserting that connecting Henry’s and Jordan’s gender and sexual anxieties with their suicidal natures is only a hypothesis, agreeing with Thomas Strychacz and Allen Josephs that Hemingway’s complex aesthetics require that we no more insist on one reading of this richly problematic text than another. 

If I may venture an advertisement for myself, considering the turbulence of Mailer and Hemingway’s work and inner life, along with Kurt Vonnegut’s as the scene of constant warfare, Vernon’s reference to Paul Fussel’s line, “My war is synonymous with my life” would have made the ideal prescript for my forthcoming study of Hemingway: ''Vonnegut and Hemingway: Writers at War'' (U. of South Carolina Press, 2011).}} In turn, McLeod declares that he depends upon “potentiality” that possibilities are limited only by the human mind. Despite that McLeod dies (like Jordan), in the words he scribbles at the bottom of his will he bequeaths to Lovett what the newborn writer calls the “rudiments of selfless friendship, the heritage of love and sacrifice” Jordan passes on to Maria: “And may he be alive to see the rising of the Phoenix.” As a free man, virtually without a social or economic past, Lovett may author his own identity, which as narrator of Mailer’s story is exactly what he does.

=== Notes ===

{{notelist}}

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tolls of War: Mailerian Sub-Texts in For Whom the Bell Tolls

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Kamyers: added another page and Notes

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tolls of War: Mailerian Sub-Texts in For Whom the Bell Tolls

2025-04-13T01:42:00Z

Kamyers: added book review box and first page

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Trust

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Kamyers: Added review, Sort, and Category

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
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{{Byline|last=Cetrano|first=Sal|url=}}

In front of my set, I am the black hood, 
The obliging executioner, ''real'' justice. 
The talking heads all ask for my pity, as if 
Anyone really believed their do-good 
Crap, this electronic absolution; 
But I have spent a gray day, shedding gray blood, 
Watching prideless scum pissing in train stations, 
And know hawks from handjobs when the light’s good.

My set tells me the day’s atrocities: 
With door expensively buttressed, it can name names, 
Show smirking punk faces, keep score of these grim games. 
Chewing through each mea culpa, each gristly plea 
By the latest crud’s milk-fed amicus, 
I pass bitter judgment with dessert and coffee. 
A fair man, only lately cruel, I put my trust 
In this: flick a switch, and the horror dies. 

My first visit to the Colony, two years back, was made with some apprehension: might things have changed, been rudely moved about, eliminated? Had the precious feel of the place, wrought of singular 
moments like pearls strung through time, been lost?

Doing my best Inspector General from basement to aerie, it was gratifying to see that it had not. Flocked wall, lush linen, canvasses of Mailer women: everywhere, Norris’s artist’s eye warmly abides. {{pg|470|471}}

Most personally gratifying, though, was the small study/TV room just off the kitchen, where he kept his current reading matter on a small table by that beat-up easy chair. Still clearly at hand were copies of some of the journals I’d religiously sent him over the years, bookmarked at my pieces. Hard by, there were several issues of ''Poetry'', of Chicago.

That ''also'' made me smile.

While claiming any influence at all over a whirlwind like Norman might seem uppity, I ''do'' take substantial credit for his increased interest in verse over the last several years of his life. Whether or not it was simply kind indulgence, Norman had always taken my efforts and sensibilities as a poet seriously. Many are the Mailerites who showed up for Norman’s readings. Norman actually showed up for one of ''mine''.

But I digress.

It must have been nine or ten years ago—I can’t place it exactly. It was a sticky July night, shrouds of mist roiling in off the water, the harbor lights vague suggestions. Norris, as was her fashion, cleaned up quickly after dinner and made herself scarce, safe from a further source of hot air. Norris understood how the anticipation of these summer talks with ''hisself'' fueled me through the classroom doldrums of winter. As kind as she was lovely, she always left us alone.

We settled in at the snug bar, he behind and I before, and my host set out a pair of heavy cut glass tumblers, followed by a bottle of single-malt Scotch. In baggy denim shirt and under white poll, the old man before me looked more Santa Claus than O’Neillian barkeep, but even at an advanced age, Norman could drink me under the table and halfway into the basement. I ritually grieved for all the gems I’d forget by morning.

Late the previous afternoon, a prankish Norman, with a simple “This is my old friend Bob—I’m sure you two will find plenty to talk about,” had introduced me to Harvard’s renowned Dr. Robert Lifton, then disappeared upstairs. For all I knew, the affable, shaggy-haired man in weathered overalls before me could have been an unhung horse thief from the next county. But, as with most of Norman’s little jokes, this one turned out well. Lifton {{pg|471|472}}

and I hit it off famously, even wound up exchanging letters, and the conversation at the table had positively crackled.

This next evening, then, Norman was in high spirits, that indefinite urgency of his outpouring as he splashed two fingers into each of the glasses.

It started quickly: Norman the ringmaster.

“So tell me . . . ” he intoned, smile billboarding his face, “''you’re'' a poet . . . ”

At this I was ready to cash in and go home, but as my drink was fresh, I
lingered, and struggled to look sufficiently rhythmic.

He continued: “Lately I’ve been reading more poetry.” The keen eyes narrowed, brows bristling like sea urchins. “Getting into it.” He pursed his lips in emphasis. “But I’m all over the place.”

Norman, I knew, prospered from a habit he passed on to me, among others—that of putting in a short period of quality reading before attempting to write, juicing yourself on someone’s excellence. Usually it was prose, Simenon or Roth.

Now he apparently felt a fresh hunger. Taking a sip, composing himself, Norman came to the point: what single journal might he depend upon to give him the best picture of what now constituted contemporary style? After all, he was a busy man!

Having by then collected a few hundred issues of the flagstaff publication, I recommended ''Poetry'' of Chicago, explaining its long history and generally formalist bent. Since Norman’s taste in poetry, as far as I could suss it, was fairly populist—the kind of thing that might have set fingers to popping back in the days of bongo fever, or later given semi-literate young radicals illusions of gravity at places like the ''Nuyorican Café''. I rather doubted that he’d pursue the matter, but he did.

First, I sent him a few issues, then by the next summer and in subsequent visits, I noticed more and more issues of ''Poetry'' about the place, well fin-{{pg|472|473}}

gered and kept close by. When he started to scribble verse again, it came as no surprise.

But back to the story . . . .

The recommendation had flowered into a discussion of “voice” in verse as distinct from that in the novel, what Ginsberg referred to as “the vibrating plane.” This floundered. It was one thing to compare and discuss, as often Norman had, say, Hemingway’s simplicity with the prolixity of Updike, but few novelists go far in exploring the weightless possibilities of the lyrical line. No matter how I struggled, though, I couldn’t make myself clear. Frustrated, I suggested that if my host had a tad more music in his life, perhaps he’d understand.

Norman gave a little mock-guilt pout, paused a moment, shoulders bunched, then suddenly brightened, as if at something remembered. Whether or not it was the word “voice” echoing late in the great man’s mind, out of deep left field he says: “So, what about this Dylan fellow—is he any
''good''?”

While it would require instruments yet unknown to science to record my dumb-founding at this, I nonetheless managed the deft riposte: “You mean ''Bob'' Dylan?!” He nodded, retreating to a poker face at my wonder.

“You’re kidding . . . ” I stammered. “You, president of PEN, champion of the word, and you don’t appreciate ''Dylan''?”

Years later, I found out that Dylan had shown up at a party of Norman’s, barely noticed him, and left Norman, ergo, feeling slighted, ala his oft-told Reagan-didn’t-love-me-at-that-dinner-party story. Here’s Norman, quintessential Duke of his Domain, and Dylan hasn’t gotten the memo—a situation comedy for the gods! ''Now'', of course, it’s amusing, but then . . . .

Ever a beacon to the perplexed, I fortified myself with a swallow and undertook the unlikely mission of using Bob Dylan to drive home a poetic explanation I’d booted the first time around. {{pg|473|474}}

Norman and I had at least one poet acquaintance—his bond surely longer and deeper than mine—in common: Ginsberg, so I tried to use Norman’s familiarity with the cadences of ''Howl’s'' creator as a bridge between the distant shores of Whitman’s measured flow and the tracer-bullet delivery of Dylan and the later puerile derivative of rap.

Careful not to turn this short-cut to a dead end, the high school teacher
on his second drink bloviated thusly:

When Allen in ''Howl'' famously declares his intention “to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose,” he is essentially carrying on the business of Whitman, who as a young man had come away affected from a lecture in which Emerson had called for an American voice unique and distinctive to the breadth and audacity of the New World experience. He is credited endlessly, even mawkishly, with adjusting poetic sensibility to a longer narrative line, as well as democratizing its voice and subject matter; but though both sang truth to their instincts, it is nonetheless left to Ginsberg to realize the incantational gusto of song.

“Once you cross ''that'' bridge,” I proferred, lacing my fingers accordingly, “you’ve got your boy Dylan.” With that as the premise, Norman got the bit. The rest of the evening, what I can recall of it, went well. You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.

A week later, following up with crusader zeal, I provided Norman with a Dylan mix CD, but as Norris often reminded me, much of what Norman requested on impulse wound up fortifying the Provincetown landfill.

The fun, don’t you know, is in the trying: Grow or pay more for remaining the same.

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Trust}}
[[Category:Poetry (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Trust

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Kamyers: added last pages

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Trust

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Kamyers: added page

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Trust

2025-04-13T00:25:52Z

Kamyers: Added page

User:Kamyers/sandbox

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Kamyers: cleaned out sandbox

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Sparring with Norman

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Kamyers: Added article

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{{Byline|last=Jacomo|first=Thomas |abstract=A confidant of Norman Mailer recounts his experiences with Mailer over many years. |note=Thomas Jacomo was a longtime friend of Norman Mailer. As executive director of the Washington Palm restaurant, he knows everyone of any importance or self-perceived importance and presides over perhaps the main, nonpartisan power meeting spot in the nation’s capital. |url=}}

{{dc|dc=I|t was around 1970 or 1971.}} I was running a hotel in Manchester, Vermont, called the Avalanche Motor Lodge. Nearby was a nightclub called The Roundhouse. People knew I was a big boxing fan and told me Jose Torres, the light heavyweight champion of the world, was over there. So of course I ran across the street.

I was young, full of piss and vinegar, and I ended up sparring with Torres, kidding around with him, and he says, “I want you to meet my friend Norman Mailer.” I didn't know who he was, but Jose says, “We’ve got a ring set up at Norman’s house over here. Why don’t you go a couple of rounds with him?”

So I said, “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

Jose was hanging around with Norman, who was teaching him how to write. Jose was writing a book called ''Sting Like a Bee: the Muhammad Ali Story''.

I go over to Norman’s house. Sure enough, he has a regular ring set up there—gloves, headgear—and I think, ''What am I getting myself into?'' Also, he outweighed me by about twenty-five pounds.

I get into the ring. Bing, bing, bing—we fought on and off for two or three weeks. We never really hurt each other. In fact, he made a rule a couple of years later that we’re never going to hurt each other, although I did give him a couple of good shots. {{pg|393|394}}

Norman was a boxing fanatic. He got an offer to do the ''Dick Cavett Show'' in New York, which was a very big deal then. Norman and Jose were going to get in the ring and spar a couple of rounds on the show. I was Norman’s second and Jose had a friend of his as his second in the ring.

I’m teasing Norman, saying, “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you? Jose’s going to get in the ring. He’s going to see the lights, he’s going to snap and think he’s in a real fight and knock you out.”

Norman said, “Nah, nah, he won’t.”

We practice a long time in the back of my restaurant. I’m instructing him and raising my elbow to demonstrate how to block punches and I say, “Hit him here! Make it sound good!”

After all the rehearsal, we get to New York for the show and I’m in Norman’s corner. Jose throws a left hook to the body. Norman’s supposed to have his elbow over here to block it. He lifts his elbow and gets hit right in the gut. I hear the wind come out of Norman and I think, ''Oh my God, he’s going to fall down, right on national television!''

I start yelling to Jose in Italian so no one else will know what I’m saying,
“''Aspetti! Piano! Piano!''”—Stop! Easy! Easy! But he’s Puerto Rican, he speaks Spanish, and doesn’t know what I’m saying.

But we survived that night and went up to Gus D’Amato’s apartment to watch it on TV. And that was one of the most exciting nights Norman and I ever had.

Another time we were up in Vermont. Norman was crazy: he decides we’re going to go hiking and boating with his kids on a lake. The water’s one inch from coming into the boat and I say, “Norman, I hate to tell you this, but I can’t swim.”

“Tom,” he says, “Don’t worry. If the boat goes over, you hang onto it. I’ll rescue the kids and take them to the shore and I’ll come back and get you.”

I said, “F-that! Take me back to the shore first; the kids can swim.”

{{* * *}}

I was a pretty hot dog skier and one day Norman tells me, “My son
Michael wants to learn how to ski.” He was about seven or eight.

I said, “Okay. I’ll take the afternoon and give Michael a few lessons.” And the old joke was, ''Bend your knees, look out for the trees, twenty dollars, please.''
That was a private ski lesson up there.{{pg|394|395}}

So I’m teaching Michael how to ski. He caught on pretty quickly, so I left
him alone for a while to practice.

That night, Norman’s supposed to be at my house for a spaghetti dinner.
I’m sitting there waiting for him . . . waiting for him . . . .

Finally the phone rings. It’s Norman. “I’m just coming back from the hospital. Michael’s just broken his leg.”

That was the end of my ski instructor career.

{{* * *}}

The other great story—I’d just broken up with my girlfriend and my heart
was broken.

I was playing ping-pong with Norman at my hotel. He's been married six
times, so I say to him, “How do you get over the hurt and the pain?”

Norman says, “Tom, once you get through the flesh, down to the bone, it doesn't hurt anymore.”

I said, “Ooh, great advice, Norman. Thanks a lot.”

{{* * *}}

I miss a lot of things about Norman Mailer. What I miss most is his intelligence. He was the smartest man I ever spoke to in my entire life. He analyzed everything. Nothing just went by him.

Despite what a lot of people said, he wasn’t tough at all. He had a heart
of gold. Any time I needed anything, he was always there for me.

And he liked to laugh. I made him laugh.

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sparring with Norman}}
[[Category:Miscellany (MR)]]

User:Kamyers/sandbox

2025-04-11T23:41:30Z

Kamyers: added Review, Sort, and Category, deleted old article

User talk:Grlucas

2025-04-08T17:42:19Z

Kamyers: Added note about Norris Church Mailer remediation

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

== Final edits ==

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)

== 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)

== 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)

== 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

== 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

== 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)

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norris Church Mailer

2025-04-08T17:39:49Z

Kamyers: Added Review, Sort, and Category

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}
{{MR04}} 

{{Byline|last=Fox|first=Sue |abstract=An interview with Norris Church Mailer discussing her relationship with Norman Mailer. |note=This interview took place on January 18, 2010 in the Mailer Brooklyn Heights home. |url=}}

{{dc|dc=O|n the face of it, a twenty-six-year-old high school art teacher}} raised by strict Arkansas Baptists whose grandparents were sharecroppers and muleskinners, and America’s wildest literary lion—at 52, already a year older than her father—with seven children, five failed marriages and other affairs in his wake—didn’t have much going for it. But who is anyone to judge? Men and women with no obvious link in their culture, backgrounds or achievements are drawn to one another and the alchemy works. Norris Church Mailer and Norman Mailer were one of those couples. Apart from their cultural mismatch and age difference, in her platform soles, the strikingly beautiful, willowy five-foot-ten redhead, towered above Mailer, who was barely five-foot-eight.

Their love affair—painful and stormy as it sometimes was—endured until the day Mailer died—November 10, 2007. He was eighty-four. Norris, who shared the same birthday as her more famous husband, January 31, is sixty-one. As she says,

{{quote|“We were together thirty-three years, which by any measure is a long marriage. Every love story has its ups and downs and we certainly had ours, but I would say it was one of the great love stories. When you think about it, the two of us were kind of impossible. Norman and his wives sounded a bit like Henry VIII. Nobody would have put our two characters in a novel and imagined that the sixth wife would be the big love story.”}} {{pg|495|496}}

Except that, deep in her heart, Norris knew that the barrel-chested, blue-eyed Jewish intellectual heavyweight—one of the great voices of post—war American literature-loved her more than he had ever loved anyone. She writes about it in her memoir.

{{quote|“Through the years, no matter the circumstances of our passions and rages, our boredoms, angers and betrayals, large and small, sex was the chord that bound us together; it was the thick wire woven from thousands of shared experiences that never broke, indeed was hardly frayed and only got stronger, no matter how the bonds of marriage were tested. Even in the worst times we had many years later, when we almost separated, somehow, inexplicably, at night we would cling to each other, drawn like powerful magnets, the familiarity of our bodies putting salve on the wounds we had inflicted during the day, until over time the warring ended and the love remained. The only thing that brought it to an end was old age, illness and death itself.”}}

Norris believes that she and Norman stayed together “Because we really loved each other. We loved our kids, we loved our life and we were comfortable with each other. There were dark places and Norman’s philandering hurt me. We sparred but we also laughed a lot. In the end, nothing was ever powerful enough to tear our marriage apart.”

She writes about the rude people: “and there are way too many rude people in this world asking her ‘Which wife are ''you?''’” Never for a moment did she doubt her short although possibly not sweet answer: “The last one.”

Love him or hate him, no one ever sat on the fence when it came to Norman Mailer, perhaps the most pugnacious writer of his generation. In 1948, his first partly autobiographical novel, ''The Naked and The Dead'', brought him fame and huge public acclaim. He was twenty-five years old. Over the next six decades, center stage, he published more than thirty books, including novels and non-fiction on subjects as disparate as Mohammed Ali and Marilyn Monroe. He twice won the Pulitzer Prize, for ''Armies of the Night'' (1968) and ''The Executioner’s Song'' (1979). Mailer wrote essays as well as writing, directing and occasionally, acting in low-budget movies. He helped found ''The Village Voice'' magazine. He was a regular and highly opinionated guest on TV talk shows who actively sought publicity and public attention.{{pg|496|497}}

Mailer once ran for Mayor of New York. He was an anti-war protester, an opponent of women’s liberation, and a man who railed against the evils of plastic. He railed against many things and, no mean boxer, could pick a fight at the least provocation. He stabbed his second wife, Adele. Gore Vidal frequently argued with him. In 1984, Mailer wrote asking Vidal to end their feud, inviting him to help raise money for a PEN World Congress by joining an impressive list of writers including John Updike, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bill Styron, Arthur Miller, William Buckley, Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer. Vidal chose to share an evening with Mailer who, throughout his life, was a great supporter of PEN. According to Norris, “He was also a great supporter of aspiring writers, replying to letters with encouraging words and sending manuscripts to agents. I used to call Norman, ‘Henry Higgins.’ He was always trying to take someone and make them into someone wonderful. He liked it when one of them succeeded and was generous with his time and advice.”

In the ICU at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, a nurse mentioned to Mailer that she liked to write. Norman told her to write about her weekend, then went through each typed page with her line by line. As Norris recounts,

{{quote|“Norman used to say that if we had money he would have liked to start a school for writers. But with nine children (When she first met Mailer, Norris had been divorced for a year, and already had three-year-old Matthew. Their son John Buffalo, was born in April of 1978), money was tight. Norman worked very hard to run our enormous family—especially the time when we had six children in private school.”}}

One of the darkest times in the Mailer marriage was when Jack Abbott came into their lives. Norman was writing a book (''The Executioner’s Song'') about a murderer, Gary Gilmore, who was executed in 1977. Jack Henry Abbot wrote to Mailer from prison. He had a history of violence and had killed an inmate. His letter was well written, useful for the book, and they began corresponding. Mailer told Abbott that he thought the correspondence would make an interesting book and his publisher took on the project. Then Abbott was granted parole. Norris had no idea that Norman had committed himself to helping Abbott until the night he announced that he was off to pick him up from the airport and bring him home to dinner.{{pg|497|498}}

According to Norris, “John Buffalo was not yet three. It was a scary time.
The most scary thing was Norman’s lapse of realism. He genuinely thought [that] talent would override everything—that with his book—Jack would be transformed. But a psychopath, even one who has written a decent book, is still a psychopath. That was Norman—idealist and optimist who woke up to a new world every day.”

In May 2007, I went to see Mailer in Provincetown. It was six months before he died. Physically frail, he was combative and thrilling company. I told him that I had once worked in Cuba with a photographer to find Gregory Fuentes who had known Ernest Hemingway and was featured in his novel ''The Old Man and The Sea''. Norman was amused to hear that we found Fuentes who, wheelchair bound, was wheeled out for tourists by his grandson. Just like Mailer, Fuentes had his life etched into his face. For $5 we could kiss Fuentes and take a photograph. As I left, “I joked to Norman, I’m going to kiss you good bye but I’m not giving you $5!” At eighty-four, in his old man’s slippers, he didn’t argue. I left, haunted by what he had said about writing. “A novel is like falling in love. You don’t say, “I’m going to fall in love. It has to come to you. It has to feel just like love.”

And love is what I came to talk about with Norris in the lovely Brooklyn brownstone house that has long been the Mailer’s New York home. The apartment is up three flights of stairs. You huff and puff your way up flights to be rewarded by the sight of her striking portrait of Humphrey Bogart hanging jokily outside the entrance.

Inside, on a clear blue sky day such as this, your breath is taken away by the view from the huge living room windows over the East River to Wall Street straight ahead. Slightly to the West is the Hudson River and the Statue of Liberty. Norris has filled her home with books. It’s an Aladdin’s cave of objects and memories. There are festive music boxes—a carousel, a circus tent and an enchanting Ferris wheel that lights up. Her home is an oasis of calm green walls and different textures—of stencilled furniture, plumped up velvet cushions, walls and surfaces covered with family photographs and paintings—some of hers—others done by Mailer children. The apartment is a celebration of her love for family and home. It radiates Norris’s artist’s gift for colour and delicious sense of humor. When you’re in her company, it is hard not to smile. She recounts, “I’m anally tidy. But it wasn’t always like this. When I first came to New York, this place was such a mess. I scrubbed it clean, and didn’t give it a thought. There were ropes and trapezes for the{{pg|498|499}}

kids hanging from the ceiling—a complete jungle gym. You can’t imagine what it was like. But I’d never been out of Arkansas until I met Norman. I’d never been on an aeroplane. And here I was, in New York, totally in love. To me the apartment was exquisite!”

Although we have been corresponding for the past couple of years, it is a year since I’ve seen Norris. She looks her usual amazing self in rich colors complementing her red hair and bold make up. But I’m shocked at how thin she is. She was thin when we met last year, but now she looks less than a size two. It is not her choice, but the result of a particularly nasty cancer, which she has been living with for ten years. She’s had surgeries and procedures that someone less strong and sunny might not have endured, with so little apparent fuss.

While we talk, a specialist nurse calls to brief her on tomorrow’s hospital appointment to replace a kidney stent. “Oh it’s just a little day trip to the OR,” she says in her soft, infectious Steel Magnolias lilt. “When it’s over you get cookies and tea and go home.” I say I’m in awe of how brave she is. Sometimes, in email she might just mention feeling a bit under the weather but it is always incidental to news about the family and her memoir. As she says,
“I’m not brave. You’d do it too. I wish it wasn’t like this, but I have to get on with it. It could be my muleskinner genes but I’ve never thought I could just curl up into a fetal ball and say I can’t do it.” The year after Norman died, Norris went to the hospital five times. “I’m not in a hurry to leave this life, but I won’t be greedy either.”

In April 2008, the week before Norman’s memorial service in a packed to the rafters Carnegie Hall, she emailed to say she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to attend. But she was there, sitting serenely in her big hat and understated clothes, seeking not one jot of attention, surrounded and protected by generations of Mailers who love her. And not just because she made Norman Mailer happy. Norris Church Mailer was no trophy wife. She is a remarkable woman in her own right—a gifted writer and painter who has also been a teacher, model and actress. Norris didn’t speak at what was a tender, and often hilarious, celebration of her husband’s life. Instead, there was a big screen video sequence of photos portraying an impossibly handsome man with his impossibly beautiful wife. It was screened to a recording of her singing “You’ll come back. You always do.”

Norris Church Mailer was the name Norman made up for her. She was born Barbara Jean Davis in Moses Lake, Washington where her father, James{{pg|499|500}}

had a job on the O’Sullivan Dam and the family joined the Freewill Baptist Church. They moved to Little Rock. Feisty, three-year-old Barbara won Little Miss Little Rock and grew into a beautiful young woman—think Julianne Moore colouring and bone structure and then some. Norris was deeply conflicted between rebelling against her strict Christian upbringing and worrying about sin. Larry Norris, her first husband, was two years ahead of her in high school. They started dating in 1966. Vietnam was just beginning. Larry paid his way through school on a scholarship, which meant joining the army when he graduated. At 17, she lost her virginity to Larry. The earth didn’t move, but in the eyes of God she knew she was married. The sex improved. She entered Arkansas Technical College to major in art. They married in August 1969. Aged 20, she knew she was making a mistake but was saving her soul from hellfire. Matthew was born in 1972. Both parents adored him but they divorced in February 1974. As Norris recounts, “The break up was my fault. We’d met as children. I always felt, in some part of me, that I was just marking time until my real life started.”

The ex-Mrs. Norris then taught Art in Russellville High School. Her students voted her Outstanding Teacher of the year. She caught the eye of a charismatic twenty-seven-year-old man named Bill Clinton who was running for Congress. One of the wittiest lines in her memoir recalls when, years later in New York, the scandals broke and a man she knew socially who was in politics said, “I guess he slept with every woman in Arkansas except you Norris.” “Sorry,” I replied. “I’m afraid he got us all.” Norris knew that Clinton would become President and she recalls: “I even wrote in a little book I gave him: See you in The White House.” He was and is pretty hard to resist. But let me put it this way. Although he’s lovely, I would not have wanted to marry Bill Clinton.”

Francis Irby Gwaltney—Fig—was a soldier with Norman Mailer in World War II. An English teacher at Arkansas Tech, he and Mailer kept up a friendship. Norris was also friends with Fig and his wife. In April 1975, Norris took her senior class to the Tech to hear a talk on film animation. Next door, in an English class, Fig was introducing his friend, the writer Norman Mailer to his English class.

Norris remembers, “I had a copy of his book on Marilyn Monroe and persuaded Fig to invite me to the party he was making for Norman that night so he could sign it. The last thing on my mind was romance. I had Matt, who my parents loved and were happy to mind when I was working, I owned my{{pg|500|501}}

house, and I had a fulfilling job. I was dating a lot. I knew Norman Mailer was older than my dad, but when we met at dinner later (Norman had taken one look at Norris and insisted Fig invite her to dinner), he didn’t seem old. He looked young and attractive and was obviously very interested in me. When someone is interested in you—really concentrating and not looking over your shoulder, which considering my shoes would have been easy for Norman—well, I was interested too.”

At the time Mailer was separated from his fourth wife, Beverley, but not quite separated from Carol, with whom he had a daughter, Maggie, who was six months older than Matt. At 9:30 pm Norris had to leave the party to collect Matt, who was with his father. Norman suggested that they pick him up together. Norris recounts, “Watching him hold my sleeping boy touched me.”

Norman Mailer was the first man Norris ever brought back to her house while her son was there. She told Norman about her desire to write, about her marriage and her divorce. He told her about his life, his wives, his children and how he was being pulled in so many directions—and not only Carol—there was another relationship he was trying to get out of too. Curiously, both of them had first married when they were twenty.

They made love on the floor, which wasn’t that great. Norris writes about it: “How could it have been? But then there are few great ones on the first try.
Most guys never get ''near'' to great under any circumstance.” Norman left the next day without ever signing her copy of his book on Marilyn Monroe. He invited Norris to meet him in New York. As Norris says, “I lied to my parents who looked after Matt. I told them I was going to an art convention.” Her close girlfriends, whom she still has to this day, thought that she would go to New York and get Norman Mailer out of her system.

Eventually they had to confront the truth. Norris had fallen in love with a man of fifty-two who lived in New York, was a lousy marriage prospect, and had fathered more than anyone’s fair share of children. Norris recalls, “When my father realised I was serious about Norman he said, ‘Well you know that in twenty years time you’re going to end up as his nurse. He’s going to be an old man? I told him. ‘Well daddy, I may go first and why give up 20 years of happiness for something that might never happen?’ I’d say that again. None of us know what’s going to happen. If you’re happy right now, that’s more than most people get.” Later, whenever another Norman Mailer story hit the headlines, Norris would call her parents to warn them about what was in the papers. Norris summarizes, “I didn’t like it and neither did they but that’s{{pg|501|502}}

how it was.” Norman and her parents didn’t have much to talk about, “But,” Norris recounts, “they respected each other and got on fine.”

Mailer used to tell Norris that she was the only woman he had ever picked who had as much common sense as his mother. Norris remembers, “It wasn’t necessarily a compliment! But I loved Fanny Mailer and she loved me. She was a character—curious, clever, down to earth. She wasn’t erudite or well educated—and I’m not either. His mother adored Norman. As long as Norman was happy, that was ok with her. She taught me about Judaism and how to cook the food he enjoyed. Fanny and his sister, Barbara, were good friends to me. That meant a lot to a girl who didn’t know anyone in New York. And Fanny adored John Buffalo, who was a sunny, sweet baby.”

John, with his movie star good looks is, like his father, a writer and actor.
He says that he was brought up with “An obscene amount of love.” He is travelling with Norris on her publicity tour. As his mother says, “To look after me, and carry the bags!”

What did Norris have that so endeared her to Norman’s children? Why did she succeed where the other wives failed? She is never going to say anything about any of the other wives: “I was an only child so having this huge family was wonderful. Susan, Norman’s oldest was the same age as me. It was like gaining a sister. The older kids were like siblings, the younger ones loved Matt and when John came along, they loved him too. Most of the time the kids lived with their mothers. They had their own lives but they spent summers with Norman in Maine, swimming, canoeing, climbing and being this big family. Norman was a wonderful father. They could see how happy he was. That hadn’t happened in a long time. Norman was very outdoorsy. During those first family summers I pretended I was more athletic than I really was. By the time he found out it was much too late. He was pretty formidable, radiating energy like a steam heater. But he didn’t phase me. I think that’s one of the reasons he found me attractive—the fact that I wasn’t phased.”

Did Mailer ever sign her copy of his book on Marilyn Monroe? “He didn’t write in it until I was already living with him in New York,” Norris recalls: This is what he wrote—To Barbara. Because I knew when I wrote this book that someone I had not yet met would read it and be with me. Hey, Baby, do you know how I love Barbara Davis and Norris Church?” Norman. Feb ’76.”

By any standard, Norris Church Mailer has had an unbelievable life.{{pg|502|503}}

Against all odds, she and Norman had a marriage that lasted, as the line goes,
“Till death us do part.” She is not unhappy living on her own and has no interest in a relationship with another man. As she says, “I’m not someone who feels lonely. I’m painting again and working on another book. Six of our children live in New York, so I’m surrounded by family. And my mother, who’s 9o, lives fifteen minutes away. We see each other all the time and I go out a lot. Of course I miss Norman. There’s so much going on in the world. I want to know what he thinks and what he has to say. If we’d never met, I guess I’d have been happy enough. I’d have painted. Maybe I’d have got married again and had a couple more kids. But I wouldn’t trade my life with Norman Mailer for anything.”

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The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norris Church Mailer

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{{Byline|last=Jacomo|first=Thomas |abstract=A confidant of Norman Mailer recounts his experiences with Mailer over many years. |note=Thomas Jacomo was a longtime friend of Norman Mailer. As executive director of the Washington Palm restaurant, he knows everyone of any importance or self-perceived importance and presides over perhaps the main, nonpartisan power meeting spot in the nation’s capital. |url=}}

{{dc|dc=I|t was around 1970 or 1971.}} I was running a hotel in Manchester, Vermont, called the Avalanche Motor Lodge. Nearby was a nightclub called The Roundhouse. People knew I was a big boxing fan and told me Jose Torres, the light heavyweight champion of the world, was over there. So of course I ran across the street.

I was young, full of piss and vinegar, and I ended up sparring with Torres, kidding around with him, and he says, “I want you to meet my friend Norman Mailer.” I didn't know who he was, but Jose says, “We’ve got a ring set up at Norman’s house over here. Why don’t you go a couple of rounds with him?”

So I said, “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

Jose was hanging around with Norman, who was teaching him how to write. Jose was writing a book called ''Sting Like a Bee: the Muhammad Ali Story''.

I go over to Norman’s house. Sure enough, he has a regular ring set up there—gloves, headgear—and I think, ''What am I getting myself into?'' Also, he outweighed me by about twenty-five pounds.

I get into the ring. Bing, bing, bing—we fought on and off for two or three weeks. We never really hurt each other. In fact, he made a rule a couple of years later that we’re never going to hurt each other, although I did give him a couple of good shots. {{pg|393|394}}

Norman was a boxing fanatic. He got an offer to do the ''Dick Cavett Show'' in New York, which was a very big deal then. Norman and Jose were going to get in the ring and spar a couple of rounds on the show. I was Norman’s second and Jose had a friend of his as his second in the ring.

I’m teasing Norman, saying, “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you? Jose’s going to get in the ring. He’s going to see the lights, he’s going to snap and think he’s in a real fight and knock you out.”

Norman said, “Nah, nah, he won’t.”

We practice a long time in the back of my restaurant. I’m instructing him and raising my elbow to demonstrate how to block punches and I say, “Hit him here! Make it sound good!”

After all the rehearsal, we get to New York for the show and I’m in Norman’s corner. Jose throws a left hook to the body. Norman’s supposed to have his elbow over here to block it. He lifts his elbow and gets hit right in the gut. I hear the wind come out of Norman and I think, ''Oh my God, he’s going to fall down, right on national television!''

I start yelling to Jose in Italian so no one else will know what I’m saying,
“''Aspetti! Piano! Piano!''”—Stop! Easy! Easy! But he’s Puerto Rican, he speaks Spanish, and doesn’t know what I’m saying.

But we survived that night and went up to Gus D’Amato’s apartment to watch it on TV. And that was one of the most exciting nights Norman and I ever had.

Another time we were up in Vermont. Norman was crazy: he decides we’re going to go hiking and boating with his kids on a lake. The water’s one inch from coming into the boat and I say, “Norman, I hate to tell you this, but I can’t swim.”

“Tom,” he says, “Don’t worry. If the boat goes over, you hang onto it. I’ll rescue the kids and take them to the shore and I’ll come back and get you.” I said, “F-that! Take me back to the shore first; the kids can swim.”

{{* * *}}

I was a pretty hot dog skier and one day Norman tells me, “My son
Michael wants to learn how to ski.” He was about seven or eight.

I said, “Okay. I’ll take the afternoon and give Michael a few lessons.” And the old joke was, ''Bend your knees, look out for the trees, twenty dollars, please.''
That was a private ski lesson up there.{{pg|394|395}}

So I’m teaching Michael how to ski. He caught on pretty quickly, so I left
him alone for a while to practice.

That night, Norman’s supposed to be at my house for a spaghetti dinner.
I’m sitting there waiting for him . . . waiting for him . . . .

Finally the phone rings. It’s Norman. “I’m just coming back from the hospital. Michael’s just broken his leg.”

That was the end of my ski instructor career.

{{* * *}}

The other great story—I’d just broken up with my girlfriend and my heart
was broken.

I was playing ping-pong with Norman at my hotel. He's been married six
times, so I say to him, “How do you get over the hurt and the pain?” Norman says, “Tom, once you get through the flesh, down to the bone, it doesn't hurt anymore.”

I said, “Ooh, great advice, Norman. Thanks a lot.”

{{* * *}}

I miss a lot of things about Norman Mailer. What I miss most is his intelligence. He was the smartest man I ever spoke to in my entire life. He analyzed everything. Nothing just went by him.

Despite what a lot of people said, he wasn’t tough at all. He had a heart
of gold. Any time I needed anything, he was always there for me.

And he liked to laugh. I made him laugh.

___

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{{Byline|last=Fox|first=Sue |abstract=An interview with Norris Church Mailer discussing her relationship with Norman Mailer. |note=This interview took place on January 18, 2010 in the Mailer Brooklyn Heights home. |url=}}

{{dc|dc=O|n the face of it, a twenty-six-year-old high school art teacher}} raised by strict Arkansas Baptists whose grandparents were sharecroppers and muleskinners, and America’s wildest literary lion—at 52, already a year older than her father—with seven children, five failed marriages and other affairs in his wake—didn’t have much going for it. But who is anyone to judge? Men and women with no obvious link in their culture, backgrounds or achievements are drawn to one another and the alchemy works. Norris Church Mailer and Norman Mailer were one of those couples. Apart from their cultural mismatch and age difference, in her platform soles, the strikingly beautiful, willowy five-foot-ten redhead, towered above Mailer, who was barely five-foot-eight.

Their love affair—painful and stormy as it sometimes was—endured until the day Mailer died—November 10, 2007. He was eighty-four. Norris, who shared the same birthday as her more famous husband, January 31, is sixty-one. As she says,

{{quote|“We were together thirty-three years, which by any measure is a long marriage. Every love story has its ups and downs and we certainly had ours, but I would say it was one of the great love stories. When you think about it, the two of us were kind of impossible. Norman and his wives sounded a bit like Henry VIII. Nobody would have put our two characters in a novel and imagined that the sixth wife would be the big love story.”}} {{pg|495|496}}

Except that, deep in her heart, Norris knew that the barrel-chested, blue-eyed Jewish intellectual heavyweight—one of the great voices of post—war American literature-loved her more than he had ever loved anyone. She writes about it in her memoir.

{{quote|“Through the years, no matter the circumstances of our passions and rages, our boredoms, angers and betrayals, large and small, sex was the chord that bound us together; it was the thick wire woven from thousands of shared experiences that never broke, indeed was hardly frayed and only got stronger, no matter how the bonds of marriage were tested. Even in the worst times we had many years later, when we almost separated, somehow, inexplicably, at night we would cling to each other, drawn like powerful magnets, the familiarity of our bodies putting salve on the wounds we had inflicted during the day, until over time the warring ended and the love remained. The only thing that brought it to an end was old age, illness and death itself.”}}

Norris believes that she and Norman stayed together “Because we really loved each other. We loved our kids, we loved our life and we were comfortable with each other. There were dark places and Norman’s philandering hurt me. We sparred but we also laughed a lot. In the end, nothing was ever powerful enough to tear our marriage apart.”

She writes about the rude people: “and there are way too many rude people in this world asking her ‘Which wife are ''you?''’” Never for a moment did she doubt her short although possibly not sweet answer: “The last one.”

Love him or hate him, no one ever sat on the fence when it came to Norman Mailer, perhaps the most pugnacious writer of his generation. In 1948, his first partly autobiographical novel, ''The Naked and The Dead'', brought him fame and huge public acclaim. He was twenty-five years old. Over the next six decades, center stage, he published more than thirty books, including novels and non-fiction on subjects as disparate as Mohammed Ali and Marilyn Monroe. He twice won the Pulitzer Prize, for ''Armies of the Night'' (1968) and ''The Executioner’s Song'' (1979). Mailer wrote essays as well as writing, directing and occasionally, acting in low-budget movies. He helped found ''The Village Voice'' magazine. He was a regular and highly opinionated guest on TV talk shows who actively sought publicity and public attention.{{pg|496|497}}

Mailer once ran for Mayor of New York. He was an anti-war protester, an opponent of women’s liberation, and a man who railed against the evils of plastic. He railed against many things and, no mean boxer, could pick a fight at the least provocation. He stabbed his second wife, Adele. Gore Vidal frequently argued with him. In 1984, Mailer wrote asking Vidal to end their feud, inviting him to help raise money for a PEN World Congress by joining an impressive list of writers including John Updike, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bill Styron, Arthur Miller, William Buckley, Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer. Vidal chose to share an evening with Mailer who, throughout his life, was a great supporter of PEN. According to Norris, “He was also a great supporter of aspiring writers, replying to letters with encouraging words and sending manuscripts to agents. I used to call Norman, ‘Henry Higgins.’ He was always trying to take someone and make them into someone wonderful. He liked it when one of them succeeded and was generous with his time and advice.”

In the ICU at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, a nurse mentioned to Mailer that she liked to write. Norman told her to write about her weekend, then went through each typed page with her line by line. As Norris recounts,

{{quote|“Norman used to say that if we had money he would have liked to start a school for writers. But with nine children (When she first met Mailer, Norris had been divorced for a year, and already had three-year-old Matthew. Their son John Buffalo, was born in April of 1978), money was tight. Norman worked very hard to run our enormous family—especially the time when we had six children in private school.”}}

One of the darkest times in the Mailer marriage was when Jack Abbott came into their lives. Norman was writing a book (''The Executioner’s Song'') about a murderer, Gary Gilmore, who was executed in 1977. Jack Henry Abbot wrote to Mailer from prison. He had a history of violence and had killed an inmate. His letter was well written, useful for the book, and they began corresponding. Mailer told Abbott that he thought the correspondence would make an interesting book and his publisher took on the project. Then Abbott was granted parole. Norris had no idea that Norman had committed himself to helping Abbott until the night he announced that he was off to pick him up from the airport and bring him home to dinner.{{pg|497|498}}

According to Norris, “John Buffalo was not yet three. It was a scary time.
The most scary thing was Norman’s lapse of realism. He genuinely thought [that] talent would override everything—that with his book—Jack would be transformed. But a psychopath, even one who has written a decent book, is still a psychopath. That was Norman—idealist and optimist who woke up to a new world every day.”

In May 2007, I went to see Mailer in Provincetown. It was six months before he died. Physically frail, he was combative and thrilling company. I told him that I had once worked in Cuba with a photographer to find Gregory Fuentes who had known Ernest Hemingway and was featured in his novel ''The Old Man and The Sea''. Norman was amused to hear that we found Fuentes who, wheelchair bound, was wheeled out for tourists by his grandson. Just like Mailer, Fuentes had his life etched into his face. For $5 we could kiss Fuentes and take a photograph. As I left, “I joked to Norman, I’m going to kiss you good bye but I’m not giving you $5!” At eighty-four, in his old man’s slippers, he didn’t argue. I left, haunted by what he had said about writing. “A novel is like falling in love. You don’t say, “I’m going to fall in love. It has to come to you. It has to feel just like love.”

And love is what I came to talk about with Norris in the lovely Brooklyn brownstone house that has long been the Mailer’s New York home. The apartment is up three flights of stairs. You huff and puff your way up flights to be rewarded by the sight of her striking portrait of Humphrey Bogart hanging jokily outside the entrance.

Inside, on a clear blue sky day such as this, your breath is taken away by the view from the huge living room windows over the East River to Wall Street straight ahead. Slightly to the West is the Hudson River and the Statue of Liberty. Norris has filled her home with books. It’s an Aladdin's cave of objects and memories. There are festive music boxes—a carousel, a circus tent and an enchanting Ferris wheel that lights up. Her home is an oasis of calm green walls and different textures—of stencilled furniture, plumped up velvet cushions, walls and surfaces covered with family photographs and paintings—some of hers—others done by Mailer children. The apartment is a celebration of her love for family and home. It radiates Norris’s artist’s gift for colour and delicious sense of humor. When you’re in her company, it is hard not to smile. She recounts, “I’m anally tidy. But it wasn’t always like this. When I first came to New York, this place was such a mess. I scrubbed it clean, and didn’t give it a thought. There were ropes and trapezes for the{{pg|498|499}}

kids hanging from the ceiling—a complete jungle gym. You can’t imagine what it was like. But I’d never been out of Arkansas until I met Norman. I’d never been on an aeroplane. And here I was, in New York, totally in love. To me the apartment was exquisite!”

Although we have been corresponding for the past couple of years, it is a year since I’ve seen Norris. She looks her usual amazing self in rich colors complementing her red hair and bold make up. But I’m shocked at how thin she is. She was thin when we met last year, but now she looks less than a size two. It is not her choice, but the result of a particularly nasty cancer, which she has been living with for ten years. She’s had surgeries and procedures that someone less strong and sunny might not have endured, with so little apparent fuss.

While we talk, a specialist nurse calls to brief her on tomorrow’s hospital appointment to replace a kidney stent. “Oh it’s just a little day trip to the OR,” she says in her soft, infectious Steel Magnolias lilt. “When it’s over you get cookies and tea and go home.” I say I’m in awe of how brave she is. Sometimes, in email she might just mention feeling a bit under the weather but it is always incidental to news about the family and her memoir. As she says,
“I’m not brave. You’d do it too. I wish it wasn’t like this, but I have to get on with it. It could be my muleskinner genes but I’ve never thought I could just curl up into a fetal ball and say I can’t do it.” The year after Norman died, Norris went to the hospital five times. “I’m not in a hurry to leave this life, but I won’t be greedy either.”

In April 2008, the week before Norman’s memorial service in a packed to the rafters Carnegie Hall, she emailed to say she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to attend. But she was there, sitting serenely in her big hat and understated clothes, seeking not one jot of attention, surrounded and protected by generations of Mailers who love her. And not just because she made Norman Mailer happy. Norris Church Mailer was no trophy wife. She is a remarkable woman in her own right—a gifted writer and painter who has also been a teacher, model and actress. Norris didn’t speak at what was a tender, and often hilarious, celebration of her husband’s life. Instead, there was a big screen video sequence of photos portraying an impossibly handsome man with his impossibly beautiful wife. It was screened to a recording of her singing “You’ll come back. You always do.”

Norris Church Mailer was the name Norman made up for her. She was born Barbara Jean Davis in Moses Lake, Washington where her father, James{{pg|499|500}}

had a job on the O’Sullivan Dam and the family joined the Freewill Baptist Church. They moved to Little Rock. Feisty, three-year-old Barbara won Little Miss Little Rock and grew into a beautiful young woman—think Julianne Moore colouring and bone structure and then some. Norris was deeply conflicted between rebelling against her strict Christian upbringing and worrying about sin. Larry Norris, her first husband, was two years ahead of her in high school. They started dating in 1966. Vietnam was just beginning. Larry paid his way through school on a scholarship, which meant joining the army when he graduated. At 17, she lost her virginity to Larry. The earth didn’t move, but in the eyes of God she knew she was married. The sex improved. She entered Arkansas Technical College to major in art. They married in August 1969. Aged 20, she knew she was making a mistake but was saving her soul from hellfire. Matthew was born in 1972. Both parents adored him but they divorced in February 1974. As Norris recounts, “The break up was my fault. We’d met as children. I always felt, in some part of me, that I was just marking time until my real life started.”

The ex-Mrs. Norris then taught Art in Russellville High School. Her students voted her Outstanding Teacher of the year. She caught the eye of a charismatic twenty-seven-year-old man named Bill Clinton who was running for Congress. One of the wittiest lines in her memoir recalls when, years later in New York, the scandals broke and a man she knew socially who was in politics said, “I guess he slept with every woman in Arkansas except you Norris.” “Sorry,” I replied. “I’m afraid he got us all.” Norris knew that Clinton would become President and she recalls: “I even wrote in a little book I gave him: See you in The White House.” He was and is pretty hard to resist. But let me put it this way. Although he’s lovely, I would not have wanted to marry Bill Clinton.”

Francis Irby Gwaltney—Fig—was a soldier with Norman Mailer in World War II. An English teacher at Arkansas Tech, he and Mailer kept up a friendship. Norris was also friends with Fig and his wife. In April 1975, Norris took her senior class to the Tech to hear a talk on film animation. Next door, in an English class, Fig was introducing his friend, the writer Norman Mailer to his English class.

Norris remembers, “I had a copy of his book on Marilyn Monroe and persuaded Fig to invite me to the party he was making for Norman that night so he could sign it. The last thing on my mind was romance. I had Matt, who my parents loved and were happy to mind when I was working, I owned my{{pg|500|501}}

house, and I had a fulfilling job. I was dating a lot. I knew Norman Mailer was older than my dad, but when we met at dinner later (Norman had taken one look at Norris and insisted Fig invite her to dinner), he didn’t seem old. He looked young and attractive and was obviously very interested in me. When someone is interested in you—really concentrating and not looking over your shoulder, which considering my shoes would have been easy for Norman—well, I was interested too.”

At the time Mailer was separated from his fourth wife, Beverley, but not quite separated from Carol, with whom he had a daughter, Maggie, who was six months older than Matt. At 9:30 pm Norris had to leave the party to collect Matt, who was with his father. Norman suggested that they pick him up together. Norris recounts, “Watching him hold my sleeping boy touched me.”

Norman Mailer was the first man Norris ever brought back to her house while her son was there. She told Norman about her desire to write, about her marriage and her divorce. He told her about his life, his wives, his children and how he was being pulled in so many directions—and not only Carol—there was another relationship he was trying to get out of too. Curiously, both of them had first married when they were twenty.

They made love on the floor, which wasn’t that great. Norris writes about it: “How could it have been? But then there are few great ones on the first try.
Most guys never get ''near'' to great under any circumstance.” Norman left the next day without ever signing her copy of his book on Marilyn Monroe. He invited Norris to meet him in New York. As Norris says, “I lied to my parents who looked after Matt. I told them I was going to an art convention.” Her close girlfriends, whom she still has to this day, thought that she would go to New York and get Norman Mailer out of her system.

Eventually they had to confront the truth. Norris had fallen in love with a man of fifty-two who lived in New York, was a lousy marriage prospect, and had fathered more than anyone’s fair share of children. Norris recalls, “When my father realised I was serious about Norman he said, ‘Well you know that in twenty years time you're going to end up as his nurse. He’s going to be an old man? I told him. ‘Well daddy, I may go first and why give up 20 years of happiness for something that might never happen?’ I’d say that again. None of us know what’s going to happen. If you’re happy right now, that’s more than most people get.” Later, whenever another Norman Mailer story hit the headlines, Norris would call her parents to warn them about what was in the papers. Norris summarizes, “I didn’t like it and neither did they but that’s{{pg|501|502}}

how it was.” Norman and her parents didn’t have much to talk about, “But,” Norris recounts, “they respected each other and got on fine.”

Mailer used to tell Norris that she was the only woman he had ever picked who had as much common sense as his mother. Norris remembers, “It wasn’t necessarily a compliment! But I loved Fanny Mailer and she loved me. She was a character—curious, clever, down to earth. She wasn’t erudite or well educated—and I’m not either. His mother adored Norman. As long as Norman was happy, that was ok with her. She taught me about Judaism and how to cook the food he enjoyed. Fanny and his sister, Barbara, were good friends to me. That meant a lot to a girl who didn’t know anyone in New York. And Fanny adored John Buffalo, who was a sunny, sweet baby.”

John, with his movie star good looks is, like his father, a writer and actor.
He says that he was brought up with “An obscene amount of love.” He is travelling with Norris on her publicity tour. As his mother says, “To look after me, and carry the bags!”

What did Norris have that so endeared her to Norman’s children? Why did she succeed where the other wives failed? She is never going to say anything about any of the other wives: “I was an only child so having this huge family was wonderful. Susan, Norman’s oldest was the same age as me. It was like gaining a sister. The older kids were like siblings, the younger ones loved Matt and when John came along, they loved him too. Most of the time the kids lived with their mothers. They had their own lives but they spent summers with Norman in Maine, swimming, canoeing, climbing and being this big family. Norman was a wonderful father. They could see how happy he was. That hadn’t happened in a long time. Norman was very outdoorsy. During those first family summers I pretended I was more athletic than I really was. By the time he found out it was much too late. He was pretty formidable, radiating energy like a steam heater. But he didn’t phase me. I think that’s one of the reasons he found me attractive—the fact that I wasn’t phased.”

Did Mailer ever sign her copy of his book on Marilyn Monroe? “He didn’t write in it until I was already living with him in New York,” Norris recalls: This is what he wrote—To Barbara. Because I knew when I wrote this book that someone I had not yet met would read it and be with me. Hey, Baby, do you know how I love Barbara Davis and Norris Church?” Norman. Feb ’76.”

By any standard, Norris Church Mailer has had an unbelievable life.{{pg|502|503}}

Against all odds, she and Norman had a marriage that lasted, as the line goes,
“Till death us do part.” She is not unhappy living on her own and has no interest in a relationship with another man. As she says, “I’m not someone who feels lonely. I’m painting again and working on another book. Six of our children live in New York, so I’m surrounded by family. And my mother, who’s 9o, lives fifteen minutes away. We see each other all the time and I go out a lot. Of course I miss Norman. There’s so much going on in the world. I want to know what he thinks and what he has to say. If we’d never met, I guess I’d have been happy enough. I’d have painted. Maybe I’d have got married again and had a couple more kids. But I wouldn’t trade my life with Norman Mailer for anything.”

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Kamyers: Added the rest of the pages.

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{{Byline|last=Jacomo|first=Thomas |abstract=A confidant of Norman Mailer recounts his experiences with Mailer over many years. |note=Thomas Jacomo was a longtime friend of Norman Mailer. As executive director of the Washington Palm restaurant, he knows everyone of any importance or self-perceived importance and presides over perhaps the main, nonpartisan power meeting spot in the nation’s capital. |url=}}

{{dc|dc=I|t was around 1970 or 1971.}} I was running a hotel in Manchester, Vermont, called the Avalanche Motor Lodge. Nearby was a nightclub called The Roundhouse. People knew I was a big boxing fan and told me Jose Torres, the light heavyweight champion of the world, was over there. So of course I ran across the street.

I was young, full of piss and vinegar, and I ended up sparring with Torres, kidding around with him, and he says, “I want you to meet my friend Norman Mailer.” I didn't know who he was, but Jose says, “We’ve got a ring set up at Norman’s house over here. Why don’t you go a couple of rounds with him?”

So I said, “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

Jose was hanging around with Norman, who was teaching him how to write. Jose was writing a book called ''Sting Like a Bee: the Muhammad Ali Story''.

I go over to Norman’s house. Sure enough, he has a regular ring set up there—gloves, headgear—and I think, ''What am I getting myself into?'' Also, he outweighed me by about twenty-five pounds.

I get into the ring. Bing, bing, bing—we fought on and off for two or three weeks. We never really hurt each other. In fact, he made a rule a couple of years later that we’re never going to hurt each other, although I did give him a couple of good shots. {{pg|393|394}}

Norman was a boxing fanatic. He got an offer to do the ''Dick Cavett Show'' in New York, which was a very big deal then. Norman and Jose were going to get in the ring and spar a couple of rounds on the show. I was Norman’s second and Jose had a friend of his as his second in the ring.

I’m teasing Norman, saying, “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you? Jose’s going to get in the ring. He’s going to see the lights, he’s going to snap and think he’s in a real fight and knock you out.”

Norman said, “Nah, nah, he won’t.”

We practice a long time in the back of my restaurant. I’m instructing him and raising my elbow to demonstrate how to block punches and I say, “Hit him here! Make it sound good!”

After all the rehearsal, we get to New York for the show and I’m in Norman’s corner. Jose throws a left hook to the body. Norman’s supposed to have his elbow over here to block it. He lifts his elbow and gets hit right in the gut. I hear the wind come out of Norman and I think, ''Oh my God, he’s going to fall down, right on national television!''

I start yelling to Jose in Italian so no one else will know what I’m saying,
“''Aspetti! Piano! Piano!''”—Stop! Easy! Easy! But he’s Puerto Rican, he speaks Spanish, and doesn’t know what I’m saying.

But we survived that night and went up to Gus D’Amato’s apartment to watch it on TV. And that was one of the most exciting nights Norman and I ever had.

Another time we were up in Vermont. Norman was crazy: he decides we’re going to go hiking and boating with his kids on a lake. The water’s one inch from coming into the boat and I say, “Norman, I hate to tell you this, but I can’t swim.”

“Tom,” he says, “Don’t worry. If the boat goes over, you hang onto it. I’ll rescue the kids and take them to the shore and I’ll come back and get you.” I said, “F-that! Take me back to the shore first; the kids can swim.”

{{* * *}}

I was a pretty hot dog skier and one day Norman tells me, “My son
Michael wants to learn how to ski.” He was about seven or eight.

I said, “Okay. I’ll take the afternoon and give Michael a few lessons.” And the old joke was, ''Bend your knees, look out for the trees, twenty dollars, please.''
That was a private ski lesson up there.{{pg|394|395}}

So I’m teaching Michael how to ski. He caught on pretty quickly, so I left
him alone for a while to practice.

That night, Norman’s supposed to be at my house for a spaghetti dinner.
I’m sitting there waiting for him . . . waiting for him . . . .

Finally the phone rings. It’s Norman. “I’m just coming back from the hospital. Michael’s just broken his leg.”

That was the end of my ski instructor career.

{{* * *}}

The other great story—I’d just broken up with my girlfriend and my heart
was broken.

I was playing ping-pong with Norman at my hotel. He's been married six
times, so I say to him, “How do you get over the hurt and the pain?” Norman says, “Tom, once you get through the flesh, down to the bone, it doesn't hurt anymore.”

I said, “Ooh, great advice, Norman. Thanks a lot.”

{{* * *}}

I miss a lot of things about Norman Mailer. What I miss most is his intelligence. He was the smartest man I ever spoke to in my entire life. He analyzed everything. Nothing just went by him.

Despite what a lot of people said, he wasn’t tough at all. He had a heart
of gold. Any time I needed anything, he was always there for me.

And he liked to laugh. I made him laugh.

___

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{{Byline|last=Fox|first=Sue |abstract=An interview with Norris Church Mailer discussing her relationship with Norman Mailer. |note=This interview took place on January 18, 2010 in the Mailer Brooklyn Heights home. |url=}}

{{dc|dc=O|n the face of it, a twenty-six-year-old high school art teacher}} raised by strict Arkansas Baptists whose grandparents were sharecroppers and muleskinners, and America’s wildest literary lion—at 52, already a year older than her father-with seven children, five failed marriages and other affairs in his wake—didn’t have much going for it. But who is anyone to judge? Men and women with no obvious link in their culture, backgrounds or achievements are drawn to one another and the alchemy works. Norris Church Mailer and Norman Mailer were one of those couples. Apart from their cultural mismatch and age difference, in her platform soles, the strikingly beautiful, willowy five-foot-ten redhead, towered above Mailer, who was barely five-foot-eight.

Their love affair—painful and stormy as it sometimes was—endured until the day Mailer died—November 10, 2007. He was eighty-four. Norris, who shared the same birthday as her more famous husband, January 31, is sixty-one. As she says,

{{quote|“We were together thirty-three years, which by any measure is a long marriage. Every love story has its ups and downs and we certainly had ours, but I would say it was one of the great love stories. When you think about it, the two of us were kind of impossible. Norman and his wives sounded a bit like Henry VIII. Nobody would have put our two characters in a novel and imagined that the sixth wife would be the big love story.”}} {{pg|495|496}}

Except that, deep in her heart, Norris knew that the barrel-chested, blue-eyed Jewish intellectual heavyweight-one of the great voices of post-war American literature-loved her more than he had ever loved anyone. She writes about it in her memoir.

{{quote|“Through the years, no matter the circumstances of our passions and rages, our boredoms, angers and betrayals, large and small, sex was the chord that bound us together; it was the thick wire woven from thousands of shared experiences that never broke, indeed was hardly frayed and only got stronger, no matter how the bonds of marriage were tested. Even in the worst times we had many years later, when we almost separated, somehow, inexplicably, at night we would cling to each other, drawn like powerful magnets, the familiarity of our bodies putting salve on the wounds we had inflicted during the day, until over time the warring ended and the love remained. The only thing that brought it to an end was old age, illness and death itself.”}}

Norris believes that she and Norman stayed together “Because we really loved each other. We loved our kids, we loved our life and we were comfortable with each other. There were dark places and Norman’s philandering hurt me. We sparred but we also laughed a lot. In the end, nothing was ever powerful enough to tear our marriage apart.”

She writes about the rude people: “and there are way too many rude people in this world asking her ‘Which wife are ''you?''’” Never for a moment did she doubt her short although possibly not sweet answer: “The last one.”

Love him or hate him, no one ever sat on the fence when it came to Norman Mailer, perhaps the most pugnacious writer of his generation. In 1948, his first partly autobiographical novel, ''The Naked and The Dead'', brought him fame and huge public acclaim. He was twenty-five years old. Over the next six decades, center stage, he published more than thirty books, including novels and non-fiction on subjects as disparate as Mohammed Ali and Marilyn Monroe. He twice won the Pulitzer Prize, for ''Armies of the Night'' (1968) and “The Executioner’s Song” (1979). Mailer wrote essays as well as writing, directing and occasionally, acting in low-budget movies. He helped found ''The Village Voice'' magazine. He was a regular and highly opinionated guest on TV talk shows who actively sought publicity and public attention.{{pg|496|497}}

Mailer once ran for Mayor of New York. He was an anti-war protester, an opponent of women’s liberation, and a man who railed against the evils of plastic. He railed against many things and, no mean boxer, could pick a fight at the least provocation. He stabbed his second wife, Adele. Gore Vidal frequently argued with him. In 1984, Mailer wrote asking Vidal to end their feud, inviting him to help raise money for a PEN World Congress by joining an impressive list of writers including John Updike, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bill Styron, Arthur Miller, William Buckley, Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer. Vidal chose to share an evening with Mailer who, throughout his life, was a great supporter of PEN. According to Norris, “He was also a great supporter of aspiring writers, replying to letters with encouraging words and sending manuscripts to agents. I used to call Norman, ‘Henry Higgins.’ He was always trying to take someone and make them into someone wonderful. He liked it when one of them succeeded and was generous with his time and advice.”

In the ICU at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, a nurse mentioned to Mailer that she liked to write. Norman told her to write about her weekend, then went through each typed page with her line by line. As Norris recounts,

{{quote|“Norman used to say that if we had money he would have liked to start a school for writers. But with nine children (When she first met Mailer, Norris had been divorced for a year, and already had three-year-old Matthew. Their son John Buffalo, was born in April of 1978), money was tight. Norman worked very hard to run our enormous family—especially the time when we had six children in private school.”}}

One of the darkest times in the Mailer marriage was when Jack Abbott came into their lives. Norman was writing a book (''The Executioner’s Song'') about a murderer, Gary Gilmore, who was executed in 1977. Jack Henry Abbot wrote to Mailer from prison. He had a history of violence and had killed an inmate. His letter was well written, useful for the book, and they began corresponding. Mailer told Abbott that he thought the correspondence would make an interesting book and his publisher took on the project. Then Abbott was granted parole. Norris had no idea that Norman had committed himself to helping Abbott until the night he announced that he was off to pick him up from the airport and bring him home to dinner.{{pg|497|498}}

According to Norris, “John Buffalo was not yet three. It was a scary time.
The most scary thing was Norman’s lapse of realism. He genuinely thought [that] talent would override everything—that with his book—Jack would be transformed. But a psychopath, even one who has written a decent book, is still a psychopath. That was Norman—idealist and optimist who woke up to a new world every day.”

In May 2007, I went to see Mailer in Provincetown. It was six months before he died. Physically frail, he was combative and thrilling company. I told him that I had once worked in Cuba with a photographer to find Gregory Fuentes who had known Ernest Hemingway and was featured in his novel ''The Old Man and The Sea''. Norman was amused to hear that we found Fuentes who, wheelchair bound, was wheeled out for tourists by his grandson. Just like Mailer, Fuentes had his life etched into his face. For $5 we could kiss Fuentes and take a photograph. As I left, “I joked to Norman, I’m going to kiss you good bye but I’m not giving you $5!” At eighty-four, in his old man’s slippers, he didn’t argue. I left, haunted by what he had said about writing. “A novel is like falling in love. You don’t say, “I’m going to fall in love. It has to come to you. It has to feel just like love.”

And love is what I came to talk about with Norris in the lovely Brooklyn brownstone house that has long been the Mailer’s New York home. The apartment is up three flights of stairs. You huff and puff your way up flights to be rewarded by the sight of her striking portrait of Humphrey Bogart hanging jokily outside the entrance.

Inside, on a clear blue sky day such as this, your breath is taken away by the view from the huge living room windows over the East River to Wall Street straight ahead. Slightly to the West is the Hudson River and the Statue of Liberty. Norris has filled her home with books. It’s an Aladdin's cave of objects and memories. There are festive music boxes—a carousel, a circus tent and an enchanting Ferris wheel that lights up. Her home is an oasis of calm green walls and different textures—of stencilled furniture, plumped up velvet cushions, walls and surfaces covered with family photographs and paintings—some of hers—others done by Mailer children. The apartment is a celebration of her love for family and home. It radiates Norris’s artist’s gift for colour and delicious sense of humor. When you’re in her company, it is hard not to smile. She recounts, “I’m anally tidy. But it wasn’t always like this. When I first came to New York, this place was such a mess. I scrubbed it clean, and didn’t give it a thought. There were ropes and trapezes for the{{pg|498|499}}

kids hanging from the ceiling—a complete jungle gym. You can’t imagine what it was like. But I’d never been out of Arkansas until I met Norman. I’d never been on an aeroplane. And here I was, in New York, totally in love. To me the apartment was exquisite!”

Although we have been corresponding for the past couple of years, it is a year since I’ve seen Norris. She looks her usual amazing self in rich colors complementing her red hair and bold make up. But I’m shocked at how thin she is. She was thin when we met last year, but now she looks less than a size two. It is not her choice, but the result of a particularly nasty cancer, which she has been living with for ten years. She’s had surgeries and procedures that someone less strong and sunny might not have endured, with so little apparent fuss.

While we talk, a specialist nurse calls to brief her on tomorrow’s hospital appointment to replace a kidney stent. “Oh it’s just a little day trip to the OR,” she says in her soft, infectious Steel Magnolias lilt. “When it’s over you get cookies and tea and go home.” I say I’m in awe of how brave she is. Sometimes, in email she might just mention feeling a bit under the weather but it is always incidental to news about the family and her memoir. As she says,
“I’m not brave. You’d do it too. I wish it wasn’t like this, but I have to get on with it. It could be my muleskinner genes but I’ve never thought I could just curl up into a fetal ball and say I can’t do it.” The year after Norman died, Norris went to the hospital five times. “I’m not in a hurry to leave this life, but I won’t be greedy either.”

In April 2008, the week before Norman’s memorial service in a packed to the rafters Carnegie Hall, she emailed to say she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to attend. But she was there, sitting serenely in her big hat and understated clothes, seeking not one jot of attention, surrounded and protected by generations of Mailers who love her. And not just because she made Norman Mailer happy. Norris Church Mailer was no trophy wife. She is a remarkable woman in her own right—a gifted writer and painter who has also been a teacher, model and actress. Norris didn’t speak at what was a tender, and often hilarious, celebration of her husband’s life. Instead, there was a big screen video sequence of photos portraying an impossibly handsome man with his impossibly beautiful wife. It was screened to a recording of her singing “You’ll come back. You always do.”

Norris Church Mailer was the name Norman made up for her. She was born Barbara Jean Davis in Moses Lake, Washington where her father, James{{pg|499|500}}

had a job on the O’Sullivan Dam and the family joined the Freewill Baptist Church. They moved to Little Rock. Feisty, three-year-old Barbara won Little Miss Little Rock and grew into a beautiful young woman—think Julianne Moore colouring and bone structure and then some. Norris was deeply conflicted between rebelling against her strict Christian upbringing and worrying about sin. Larry Norris, her first husband, was two years ahead of her in high school. They started dating in 1966. Vietnam was just beginning. Larry paid his way through school on a scholarship, which meant joining the army when he graduated. At 17, she lost her virginity to Larry. The earth didn’t move, but in the eyes of God she knew she was married. The sex improved. She entered Arkansas Technical College to major in art. They married in August 1969. Aged 20, she knew she was making a mistake but was saving her soul from hellfire. Matthew was born in 1972. Both parents adored him but they divorced in February 1974. As Norris recounts, “The break up was my fault. We'd met as children. I always felt, in some part of me, that I was just marking time until my real life started.”

The ex-Mrs. Norris then taught Art in Russellville High School. Her students voted her Outstanding Teacher of the year. She caught the eye of a charismatic twenty-seven-year-old man named Bill Clinton who was running for Congress. One of the wittiest lines in her memoir recalls when, years later in New York, the scandals broke and a man she knew socially who was in politics said, “I guess he slept with every woman in Arkansas except you Norris.” “Sorry,” I replied. “I’m afraid he got us all.” Norris knew that Clinton would become President and she recalls: “I even wrote in a little book I gave him: See you in The White House.” He was and is pretty hard to resist. But let me put it this way. Although he’s lovely, I would not have wanted to marry Bill Clinton.”

Francis Irby Gwaltney—Fig—was a soldier with Norman Mailer in World War II. An English teacher at Arkansas Tech, he and Mailer kept up a friendship. Norris was also friends with Fig and his wife. In April 1975, Norris took her senior class to the Tech to hear a talk on film animation. Next door, in an English class, Fig was introducing his friend, the writer Norman Mailer to his English class.

Norris remembers, “I had a copy of his book on Marilyn Monroe and persuaded Fig to invite me to the party he was making for Norman that night so he could sign it. The last thing on my mind was romance. I had Matt, who my parents loved and were happy to mind when I was working, I owned my{{pg|500|501}}

house, and I had a fulfilling job. I was dating a lot. I knew Norman Mailer was older than my dad, but when we met at dinner later (Norman had taken one look at Norris and insisted Fig invite her to dinner), he didn’t seem old. He looked young and attractive and was obviously very interested in me. When someone is interested in you—really concentrating and not looking over your shoulder, which considering my shoes would have been easy for Norman—well, I was interested too.”

At the time Mailer was separated from his fourth wife, Beverley, but not quite separated from Carol, with whom he had a daughter, Maggie, who was six months older than Matt. At 9:30 pm Norris had to leave the party to collect Matt, who was with his father. Norman suggested that they pick him up together. Norris recounts, “Watching him hold my sleeping boy touched me.” Norman Mailer was the first man Norris ever brought back to her house while her son was there. She told Norman about her desire to write, about her marriage and her divorce. He told her about his life, his wives, his children and how he was being pulled in so many directions—and not only Carol—there was another relationship he was trying to get out of too. Curiously, both of them had first married when they were twenty.

They made love on the floor, which wasn’t that great. Norris writes about it: “How could it have been? But then there are few great ones on the first try.
Most guys never get near to great under any circumstance.” Norman left the next day without ever signing her copy of his book on Marilyn Monroe. He invited Norris to meet him in New York. As Norris says, “I lied to my parents who looked after Matt. I told them I was going to an art convention.” Her close girlfriends, whom she still has to this day, thought that she would go to New York and get Norman Mailer out of her system.

Eventually they had to confront the truth. Norris had fallen in love with a man of fifty-two who lived in New York, was a lousy marriage prospect, and had fathered more than anyone’s fair share of children. Norris recalls, “When my father realised I was serious about Norman he said, ‘Well you know that in twenty years time you're going to end up as his nurse. He's going to be an old man? I told him. ‘Well daddy, I may go first and why give up 20 years of happiness for something that might never happen?’ I’d say that again. None of us know what’s going to happen. If you’re happy right now, that’s more than most people get.” Later, whenever another Norman Mailer story hit the headlines, Norris would call her parents to warn them about what was in the papers. Norris summarizes, “I didn’t like it and neither did they but that’s{{pg|501|502}}

how it was.” Norman and her parents didn’t have much to talk about, “But,” Norris recounts, “they respected each other and got on fine.”

Mailer used to tell Norris that she was the only woman he had ever picked who had as much common sense as his mother. Norris remembers, “It wasn’t necessarily a compliment! But I loved Fanny Mailer and she loved me. She was a character—curious, clever, down to earth. She wasn’t erudite or well educated—and I’m not either. His mother adored Norman. As long as Norman was happy, that was ok with her. She taught me about Judaism and how to cook the food he enjoyed. Fanny and his sister, Barbara, were good friends to me. That meant a lot to a girl who didn’t know anyone in New York. And Fanny adored John Buffalo, who was a sunny, sweet baby.”

John, with his movie star good looks is, like his father, a writer and actor.
He says that he was brought up with “An obscene amount of love.” He is travelling with Norris on her publicity tour. As his mother says, “To look after me, and carry the bags!”

What did Norris have that so endeared her to Norman’s children? Why did she succeed where the other wives failed? She is never going to say anything about any of the other wives: “I was an only child so having this huge family was wonderful. Susan, Norman’s oldest was the same age as me. It was like gaining a sister. The older kids were like siblings, the younger ones loved Matt and when John came along, they loved him too. Most of the time the kids lived with their mothers. They had their own lives but they spent summers with Norman in Maine, swimming, canoeing, climbing and being this big family. Norman was a wonderful father. They could see how happy he was. That hadn’t happened in a long time. Norman was very outdoorsy. During those first family summers I pretended I was more athletic than I really was. By the time he found out it was much too late. He was pretty formidable, radiating energy like a steam heater. But he didn’t phase me. I think that’s one of the reasons he found me attractive—the fact that I wasn’t phased.”

Did Mailer ever sign her copy of his book on Marilyn Monroe? “He didn't write in it until I was already living with him in New York,” Norris recalls: This is what he wrote—To Barbara. Because I knew when I wrote this book that someone I had not yet met would read it and be with me. Hey, Baby, do you know how I love Barbara Davis and Norris Church?” Norman. Feb ’76.”

By any standard, Norris Church Mailer has had an unbelievable life.{{pg|502|503}}

Against all odds, she and Norman had a marriage that lasted, as the line goes,
“Till death us do part.” She is not unhappy living on her own and has no interest in a relationship with another man. As she says, “I’m not someone who feels lonely. I’m painting again and working on another book. Six of our children live in New York, so I’m surrounded by family. And my mother, who’s 9o, lives fifteen minutes away. We see each other all the time and I go out a lot. Of course I miss Norman. There’s so much going on in the world. I want to know what he thinks and what he has to say. If we’d never met, I guess I’d have been happy enough. I’d have painted. Maybe I’d have got married again and had a couple more kids. But I wouldn’t trade my life with Norman Mailer for anything.”

User:Kamyers/sandbox

2025-04-04T16:50:21Z

Kamyers: fixed quote

{{user sandbox|plain=yes}}

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}
{{MR04}}
{{Byline|last=Jacomo|first=Thomas |abstract=A confidant of Norman Mailer recounts his experiences with Mailer over many years. |note=Thomas Jacomo was a longtime friend of Norman Mailer. As executive director of the Washington Palm restaurant, he knows everyone of any importance or self-perceived importance and presides over perhaps the main, nonpartisan power meeting spot in the nation's capital. |url=}}

{{dc|dc=I|t was around 1970 or 1971.}} I was running a hotel in Manchester, Vermont, called the Avalanche Motor Lodge. Nearby was a nightclub called The Roundhouse. People knew I was a big boxing fan and told me Jose Torres, the light heavyweight champion of the world, was over there. So of course I ran across the street.

I was young, full of piss and vinegar, and I ended up sparring with Torres, kidding around with him, and he says, “I want you to meet my friend Norman Mailer.” I didn't know who he was, but Jose says, “We’ve got a ring set up at Norman’s house over here. Why don’t you go a couple of rounds with him?”

So I said, “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

Jose was hanging around with Norman, who was teaching him how to write. Jose was writing a book called ''Sting Like a Bee: the Muhammad Ali Story''.

I go over to Norman’s house. Sure enough, he has a regular ring set up there—gloves, headgear—and I think, ''What am I getting myself into?'' Also, he outweighed me by about twenty-five pounds.

I get into the ring. Bing, bing, bing—we fought on and off for two or three weeks. We never really hurt each other. In fact, he made a rule a couple of years later that we’re never going to hurt each other, although I did give him a couple of good shots. {{pg|393|394}}

Norman was a boxing fanatic. He got an offer to do the ''Dick Cavett Show'' in New York, which was a very big deal then. Norman and Jose were going to get in the ring and spar a couple of rounds on the show. I was Norman’s second and Jose had a friend of his as his second in the ring.

I’m teasing Norman, saying, “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you? Jose’s going to get in the ring. He’s going to see the lights, he’s going to snap and think he’s in a real fight and knock you out.”

Norman said, “Nah, nah, he won’t.”

We practice a long time in the back of my restaurant. I’m instructing him and raising my elbow to demonstrate how to block punches and I say, “Hit him here! Make it sound good!”

After all the rehearsal, we get to New York for the show and I’m in Norman’s corner. Jose throws a left hook to the body. Norman’s supposed to have his elbow over here to block it. He lifts his elbow and gets hit right in the gut. I hear the wind come out of Norman and I think, ''Oh my God, he’s going to fall down, right on national television!''

I start yelling to Jose in Italian so no one else will know what I’m saying,
“''Aspetti! Piano! Piano!''”—Stop! Easy! Easy! But he’s Puerto Rican, he speaks Spanish, and doesn’t know what I’m saying.

But we survived that night and went up to Gus D’Amato’s apartment to watch it on TV. And that was one of the most exciting nights Norman and I ever had.

Another time we were up in Vermont. Norman was crazy: he decides we’re going to go hiking and boating with his kids on a lake. The water’s one inch from coming into the boat and I say, “Norman, I hate to tell you this, but I can’t swim.”

“Tom,” he says, “Don’t worry. If the boat goes over, you hang onto it. I’ll rescue the kids and take them to the shore and I’ll come back and get you.” I said, “F-that! Take me back to the shore first; the kids can swim.”

{{* * *}}

I was a pretty hot dog skier and one day Norman tells me, “My son
Michael wants to learn how to ski.” He was about seven or eight.

I said, “Okay. I’ll take the afternoon and give Michael a few lessons.” And the old joke was, ''Bend your knees, look out for the trees, twenty dollars, please.''
That was a private ski lesson up there.{{pg|394|395}}

So I’m teaching Michael how to ski. He caught on pretty quickly, so I left
him alone for a while to practice.

That night, Norman’s supposed to be at my house for a spaghetti dinner.
I’m sitting there waiting for him . . . waiting for him . . . .

Finally the phone rings. It’s Norman. “I’m just coming back from the hospital. Michael’s just broken his leg.”

That was the end of my ski instructor career.

{{* * *}}

The other great story—I’d just broken up with my girlfriend and my heart
was broken.

I was playing ping-pong with Norman at my hotel. He's been married six
times, so I say to him, “How do you get over the hurt and the pain?” Norman says, “Tom, once you get through the flesh, down to the bone, it doesn't hurt anymore.”

I said, “Ooh, great advice, Norman. Thanks a lot.”

{{* * *}}

I miss a lot of things about Norman Mailer. What I miss most is his intelligence. He was the smartest man I ever spoke to in my entire life. He analyzed everything. Nothing just went by him.

Despite what a lot of people said, he wasn’t tough at all. He had a heart
of gold. Any time I needed anything, he was always there for me.

And he liked to laugh. I made him laugh.

___

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}
{{MR04}} 

{{Byline|last=Fox|first=Sue |abstract=An interview with Norris Church Mailer discussing her relationship with Norman Mailer. |note=This interview took place on January 18, 2010 in the Mailer Brooklyn Heights home. |url=}}

{{dc|dc=O|n the face of it, a twenty-six-year-old high school art teacher}} raised by strict Arkansas Baptists whose grandparents were sharecroppers and muleskinners, and America’s wildest literary lion—at 52, already a year older than her father-with seven children, five failed marriages and other affairs in his wake—didn’t have much going for it. But who is anyone to judge? Men and women with no obvious link in their culture, backgrounds or achievements are drawn to one another and the alchemy works. Norris Church Mailer and Norman Mailer were one of those couples. Apart from their cultural mismatch and age difference, in her platform soles, the strikingly beautiful, willowy five-foot-ten redhead, towered above Mailer, who was barely five-foot-eight.

Their love affair—painful and stormy as it sometimes was—endured until the day Mailer died—November 10, 2007. He was eighty-four. Norris, who shared the same birthday as her more famous husband, January 31, is sixty-one. As she says,

{{quote|“We were together thirty-three years, which by any measure is a long marriage. Every love story has its ups and downs and we certainly had ours, but I would say it was one of the great love stories. When you think about it, the two of us were kind of impossible. Norman and his wives sounded a bit like Henry VIII. Nobody would have put our two characters in a novel and imagined that the sixth wife would be the big love story.”}} {{pg|495|496}}

Except that, deep in her heart, Norris knew that the barrel-chested, blue-eyed Jewish intellectual heavyweight-one of the great voices of post-war American literature-loved her more than he had ever loved anyone. She writes about it in her memoir.

{{quote|“Through the years, no matter the circumstances of our passions and rages, our boredoms, angers and betrayals, large and small, sex was the chord that bound us together; it was the thick wire woven from thousands of shared experiences that never broke, indeed was hardly frayed and only got stronger, no matter how the bonds of marriage were tested. Even in the worst times we had many years later, when we almost separated, somehow, inexplicably, at night we would cling to each other, drawn like powerful magnets, the familiarity of our bodies putting salve on the wounds we had inflicted during the day, until over time the warring ended and the love remained. The only thing that brought it to an end was old age, illness and death itself.”}}

Norris believes that she and Norman stayed together “Because we really loved each other. We loved our kids, we loved our life and we were comfortable with each other. There were dark places and Norman’s philandering hurt me. We sparred but we also laughed a lot. In the end, nothing was ever powerful enough to tear our marriage apart.”

She writes about the rude people: “and there are way too many rude people in this world asking her ‘Which wife are ''you?''’” Never for a moment did she doubt her short although possibly not sweet answer: “The last one.”

Love him or hate him, no one ever sat on the fence when it came to Norman Mailer, perhaps the most pugnacious writer of his generation. In 1948, his first partly autobiographical novel, ''The Naked and The Dead'', brought him fame and huge public acclaim. He was twenty-five years old. Over the next six decades, center stage, he published more than thirty books, including novels and non-fiction on subjects as disparate as Mohammed Ali and Marilyn Monroe. He twice won the Pulitzer Prize, for ''Armies of the Night'' (1968) and “The Executioner’s Song” (1979). Mailer wrote essays as well as writing, directing and occasionally, acting in low-budget movies. He helped found ''The Village Voice'' magazine. He was a regular and highly opinionated guest on TV talk shows who actively sought publicity and public attention.{{pg|196|197}}

Mailer once ran for Mayor of New York. He was an anti-war protester, an opponent of women’s liberation, and a man who railed against the evils of plastic. He railed against many things and, no mean boxer, could pick a fight at the least provocation. He stabbed his second wife, Adele. Gore Vidal frequently argued with him. In 1984, Mailer wrote asking Vidal to end their feud, inviting him to help raise money for a PEN World Congress by joining an impressive list of writers including John Updike, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bill Styron, Arthur Miller, William Buckley, Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer. Vidal chose to share an evening with Mailer who, throughout his life, was a great supporter of PEN. According to Norris, “He was also a great supporter of aspiring writers, replying to letters with encouraging words and sending manuscripts to agents. I used to call Norman, ‘Henry Higgins.’ He was always trying to take someone and make them into someone wonderful. He liked it when one of them succeeded and was generous with his time and advice.”

In the ICU at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, a nurse mentioned to Mailer that she liked to write. Norman told her to write about her weekend, then went through each typed page with her line by line. As Norris recounts,

{{quote|“Norman used to say that if we had money he would have liked to start a school for writers. But with nine children (When she first met Mailer, Norris had been divorced for a year, and already had three-year-old Matthew. Their son John Buffalo, was born in April of 1978), money was tight. Norman worked very hard to run our enormous family—especially the time when we had six children in private school.”}}

One of the darkest times in the Mailer marriage was when Jack Abbott came into their lives. Norman was writing a book (''The Executioner’s Song'') about a murderer, Gary Gilmore, who was executed in 1977. Jack Henry Abbot wrote to Mailer from prison. He had a history of violence and had killed an inmate. His letter was well written, useful for the book, and they began corresponding. Mailer told Abbott that he thought the correspondence would make an interesting book and his publisher took on the project. Then Abbott was granted parole. Norris had no idea that Norman had committed himself to helping Abbott until the night he announced that he was off to pick him up from the airport and bring him home to dinner.{{pg|197|198}}

According to Norris, “John Buffalo was not yet three. It was a scary time.
The most scary thing was Norman’s lapse of realism. He genuinely thought [that] talent would override everything—that with his book—Jack would be transformed. But a psychopath, even one who has written a decent book, is still a psychopath. That was Norman—idealist and optimist who woke up to a new world every day.”

In May 2007, I went to see Mailer in Provincetown. It was six months before he died. Physically frail, he was combative and thrilling company. I told him that I had once worked in Cuba with a photographer to find Gregory Fuentes who had known Ernest Hemingway and was featured in his novel ''The Old Man and The Sea''. Norman was amused to hear that we found Fuentes who, wheelchair bound, was wheeled out for tourists by his grandson. Just like Mailer, Fuentes had his life etched into his face. For $5 we could kiss Fuentes and take a photograph. As I left, “I joked to Norman, I’m going to kiss you good bye but I’m not giving you $5!” At eighty-four, in his old man’s slippers, he didn’t argue. I left, haunted by what he had said about writing. “A novel is like falling in love. You don’t say, “I’m going to fall in love. It has to come to you. It has to feel just like love.”

And love is what I came to talk about with Norris in the lovely Brooklyn brownstone house that has long been the Mailer’s New York home. The apartment is up three flights of stairs. You huff and puff your way up flights to be rewarded by the sight of her striking portrait of Humphrey Bogart hanging jokily outside the entrance.

Inside, on a clear blue sky day such as this, your breath is taken away by the view from the huge living room windows over the East River to Wall Street straight ahead. Slightly to the West is the Hudson River and the Statue of Liberty. Norris has filled her home with books. It’s an Aladdin's cave of objects and memories. There are festive music boxes—a carousel, a circus tent and an enchanting Ferris wheel that lights up. Her home is an oasis of calm green walls and different textures—of stencilled furniture, plumped up velvet cushions, walls and surfaces covered with family photographs and paintings—some of hers—others done by Mailer children. The apartment is a celebration of her love for family and home. It radiates Norris’s artist’s gift for colour and delicious sense of humor. When you’re in her company, it is hard not to smile. She recounts, “I’m anally tidy. But it wasn’t always like this. When I first came to New York, this place was such a mess. I scrubbed it clean, and didn’t give it a thought. There were ropes and trapezes for the

User:Kamyers/sandbox

2025-04-04T16:49:36Z

Kamyers: added a few pages

{{user sandbox|plain=yes}}

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}
{{MR04}}
{{Byline|last=Jacomo|first=Thomas |abstract=A confidant of Norman Mailer recounts his experiences with Mailer over many years. |note=Thomas Jacomo was a longtime friend of Norman Mailer. As executive director of the Washington Palm restaurant, he knows everyone of any importance or self-perceived importance and presides over perhaps the main, nonpartisan power meeting spot in the nation's capital. |url=}}

{{dc|dc=I|t was around 1970 or 1971.}} I was running a hotel in Manchester, Vermont, called the Avalanche Motor Lodge. Nearby was a nightclub called The Roundhouse. People knew I was a big boxing fan and told me Jose Torres, the light heavyweight champion of the world, was over there. So of course I ran across the street.

I was young, full of piss and vinegar, and I ended up sparring with Torres, kidding around with him, and he says, “I want you to meet my friend Norman Mailer.” I didn't know who he was, but Jose says, “We’ve got a ring set up at Norman’s house over here. Why don’t you go a couple of rounds with him?”

So I said, “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

Jose was hanging around with Norman, who was teaching him how to write. Jose was writing a book called ''Sting Like a Bee: the Muhammad Ali Story''.

I go over to Norman’s house. Sure enough, he has a regular ring set up there—gloves, headgear—and I think, ''What am I getting myself into?'' Also, he outweighed me by about twenty-five pounds.

I get into the ring. Bing, bing, bing—we fought on and off for two or three weeks. We never really hurt each other. In fact, he made a rule a couple of years later that we’re never going to hurt each other, although I did give him a couple of good shots. {{pg|393|394}}

Norman was a boxing fanatic. He got an offer to do the ''Dick Cavett Show'' in New York, which was a very big deal then. Norman and Jose were going to get in the ring and spar a couple of rounds on the show. I was Norman’s second and Jose had a friend of his as his second in the ring.

I’m teasing Norman, saying, “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you? Jose’s going to get in the ring. He’s going to see the lights, he’s going to snap and think he’s in a real fight and knock you out.”

Norman said, “Nah, nah, he won’t.”

We practice a long time in the back of my restaurant. I’m instructing him and raising my elbow to demonstrate how to block punches and I say, “Hit him here! Make it sound good!”

After all the rehearsal, we get to New York for the show and I’m in Norman’s corner. Jose throws a left hook to the body. Norman’s supposed to have his elbow over here to block it. He lifts his elbow and gets hit right in the gut. I hear the wind come out of Norman and I think, ''Oh my God, he’s going to fall down, right on national television!''

I start yelling to Jose in Italian so no one else will know what I’m saying,
“''Aspetti! Piano! Piano!''”—Stop! Easy! Easy! But he’s Puerto Rican, he speaks Spanish, and doesn’t know what I’m saying.

But we survived that night and went up to Gus D’Amato’s apartment to watch it on TV. And that was one of the most exciting nights Norman and I ever had.

Another time we were up in Vermont. Norman was crazy: he decides we’re going to go hiking and boating with his kids on a lake. The water’s one inch from coming into the boat and I say, “Norman, I hate to tell you this, but I can’t swim.”

“Tom,” he says, “Don’t worry. If the boat goes over, you hang onto it. I’ll rescue the kids and take them to the shore and I’ll come back and get you.” I said, “F-that! Take me back to the shore first; the kids can swim.”

{{* * *}}

I was a pretty hot dog skier and one day Norman tells me, “My son
Michael wants to learn how to ski.” He was about seven or eight.

I said, “Okay. I’ll take the afternoon and give Michael a few lessons.” And the old joke was, ''Bend your knees, look out for the trees, twenty dollars, please.''
That was a private ski lesson up there.{{pg|394|395}}

So I’m teaching Michael how to ski. He caught on pretty quickly, so I left
him alone for a while to practice.

That night, Norman’s supposed to be at my house for a spaghetti dinner.
I’m sitting there waiting for him . . . waiting for him . . . .

Finally the phone rings. It’s Norman. “I’m just coming back from the hospital. Michael’s just broken his leg.”

That was the end of my ski instructor career.

{{* * *}}

The other great story—I’d just broken up with my girlfriend and my heart
was broken.

I was playing ping-pong with Norman at my hotel. He's been married six
times, so I say to him, “How do you get over the hurt and the pain?” Norman says, “Tom, once you get through the flesh, down to the bone, it doesn't hurt anymore.”

I said, “Ooh, great advice, Norman. Thanks a lot.”

{{* * *}}

I miss a lot of things about Norman Mailer. What I miss most is his intelligence. He was the smartest man I ever spoke to in my entire life. He analyzed everything. Nothing just went by him.

Despite what a lot of people said, he wasn’t tough at all. He had a heart
of gold. Any time I needed anything, he was always there for me.

And he liked to laugh. I made him laugh.

___

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}
{{MR04}} 

{{Byline|last=Fox|first=Sue |abstract=An interview with Norris Church Mailer discussing her relationship with Norman Mailer. |note=This interview took place on January 18, 2010 in the Mailer Brooklyn Heights home. |url=}}

{{dc|dc=O|n the face of it, a twenty-six-year-old high school art teacher}} raised by strict Arkansas Baptists whose grandparents were sharecroppers and muleskinners, and America’s wildest literary lion—at 52, already a year older than her father-with seven children, five failed marriages and other affairs in his wake—didn’t have much going for it. But who is anyone to judge? Men and women with no obvious link in their culture, backgrounds or achievements are drawn to one another and the alchemy works. Norris Church Mailer and Norman Mailer were one of those couples. Apart from their cultural mismatch and age difference, in her platform soles, the strikingly beautiful, willowy five-foot-ten redhead, towered above Mailer, who was barely five-foot-eight.

Their love affair—painful and stormy as it sometimes was—endured until the day Mailer died—November 10, 2007. He was eighty-four. Norris, who shared the same birthday as her more famous husband, January 31, is sixty-one. As she says,

{{quote|“We were together thirty-three years, which by any measure is a long marriage. Every love story has its ups and downs and we certainly had ours, but I would say it was one of the great love stories. When you think about it, the two of us were kind of impossible. Norman and his wives sounded a bit like Henry VIII. Nobody would have put our two characters in a novel and imagined that the sixth wife would be the big love story.”}} {{pg|495|496}}

Except that, deep in her heart, Norris knew that the barrel-chested, blue-eyed Jewish intellectual heavyweight-one of the great voices of post-war American literature-loved her more than he had ever loved anyone. She writes about it in her memoir.

{{quote|“Through the years, no matter the circumstances of our passions and rages, our boredoms, angers and betrayals, large and small, sex was the chord that bound us together; it was the thick wire woven from thousands of shared experiences that never broke, indeed was hardly frayed and only got stronger, no matter how the bonds of marriage were tested. Even in the worst times we had many years later, when we almost separated, somehow, inexplicably, at night we would cling to each other, drawn like powerful magnets, the familiarity of our bodies putting salve on the wounds we had inflicted during the day, until over time the warring ended and the love remained. The only thing that brought it to an end was old age, illness and death itself.”

Norris believes that she and Norman stayed together “Because we really loved each other. We loved our kids, we loved our life and we were comfortable with each other. There were dark places and Norman’s philandering hurt me. We sparred but we also laughed a lot. In the end, nothing was ever powerful enough to tear our marriage apart.”

She writes about the rude people: “and there are way too many rude people in this world asking her ‘Which wife are ''you?''’” Never for a moment did she doubt her short although possibly not sweet answer: “The last one.”

Love him or hate him, no one ever sat on the fence when it came to Norman Mailer, perhaps the most pugnacious writer of his generation. In 1948, his first partly autobiographical novel, ''The Naked and The Dead'', brought him fame and huge public acclaim. He was twenty-five years old. Over the next six decades, center stage, he published more than thirty books, including novels and non-fiction on subjects as disparate as Mohammed Ali and Marilyn Monroe. He twice won the Pulitzer Prize, for ''Armies of the Night'' (1968) and “The Executioner’s Song” (1979). Mailer wrote essays as well as writing, directing and occasionally, acting in low-budget movies. He helped found ''The Village Voice'' magazine. He was a regular and highly opinionated guest on TV talk shows who actively sought publicity and public attention.{{pg|196|197}}

Mailer once ran for Mayor of New York. He was an anti-war protester, an opponent of women’s liberation, and a man who railed against the evils of plastic. He railed against many things and, no mean boxer, could pick a fight at the least provocation. He stabbed his second wife, Adele. Gore Vidal frequently argued with him. In 1984, Mailer wrote asking Vidal to end their feud, inviting him to help raise money for a PEN World Congress by joining an impressive list of writers including John Updike, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bill Styron, Arthur Miller, William Buckley, Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer. Vidal chose to share an evening with Mailer who, throughout his life, was a great supporter of PEN. According to Norris, “He was also a great supporter of aspiring writers, replying to letters with encouraging words and sending manuscripts to agents. I used to call Norman, ‘Henry Higgins.’ He was always trying to take someone and make them into someone wonderful. He liked it when one of them succeeded and was generous with his time and advice.”

In the ICU at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, a nurse mentioned to Mailer that she liked to write. Norman told her to write about her weekend, then went through each typed page with her line by line. As Norris recounts,

{{quote|“Norman used to say that if we had money he would have liked to start a school for writers. But with nine children (When she first met Mailer, Norris had been divorced for a year, and already had three-year-old Matthew. Their son John Buffalo, was born in April of 1978), money was tight. Norman worked very hard to run our enormous family—especially the time when we had six children in private school.”}}

One of the darkest times in the Mailer marriage was when Jack Abbott came into their lives. Norman was writing a book (''The Executioner’s Song'') about a murderer, Gary Gilmore, who was executed in 1977. Jack Henry Abbot wrote to Mailer from prison. He had a history of violence and had killed an inmate. His letter was well written, useful for the book, and they began corresponding. Mailer told Abbott that he thought the correspondence would make an interesting book and his publisher took on the project. Then Abbott was granted parole. Norris had no idea that Norman had committed himself to helping Abbott until the night he announced that he was off to pick him up from the airport and bring him home to dinner.{{pg|197|198}}

According to Norris, “John Buffalo was not yet three. It was a scary time.
The most scary thing was Norman’s lapse of realism. He genuinely thought [that] talent would override everything—that with his book—Jack would be transformed. But a psychopath, even one who has written a decent book, is still a psychopath. That was Norman—idealist and optimist who woke up to a new world every day.”

In May 2007, I went to see Mailer in Provincetown. It was six months before he died. Physically frail, he was combative and thrilling company. I told him that I had once worked in Cuba with a photographer to find Gregory Fuentes who had known Ernest Hemingway and was featured in his novel ''The Old Man and The Sea''. Norman was amused to hear that we found Fuentes who, wheelchair bound, was wheeled out for tourists by his grandson. Just like Mailer, Fuentes had his life etched into his face. For $5 we could kiss Fuentes and take a photograph. As I left, “I joked to Norman, I’m going to kiss you good bye but I’m not giving you $5!” At eighty-four, in his old man’s slippers, he didn’t argue. I left, haunted by what he had said about writing. “A novel is like falling in love. You don’t say, “I’m going to fall in love. It has to come to you. It has to feel just like love.”

And love is what I came to talk about with Norris in the lovely Brooklyn brownstone house that has long been the Mailer’s New York home. The apartment is up three flights of stairs. You huff and puff your way up flights to be rewarded by the sight of her striking portrait of Humphrey Bogart hanging jokily outside the entrance.

Inside, on a clear blue sky day such as this, your breath is taken away by the view from the huge living room windows over the East River to Wall Street straight ahead. Slightly to the West is the Hudson River and the Statue of Liberty. Norris has filled her home with books. It’s an Aladdin's cave of objects and memories. There are festive music boxes—a carousel, a circus tent and an enchanting Ferris wheel that lights up. Her home is an oasis of calm green walls and different textures—of stencilled furniture, plumped up velvet cushions, walls and surfaces covered with family photographs and paintings—some of hers—others done by Mailer children. The apartment is a celebration of her love for family and home. It radiates Norris’s artist’s gift for colour and delicious sense of humor. When you’re in her company, it is hard not to smile. She recounts, “I’m anally tidy. But it wasn’t always like this. When I first came to New York, this place was such a mess. I scrubbed it clean, and didn’t give it a thought. There were ropes and trapezes for the

User:Kamyers/sandbox

2025-04-04T14:01:10Z

Kamyers: added another page

User:Kamyers/sandbox

2025-04-04T13:56:45Z

Kamyers: added another page

User:Kamyers/sandbox

2025-04-04T13:42:27Z

Kamyers: Added a page of "Sparring with Norman"

User talk:Grlucas

2025-04-03T22:21:14Z

Kamyers: Adding note of article ready for review.

{{Talk header}}

== Article Errors ==

I've added the body of the article to my sandbox page. What errors do I need to specifically change in order to make it correct?[[User:CDucharme|CDucharme]] ([[User talk:CDucharme|talk]]) 17:04, 14 September 2020 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|CDucharme}} Mostly you need to add the notes, citation, and read for typos. It’s meticulous, but that’s the job. (Thanks for signing.) —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:08, 14 September 2020 (EDT)

Hey, I need help with instructions for the Norman Mailer Bibliography for the remediation project. I am not sure what I am supposed to do.[[User:AJohnson|AJohnson]] ([[User talk:AJohnson|talk]]) 29 March 2021 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|AJohnson}} You need to remediate the bibliography by adding missing entries from the PDF to the article on this site using the correct templates. As the note on the bibliography says, you may use [[The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007|Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007]] as a model. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 14:48, 29 March 2021 (EDT)

== Final edits ==
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)

Hello, Dr. Lucas, I finished editing my article. May I have the banner removed?[[User:KJordan|KJordan]] ([[User talk:KJordan|talk]]) 20:13, 22 September 2020 (EDT)KJordan
:{{Reply to|KJordan}} Maybe. You should always link to something you want me to have a look at, please. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 20:14, 22 September 2020 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas, I have finished editing my article. Can you please review it? Thank You. Here is a link to it: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_2,_2008/The_Heart_of_the_Nation:_Jewish_Values_in_the_Fiction_of_Norman_Mailer --[[User:AMurray|AMurray]] ([[User talk:AMurray|talk]]) 21:56, 23 September 2020 (EDT)

:{{Reply to|AMurray}} Looking good! However, I still see quote a few typos. There should be no space before a footnote or citation.<ref>Like this.</ref> And all parenthetical citations need to be converted. I also see a lot of missing punctuation, especially around citations. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:24, 24 September 2020 (EDT)

{{Reflist}}

Dr. Lucas, I finished editing my article. Will you please review?
https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_2,_2008/The_Unknown_and_the_General --[[User:Jrdavisjr|Jrdavisjr]] ([[User talk:Jrdavisjr|talk]]) 09:00, 25 September 2020 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Jrdavisjr}} It looks good. Let's go through editing week and see if anything else comes up. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:15, 25 September 2020 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas, I have finished editing my article. Can you please review it? Thank You
https://projectmailer.net/pm/User:JSheppard/sandbox [[User:JSheppard|JSheppard]] ([[User talk:JSheppard|talk]])
:{{Reply to| JSheppard}} You have a '''lot''' of work left to do. I see [[User:Jules Carry]] is helping, but you’re missing references and there are typos throughout. Keep working. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:19, 25 September 2020 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas, I finished my article.
https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/More_Than_The_Dead_Know
[[User:RWalsh|RWalsh]] ([[User talk:RWalsh|talk]]) 15:15, 8 February 2021 (EST)
:{{reply to|RWalsh}} Not quite, but it's looking good. Clean it up and begin helping others. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:11, 9 February 2021 (EST)

Dr. Lucas, I believe I have finished editing my article. Will you please review?
https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/%E2%80%9CHer_Problems_Were_Everyone%E2%80%99s_Problems%E2%80%9D:_Self_and_Gender_in_The_Deer_Park [[User:Klcrawford|Klcrawford]] ([[User talk:Klcrawford|talk]]) 09:06, 15 February 2021 (EST)
:{{Reply to|Klcrawford}} Great work. I have removed the working banner. I would appreciate it if you began to assist some of the other editors. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 13:04, 15 February 2021 (EST)

Hello Dr. Lucas, I have been making some edits, I am still looking to see if there is more, can you look through and give any feedback?https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/Angst,_Authorship,_Critics:_“The_Snows_of_Kilimanjaro,”_“The_Crack-Up,”_Advertisements_for_Myself [[User:JFordyce|JFordyce]] ([[User talk:JFordyce|talk]]) 18:27, 20 February 2021 (EST)JFordyce

Hello Dr. Lucas, I believe I have finished my article. Can you please review it? https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/Request [[User:EKrauskopf|EKrauskopf]] ([[User talk:EKrauskopf|talk]]) 13:06, 22 Februrary 2021 (EST)
:{{Reply to|EKrauskopf}} OK, looks good. Well done. Now please begin assisting others on getting volume 9 finished. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 06:41, 23 February 2021 (EST)

Dr. Lucas, I have finished and cleaned up my article. Could you please review it?
https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/More_Than_The_Dead_Know [[User:RWalsh|RWalsh]] ([[User talk:RWalsh|talk]]) 12:35, 23 February 2021 (EST)
:{{Reply to|RWalsh}} OK, nice job. Now please begin assisting others on getting volume 9 finished. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 13:47, 23 February 2021 (EST)

Hello Dr.Lucas final edits have been made and the article is finished.https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/Angst,_Authorship,_Critics:_“The_Snows_of_Kilimanjaro,”_“The_Crack-Up,”_Advertisements_for_Myself[[User:JFordyce|JFordyce]] ([[User talk:JFordyce|talk]]) 22:27, 2 March 2021 (EST) JFordyce

Hello, Dr. Lucas! I have completed remediation on [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/The American Civil War in The Naked and the Dead and Across the River and Into the Trees]]. Can you please let me know if there's anything I need to correct? Thanks so much! [[User:KaraCroissant|KaraCroissant]] ([[User talk:KaraCroissant|talk]]) 17:11, 1 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|KaraCroissant}} great work! 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. Other than that—great job! I have removed the banner, so you are free to help with the rest of the volume. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:58, 3 April 2025 (EDT)

Hi, Dr. Lucas. I think I have finished my PM article:[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Hemingway_to_Mailer_—_A_Delayed_Response_to_The_Deer_Park|Hemingway to Mailer-A Delayed Response to The Deer Park]]. Please let me know if there is anything else needed from me. [[User:Hobbitonya|Hobbitonya]] ([[User talk:Hobbitonya|talk]]) 17:54, 2 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|Hobbitonya}} nice work. 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. Look at punctuation placement and footnotes; commas go inside quotation marks; punctuation goes before footnotes. You still have some citation issues. Note the read errors at the bottom of the page. These need to be gone. (Check the Mailer 1963 short footnote; there is no corresponding citation for 1963.) Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:58, 3 April 2025 (EDT)

Hi Dr. Lucas. I think I have finished my article: https://projectmailer.net/index.php?title=The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Ernest_and_Norman:_A_Dialogue_in_Two_Acts&oldid=17870
Please let me know if there is anything I need to fix. Also, let me know if the link is working. [[User:DSánchez|DSánchez]] ([[User talk:DSánchez|talk]]) 17:13, 3 April 2025 (EDT)

==Article Request==
Dr. Lucas. I have started working on another article. Would you be able to send me the PDF of "The Savage Poet-- Unlocking the Universe With Metaphor" so that I can help add to the article? [[User:Klcrawford|Klcrawford]] ([[User talk:Klcrawford|talk]]) 18:24, 23 February 2021 (EST)
:{{Reply to|Klcrawford}} Done. Thank you. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:46, 24 February 2021 (EST)

== When we Were Kings 1st remediation ==

[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/When_We_Were_Kings:_Review_and_Commentary|https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/When_We_Were_Kings:_Review_and_Commentary]]

Here is the link for the remediation I did for this weeks assignment. I did not now where to place the link.

Thank you,
Trevor Ryals
:{{Reply to|TRyals}} Thank you, but this is unnecessary. Just do the work; I promise I will see it. (And be sure to sign your talk page posts.) —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 18:16, 2 February 2021 (EST)

==Summer 2021==
Can you please review my article? I have a couple errors that I do not understand how to fix. Other than that, I am finished. https://projectmailer.net/pm/User:PLowery/sandbox

Can you review my article again please? I think I might be done. [[User:PLowery|PLowery]] ([[User talk:PLowery|talk]])
:{{Reply to|PLowery}} In order for you to be finished, your entire article must be posted [[The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/A Favor for the Ages|in the mainspace]]. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:29, 21 June 2021 (EDT)
::Done
:::I believe I have it done correctly now.

My topic person is Marion Stegeman Hodgson,however she was not my first choice. There are four others who initially chose Hodgson, Tyler McMillan, Elizabeth Webb, Caleb Andrews, and Marguerite Walker. I haven't gotten in touch with either classmate as of this date however.[[User:KWilcox|KWilcox]] ([[User talk:KWilcox|talk]])Kenneth Wilcox(KWilcox)July 7, 2021[[User:KWilcox|KWilcox]] ([[User talk:KWilcox|talk]])
:{{Reply to|KWilcox}} This work should be done on Wikipedia. Please post all questions and work about project 2 on Wikipedia. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:12, 8 July 2021 (EDT)

My attempt at creating a draft article failed by creating a new page. My next attempt will be using the user page to create the draft article, is this correct?[[User:KWilcox|KWilcox]] ([[User talk:KWilcox|talk]]) 10:22, 8 July 2021 (EDT)Kenneth Wilcox, July 8, 2021, 10:21am[[User:KWilcox|KWilcox]] ([[User talk:KWilcox|talk]]) 10:22, 8 July 2021 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|KWilcox}} As I said: please post all questions for project 2 on Wikipedia. This is an inappropriate forum for them. Thank you. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:27, 8 July 2021 (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)

== 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)

== 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)

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Norman Mailer Today

2025-03-28T01:26:44Z

Kamyers: added page numbers

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}
{{MR05}}

{{Byline|last=Toback|first=James|note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967}}

{{dc|dc=I|n the late 50’s, Norman Mailer’s Reputation}} still stood on ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948), neither of his subsequent efforts, ''Barbary Shore'' (1951) and ''The Deer Park'' (1955), having quite convinced Mailer or anyone else that he was the major novelist he insisted he could become. By his own later account, his head was leaden with seconal, benzedrene, and marijuana: a sense of what he himself has termed passivity, stupidity, and dissipation threatened to overcome him. Only gradually, after returning to New York from Paris and giving up drugs and cigarettes, did he begin to feel that he could write once again. Then, in 1957, Mailer produced “The White Negro,” an essay which restored his faith in his literary future and presaged the forms and directions that it would take.

Mailer has always professed an umbilical attachment to the Left, but since “The White Negro” the drift has been unmistakably from political radicalism toward spiritual radicalism, from an obsession with Marx to an obsession with Reich, from economic revolution to apocalyptic orgasm, from the proletariat to heroes, demons, boxers, tycoons, bitches, murderers, suicides, pimps, and lovers. And correspondingly, concern with extreme psychic states has become more important to his work than concern with extreme political states (the center having always been a bore for Mailer in all its manifestations).

It was not that eschatology ''replaced'' politics, but rather that it came to constitute a new means of diagnosis, both of personal and social plague, and that it promised answers to the crisis in which both the individual and the nation were entrapped. The criteria by which the health of a particular man {{pg|413|414}}(the organ) were to be assessed—his complexity, his bravery, his daring, his capacity for love—were essentially the same as those which measured the salubrity of America (the organism). Similarly, the disease which threatened both individual and state (expressed at once literally and metaphorically as cancer) evinced identical symptoms: mediocrity, uniformity, repression, and security.

Assuming the voice of religious physician, the Mailer of the 60’s reveals a vision of malady and possible restoration that is profoundly radical; at the same time the terminology and conceptual foundation of his homily are Puritan to the core. God and the Devil, Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell, History and Eternity are as inescapably real for Mailer as they were for Jonathan Edwards—and he has repeatedly asserted that such ultimate questions are proper and indeed necessary preoccupations for the contemporary novelist. Many would dissent, but even if we do look to the novelist for salvation, can we look to Mailer? There is, at least on the surface, an insistent buffoonery to his self-projected public image that can make it difficult to take him seriously, let alone to believe he can show us the way to redemption. Yet even a cursory examination of his work suggests that he is justified in claiming to be an intellectual adventurer of broad dimension. If he sometimes seems to be more familiar with ''Captain Blood'' than ''Middlemarch'', he nevertheless possesses an uncanny ability to recall and make use of what he has read. If he is sometimes guileful, more often he strives for complete honesty and the subject of his work. If his thinking is occasionally wild and unsound, he is also capable of rigorously logical intellection. And if his emphasis on scatology is at times repugnant, his undeniable charisma excites interest in practically everything he writes or says or does.

Consequently, when a new work by Mailer appears, we turn to it eagerly—expectant and hopeful—especially when, as in the case of his latest novel, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'',{{efn|Putnam, 208 pp., $4.95}} the new work also represents a new literary departure. By itself perhaps the most ambitious and the most difficult effort of his career, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is also a crystallization and an extension of Mailer’s other major productions of the 6o’s. To do justice to its complexity, to make it more accessible, and to place it properly in the perspective of Mailer’s development as a writer, one must first look back to ''The Presidential Papers'', ''An American Dream'', ''Cannibals and Christians'', and the dramatic adaptation of ''The Deer Park''.

With ''Advertisements for Myself'' (1959), Mailer showed that whatever {{pg|414|415}} stature he might or might not achieve as a novelist, he was certainly becoming a major essayist. This impression was confirmed by ''The Presidential Papers'' (1963), in which Mailer took it upon himself to indicate to John F. Kennedy the brave new paths he must follow in order to achieve greatness as a President, heroism as a man, and salvation for his country. In Mailer’s view, the only kind of hero who can appear in contemporary American life is the “existential” hero, a man who lives—in his thoughts as in his actions—by daring the unknown. On one occasion, when discussing symptoms of the national disease, Mailer remarks that no one in America is capable of tolerating a question that cannot be answered in twenty seconds. And he finds deeds courageous (and hence potentially heroic) only if there is death, or at least danger, as a possible consequence.

Heroism is the victory over Dread, the sensation that haunts not only ''The Presidential Papers'', but the whole of Mailer’s work in the 6o’s. Although doubtless a natural threat to man from the earliest days of his consciousness, Dread has become rather fashionable (to talk about if not to feel) in recent years. It has perhaps been best described by Tennessee Williams. After indicating that the war, the atom bomb, and terminal disease are not really to the point, Williams writes:

{{quote|These things are parts of the visible, sensible phenomena of every man’s experience or knowledge, but the true sense of dread is not a reaction to anything . . . strictly, materially ''knowable''. But rather it’s a kind of spiritual intuition of something almost too incredible and shocking to talk about, which underlies the whole so-called thing.}}

Either one knows what Williams is talking about or one doesn’t, and Williams implies that only artists and madmen do. Mailer, however, sees no one safe from the possibility of confrontation with the abyss, and he seems to feel a moral obligation to awaken us all to the danger. All roads lead to it, and it is only through the unmanly deceptions of right-wing politics, logical positivism, linguistic analysis, popular journalism, and Freudian psychology that “the terror which lies beneath our sedition [is hidden from us].” The vigilantes of the right wing, like the Un-American Activities Committee, the F.B.I., and the Birch Society, seek to transform metaphysical Dread into Red dread, to give internal emptiness the tangible outer shape of Com- {{pg|415|416}} munism. And Freudians tell us that Dread is merely a recurrence of the fear we feel as helpless infants. But Mailer, like the latter-day hell-fire Puritan preacher he is, asserts that the horrible intimation of Dread is that “we are going to die badly and suffer some unendurable stricture of eternity.” This is no metaphor; it is an expression of Mailer’s belief in the literal existence of hell.

The Maileresque hero—suspecting that his Dread is a real premonition of the agony that awaits him after death, an agony that can be averted only be daring death to come sooner, to come right away—will always put up an ante that amounts to more than he can afford to lose. Here, for example, is Mailer on Hemingway’s suicide:

{{quote|How likely that he had a death of the most awful proportions within him. He was exactly the one to know that the cure for such disease is to risk dying many a time . . . .

I wonder if, morning after morning, Hemingway did not go downstairs secretly in the dawn, set the base of his loaded shotgun on the floor, put the muzzle into his mouth, and press his thumb to the trigger . . . . He can move the trigger up to a point [of no man’s land] and yet not fire the gun . . . . Perhaps he tried just such a reconnaissance one hundred times before, and felt the touch of health return . . . . If he did it well, he could come close to death without dying.}}

That Hemingway eventually died as a result of his gambling with life is not so important as that he grew by it. By challenging fate he was saving his soul; by refusing to give into his dread of death, he was making whatever life was left for him more noble; and he was fortifying his spirit so that he might transcend the eternity of hell.

If the individual can save himself from madness and the abyss only by ceasing to repress even his most hidden and dangerous impulses and by flirting with death, so, too, with the nation as a whole. Devoted to the illusion of safety and security, it is condemned to mass insanity and an ignoble end, unless it redeems itself by immediate embarkation on a course of “existential” politics. This would involve a complete remolding of national objectives, not only on the large issues involving danger and death, survival or extinction, but also on less apocalyptic matters like urban housing. {{pg|416|417}}

For if America is not already incurably insane, she is certainly in a state of plague. Mailer sees the symptoms everywhere: in architecture, frozen food, television commercials, sleeping pills, sexual excess, sexual repression, the deterioration of the language. One has only to look at the kind of people who regulate and set the tone of the nation. Mailer lists them: politicians, medicos, policemen, professors, priests, rabbis, ministers, psychoanalysts, builders, and executives. It has not always been so:

{{quote|[Once] America was the land where people still believed in heroes: George Washington, Billy the Kid; Lincoln, Jefferson, Mark Twain, Jack London, Hemingway, Joe Louis, Dempsey, Gentleman Jim; American believed in athletes, rum-runners, aviators, even lovers. It was a country which had grown by the leap of one hero past another.}}

Now, more than ever before, America needed a hero. Was he Norman Mailer? Not yet. For the time being Mailer’s faith was in Kennedy, the inspiration for the essay, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” in which Mailer had expressed his faith in Kennedy’s capacity to lead the country in “the recovery of its imagination, its pioneer lust for the unexpected and the incalculable.” And yet no sooner had Kennedy won the election than Mailer was possessed by “a sense of awe,” an intuition that he had betrayed himself, and, as a result, he began to follow Kennedy’s career obsessively, as if he, Norman Mailer, personally “were responsible and guilty for all which was bad . . . and potentially totalitarian.” There are suggestions in this abrupt reversal of sentiment of three forces at work in Mailer: serious concern for the fate of the spiritual and political ideals he cherishes; a histrionic penchant for breast-beating; an almost petulant envy of Kennedy’s power and possibility, an irrational and vast extension of the simple literary envy he occasionally felt for James Jones.

To be sure, the heroism of which Mailer speaks is a cure which both individual and nation might decide is too hazardous and too painful to undertake. The patient is apt to protest that he does not really feel so sick as Mailer tells him he is and that even if he were, he would rather fade gradually into death than risk the unknown under surgery. If it is the “Establishment” that objects in these terms, Mailer regards it as plain cowardice, the cardinal sin, which should be avoided even if the strictures of eternity were {{pg|417|418}} not waiting as retribution. But with minority groups, the Negro in particular, his urgency is softened. He understands that it would be no small act of presumption on his part to demand that the Negro, who has lived with violence all his life, surrender the goals of security and stability.

{{quote|The demand for courage may have been exorbitant. Now as the Negro was beginning to come into the white man’s world, he wanted the logic of the white man’s world: annuities, mental hygiene, sociological jargon, committee solutions for the ills of the breast. He was sick of a whore’s logic and a pimp’s logic.}}

And yet the paradox here is only too obvious to Mailer. Believing that he must turn his back on the values of the ghetto, the Negro seeks recovery through assimilation into the moribund world of white liberal America. In reality, he is abandoning a way of life which is founded on those extreme states of human feeling and action which for Mailer constitute the only true possibility for spiritual rehabilitation. Mailer regrets that

{{quote|there is no one to tell [the Negro] it would be better to keep the psychology of the streets than to cultivate the contradictory desire to be . . . a great, healthy, mature, autonomous, related, integrated individual.}}

This problem is crystallized in the eleventh (and perhaps best) essay in ''The Presidential Papers'', “Death,” which focuses on the proceedings before, during, and immediately after the first Floyd Patterson-Sonny Liston heavyweight championship fight. Most Negroes wanted Patterson to win, a fact which Mailer explains by identifying Patterson as the symbol of security. Patterson was polite, quiet, humble, diligent, and Catholic; he was, in short, “White.” Liston, on the other hand, personified “the old torment,” the darker, dangerous side of life that the Negro had known only too well. Liston was surly, unpredictable, mob affiliated, and an ex-convict; he was “black.”

Most Negroes, then, wanted to see Liston beaten by Patterson for much the same reason that they would not react warmly to proposals that they seek out violence, danger, and the unknown. But if Mailer cannot blame them, he is nevertheless distressed by the insidious assimilation of Negroes (and Jews as well) into Anglo-Saxon America. For a Negro or a Jew, to stifle the rich unique- {{pg|418|419}} ness of his potential contribution to American life is to betray himself and to withhold the transfusion that might save this bloodless land.

Mailer likes Patterson—his loneliness, his pride, his persistent struggle against the odds. But just as the Fascist Croft had stolen Mailer’s interest from the liberal Hearn in ''The Naked and the Dead'', so Mailer’s real fascination here is not with Patterson but with Liston, whose inexorable toughness makes him the kind of Negro other Negroes refer to (sometimes in fear, sometimes in praise, sometimes in disapproval, but always in awe) as “a ''bad'' cat.” Liston takes on mythic proportions in Mailer’s mind, a mind which by nature tends to intensify, to exaggerate, and to think in terms of extremes. He is “near to beautiful” and one can think of “very few men who have beauty.” But that is in no way all.

{{quote|Liston was voodoo, Liston was magic . . . . Liston was the secret hero of every man who had ever given mouth to a final curse against the dispositions of the Lord and made a pact with Black magic. Liston was Faust.}}

He was the kind of Negro that any white man who imagined himself hip would have to come to terms with—either as model or as rival. Predictably, Mailer chooses the latter course, and does battle with Liston. Not physical battle, but psychic warfare that could have erupted into violence.

Liston’s incredibly fast knockout of Patterson left Mailer in a state of feverish frustration, a condition aggravated by a conscience which taunted him for his own recent failures—for too much alcohol and too little discipline. It was out of this sense of despair and defeat that another of Mailer’s obsessions was born.

{{quote|I began . . . to see myself as some sort of center about which all that had been lost must now rally. It was not simple egomania nor simple drunkenness, it was not even simple insanity: it was a kind of metaphorical leap across a gap. To believe the impossible may be won creates a strength from which the impossible may be attacked.}}

The essence of Mailer’s claim was that he was “the only man in the country” who could build the gate of a second Patterson-Liston fight into the pro- {{pg|419|420}} portions of an epic. The insistence with which he promoted his proposal the next day, the rude insults he hurled at Liston, and his petulant refusal to leave the dais (where he did not belong) all indicate that what Mailer wanted above everything was some kind of direct confrontation with Liston, some chance to prove to himself that he was still a possible hero, that he was larger than the myth into which his own mind had transformed the new heavyweight champion.

After the series of humiliations which gave reporters, detectives, by-standers, and Liston himself ample opportunity to laugh at him, Mailer finally got his chance. While obviously intoxicated, he approached Liston.

{{quote|“You called me a bum.” I said . . . “Well, you are a bum,” he said. “Everybody is a bum. I'm a bum too. It’s just that I’m a bigger bum than you are.” He stuck out his hand. “Shake, bum,” he said . . . . Could it be, was I indeed a bum? I shook his hand . . . . “Listen,” said I, leaning my head closer, speaking from the corner of my mouth as if I were whispering in a clinch, “I’m pulling this caper for a reason. I know a way to build the next fight from a $200,000 dog in Miami to a $2,000,000 gate in New York.” . . . “Say,” said Liston, “that last drink really set you up. Why don’t you go and get me a drink, you bum.”

“I’m not your flunky,” I said. It was the first punch I’d sent home. He loved me for it. The hint of corny old darky laughter, cottonfield giggles, peeped out a moment from his throat. “Oh, sheet, man!,” said the wit in his eyes. And for the crowd watching, he turned and announced at large, “I like this guy.”}}

Three phrases in this most revealing passage are particularly significant. First, Mailer views the dialogue in the terms of a fight; he speaks to Liston as if they were “in a clinch.” Secondly, Mailer’s “first punch” (“I’m not your flunky”) is delivered while he is behind on points and trapped in a corner. When he finally makes this move, he risks taking a (literal) punch in the mouth from Liston, who is not, one imagines, in the habit of being told off in public by inebriated reporters. Then, there is Liston’s remarkable reaction (“I like this guy”) to Mailer’s thrust, a totally unexpected profession of feeling for the writer that amounts to admiration, and the even more remarkable response that Liston’s concession generates in Mailer’s mind. For Mailer, Liston’s grunt {{pg|420|421}} becomes “a chuckle of corny old darky laughter, cottonfield giggles”: not only has Mailer taken final honors in his combat with the “Supreme Spade,” but he has metaphorically reduced him to his (ancestrally) original condition of servitude. From king of the Northern urban jungle where the white man is afraid to meet him on the street at night, Liston has been deported to a Southern cotton plantation where he knows his place and recognizes his master.

Liston is at once Mailer himself and Mailer’s alter ego. When he is the latter, Mailer becomes Patterson: “The fighters spoke as well from the countered halves of my nature.” Mailer even conjectures that perhaps Patterson is God and Liston the Devil, an idea which emanates from a conviction that every man is a potential agent for either of the two great warring cosmic powers, and that by one’s actions one affects the outcome in their ultimate struggle for control of a Manichean universe. On that night in Chicago, Liston, in his demonic role, “had shown that the Lord was dramatically weak.” Was it possible that Mailer’s press-conference comeback had restored some of the Deity’s strength? No negative answer could be given with full assurance.

In ''An American Dream'' (1964)—his first novel since ''The Deer Park''— Mailer is again concerned with the themes that inform the essays: danger, death, and heroism. The pattern of the novel, one might say, is designed on intercourse—with God, with the Devil, with voices from the inner recesses of the mind, with the vagina, and with the anus: intercourse leading to oceanic climax, coming variously in waves of love, lust, or pure aestheticism. The center of all this activity, the narrator and hero, is Stephen Richards Rojack, the embodiment of Mailer’s unrealized fantasies and of his radical Puritanism as well. A Harvard graduate ''summa cum laude'', he is also a war hero (“the one intellectual in America’s history to win a distinguished service cross”), an ex-congressman, a television personality, a professor of existentialist psychology, an author, a boxer, and an unsurpassed stud. He lives in contemporary New York amid people who, in Mailer’s view, personify the cancerous totalitarianism of our age.

The action is generated by Rojack’s murder of his wife, Deborah, a great bitch, beautiful, extremely rich, and secretly involved in international intrigue as a spy. The love he once felt for her has withered into a sense of dependence so paralyzing that she has now become the very structure of his ego. Without her, he fears he “might topple like clay.” In such a condition {{pg|421|422}} Rojack, who expresses Mailer’s eschatological vision, knows he is unprepared to face eternity. The first step toward reconstruction of self is to exorcise the demon that possesses him—and to exorcise Deborah is to kill her. The act of strangulation is committed with sexual passion, which is true to Mailer’s insistence that sex, love, and murder are inseparable and cathartic:

{{quote|Some blackbiled lust, some desire to go ahead (and kill her) not unlike the instant one comes in a woman against her cry that she is without protection came bursting with rage from out of me and . . . crack I choked her harder . . . and ''crack'' I gave her payment.}}

With Deborah’s death begins the arduous process of Rojack’s rebirth; he realizes that if murder is sometimes necessary, it is never simple. The gods, like furies, haunt him; he is acutely conscious of everything he thinks or says or does, for now cowardice or weakness or smallness will bring swift retribution—Dread, insanity, and the abyss. To strengthen himself, and to find, once again, something he can honestly call love are the ends of Rojack’s quest, but fulfillment of it and freedom from these new furies can be attained only through heroism, through seeking danger and daring death.

{{quote|. . . I believed that God was not love but courage. Love can come only as a reward . . . . A voice said in my mind: “That which you fear most is what you must do.”}}

The very phrasing of the passage is related to the nature of the punishment that will accrue if the command goes unheeded. Rojack’s mental life is split into a “voice” and “mind,” a separation dangerously close to the empty panic of schizophrenia.

But if madness looms as the penalty for prudence and cowardice (Mailer uses the two as almost indistinguishable), it is also possible that Dread will overwhelm even the bold Promethean. Rojack knows that “if man wished to steal the secret of the gods . . . they would defend themselves and destroy whichever man came too close.” With so narrow a chance of escape from insanity and an eternity in the abyss, suicide quite naturally presents itself as an alternative. What is to hold one back?

Despite all his frenetic activity, it is not merely a sensual lust for experi- {{pg|422|423}} ence that keeps Rojack going. On the contrary, while his senses are irrepressibly active (especially his sense of smell), his mind persists relentlessly in observation, commentary, and criticism. Any physical sensation is immediately subject to conscious analysis. In Rojack, sex is the effort of the body to rape the mind, to pulsate in waves of ecstasy transcending consciousness. But even here he fails. Whether it is with the German maid, Ruta, or with the Southern chanteuse, Cherry, Rojack’s concern is with power rather than with pleasure, with the psychic domination he achieves after ''her'' orgasm rather than with the physical rapture of his own. Like his creator, Rojack is far more a Puritan than a hedonist; life is struggle rather than joy.

So the question remains: why go on? It is true that Rojack puts his life on the line more than once. The murder of his wife, the competition with mafia goons, the insults to a former boxing champion in an unfriendly bar, and, especially, the nocturnal walk on the parapet of a windy terrace thirty stories above the ground—all could easily have resulted in his death. But rather than misguided suicide attempts, these acts are a part of Rojack’s supreme effort to prepare himself for death. The goal in life is finally religious—to make oneself as fit as possible to meet the unknown after life is done, to face the judgment of eternity; and Rojack is possessed by the faith of the gambler. Like a poker player who is convinced that his next hand is bound to be the lucky one, Rojack acts on the assumption that the longer he lives, the more heroic he may become.

And the assumption is not unfounded, for Rojack’s heroism is boundless. He argues with demonic voices and then dispels them, he outwits and outfights his indomitable tycoon father-in-law, and, above all, he humiliates and beats up a sexually magnetic Negro hero, Shago Martin. Not only does Rojack cause Cherry to have her first sexual explosion, after Shago had failed with her for months, but through a combination of psychic intuition and physical power he changes a situation where Shago is standing over him with a knife to one in which he is standing over Shago, who is now writhing pulp at the bottom of a staircase (and all in the space of ten minutes).

Practically everything Rojack says or does suggests parallels to his creator’s personal life, and the episode with Shago Martin, recalling the Mailer-Liston confrontation, is perhaps the richest example. If Liston was a large part of Mailer, Shago’s ode to himself is easily applicable to the dark sides of both Rojack and Mailer. {{pg|423|424}}

{{quote|“I’m a lily-white devil . . . . I’m just the future, in love with myself, that’s the future. I got twenty faces, I talk the tongues, I’m a devil . . . . I’m cut off from my own lines, I try to speak from my heart and it gets snatched.”}}

If Mailer’s encounter with Liston faintly suggested repressed homosexuality transformed into manly fortitude, Rojack’s encounter with Shago positively smacks of it. Like Shago, he has Cherry, and his immediate concern after intercourse is in comparison. He can hardly hide his elation when she implies that he was better, a predictable response when one recalls his reaction the night before to Cherry’s paean to Shago’s sexual prowess. Her emphasis on the word “stud” had made Rojack uneasy.

{{quote|The word went in like a blow to the soft part of my belly. There was something final in the verdict as if there were a sexual round robin where the big people played. All the big Negroes and the big whites.}}

Like Mailer, Rojack lives his life as if it were some dark experiment which has gradually but relentlessly gained the upper hand so that he is free to act only within its prescribed limits. Again like Mailer, Rojack is paying the price for a lifelong habit of thinking in metaphor; image (like God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell) has become reality, and that reality has become a master demanding undivided attention. It is a reality of dreams, and the dreams in ''An American Dream'' are endless: the sexual dreams of Don Juan, the Alger dream of the self-made man, the outsider’s dream of the inside, the Mafia’s dream of money and power, the square’s dream of the life of the hipster, and the hipster’s dream of death. None of these dreams has turned entirely into nightmare, but each has gone sour, like the soul of the nation which fabricated them. But the saddest dream of all is Stephen Rojack’s (and perhaps Mailer’s) dream of sanity.

{{quote|I was caught. I wanted to escape from that intelligence which let me know of murders in one direction and conceive of [love] from the other, I wanted to be free of magic, the tongue of the devil, the dread of the Lord, I wanted to be some sort of rational man again . . . But I could not move.}} {{pg|424|425}}

But what if, unlike Mailer and Rojack, one is ''not'' obsessed with psychopathic extremes? What if one’s patience expires at exhibitions of braggadocio? What if one appreciates wit (of which there is some) but loves humor (of which there is none)? Probably one would call ''An American Dream'' a joke, and a bad joke at that. The infantile demand for intermediate and complete attention; the insistence on being taken seriously, literally, and on his own terms at all times; the inability to treat his agony with even a suggestion of laughter or a trace of irony; the sloppy inconsistency of much of the dialogue; and, finally, the sheer loudness that informs the whole novel, a tone alternating between agitation and hysteria—all this works to tire, frustrate, and, at times, infuriate even the most sympathetic reader.

And yet somehow exasperation yields to the suspicion that Mailer’s is a mind which understands as much about the quality of contemporary American life as any now active, a mind which could well represent the last intellectually significant and articulate thrust of an eschatological and religious fervor that may be sorely missed once it is gone. So one is willing to indulge Mailer further, even to thank him once again. And one is willing to accept Rojack’s vision of himself as a fair description of Mailer:

{{quote|I had leverage; I was one of the more active figures of the city—no one could be certain finally that nothing large would come to me.}}

In 1960 there was reason to hope for a dramatic rebirth of energy and heroism; even the darkest passages of ''The Presidential Papers'' were balanced by intimations that America was not yet doomed. A man could function in society and still find opportunity to grow. By 1966, dream had at last soured into nightmare. ''Cannibals and Christians'', a collection of essays, “poems” (or, more accurately, epigrams and graffiti), and interviews (both real and imaginary), is a sermon whose vision of hell has become dire and inevitable. From Mailer’s pulpit comes a most disconcerting premonition:

{{quote|The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again; it has perhaps not been here so intensely in thirty years, not since the Nazis were prospering, but it is coming . . . . The world is entering a time of plague.}} {{pg|425|426}}

Totalitarianism has suffocated individuality; the Hilton in San Francisco is emulated before the Plaza in New York; housing projects look like nurseries and nurseries look like hospitals; appliances are plastic rather than metal; vile bully tactics in Vietnam have developed from simple occupation of Southeast Asia; the psychotic has taken over from the psychopath; pornography has gained another step on sexuality. In a word, Lyndon Johnson has replaced John Kennedy.

Johnson, Mailer tells us, is the archetypically alienated figure—a fact which can be observed in his prose (perhaps “the worst ever written by any political leader anywhere”), in his boorish manners, in his deceitfulness, in his voracious ego, and in his almost arrogant lack of style. If a President has a profound effect on the quality of life during his era—and Mailer is convinced that he does—then hope is indeed dim. And the consequences may be far worse than possible loss of prestige, power, or land; for there is the unknown to face after death, and the possibility that there is no absolution for cowardly sins.

But Mailer’s exhortations against the insanities of the age of Johnson do not come from one whose own tensions—between radicalism and Puritanism, heroism, and buffoonery, the playboy’s life and the intellectual’s vocation—are anywhere near control. And there is a further complication in Mailer’s complex personality, an unmistakably reactionary streak, not unrelated in impulse to his intense religiosity, which challenges his natural and professed political radicalism. Apart from the kind of conservatism that is common property among many contemporary radicals—a quasi-isolationism that urges America to terminate involvement in practically all foreign countries and a profound distrust of the liberal establishment—Mailer holds positions on matters not directly political which fall neatly into line with the conservative spirit (he is, for example, strongly opposed to birth control and abortion, and he speaks of homosexuality as a “vice”). But two pieces of evidence (both from the essay on the 1964 Republican Convention) are particularly striking. First, Mailer confesses to a buried urge to see Barry Goldwater elected:

{{quote|I knew Goldwater could win because something in me leaped out at the thought; a part of me, a devil, wished to take that choice.}} {{pg|426|427}}

Secondly, Mailer’s ambivalence toward Negroes, manifested earlier only in the individual cases of Sonny Liston and Shago Martin, is now explicitly broadened. His reaction to James Baldwin’s suggestion that there may be no remission for the white man’s sins against the Negro is violent:

{{quote|I had to throttle an impulse to . . . call Baldwin, and say, “You get this, baby. There’s a shit storm coming like nothing you ever knew. So ask yourself if what you desire is for the white to kill every black so that there be total remission of guilt in your black soul.”}}

If the relief of such tensions and conflicts and the consequent fortification of the self can come only from bold action, then Mailer’s primary means of personal salvation lies in his work. It is in the very act of creating the artistic sermons which he claims will show us the way to redemption that Mailer redeems himself. His influence has given rise to several “cults.” At one extreme there is a segment of the underground hipster community, closely involved with drugs, which worships him as the high priest of God and Sex. At the other end is that increasingly large group of liberal and radical intellectuals, centered in New York and comprised of such critics as Norman Podhoretz, Steven Marcus, and Richard Poirier who see in Mailer, as Marcus once put it, the embodiment of extraordinary literary talent, personal honesty and loyalty, and penetrating social criticism. And yet, in the last analysis, Mailer’s influence is limited, for the Word has hardly reached, let alone changed, the heart of the land he is trying to transform.

From the first three sermons of the 1960’s, the congregation is likely to walk away interested and, sometimes, excited, rather than transformed. Entertainment overshadows eschatology. And in Mailer’s fourth effort of the 6o’s, ''The Deer Park'', a stage adaption of his novel of 1956, religion gives way completely to comedy (both intentional and unintentional).{{efn|One ignores, for Mailer’s sake as much as for one’s own, ''Deaths for the Ladies'', a collection of words which the author extravagantly describes as poetry.}}

This is not to imply that Mailer has abandoned his urgent message; practically all his obsessions of the 6o’s are here: sex, love, lust, heroism, cowardice, power, God, and the Devil. If Mailer has added anything new to his philosophy, it lies in the expansion of his idea as sexual freedom and it is expressed through the pimp Marion Faye, who “follows sex to the end, turns queer, bangs dogs, and sniffs toes.” But in the figure of Herman Teppis (or
“H.T.”), a Hollywood mogul in the tradition of Louis B. Mayer and Harry {{pg|427|428}} Cohn, genuine humor replaces heavy rhetoric and caustic wit. In the desert of endless debates over who is—and who is not—a genius in bed, Teppis’s pronouncements are oases.

{{quote|You know what an artist is? He's a crook. They even got a Frenchman now, you know what, he picks people’s pockets at society parties. They say he’s the greatest writer in France. No wonder they need a dictator, those crazy French. I could never get along with the French.}}

But Mailer pays a price for his success in the comic mode. One laughs so hard at Teppis that one keeps right on laughing, even at the tortured, self-searching characters—spokesmen all for traditional Maileresque values—one is meant to take seriously. If there is a lesson to be learned from this play, it is that comedy may be suitable to many dramatic modes, including tragedy, but that it has no place at all in eschatological homily.

After a pop play perhaps one should have expected, or at least have been prepared for, a pop novel from Mailer’s pen. Nevertheless, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' comes as a shock. Radical as the ideas contained in them may have been, Mailer’s earlier novels were more or less conservative in form: except for ''Barbary Shore'', they were all clearly in the mainstream of the realist-naturalist tradition. But in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' ordered syntax has yielded to the total liberation of the word; intricate plot structure has given way to hallucinatory fantasy; fully realized characters living in what we know as the real world have been replaced by the protean apparitions in Mailer’s mind; the last trace of ratiocination has been obliterated by a relentless bombardment of sensual impressions and apocalyptic utterances. Dreiser and Farrell have disappeared in favor of Joyce, Faulkner, Burroughs, McLuhan, and Norman O. Brown.

At one point or another virtually every theory Mailer has ever had appears—but now with an important difference. Rather than preaching his messages baldly as in the past, Mailer drops them mockingly. And the mockery is directed both at himself and at those he would edify.

{{quote|The world is going shazam, hahray harout, fart in my toot, air we breathe is the prez, present dent, and god has always wanted more from man than man has wished to give him. Zig a zig a zig. That is why we live in dread of god.}} {{pg|428|429}}

Even the seminal concept of Dread is translated into the pop language of rock-and-roll. A vast chasm of culture and sensibility separates the tone of Rojack’s agonized monologues from the narrative voice of the present novel.

{{quote|. . . Mr. Sender, who sends out that Awe and Dread is up on their back . . . because they ''alone'', man, you dig? They all ''alone'', it’s a fright wig, man, that Upper silence alone is enough to bugger you, whoo-ee.}}

Indeed, the very claim to a prophetic stance in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is established in a similarly (and intentionally) ambiguous tone.

{{quote|This is your own wandering troubadour brought right up to date, here to sell America its new handbook on how to live . . . . We’re going to tell you what it’s all about.}}

Although there is a bare minimum of dramatic tension or external conflict, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' has several “characters,” each significant primarily on a symbolic plane. D.J. (Disc Jockey, Dr. Jekyll), the adolescent hero narrator of patrician Texas blood, is sometimes convinced that he is really a “Harlem Nigger,” and since “there is no such thing as a totally false perception,” perhaps he is. Not literally, of course, but rather in the same way that Mailer recognized Sonny Liston in himself and in the same way that the white hipster of “The White Negro” is, in his psychic makeup, black. If D.J. is the hipster, Rusty, his father, is the square, a corporation tycoon in Dallas—coarse, selfish, and, at heart, a coward. Tex (the Mr. Hyde to D.J.’s Dr. Jekyll) is part Indian, manly, bisexual, and the son of an undertaker.

The three go bear hunting in Alaska, but the most important action takes place in D.J.’s mind. At one point he has an urge to turn his gun on his father and “blast a shot, thump in his skull.” Although he resists, he soon commits the act symbolically by contradicting his father’s warning and courageously approaching a wounded bear, putting his life on the line, while his father lies hidden, waiting for the bear to become helpless before firing the fatal shot. Thus liberated from paternal authority, D.J. finds his instincts for love and battle shifted to Tex, D.J. encounters nakedly for the first time his other self. And through a mutual awareness of their mutual desire for {{pg|429|430}} both intercourse and fratricide, D.J. and Tex finally achieve a sense of purification and personal integration.

{{quote|. . . Tex Hyde . . . was finally afraid to prong D.J., because D.J. once become a bitch would kill him, and D.J. breathing that in by the wide-awake of the dark with Aurora Borealis jumping to the beat of his heart knew he could make a try to prong Tex, there was a chance to get in and steal the iron from Texas’ ass and put it on his own . . . now it was there, murder between them under all friendship, for god was a beast, not a man, and god said, “Go out and kill—fulfill my will, go and kill,” and they hung there each of them on the knife of the divide in all conflict of lust to own the other . . . Killer brothers, owned by something, prince of darkness, lord of light, they did not know; they just knew that telepathy was on them, they had been touched forever by the North and each bit a drop of blood from his own finger and touched them across and met blood to blood . . . .}}

In one eternal moment the Manichean polarities that have obsessed Mailer are at last synthesized—God and the Devil, heaven and hell, nature and man, Negro and white, Dallas and Harlem, phallus and anus.

But why ''are'' we in Vietnam? What relation does the title have to D.J., Tex, Rusty, bear-hunting, Harlem, Dallas, liberated syntax, or Maileresque eschatology? In the strictest sense, nothing at all. But in a broader, metaphysical sense, the title can be explained as another urgent warning to America. We are in Vietnam because we, as a nation, are going, or have already gone, insane. Mailer’s development from politics to meta-politics is complete. The world—and especially America—is now viewed as an expression of Mailer’s own most extreme longings and fantasies. Subject and object, chaos and order, internal imagination and external reality are united in a fusion of creator and creation.
In an ultimate sense Mailer is claiming not only ''relation to'' America but ''identity with'' her. It is likely that he has himself in mind when he writes of Rusty:

{{quote|His secret is that he sees himself as one of the pillars of the firmament, yeah, man—he reads the world’s doom in his own fuckup. If he is less great than God intended him to be, then America is in Trouble.}} {{pg|430|431}}

One cannot help wondering whether ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'', unruly and overwhelming, is not at least as much a symptom of our “Trouble” as a cure for it.

Throughout the past decade Mailer has made the world of the hipster the stuff of his sermons—novels, essays, and plays—as well as the style of his personal life. He calls it “a muted cool religious revival,” and a better description (at least of his ''intentions'') would be hard to find. He is Zarathustra coming down from the mountain with his vision of the hero; he is Dostoevsky reminding us that “God and the Devil are fighting, and the battleground is the heart of man!”; he is a Puritan minister informing us that pain may be good, for to suffer is to be given the opportunity to grow and prepare for the mystery of death and the perils of hell; he is a preacher frustrated by his congregation’s blind faith in innocence at a time in history when innocence is not only a lie but a crime; he is a seer trying to jar complacent men into an awareness of the despair that lies beneath their conventions; he is Toynbee telling us that if a civilization stagnates, it will die, that if a nation is to survive, it must respond to the reality of challenge; and he is Jonathan Swift couching his eschatological message in the language and imagery of scatology.

It is true that Mailer’s own faith in the validity of his message is not absolute. He has admitted that “the hipster gambles that he can be terribly, tragically wrong, and therefore be doomed to Hell.” But Mailer is a gambler, and so he continues to preach, to reiterate the old verities with a new twist, opening himself to the charge of anachronism, refusing to accept the “modern,” the valueless objectivity of the novels of Robbe-Grillet, the impersonal detachment of the music of Milton Babbitt, and the faceless hotels of Conrad Hilton. He will not give up like Hemingway’s Lieutenant Henry, who trusts only in the names of bridges, cities, and battles; Mailer chooses instead still to believe in God, Love, Heroism, Courage, and Death. His life and work are a contradiction of the message contained in one of his own poems:

{{quote|''Never'' ''contemplate'' ''nothing'' ''said'' ''the saint.''}} {{pg|431|432}}

History is a nightmare from which Mailer is still trying to awaken; but he will not take the easy way out in his struggle.

And yet if he is singleminded in his determination to view life in terms of ultimate battle, his desire for victory is not without ambivalence. His involvement in the pop world has become more than peripheral with his play, his new underground movie (where he is cast as a Mafia gangster), his new novel, and his own life style (where he tries to enact simultaneously the roles of writer, fighter, celebrity, lover, and messiah); and like most of the major figures in this eclectic pop world, he is flirting with psychosis. To live on the edge of so many different scenes is to belong truly to none; and to act like so many different people is to endanger the self. The sign of surrender, the indication that the battle has been lost, is the sense of succumbing to Dread. It is not impossible that Mailer’s Dread is essentially the fulfillment of his own unacknowledged ''desire'' for that Dread, the intuition that all those “psychotic” ideas and actions he lives by are simply the expression of a profound longing for madness and extinction.

Mailer holds himself together, however, by virtue of his work. Through creation he is able to come closer to the unattainable goal of total victory in the struggle which is the metaphor for his vision of life. Even if we do not believe in it ourselves, even if we are impatient with the intellectual naivete of a man who only a decade ago speculated that perhaps he was the first person to state that God was in danger of dying, and even if we are annoyed by the heavily flawed style of his prose, we can still learn from, and be moved by, this belligerent prophet. At the end of the stage version of ''The Deer Park'', he speaks of debates about God and Time and Sex as constituting “part of the poor odd dialogues which give hope to us noble humans for more than one night.” If Mailer has done this in his own work even a small part of the time, he is one Puritan our age can ill afford to lose.

=== Notes ===

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{{Review}}
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[[Category:Classic Interpretations (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Norman Mailer Today

2025-03-27T00:43:52Z

Kamyers:

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{{Byline|last=Toback|first=James|note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967}}

{{dc|dc=I|n the late 50’s, Norman Mailer’s Reputation}} still stood on ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948), neither of his subsequent efforts, ''Barbary Shore'' (1951) and ''The Deer Park'' (1955), having quite convinced Mailer or anyone else that he was the major novelist he insisted he could become. By his own later account, his head was leaden with seconal, benzedrene, and marijuana: a sense of what he himself has termed passivity, stupidity, and dissipation threatened to overcome him. Only gradually, after returning to New York from Paris and giving up drugs and cigarettes, did he begin to feel that he could write once again. Then, in 1957, Mailer produced “The White Negro,” an essay which restored his faith in his literary future and presaged the forms and directions that it would take.

Mailer has always professed an umbilical attachment to the Left, but since “The White Negro” the drift has been unmistakably from political radicalism toward spiritual radicalism, from an obsession with Marx to an obsession with Reich, from economic revolution to apocalyptic orgasm, from the proletariat to heroes, demons, boxers, tycoons, bitches, murderers, suicides, pimps, and lovers. And correspondingly, concern with extreme psychic states has become more important to his work than concern with extreme political states (the center having always been a bore for Mailer in all its manifestations).

It was not that eschatology ''replaced'' politics, but rather that it came to constitute a new means of diagnosis, both of personal and social plague, and that it promised answers to the crisis in which both the individual and the nation were entrapped. The criteria by which the health of a particular man (the organ) were to be assessed—his complexity, his bravery, his daring, his capacity for love—were essentially the same as those which measured the salubrity of America (the organism). Similarly, the disease which threatened both individual and state (expressed at once literally and metaphorically as cancer) evinced identical symptoms: mediocrity, uniformity, repression, and security.

Assuming the voice of religious physician, the Mailer of the 60’s reveals a vision of malady and possible restoration that is profoundly radical; at the same time the terminology and conceptual foundation of his homily are Puritan to the core. God and the Devil, Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell, History and Eternity are as inescapably real for Mailer as they were for Jonathan Edwards—and he has repeatedly asserted that such ultimate questions are proper and indeed necessary preoccupations for the contemporary novelist. Many would dissent, but even if we do look to the novelist for salvation, can we look to Mailer? There is, at least on the surface, an insistent buffoonery to his self-projected public image that can make it difficult to take him seriously, let alone to believe he can show us the way to redemption. Yet even a cursory examination of his work suggests that he is justified in claiming to be an intellectual adventurer of broad dimension. If he sometimes seems to be more familiar with ''Captain Blood'' than ''Middlemarch'', he nevertheless possesses an uncanny ability to recall and make use of what he has read. If he is sometimes guileful, more often he strives for complete honesty and the subject of his work. If his thinking is occasionally wild and unsound, he is also capable of rigorously logical intellection. And if his emphasis on scatology is at times repugnant, his undeniable charisma excites interest in practically everything he writes or says or does.

Consequently, when a new work by Mailer appears, we turn to it eagerly—expectant and hopeful—especially when, as in the case of his latest novel, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'',{{efn|Putnam, 208 pp., $4.95}} the new work also represents a new literary departure. By itself perhaps the most ambitious and the most difficult effort of his career, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is also a crystallization and an extension of Mailer’s other major productions of the 6o’s. To do justice to its complexity, to make it more accessible, and to place it properly in the perspective of Mailer’s development as a writer, one must first look back to ''The Presidential Papers'', ''An American Dream'', ''Cannibals and Christians'', and the dramatic adaptation of ''The Deer Park''.

With ''Advertisements for Myself'' (1959), Mailer showed that whatever
stature he might or might not achieve as a novelist, he was certainly becoming a major essayist. This impression was confirmed by ''The Presidential Papers'' (1963), in which Mailer took it upon himself to indicate to John F. Kennedy the brave new paths he must follow in order to achieve greatness as a President, heroism as a man, and salvation for his country. In Mailer’s view, the only kind of hero who can appear in contemporary American life is the “existential” hero, a man who lives—in his thoughts as in his actions—by daring the unknown. On one occasion, when discussing symptoms of the national disease, Mailer remarks that no one in America is capable of tolerating a question that cannot be answered in twenty seconds. And he finds deeds courageous (and hence potentially heroic) only if there is death, or at least danger, as a possible consequence.

Heroism is the victory over Dread, the sensation that haunts not only ''The Presidential Papers'', but the whole of Mailer’s work in the 6o’s. Although doubtless a natural threat to man from the earliest days of his consciousness, Dread has become rather fashionable (to talk about if not to feel) in recent years. It has perhaps been best described by Tennessee Williams. After indicating that the war, the atom bomb, and terminal disease are not really to the point, Williams writes:

{{quote|These things are parts of the visible, sensible phenomena of every man’s experience or knowledge, but the true sense of dread is not a reaction to anything . . . strictly, materially ''knowable''. But rather it’s a kind of spiritual intuition of something almost too incredible and shocking to talk about, which underlies the whole so-called thing.}}

Either one knows what Williams is talking about or one doesn’t, and Williams implies that only artists and madmen do. Mailer, however, sees no one safe from the possibility of confrontation with the abyss, and he seems to feel a moral obligation to awaken us all to the danger. All roads lead to it, and it is only through the unmanly deceptions of right-wing politics, logical positivism, linguistic analysis, popular journalism, and Freudian psychology that “the terror which lies beneath our sedition [is hidden from us].” The vigilantes of the right wing, like the Un-American Activities Committee, the F.B.I., and the Birch Society, seek to transform metaphysical Dread into Red dread, to give internal emptiness the tangible outer shape of Communism. And Freudians tell us that Dread is merely a recurrence of the fear we feel as helpless infants. But Mailer, like the latter-day hell-fire Puritan preacher he is, asserts that the horrible intimation of Dread is that “we are going to die badly and suffer some unendurable stricture of eternity.” This is no metaphor; it is an expression of Mailer’s belief in the literal existence of hell.

The Maileresque hero—suspecting that his Dread is a real premonition of the agony that awaits him after death, an agony that can be averted only be daring death to come sooner, to come right away—will always put up an ante that amounts to more than he can afford to lose. Here, for example, is Mailer on Hemingway’s suicide:

{{quote|How likely that he had a death of the most awful proportions within him. He was exactly the one to know that the cure for such disease is to risk dying many a time . . . .

I wonder if, morning after morning, Hemingway did not go downstairs secretly in the dawn, set the base of his loaded shotgun on the floor, put the muzzle into his mouth, and press his thumb to the trigger . . . . He can move the trigger up to a point [of no man’s land] and yet not fire the gun . . . . Perhaps he tried just such a reconnaissance one hundred times before, and felt the touch of health return . . . . If he did it well, he could come close to death without dying.}}

That Hemingway eventually died as a result of his gambling with life is not so important as that he grew by it. By challenging fate he was saving his soul; by refusing to give into his dread of death, he was making whatever life was left for him more noble; and he was fortifying his spirit so that he might transcend the eternity of hell.

If the individual can save himself from madness and the abyss only by ceasing to repress even his most hidden and dangerous impulses and by flirting with death, so, too, with the nation as a whole. Devoted to the illusion of safety and security, it is condemned to mass insanity and an ignoble end, unless it redeems itself by immediate embarkation on a course of “existential” politics. This would involve a complete remolding of national objectives, not only on the large issues involving danger and death, survival or extinction, but also on less apocalyptic matters like urban housing.

For if America is not already incurably insane, she is certainly in a state of plague. Mailer sees the symptoms everywhere: in architecture, frozen food, television commercials, sleeping pills, sexual excess, sexual repression, the deterioration of the language. One has only to look at the kind of people who regulate and set the tone of the nation. Mailer lists them: politicians, medicos, policemen, professors, priests, rabbis, ministers, psychoanalysts, builders, and executives. It has not always been so:

{{quote|[Once] America was the land where people still believed in heroes: George Washington, Billy the Kid; Lincoln, Jefferson, Mark Twain, Jack London, Hemingway, Joe Louis, Dempsey, Gentleman Jim; American believed in athletes, rum-runners, aviators, even lovers. It was a country which had grown by the leap of one hero past another.}}

Now, more than ever before, America needed a hero. Was he Norman Mailer? Not yet. For the time being Mailer’s faith was in Kennedy, the inspiration for the essay, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” in which Mailer had expressed his faith in Kennedy’s capacity to lead the country in “the recovery of its imagination, its pioneer lust for the unexpected and the incalculable.” And yet no sooner had Kennedy won the election than Mailer was possessed by “a sense of awe,” an intuition that he had betrayed himself, and, as a result, he began to follow Kennedy’s career obsessively, as if he, Norman Mailer, personally “were responsible and guilty for all which was bad . . . and potentially totalitarian.” There are suggestions in this abrupt reversal of sentiment of three forces at work in Mailer: serious concern for the fate of the spiritual and political ideals he cherishes; a histrionic penchant for breast-beating; an almost petulant envy of Kennedy’s power and possibility, an irrational and vast extension of the simple literary envy he occasionally felt for James Jones.

To be sure, the heroism of which Mailer speaks is a cure which both individual and nation might decide is too hazardous and too painful to undertake. The patient is apt to protest that he does not really feel so sick as Mailer tells him he is and that even if he were, he would rather fade gradually into death than risk the unknown under surgery. If it is the “Establishment” that objects in these terms, Mailer regards it as plain cowardice, the cardinal sin, which should be avoided even if the strictures of eternity were not waiting as retribution. But with minority groups, the Negro in particular, his urgency is softened. He understands that it would be no small act of presumption on his part to demand that the Negro, who has lived with violence all his life, surrender the goals of security and stability.

{{quote|The demand for courage may have been exorbitant. Now as the Negro was beginning to come into the white man’s world, he wanted the logic of the white man’s world: annuities, mental hygiene, sociological jargon, committee solutions for the ills of the breast. He was sick of a whore’s logic and a pimp’s logic.}}

And yet the paradox here is only too obvious to Mailer. Believing that he must turn his back on the values of the ghetto, the Negro seeks recovery through assimilation into the moribund world of white liberal America. In reality, he is abandoning a way of life which is founded on those extreme states of human feeling and action which for Mailer constitute the only true possibility for spiritual rehabilitation. Mailer regrets that

{{quote|there is no one to tell [the Negro] it would be better to keep the psychology of the streets than to cultivate the contradictory desire to be . . . a great, healthy, mature, autonomous, related, integrated individual.}}

This problem is crystallized in the eleventh (and perhaps best) essay in ''The Presidential Papers'', “Death,” which focuses on the proceedings before, during, and immediately after the first Floyd Patterson-Sonny Liston heavyweight championship fight. Most Negroes wanted Patterson to win, a fact which Mailer explains by identifying Patterson as the symbol of security. Patterson was polite, quiet, humble, diligent, and Catholic; he was, in short, “White.” Liston, on the other hand, personified “the old torment,” the darker, dangerous side of life that the Negro had known only too well. Liston was surly, unpredictable, mob affiliated, and an ex-convict; he was “black.”

Most Negroes, then, wanted to see Liston beaten by Patterson for much the same reason that they would not react warmly to proposals that they seek out violence, danger, and the unknown. But if Mailer cannot blame them, he is nevertheless distressed by the insidious assimilation of Negroes (and Jews as well) into Anglo-Saxon America. For a Negro or a Jew, to stifle the rich uniqueness of his potential contribution to American life is to betray himself and to withhold the transfusion that might save this bloodless land.

Mailer likes Patterson—his loneliness, his pride, his persistent struggle against the odds. But just as the Fascist Croft had stolen Mailer’s interest from the liberal Hearn in ''The Naked and the Dead'', so Mailer’s real fascination here is not with Patterson but with Liston, whose inexorable toughness makes him the kind of Negro other Negroes refer to (sometimes in fear, sometimes in praise, sometimes in disapproval, but always in awe) as “a ''bad'' cat.” Liston takes on mythic proportions in Mailer’s mind, a mind which by nature tends to intensify, to exaggerate, and to think in terms of extremes. He is “near to beautiful” and one can think of “very few men who have beauty.” But that is in no way all.

{{quote|Liston was voodoo, Liston was magic . . . . Liston was the secret hero of every man who had ever given mouth to a final curse against the dispositions of the Lord and made a pact with Black magic. Liston was Faust.}}

He was the kind of Negro that any white man who imagined himself hip would have to come to terms with—either as model or as rival. Predictably, Mailer chooses the latter course, and does battle with Liston. Not physical battle, but psychic warfare that could have erupted into violence.

Liston’s incredibly fast knockout of Patterson left Mailer in a state of feverish frustration, a condition aggravated by a conscience which taunted him for his own recent failures—for too much alcohol and too little discipline. It was out of this sense of despair and defeat that another of Mailer’s obsessions was born.

{{quote|I began . . . to see myself as some sort of center about which all that had been lost must now rally. It was not simple egomania nor simple drunkenness, it was not even simple insanity: it was a kind of metaphorical leap across a gap. To believe the impossible may be won creates a strength from which the impossible may be attacked.}}

The essence of Mailer’s claim was that he was “the only man in the country” who could build the gate of a second Patterson-Liston fight into the proportions of an epic. The insistence with which he promoted his proposal the next day, the rude insults he hurled at Liston, and his petulant refusal to leave the dais (where he did not belong) all indicate that what Mailer wanted above everything was some kind of direct confrontation with Liston, some chance to prove to himself that he was still a possible hero, that he was larger than the myth into which his own mind had transformed the new heavyweight champion.

After the series of humiliations which gave reporters, detectives, by-standers, and Liston himself ample opportunity to laugh at him, Mailer finally got his chance. While obviously intoxicated, he approached Liston.

{{quote|“You called me a bum.” I said . . . “Well, you are a bum,” he said. “Everybody is a bum. I'm a bum too. It’s just that I’m a bigger bum than you are.” He stuck out his hand. “Shake, bum,” he said . . . . Could it be, was I indeed a bum? I shook his hand . . . . “Listen,” said I, leaning my head closer, speaking from the corner of my mouth as if I were whispering in a clinch, “I’m pulling this caper for a reason. I know a way to build the next fight from a $200,000 dog in Miami to a $2,000,000 gate in New York.” . . . “Say,” said Liston, “that last drink really set you up. Why don’t you go and get me a drink, you bum.”

“I’m not your flunky,” I said. It was the first punch I’d sent home. He loved me for it. The hint of corny old darky laughter, cottonfield giggles, peeped out a moment from his throat. “Oh, sheet, man!,” said the wit in his eyes. And for the crowd watching, he turned and announced at large, “I like this guy.”}}

Three phrases in this most revealing passage are particularly significant. First, Mailer views the dialogue in the terms of a fight; he speaks to Liston as if they were “in a clinch.” Secondly, Mailer’s “first punch” (“I’m not your flunky”) is delivered while he is behind on points and trapped in a corner. When he finally makes this move, he risks taking a (literal) punch in the mouth from Liston, who is not, one imagines, in the habit of being told off in public by inebriated reporters. Then, there is Liston’s remarkable reaction (“I like this guy”) to Mailer’s thrust, a totally unexpected profession of feeling for the writer that amounts to admiration, and the even more remarkable response that Liston’s concession generates in Mailer’s mind. For Mailer, Liston’s grunt becomes “a chuckle of corny old darky laughter, cottonfield giggles”: not only has Mailer taken final honors in his combat with the “Supreme Spade,” but he has metaphorically reduced him to his (ancestrally) original condition of servitude. From king of the Northern urban jungle where the white man is afraid to meet him on the street at night, Liston has been deported to a Southern cotton plantation where he knows his place and recognizes his master.

Liston is at once Mailer himself and Mailer’s alter ego. When he is the latter, Mailer becomes Patterson: “The fighters spoke as well from the countered halves of my nature.” Mailer even conjectures that perhaps Patterson is God and Liston the Devil, an idea which emanates from a conviction that every man is a potential agent for either of the two great warring cosmic powers, and that by one’s actions one affects the outcome in their ultimate struggle for control of a Manichean universe. On that night in Chicago, Liston, in his demonic role, “had shown that the Lord was dramatically weak.” Was it possible that Mailer’s press-conference comeback had restored some of the Deity’s strength? No negative answer could be given with full assurance.

In ''An American Dream'' (1964)—his first novel since ''The Deer Park''— Mailer is again concerned with the themes that inform the essays: danger, death, and heroism. The pattern of the novel, one might say, is designed on intercourse—with God, with the Devil, with voices from the inner recesses of the mind, with the vagina, and with the anus: intercourse leading to oceanic climax, coming variously in waves of love, lust, or pure aestheticism. The center of all this activity, the narrator and hero, is Stephen Richards Rojack, the embodiment of Mailer’s unrealized fantasies and of his radical Puritanism as well. A Harvard graduate ''summa cum laude'', he is also a war hero (“the one intellectual in America’s history to win a distinguished service cross”), an ex-congressman, a television personality, a professor of existentialist psychology, an author, a boxer, and an unsurpassed stud. He lives in contemporary New York amid people who, in Mailer’s view, personify the cancerous totalitarianism of our age.

The action is generated by Rojack’s murder of his wife, Deborah, a great bitch, beautiful, extremely rich, and secretly involved in international intrigue as a spy. The love he once felt for her has withered into a sense of dependence so paralyzing that she has now become the very structure of his ego. Without her, he fears he “might topple like clay.” In such a condition Rojack, who expresses Mailer’s eschatological vision, knows he is unprepared to face eternity. The first step toward reconstruction of self is to exorcise the demon that possesses him—and to exorcise Deborah is to kill her. The act of strangulation is committed with sexual passion, which is true to Mailer’s insistence that sex, love, and murder are inseparable and cathartic:

{{quote|Some blackbiled lust, some desire to go ahead (and kill her) not unlike the instant one comes in a woman against her cry that she is without protection came bursting with rage from out of me and . . . crack I choked her harder . . . and ''crack'' I gave her payment.}}

With Deborah’s death begins the arduous process of Rojack’s rebirth; he realizes that if murder is sometimes necessary, it is never simple. The gods, like furies, haunt him; he is acutely conscious of everything he thinks or says or does, for now cowardice or weakness or smallness will bring swift retribution—Dread, insanity, and the abyss. To strengthen himself, and to find, once again, something he can honestly call love are the ends of Rojack’s quest, but fulfillment of it and freedom from these new furies can be attained only through heroism, through seeking danger and daring death.

{{quote|. . . I believed that God was not love but courage. Love can come only as a reward . . . . A voice said in my mind: “That which you fear most is what you must do.”}}

The very phrasing of the passage is related to the nature of the punishment that will accrue if the command goes unheeded. Rojack’s mental life is split into a “voice” and “mind,” a separation dangerously close to the empty panic of schizophrenia.

But if madness looms as the penalty for prudence and cowardice (Mailer uses the two as almost indistinguishable), it is also possible that Dread will overwhelm even the bold Promethean. Rojack knows that “if man wished to steal the secret of the gods . . . they would defend themselves and destroy whichever man came too close.” With so narrow a chance of escape from insanity and an eternity in the abyss, suicide quite naturally presents itself as an alternative. What is to hold one back?

Despite all his frenetic activity, it is not merely a sensual lust for experience that keeps Rojack going. On the contrary, while his senses are irrepressibly active (especially his sense of smell), his mind persists relentlessly in observation, commentary, and criticism. Any physical sensation is immediately subject to conscious analysis. In Rojack, sex is the effort of the body to rape the mind, to pulsate in waves of ecstasy transcending consciousness. But even here he fails. Whether it is with the German maid, Ruta, or with the Southern chanteuse, Cherry, Rojack’s concern is with power rather than with pleasure, with the psychic domination he achieves after ''her'' orgasm rather than with the physical rapture of his own. Like his creator, Rojack is far more a Puritan than a hedonist; life is struggle rather than joy.

So the question remains: why go on? It is true that Rojack puts his life on the line more than once. The murder of his wife, the competition with mafia goons, the insults to a former boxing champion in an unfriendly bar, and, especially, the nocturnal walk on the parapet of a windy terrace thirty stories above the ground—all could easily have resulted in his death. But rather than misguided suicide attempts, these acts are a part of Rojack’s supreme effort to prepare himself for death. The goal in life is finally religious—to make oneself as fit as possible to meet the unknown after life is done, to face the judgment of eternity; and Rojack is possessed by the faith of the gambler. Like a poker player who is convinced that his next hand is bound to be the lucky one, Rojack acts on the assumption that the longer he lives, the more heroic he may become.

And the assumption is not unfounded, for Rojack’s heroism is boundless. He argues with demonic voices and then dispels them, he outwits and outfights his indomitable tycoon father-in-law, and, above all, he humiliates and beats up a sexually magnetic Negro hero, Shago Martin. Not only does Rojack cause Cherry to have her first sexual explosion, after Shago had failed with her for months, but through a combination of psychic intuition and physical power he changes a situation where Shago is standing over him with a knife to one in which he is standing over Shago, who is now writhing pulp at the bottom of a staircase (and all in the space of ten minutes).

Practically everything Rojack says or does suggests parallels to his creator’s personal life, and the episode with Shago Martin, recalling the Mailer-Liston confrontation, is perhaps the richest example. If Liston was a large part of Mailer, Shago’s ode to himself is easily applicable to the dark sides of both Rojack and Mailer.

{{quote|“I’m a lily-white devil . . . . I’m just the future, in love with myself, that’s the future. I got twenty faces, I talk the tongues, I’m a devil . . . . I’m cut off from my own lines, I try to speak from my heart and it gets snatched.”}}

If Mailer’s encounter with Liston faintly suggested repressed homosexuality transformed into manly fortitude, Rojack’s encounter with Shago positively smacks of it. Like Shago, he has Cherry, and his immediate concern after intercourse is in comparison. He can hardly hide his elation when she implies that he was better, a predictable response when one recalls his reaction the night before to Cherry’s paean to Shago’s sexual prowess. Her emphasis on the word “stud” had made Rojack uneasy.

{{quote|The word went in like a blow to the soft part of my belly. There was something final in the verdict as if there were a sexual round robin where the big people played. All the big Negroes and the big whites.}}

Like Mailer, Rojack lives his life as if it were some dark experiment which has gradually but relentlessly gained the upper hand so that he is free to act only within its prescribed limits. Again like Mailer, Rojack is paying the price for a lifelong habit of thinking in metaphor; image (like God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell) has become reality, and that reality has become a master demanding undivided attention. It is a reality of dreams, and the dreams in ''An American Dream'' are endless: the sexual dreams of Don Juan, the Alger dream of the self-made man, the outsider’s dream of the inside, the Mafia’s dream of money and power, the square’s dream of the life of the hipster, and the hipster’s dream of death. None of these dreams has turned entirely into nightmare, but each has gone sour, like the soul of the nation which fabricated them. But the saddest dream of all is Stephen Rojack’s (and perhaps Mailer’s) dream of sanity.

{{quote|I was caught. I wanted to escape from that intelligence which let me know of murders in one direction and conceive of [love] from the other, I wanted to be free of magic, the tongue of the devil, the dread of the Lord, I wanted to be some sort of rational man again . . . But I could not move.}}

But what if, unlike Mailer and Rojack, one is ''not'' obsessed with psychopathic extremes? What if one’s patience expires at exhibitions of braggadocio? What if one appreciates wit (of which there is some) but loves humor (of which there is none)? Probably one would call ''An American Dream'' a joke, and a bad joke at that. The infantile demand for intermediate and complete attention; the insistence on being taken seriously, literally, and on his own terms at all times; the inability to treat his agony with even a suggestion of laughter or a trace of irony; the sloppy inconsistency of much of the dialogue; and, finally, the sheer loudness that informs the whole novel, a tone alternating between agitation and hysteria—all this works to tire, frustrate, and, at times, infuriate even the most sympathetic reader.

And yet somehow exasperation yields to the suspicion that Mailer’s is a mind which understands as much about the quality of contemporary American life as any now active, a mind which could well represent the last intellectually significant and articulate thrust of an eschatological and religious fervor that may be sorely missed once it is gone. So one is willing to indulge Mailer further, even to thank him once again. And one is willing to accept Rojack’s vision of himself as a fair description of Mailer:

{{quote|I had leverage; I was one of the more active figures of the city—no one could be certain finally that nothing large would come to me.}}

In 1960 there was reason to hope for a dramatic rebirth of energy and heroism; even the darkest passages of ''The Presidential Papers'' were balanced by intimations that America was not yet doomed. A man could function in society and still find opportunity to grow. By 1966, dream had at last soured into nightmare. ''Cannibals and Christians'', a collection of essays, “poems” (or, more accurately, epigrams and graffiti), and interviews (both real and imaginary), is a sermon whose vision of hell has become dire and inevitable. From Mailer’s pulpit comes a most disconcerting premonition:

{{quote|The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again; it has perhaps not been here so intensely in thirty years, not since the Nazis were prospering, but it is coming . . . . The world is entering a time of plague.}}

Totalitarianism has suffocated individuality; the Hilton in San Francisco is emulated before the Plaza in New York; housing projects look like nurseries and nurseries look like hospitals; appliances are plastic rather than metal; vile bully tactics in Vietnam have developed from simple occupation of Southeast Asia; the psychotic has taken over from the psychopath; pornography has gained another step on sexuality. In a word, Lyndon Johnson has replaced John Kennedy.

Johnson, Mailer tells us, is the archetypically alienated figure—a fact which can be observed in his prose (perhaps “the worst ever written by any political leader anywhere”), in his boorish manners, in his deceitfulness, in his voracious ego, and in his almost arrogant lack of style. If a President has a profound effect on the quality of life during his era—and Mailer is convinced that he does—then hope is indeed dim. And the consequences may be far worse than possible loss of prestige, power, or land; for there is the unknown to face after death, and the possibility that there is no absolution for cowardly sins.

But Mailer’s exhortations against the insanities of the age of Johnson do not come from one whose own tensions—between radicalism and Puritanism, heroism, and buffoonery, the playboy’s life and the intellectual’s vocation—are anywhere near control. And there is a further complication in Mailer’s complex personality, an unmistakably reactionary streak, not unrelated in impulse to his intense religiosity, which challenges his natural and professed political radicalism. Apart from the kind of conservatism that is common property among many contemporary radicals—a quasi-isolationism that urges America to terminate involvement in practically all foreign countries and a profound distrust of the liberal establishment—Mailer holds positions on matters not directly political which fall neatly into line with the conservative spirit (he is, for example, strongly opposed to birth control and abortion, and he speaks of homosexuality as a “vice”). But two pieces of evidence (both from the essay on the 1964 Republican Convention) are particularly striking. First, Mailer confesses to a buried urge to see Barry Goldwater elected:

{{quote|I knew Goldwater could win because something in me leaped out at the thought; a part of me, a devil, wished to take that choice.}}

Secondly, Mailer’s ambivalence toward Negroes, manifested earlier only in the individual cases of Sonny Liston and Shago Martin, is now explicitly broadened. His reaction to James Baldwin’s suggestion that there may be no remission for the white man’s sins against the Negro is violent:

{{quote|I had to throttle an impulse to . . . call Baldwin, and say, “You get this, baby. There’s a shit storm coming like nothing you ever knew. So ask yourself if what you desire is for the white to kill every black so that there be total remission of guilt in your black soul.”}}

If the relief of such tensions and conflicts and the consequent fortification of the self can come only from bold action, then Mailer’s primary means of personal salvation lies in his work. It is in the very act of creating the artistic sermons which he claims will show us the way to redemption that Mailer redeems himself. His influence has given rise to several “cults.” At one extreme there is a segment of the underground hipster community, closely involved with drugs, which worships him as the high priest of God and Sex. At the other end is that increasingly large group of liberal and radical intellectuals, centered in New York and comprised of such critics as Norman Podhoretz, Steven Marcus, and Richard Poirier who see in Mailer, as Marcus once put it, the embodiment of extraordinary literary talent, personal honesty and loyalty, and penetrating social criticism. And yet, in the last analysis, Mailer’s influence is limited, for the Word has hardly reached, let alone changed, the heart of the land he is trying to transform.

From the first three sermons of the 1960’s, the congregation is likely to walk away interested and, sometimes, excited, rather than transformed. Entertainment overshadows eschatology. And in Mailer’s fourth effort of the 6o’s, ''The Deer Park'', a stage adaption of his novel of 1956, religion gives way completely to comedy (both intentional and unintentional).{{efn|One ignores, for Mailer’s sake as much as for one’s own, ''Deaths for the Ladies'', a collection of words which the author extravagantly describes as poetry.}}

This is not to imply that Mailer has abandoned his urgent message; practically all his obsessions of the 6o’s are here: sex, love, lust, heroism, cowardice, power, God, and the Devil. If Mailer has added anything new to his philosophy, it lies in the expansion of his idea as sexual freedom and it is expressed through the pimp Marion Faye, who “follows sex to the end, turns queer, bangs dogs, and sniffs toes.” But in the figure of Herman Teppis (or
“H.T.”), a Hollywood mogul in the tradition of Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn, genuine humor replaces heavy rhetoric and caustic wit. In the desert of endless debates over who is—and who is not—a genius in bed, Teppis’s pronouncements are oases.

{{quote|You know what an artist is? He's a crook. They even got a Frenchman now, you know what, he picks people’s pockets at society parties. They say he’s the greatest writer in France. No wonder they need a dictator, those crazy French. I could never get along with the French.}}

But Mailer pays a price for his success in the comic mode. One laughs so hard at Teppis that one keeps right on laughing, even at the tortured, self-searching characters—spokesmen all for traditional Maileresque values—one is meant to take seriously. If there is a lesson to be learned from this play, it is that comedy may be suitable to many dramatic modes, including tragedy, but that it has no place at all in eschatological homily.

After a pop play perhaps one should have expected, or at least have been prepared for, a pop novel from Mailer’s pen. Nevertheless, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' comes as a shock. Radical as the ideas contained in them may have been, Mailer’s earlier novels were more or less conservative in form: except for ''Barbary Shore'', they were all clearly in the mainstream of the realist-naturalist tradition. But in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' ordered syntax has yielded to the total liberation of the word; intricate plot structure has given way to hallucinatory fantasy; fully realized characters living in what we know as the real world have been replaced by the protean apparitions in Mailer’s mind; the last trace of ratiocination has been obliterated by a relentless bombardment of sensual impressions and apocalyptic utterances. Dreiser and Farrell have disappeared in favor of Joyce, Faulkner, Burroughs, McLuhan, and Norman O. Brown.

At one point or another virtually every theory Mailer has ever had appears—but now with an important difference. Rather than preaching his messages baldly as in the past, Mailer drops them mockingly. And the mockery is directed both at himself and at those he would edify.

{{quote|The world is going shazam, hahray harout, fart in my toot, air we breathe is the prez, present dent, and god has always wanted more from man than man has wished to give him. Zig a zig a zig. That is why we live in dread of god.}}

Even the seminal concept of Dread is translated into the pop language of rock-and-roll. A vast chasm of culture and sensibility separates the tone of Rojack’s agonized monologues from the narrative voice of the present novel.

{{quote|. . . Mr. Sender, who sends out that Awe and Dread is up on their back . . . because they ''alone'', man, you dig? They all ''alone'', it’s a fright wig, man, that Upper silence alone is enough to bugger you, whoo-ee.}}

Indeed, the very claim to a prophetic stance in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is established in a similarly (and intentionally) ambiguous tone.

{{quote|This is your own wandering troubadour brought right up to date, here to sell America its new handbook on how to live . . . . We’re going to tell you what it’s all about.}}

Although there is a bare minimum of dramatic tension or external conflict, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' has several “characters,” each significant primarily on a symbolic plane. D.J. (Disc Jockey, Dr. Jekyll), the adolescent hero narrator of patrician Texas blood, is sometimes convinced that he is really a “Harlem Nigger,” and since “there is no such thing as a totally false perception,” perhaps he is. Not literally, of course, but rather in the same way that Mailer recognized Sonny Liston in himself and in the same way that the white hipster of “The White Negro” is, in his psychic makeup, black. If D.J. is the hipster, Rusty, his father, is the square, a corporation tycoon in Dallas—coarse, selfish, and, at heart, a coward. Tex (the Mr. Hyde to D.J.’s Dr. Jekyll) is part Indian, manly, bisexual, and the son of an undertaker.

The three go bear hunting in Alaska, but the most important action takes place in D.J.’s mind. At one point he has an urge to turn his gun on his father and “blast a shot, thump in his skull.” Although he resists, he soon commits the act symbolically by contradicting his father’s warning and courageously approaching a wounded bear, putting his life on the line, while his father lies hidden, waiting for the bear to become helpless before firing the fatal shot. Thus liberated from paternal authority, D.J. finds his instincts for love and battle shifted to Tex, D.J. encounters nakedly for the first time his other self. And through a mutual awareness of their mutual desire for both intercourse and fratricide, D.J. and Tex finally achieve a sense of purification and personal integration.

{{quote|. . . Tex Hyde . . . was finally afraid to prong D.J., because D.J. once become a bitch would kill him, and D.J. breathing that in by the wide-awake of the dark with Aurora Borealis jumping to the beat of his heart knew he could make a try to prong Tex, there was a chance to get in and steal the iron from Texas’ ass and put it on his own . . . now it was there, murder between them under all friendship, for god was a beast, not a man, and god said, “Go out and kill—fulfill my will, go and kill,” and they hung there each of them on the knife of the divide in all conflict of lust to own the other . . . Killer brothers, owned by something, prince of darkness, lord of light, they did not know; they just knew that telepathy was on them, they had been touched forever by the North and each bit a drop of blood from his own finger and touched them across and met blood to blood . . . .}}

In one eternal moment the Manichean polarities that have obsessed Mailer are at last synthesized—God and the Devil, heaven and hell, nature and man, Negro and white, Dallas and Harlem, phallus and anus.

But why ''are'' we in Vietnam? What relation does the title have to D.J., Tex, Rusty, bear-hunting, Harlem, Dallas, liberated syntax, or Maileresque eschatology? In the strictest sense, nothing at all. But in a broader, metaphysical sense, the title can be explained as another urgent warning to America. We are in Vietnam because we, as a nation, are going, or have already gone, insane. Mailer’s development from politics to meta-politics is complete. The world—and especially America—is now viewed as an expression of Mailer’s own most extreme longings and fantasies. Subject and object, chaos and order, internal imagination and external reality are united in a fusion of creator and creation.
In an ultimate sense Mailer is claiming not only ''relation to'' America but ''identity with'' her. It is likely that he has himself in mind when he writes of Rusty:

{{quote|His secret is that he sees himself as one of the pillars of the firmament, yeah, man—he reads the world’s doom in his own fuckup. If he is less great than God intended him to be, then America is in Trouble.}}

One cannot help wondering whether ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'', unruly and overwhelming, is not at least as much a symptom of our “Trouble” as a cure for it.

Throughout the past decade Mailer has made the world of the hipster the stuff of his sermons—novels, essays, and plays—as well as the style of his personal life. He calls it “a muted cool religious revival,” and a better description (at least of his ''intentions'') would be hard to find. He is Zarathustra coming down from the mountain with his vision of the hero; he is Dostoevsky reminding us that “God and the Devil are fighting, and the battleground is the heart of man!”; he is a Puritan minister informing us that pain may be good, for to suffer is to be given the opportunity to grow and prepare for the mystery of death and the perils of hell; he is a preacher frustrated by his congregation’s blind faith in innocence at a time in history when innocence is not only a lie but a crime; he is a seer trying to jar complacent men into an awareness of the despair that lies beneath their conventions; he is Toynbee telling us that if a civilization stagnates, it will die, that if a nation is to survive, it must respond to the reality of challenge; and he is Jonathan Swift couching his eschatological message in the language and imagery of scatology.

It is true that Mailer’s own faith in the validity of his message is not absolute. He has admitted that “the hipster gambles that he can be terribly, tragically wrong, and therefore be doomed to Hell.” But Mailer is a gambler, and so he continues to preach, to reiterate the old verities with a new twist, opening himself to the charge of anachronism, refusing to accept the “modern,” the valueless objectivity of the novels of Robbe-Grillet, the impersonal detachment of the music of Milton Babbitt, and the faceless hotels of Conrad Hilton. He will not give up like Hemingway’s Lieutenant Henry, who trusts only in the names of bridges, cities, and battles; Mailer chooses instead still to believe in God, Love, Heroism, Courage, and Death. His life and work are a contradiction of the message contained in one of his own poems:

{{quote|''Never'' ''contemplate'' ''nothing'' ''said'' ''the saint.''}}

History is a nightmare from which Mailer is still trying to awaken; but he will not take the easy way out in his struggle.

And yet if he is singleminded in his determination to view life in terms of ultimate battle, his desire for victory is not without ambivalence. His involvement in the pop world has become more than peripheral with his play, his new underground movie (where he is cast as a Mafia gangster), his new novel, and his own life style (where he tries to enact simultaneously the roles of writer, fighter, celebrity, lover, and messiah); and like most of the major figures in this eclectic pop world, he is flirting with psychosis. To live on the edge of so many different scenes is to belong truly to none; and to act like so many different people is to endanger the self. The sign of surrender, the indication that the battle has been lost, is the sense of succumbing to Dread. It is not impossible that Mailer’s Dread is essentially the fulfillment of his own unacknowledged ''desire'' for that Dread, the intuition that all those “psychotic” ideas and actions he lives by are simply the expression of a profound longing for madness and extinction.

Mailer holds himself together, however, by virtue of his work. Through creation he is able to come closer to the unattainable goal of total victory in the struggle which is the metaphor for his vision of life. Even if we do not believe in it ourselves, even if we are impatient with the intellectual naivete of a man who only a decade ago speculated that perhaps he was the first person to state that God was in danger of dying, and even if we are annoyed by the heavily flawed style of his prose, we can still learn from, and be moved by, this belligerent prophet. At the end of the stage version of ''The Deer Park'', he speaks of debates about God and Time and Sex as constituting “part of the poor odd dialogues which give hope to us noble humans for more than one night.” If Mailer has done this in his own work even a small part of the time, he is one Puritan our age can ill afford to lose.

=== Notes ===

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{{Byline|last=Toback|first=James|note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967}}

{{dc|dc=I|n the late 50’s, Norman Mailer’s Reputation}} still stood on ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948), neither of his subsequent efforts, ''Barbary Shore'' (1951) and ''The Deer Park'' (1955), having quite convinced Mailer or anyone else that he was the major novelist he insisted he could become. By his own later account, his head was leaden with seconal, benzedrene, and marijuana: a sense of what he himself has termed passivity, stupidity, and dissipation threatened to overcome him. Only gradually, after returning to New York from Paris and giving up drugs and cigarettes, did he begin to feel that he could write once again. Then, in 1957, Mailer produced “The White Negro,” an essay which restored his faith in his literary future and presaged the forms and directions that it would take.

Mailer has always professed an umbilical attachment to the Left, but since “The White Negro” the drift has been unmistakably from political radicalism toward spiritual radicalism, from an obsession with Marx to an obsession with Reich, from economic revolution to apocalyptic orgasm, from the proletariat to heroes, demons, boxers, tycoons, bitches, murderers, suicides, pimps, and lovers. And correspondingly, concern with extreme psychic states has become more important to his work than concern with extreme political states (the center having always been a bore for Mailer in all its manifestations).

It was not that eschatology ''replaced'' politics, but rather that it came to constitute a new means of diagnosis, both of personal and social plague, and that it promised answers to the crisis in which both the individual and the nation were entrapped. The criteria by which the health of a particular man (the organ) were to be assessed—his complexity, his bravery, his daring, his capacity for love—were essentially the same as those which measured the salubrity of America (the organism). Similarly, the disease which threatened both individual and state (expressed at once literally and metaphorically as cancer) evinced identical symptoms: mediocrity, uniformity, repression, and security.

Assuming the voice of religious physician, the Mailer of the 60’s reveals a vision of malady and possible restoration that is profoundly radical; at the same time the terminology and conceptual foundation of his homily are Puritan to the core. God and the Devil, Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell, History and Eternity are as inescapably real for Mailer as they were for Jonathan Edwards—and he has repeatedly asserted that such ultimate questions are proper and indeed necessary preoccupations for the contemporary novelist. Many would dissent, but even if we do look to the novelist for salvation, can we look to Mailer? There is, at least on the surface, an insistent buffoonery to his self-projected public image that can make it difficult to take him seriously, let alone to believe he can show us the way to redemption. Yet even a cursory examination of his work suggests that he is justified in claiming to be an intellectual adventurer of broad dimension. If he sometimes seems to be more familiar with ''Captain Blood'' than ''Middlemarch'', he nevertheless possesses an uncanny ability to recall and make use of what he has read. If he is sometimes guileful, more often he strives for complete honesty and the subject of his work. If his thinking is occasionally wild and unsound, he is also capable of rigorously logical intellection. And if his emphasis on scatology is at times repugnant, his undeniable charisma excites interest in practically everything he writes or says or does.

Consequently, when a new work by Mailer appears, we turn to it eagerly—expectant and hopeful—especially when, as in the case of his latest novel, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'',{{efn|Putnam, 208 pp., $4.95}} the new work also represents a new literary departure. By itself perhaps the most ambitious and the most difficult effort of his career, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is also a crystallization and an extension of Mailer’s other major productions of the 6o’s. To do justice to its complexity, to make it more accessible, and to place it properly in the perspective of Mailer’s development as a writer, one must first look back to ''The Presidential Papers'', ''An American Dream'', ''Cannibals and Christians'', and the dramatic adaptation of ''The Deer Park''.

With ''Advertisements for Myself'' (1959), Mailer showed that whatever
stature he might or might not achieve as a novelist, he was certainly becoming a major essayist. This impression was confirmed by ''The Presidential Papers'' (1963), in which Mailer took it upon himself to indicate to John F. Kennedy the brave new paths he must follow in order to achieve greatness as a President, heroism as a man, and salvation for his country. In Mailer’s view, the only kind of hero who can appear in contemporary American life is the “existential” hero, a man who lives—in his thoughts as in his actions—by daring the unknown. On one occasion, when discussing symptoms of the national disease, Mailer remarks that no one in America is capable of tolerating a question that cannot be answered in twenty seconds. And he finds deeds courageous (and hence potentially heroic) only if there is death, or at least danger, as a possible consequence.

Heroism is the victory over Dread, the sensation that haunts not only ''The Presidential Papers'', but the whole of Mailer’s work in the 6o’s. Although doubtless a natural threat to man from the earliest days of his consciousness, Dread has become rather fashionable (to talk about if not to feel) in recent years. It has perhaps been best described by Tennessee Williams. After indicating that the war, the atom bomb, and terminal disease are not really to the point, Williams writes:

{{quote|These things are parts of the visible, sensible phenomena of every man’s experience or knowledge, but the true sense of dread is not a reaction to anything . . . strictly, materially ''knowable''. But rather it’s a kind of spiritual intuition of something almost too incredible and shocking to talk about, which underlies the whole so-called thing.}}

Either one knows what Williams is talking about or one doesn’t, and Williams implies that only artists and madmen do. Mailer, however, sees no one safe from the possibility of confrontation with the abyss, and he seems to feel a moral obligation to awaken us all to the danger. All roads lead to it, and it is only through the unmanly deceptions of right-wing politics, logical positivism, linguistic analysis, popular journalism, and Freudian psychology that “the terror which lies beneath our sedition [is hidden from us].” The vigilantes of the right wing, like the Un-American Activities Committee, the F.B.I., and the Birch Society, seek to transform metaphysical Dread into Red dread, to give internal emptiness the tangible outer shape of Communism. And Freudians tell us that Dread is merely a recurrence of the fear we feel as helpless infants. But Mailer, like the latter-day hell-fire Puritan preacher he is, asserts that the horrible intimation of Dread is that “we are going to die badly and suffer some unendurable stricture of eternity.” This is no metaphor; it is an expression of Mailer’s belief in the literal existence of hell.

The Maileresque hero—suspecting that his Dread is a real premonition of the agony that awaits him after death, an agony that can be averted only be daring death to come sooner, to come right away—will always put up an ante that amounts to more than he can afford to lose. Here, for example, is Mailer on Hemingway’s suicide:

{{quote|How likely that he had a death of the most awful proportions within him. He was exactly the one to know that the cure for such disease is to risk dying many a time . . . .

I wonder if, morning after morning, Hemingway did not go downstairs secretly in the dawn, set the base of his loaded shotgun on the floor, put the muzzle into his mouth, and press his thumb to the trigger . . . . He can move the trigger up to a point [of no man’s land] and yet not fire the gun . . . . Perhaps he tried just such a reconnaissance one hundred times before, and felt the touch of health return . . . . If he did it well, he could come close to death without dying.}}

That Hemingway eventually died as a result of his gambling with life is not so important as that he grew by it. By challenging fate he was saving his soul; by refusing to give into his dread of death, he was making whatever life was left for him more noble; and he was fortifying his spirit so that he might transcend the eternity of hell.

If the individual can save himself from madness and the abyss only by ceasing to repress even his most hidden and dangerous impulses and by flirting with death, so, too, with the nation as a whole. Devoted to the illusion of safety and security, it is condemned to mass insanity and an ignoble end, unless it redeems itself by immediate embarkation on a course of “existential” politics. This would involve a complete remolding of national objectives, not only on the large issues involving danger and death, survival or extinction, but also on less apocalyptic matters like urban housing.

For if America is not already incurably insane, she is certainly in a state of plague. Mailer sees the symptoms everywhere: in architecture, frozen food, television commercials, sleeping pills, sexual excess, sexual repression, the deterioration of the language. One has only to look at the kind of people who regulate and set the tone of the nation. Mailer lists them: politicians, medicos, policemen, professors, priests, rabbis, ministers, psychoanalysts, builders, and executives. It has not always been so:

{{quote|[Once] America was the land where people still believed in heroes: George Washington, Billy the Kid; Lincoln, Jefferson, Mark Twain, Jack London, Hemingway, Joe Louis, Dempsey, Gentleman Jim; American believed in athletes, rum-runners, aviators, even lovers. It was a country which had grown by the leap of one hero past another.}}

Now, more than ever before, America needed a hero. Was he Norman Mailer? Not yet. For the time being Mailer’s faith was in Kennedy, the inspiration for the essay, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” in which Mailer had expressed his faith in Kennedy’s capacity to lead the country in “the recovery of its imagination, its pioneer lust for the unexpected and the incalculable.” And yet no sooner had Kennedy won the election than Mailer was possessed by “a sense of awe,” an intuition that he had betrayed himself, and, as a result, he began to follow Kennedy’s career obsessively, as if he, Norman Mailer, personally “were responsible and guilty for all which was bad . . . and potentially totalitarian.” There are suggestions in this abrupt reversal of sentiment of three forces at work in Mailer: serious concern for the fate of the spiritual and political ideals he cherishes; a histrionic penchant for breast-beating; an almost petulant envy of Kennedy’s power and possibility, an irrational and vast extension of the simple literary envy he occasionally felt for James Jones.

To be sure, the heroism of which Mailer speaks is a cure which both individual and nation might decide is too hazardous and too painful to undertake. The patient is apt to protest that he does not really feel so sick as Mailer tells him he is and that even if he were, he would rather fade gradually into death than risk the unknown under surgery. If it is the “Establishment” that objects in these terms, Mailer regards it as plain cowardice, the cardinal sin, which should be avoided even if the strictures of eternity were not waiting as retribution. But with minority groups, the Negro in particular, his urgency is softened. He understands that it would be no small act of presumption on his part to demand that the Negro, who has lived with violence all his life, surrender the goals of security and stability.

{{quote|The demand for courage may have been exorbitant. Now as the Negro was beginning to come into the white man’s world, he wanted the logic of the white man’s world: annuities, mental hygiene, sociological jargon, committee solutions for the ills of the breast. He was sick of a whore’s logic and a pimp’s logic.}}

And yet the paradox here is only too obvious to Mailer. Believing that he must turn his back on the values of the ghetto, the Negro seeks recovery through assimilation into the moribund world of white liberal America. In reality, he is abandoning a way of life which is founded on those extreme states of human feeling and action which for Mailer constitute the only true possibility for spiritual rehabilitation. Mailer regrets that

{{quote|there is no one to tell [the Negro] it would be better to keep the psychology of the streets than to cultivate the contradictory desire to be . . . a great, healthy, mature, autonomous, related, integrated individual.}}

This problem is crystallized in the eleventh (and perhaps best) essay in ''The Presidential Papers'', “Death,” which focuses on the proceedings before, during, and immediately after the first Floyd Patterson-Sonny Liston heavyweight championship fight. Most Negroes wanted Patterson to win, a fact which Mailer explains by identifying Patterson as the symbol of security. Patterson was polite, quiet, humble, diligent, and Catholic; he was, in short, “White.” Liston, on the other hand, personified “the old torment,” the darker, dangerous side of life that the Negro had known only too well. Liston was surly, unpredictable, mob affiliated, and an ex-convict; he was “black.”

Most Negroes, then, wanted to see Liston beaten by Patterson for much the same reason that they would not react warmly to proposals that they seek out violence, danger, and the unknown. But if Mailer cannot blame them, he is nevertheless distressed by the insidious assimilation of Negroes (and Jews as well) into Anglo-Saxon America. For a Negro or a Jew, to stifle the rich uniqueness of his potential contribution to American life is to betray himself and to withhold the transfusion that might save this bloodless land.

Mailer likes Patterson—his loneliness, his pride, his persistent struggle against the odds. But just as the Fascist Croft had stolen Mailer’s interest from the liberal Hearn in ''The Naked and the Dead'', so Mailer’s real fascination here is not with Patterson but with Liston, whose inexorable toughness makes him the kind of Negro other Negroes refer to (sometimes in fear, sometimes in praise, sometimes in disapproval, but always in awe) as “a ''bad'' cat.” Liston takes on mythic proportions in Mailer’s mind, a mind which by nature tends to intensify, to exaggerate, and to think in terms of extremes. He is “near to beautiful” and one can think of “very few men who have beauty.” But that is in no way all.

{{quote|Liston was voodoo, Liston was magic . . . . Liston was the secret hero of every man who had ever given mouth to a final curse against the dispositions of the Lord and made a pact with Black magic. Liston was Faust.}}

He was the kind of Negro that any white man who imagined himself hip would have to come to terms with—either as model or as rival. Predictably, Mailer chooses the latter course, and does battle with Liston. Not physical battle, but psychic warfare that could have erupted into violence.

Liston’s incredibly fast knockout of Patterson left Mailer in a state of feverish frustration, a condition aggravated by a conscience which taunted him for his own recent failures—for too much alcohol and too little discipline. It was out of this sense of despair and defeat that another of Mailer’s obsessions was born.

{{quote|I began . . . to see myself as some sort of center about which all that had been lost must now rally. It was not simple egomania nor simple drunkenness, it was not even simple insanity: it was a kind of metaphorical leap across a gap. To believe the impossible may be won creates a strength from which the impossible may be attacked.}}

The essence of Mailer’s claim was that he was “the only man in the country” who could build the gate of a second Patterson-Liston fight into the proportions of an epic. The insistence with which he promoted his proposal the next day, the rude insults he hurled at Liston, and his petulant refusal to leave the dais (where he did not belong) all indicate that what Mailer wanted above everything was some kind of direct confrontation with Liston, some chance to prove to himself that he was still a possible hero, that he was larger than the myth into which his own mind had transformed the new heavyweight champion.

After the series of humiliations which gave reporters, detectives, by-standers, and Liston himself ample opportunity to laugh at him, Mailer finally got his chance. While obviously intoxicated, he approached Liston.

{{quote|“You called me a bum.” I said . . . “Well, you are a bum,” he said. “Everybody is a bum. I'm a bum too. It’s just that I’m a bigger bum than you are.” He stuck out his hand. “Shake, bum,” he said . . . . Could it be, was I indeed a bum? I shook his hand . . . . “Listen,” said I, leaning my head closer, speaking from the corner of my mouth as if I were whispering in a clinch, “I’m pulling this caper for a reason. I know a way to build the next fight from a $200,000 dog in Miami to a $2,000,000 gate in New York.” . . . “Say,” said Liston, “that last drink really set you up. Why don’t you go and get me a drink, you bum.”

“I’m not your flunky,” I said. It was the first punch I’d sent home. He loved me for it. The hint of corny old darky laughter, cottonfield giggles, peeped out a moment from his throat. “Oh, sheet, man!,” said the wit in his eyes. And for the crowd watching, he turned and announced at large, “I like this guy.”}}

Three phrases in this most revealing passage are particularly significant. First, Mailer views the dialogue in the terms of a fight; he speaks to Liston as if they were “in a clinch.” Secondly, Mailer’s “first punch” (“I’m not your flunky”) is delivered while he is behind on points and trapped in a corner. When he finally makes this move, he risks taking a (literal) punch in the mouth from Liston, who is not, one imagines, in the habit of being told off in public by inebriated reporters. Then, there is Liston’s remarkable reaction (“I like this guy”) to Mailer’s thrust, a totally unexpected profession of feeling for the writer that amounts to admiration, and the even more remarkable response that Liston’s concession generates in Mailer’s mind. For Mailer, Liston’s grunt becomes “a chuckle of corny old darky laughter, cottonfield giggles”: not only has Mailer taken final honors in his combat with the “Supreme Spade,” but he has metaphorically reduced him to his (ancestrally) original condition of servitude. From king of the Northern urban jungle where the white man is afraid to meet him on the street at night, Liston has been deported to a Southern cotton plantation where he knows his place and recognizes his master.

Liston is at once Mailer himself and Mailer’s alter ego. When he is the latter, Mailer becomes Patterson: “The fighters spoke as well from the countered halves of my nature.” Mailer even conjectures that perhaps Patterson is God and Liston the Devil, an idea which emanates from a conviction that every man is a potential agent for either of the two great warring cosmic powers, and that by one’s actions one affects the outcome in their ultimate struggle for control of a Manichean universe. On that night in Chicago, Liston, in his demonic role, “had shown that the Lord was dramatically weak.” Was it possible that Mailer’s press-conference comeback had restored some of the Deity’s strength? No negative answer could be given with full assurance.

In ''An American Dream'' (1964)—his first novel since ''The Deer Park''— Mailer is again concerned with the themes that inform the essays: danger, death, and heroism. The pattern of the novel, one might say, is designed on intercourse—with God, with the Devil, with voices from the inner recesses of the mind, with the vagina, and with the anus: intercourse leading to oceanic climax, coming variously in waves of love, lust, or pure aestheticism. The center of all this activity, the narrator and hero, is Stephen Richards Rojack, the embodiment of Mailer’s unrealized fantasies and of his radical Puritanism as well. A Harvard graduate ''summa cum laude'', he is also a war hero (“the one intellectual in America’s history to win a distinguished service cross”), an ex-congressman, a television personality, a professor of existentialist psychology, an author, a boxer, and an unsurpassed stud. He lives in contemporary New York amid people who, in Mailer’s view, personify the cancerous totalitarianism of our age.

The action is generated by Rojack’s murder of his wife, Deborah, a great bitch, beautiful, extremely rich, and secretly involved in international intrigue as a spy. The love he once felt for her has withered into a sense of dependence so paralyzing that she has now become the very structure of his ego. Without her, he fears he “might topple like clay.” In such a condition Rojack, who expresses Mailer’s eschatological vision, knows he is unprepared to face eternity. The first step toward reconstruction of self is to exorcise the demon that possesses him—and to exorcise Deborah is to kill her. The act of strangulation is committed with sexual passion, which is true to Mailer’s insistence that sex, love, and murder are inseparable and cathartic:

{{quote|Some blackbiled lust, some desire to go ahead (and kill her) not unlike the instant one comes in a woman against her cry that she is without protection came bursting with rage from out of me and . . . crack I choked her harder . . . and ''crack'' I gave her payment.}}

With Deborah’s death begins the arduous process of Rojack’s rebirth; he realizes that if murder is sometimes necessary, it is never simple. The gods, like furies, haunt him; he is acutely conscious of everything he thinks or says or does, for now cowardice or weakness or smallness will bring swift retribution—Dread, insanity, and the abyss. To strengthen himself, and to find, once again, something he can honestly call love are the ends of Rojack’s quest, but fulfillment of it and freedom from these new furies can be attained only through heroism, through seeking danger and daring death.

{{quote|. . . I believed that God was not love but courage. Love can come only as a reward . . . . A voice said in my mind: “That which you fear most is what you must do.”}}

The very phrasing of the passage is related to the nature of the punishment that will accrue if the command goes unheeded. Rojack’s mental life is split into a “voice” and “mind,” a separation dangerously close to the empty panic of schizophrenia.

But if madness looms as the penalty for prudence and cowardice (Mailer uses the two as almost indistinguishable), it is also possible that Dread will overwhelm even the bold Promethean. Rojack knows that “if man wished to steal the secret of the gods . . . they would defend themselves and destroy whichever man came too close.” With so narrow a chance of escape from insanity and an eternity in the abyss, suicide quite naturally presents itself as an alternative. What is to hold one back?

Despite all his frenetic activity, it is not merely a sensual lust for experience that keeps Rojack going. On the contrary, while his senses are irrepressibly active (especially his sense of smell), his mind persists relentlessly in observation, commentary, and criticism. Any physical sensation is immediately subject to conscious analysis. In Rojack, sex is the effort of the body to rape the mind, to pulsate in waves of ecstasy transcending consciousness. But even here he fails. Whether it is with the German maid, Ruta, or with the Southern chanteuse, Cherry, Rojack’s concern is with power rather than with pleasure, with the psychic domination he achieves after ''her'' orgasm rather than with the physical rapture of his own. Like his creator, Rojack is far more a Puritan than a hedonist; life is struggle rather than joy.

So the question remains: why go on? It is true that Rojack puts his life on the line more than once. The murder of his wife, the competition with mafia goons, the insults to a former boxing champion in an unfriendly bar, and, especially, the nocturnal walk on the parapet of a windy terrace thirty stories above the ground—all could easily have resulted in his death. But rather than misguided suicide attempts, these acts are a part of Rojack’s supreme effort to prepare himself for death. The goal in life is finally religious—to make oneself as fit as possible to meet the unknown after life is done, to face the judgment of eternity; and Rojack is possessed by the faith of the gambler. Like a poker player who is convinced that his next hand is bound to be the lucky one, Rojack acts on the assumption that the longer he lives, the more heroic he may become.

And the assumption is not unfounded, for Rojack’s heroism is boundless. He argues with demonic voices and then dispels them, he outwits and outfights his indomitable tycoon father-in-law, and, above all, he humiliates and beats up a sexually magnetic Negro hero, Shago Martin. Not only does Rojack cause Cherry to have her first sexual explosion, after Shago had failed with her for months, but through a combination of psychic intuition and physical power he changes a situation where Shago is standing over him with a knife to one in which he is standing over Shago, who is now writhing pulp at the bottom of a staircase (and all in the space of ten minutes).

Practically everything Rojack says or does suggests parallels to his creator’s personal life, and the episode with Shago Martin, recalling the Mailer-Liston confrontation, is perhaps the richest example. If Liston was a large part of Mailer, Shago’s ode to himself is easily applicable to the dark sides of both Rojack and Mailer.

{{quote|“I’m a lily-white devil . . . . I’m just the future, in love with myself, that’s the future. I got twenty faces, I talk the tongues, I’m a devil . . . . I’m cut off from my own lines, I try to speak from my heart and it gets snatched.”}}

If Mailer’s encounter with Liston faintly suggested repressed homosexuality transformed into manly fortitude, Rojack’s encounter with Shago positively smacks of it. Like Shago, he has Cherry, and his immediate concern after intercourse is in comparison. He can hardly hide his elation when she implies that he was better, a predictable response when one recalls his reaction the night before to Cherry’s paean to Shago’s sexual prowess. Her emphasis on the word “stud” had made Rojack uneasy.

{{quote|The word went in like a blow to the soft part of my belly. There was something final in the verdict as if there were a sexual round robin where the big people played. All the big Negroes and the big whites.}}

Like Mailer, Rojack lives his life as if it were some dark experiment which has gradually but relentlessly gained the upper hand so that he is free to act only within its prescribed limits. Again like Mailer, Rojack is paying the price for a lifelong habit of thinking in metaphor; image (like God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell) has become reality, and that reality has become a master demanding undivided attention. It is a reality of dreams, and the dreams in ''An American Dream'' are endless: the sexual dreams of Don Juan, the Alger dream of the self-made man, the outsider’s dream of the inside, the Mafia’s dream of money and power, the square’s dream of the life of the hipster, and the hipster’s dream of death. None of these dreams has turned entirely into nightmare, but each has gone sour, like the soul of the nation which fabricated them. But the saddest dream of all is Stephen Rojack’s (and perhaps Mailer’s) dream of sanity.

{{quote|I was caught. I wanted to escape from that intelligence which let me know of murders in one direction and conceive of [love] from the other, I wanted to be free of magic, the tongue of the devil, the dread of the Lord, I wanted to be some sort of rational man again . . . But I could not move.}}

But what if, unlike Mailer and Rojack, one is ''not'' obsessed with psychopathic extremes? What if one’s patience expires at exhibitions of braggadocio? What if one appreciates wit (of which there is some) but loves humor (of which there is none)? Probably one would call ''An American Dream'' a joke, and a bad joke at that. The infantile demand for intermediate and complete attention; the insistence on being taken seriously, literally, and on his own terms at all times; the inability to treat his agony with even a suggestion of laughter or a trace of irony; the sloppy inconsistency of much of the dialogue; and, finally, the sheer loudness that informs the whole novel, a tone alternating between agitation and hysteria—all this works to tire, frustrate, and, at times, infuriate even the most sympathetic reader.

And yet somehow exasperation yields to the suspicion that Mailer’s is a mind which understands as much about the quality of contemporary American life as any now active, a mind which could well represent the last intellectually significant and articulate thrust of an eschatological and religious fervor that may be sorely missed once it is gone. So one is willing to indulge Mailer further, even to thank him once again. And one is willing to accept Rojack’s vision of himself as a fair description of Mailer:

{{quote|I had leverage; I was one of the more active figures of the city—no one could be certain finally that nothing large would come to me.}}

In 1960 there was reason to hope for a dramatic rebirth of energy and heroism; even the darkest passages of ''The Presidential Papers'' were balanced by intimations that America was not yet doomed. A man could function in society and still find opportunity to grow. By 1966, dream had at last soured into nightmare. ''Cannibals and Christians'', a collection of essays, “poems” (or, more accurately, epigrams and graffiti), and interviews (both real and imaginary), is a sermon whose vision of hell has become dire and inevitable. From Mailer’s pulpit comes a most disconcerting premonition:

{{quote|The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again; it has perhaps not been here so intensely in thirty years, not since the Nazis were prospering, but it is coming . . . . The world is entering a time of plague.}}

Totalitarianism has suffocated individuality; the Hilton in San Francisco is emulated before the Plaza in New York; housing projects look like nurseries and nurseries look like hospitals; appliances are plastic rather than metal; vile bully tactics in Vietnam have developed from simple occupation of Southeast Asia; the psychotic has taken over from the psychopath; pornography has gained another step on sexuality. In a word, Lyndon Johnson has replaced John Kennedy.

Johnson, Mailer tells us, is the archetypically alienated figure—a fact which can be observed in his prose (perhaps “the worst ever written by any political leader anywhere”), in his boorish manners, in his deceitfulness, in his voracious ego, and in his almost arrogant lack of style. If a President has a profound effect on the quality of life during his era—and Mailer is convinced that he does—then hope is indeed dim. And the consequences may be far worse than possible loss of prestige, power, or land; for there is the unknown to face after death, and the possibility that there is no absolution for cowardly sins.

But Mailer’s exhortations against the insanities of the age of Johnson do not come from one whose own tensions—between radicalism and Puritanism, heroism, and buffoonery, the playboy’s life and the intellectual’s vocation—are anywhere near control. And there is a further complication in Mailer’s complex personality, an unmistakably reactionary streak, not unrelated in impulse to his intense religiosity, which challenges his natural and professed political radicalism. Apart from the kind of conservatism that is common property among many contemporary radicals—a quasi-isolationism that urges America to terminate involvement in practically all foreign countries and a profound distrust of the liberal establishment—Mailer holds positions on matters not directly political which fall neatly into line with the conservative spirit (he is, for example, strongly opposed to birth control and abortion, and he speaks of homosexuality as a “vice”). But two pieces of evidence (both from the essay on the 1964 Republican Convention) are particularly striking. First, Mailer confesses to a buried urge to see Barry Goldwater elected:

{{quote|I knew Goldwater could win because something in me leaped out at the thought; a part of me, a devil, wished to take that choice.}}

Secondly, Mailer’s ambivalence toward Negroes, manifested earlier only in the individual cases of Sonny Liston and Shago Martin, is now explicitly broadened. His reaction to James Baldwin’s suggestion that there may be no remission for the white man’s sins against the Negro is violent:

{{quote|I had to throttle an impulse to . . . call Baldwin, and say, “You get this, baby. There’s a shit storm coming like nothing you ever knew. So ask yourself if what you desire is for the white to kill every black so that there be total remission of guilt in your black soul.”}}

If the relief of such tensions and conflicts and the consequent fortification of the self can come only from bold action, then Mailer’s primary means of personal salvation lies in his work. It is in the very act of creating the artistic sermons which he claims will show us the way to redemption that Mailer redeems himself. His influence has given rise to several “cults.” At one extreme there is a segment of the underground hipster community, closely involved with drugs, which worships him as the high priest of God and Sex. At the other end is that increasingly large group of liberal and radical intellectuals, centered in New York and comprised of such critics as Norman Podhoretz, Steven Marcus, and Richard Poirier who see in Mailer, as Marcus once put it, the embodiment of extraordinary literary talent, personal honesty and loyalty, and penetrating social criticism. And yet, in the last analysis, Mailer’s influence is limited, for the Word has hardly reached, let alone changed, the heart of the land he is trying to transform.

From the first three sermons of the 1960’s, the congregation is likely to walk away interested and, sometimes, excited, rather than transformed. Entertainment overshadows eschatology. And in Mailer’s fourth effort of the 6o’s, ''The Deer Park'', a stage adaption of his novel of 1956, religion gives way completely to comedy (both intentional and unintentional).{{efn|One ignores, for Mailer’s sake as much as for one’s own, ''Deaths for the Ladies'', a collection of words which the author extravagantly describes as poetry.}}

This is not to imply that Mailer has abandoned his urgent message; practically all his obsessions of the 6o’s are here: sex, love, lust, heroism, cowardice, power, God, and the Devil. If Mailer has added anything new to his philosophy, it lies in the expansion of his idea as sexual freedom and it is expressed through the pimp Marion Faye, who “follows sex to the end, turns queer, bangs dogs, and sniffs toes.” But in the figure of Herman Teppis (or
“H.T.”), a Hollywood mogul in the tradition of Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn, genuine humor replaces heavy rhetoric and caustic wit. In the desert of endless debates over who is—and who is not—a genius in bed, Teppis’s pronouncements are oases.

{{quote|You know what an artist is? He's a crook. They even got a Frenchman now, you know what, he picks people’s pockets at society parties. They say he’s the greatest writer in France. No wonder they need a dictator, those crazy French. I could never get along with the French.}}

But Mailer pays a price for his success in the comic mode. One laughs so hard at Teppis that one keeps right on laughing, even at the tortured, self-searching characters—spokesmen all for traditional Maileresque values—one is meant to take seriously. If there is a lesson to be learned from this play, it is that comedy may be suitable to many dramatic modes, including tragedy, but that it has no place at all in eschatological homily.

After a pop play perhaps one should have expected, or at least have been prepared for, a pop novel from Mailer’s pen. Nevertheless, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' comes as a shock. Radical as the ideas contained in them may have been, Mailer’s earlier novels were more or less conservative in form: except for ''Barbary Shore'', they were all clearly in the mainstream of the realist-naturalist tradition. But in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' ordered syntax has yielded to the total liberation of the word; intricate plot structure has given way to hallucinatory fantasy; fully realized characters living in what we know as the real world have been replaced by the protean apparitions in Mailer’s mind; the last trace of ratiocination has been obliterated by a relentless bombardment of sensual impressions and apocalyptic utterances. Dreiser and Farrell have disappeared in favor of Joyce, Faulkner, Burroughs, McLuhan, and Norman O. Brown.

At one point or another virtually every theory Mailer has ever had appears—but now with an important difference. Rather than preaching his messages baldly as in the past, Mailer drops them mockingly. And the mockery is directed both at himself and at those he would edify.

{{quote|The world is going shazam, hahray harout, fart in my toot, air we breathe is the prez, present dent, and god has always wanted more from man than man has wished to give him. Zig a zig a zig. That is why we live in dread of god.}}

Even the seminal concept of Dread is translated into the pop language of rock-and-roll. A vast chasm of culture and sensibility separates the tone of Rojack’s agonized monologues from the narrative voice of the present novel.

{{quote|. . . Mr. Sender, who sends out that Awe and Dread is up on their back . . . because they ''alone'', man, you dig? They all ''alone'', it’s a fright wig, man, that Upper silence alone is enough to bugger you, whoo-ee.}}

Indeed, the very claim to a prophetic stance in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is established in a similarly (and intentionally) ambiguous tone.

{{quote|This is your own wandering troubadour brought right up to date, here to sell America its new handbook on how to live . . . . We’re going to tell you what it’s all about.}}

Although there is a bare minimum of dramatic tension or external conflict, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' has several “characters,” each significant primarily on a symbolic plane. D.J. (Disc Jockey, Dr. Jekyll), the adolescent hero narrator of patrician Texas blood, is sometimes convinced that he is really a “Harlem Nigger,” and since “there is no such thing as a totally false perception,” perhaps he is. Not literally, of course, but rather in the same way that Mailer recognized Sonny Liston in himself and in the same way that the white hipster of “The White Negro” is, in his psychic makeup, black. If D.J. is the hipster, Rusty, his father, is the square, a corporation tycoon in Dallas—coarse, selfish, and, at heart, a coward. Tex (the Mr. Hyde to D.J.’s Dr. Jekyll) is part Indian, manly, bisexual, and the son of an undertaker.

The three go bear hunting in Alaska, but the most important action takes place in D.J.’s mind. At one point he has an urge to turn his gun on his father and “blast a shot, thump in his skull.” Although he resists, he soon commits the act symbolically by contradicting his father’s warning and courageously approaching a wounded bear, putting his life on the line, while his father lies hidden, waiting for the bear to become helpless before firing the fatal shot. Thus liberated from paternal authority, D.J. finds his instincts for love and battle shifted to Tex, D.J. encounters nakedly for the first time his other self. And through a mutual awareness of their mutual desire for both intercourse and fratricide, D.J. and Tex finally achieve a sense of purification and personal integration.

{{quote|. . . Tex Hyde . . . was finally afraid to prong D.J., because D.J. once become a bitch would kill him, and D.J. breathing that in by the wide-awake of the dark with Aurora Borealis jumping to the beat of his heart knew he could make a try to prong Tex, there was a chance to get in and steal the iron from Texas’ ass and put it on his own . . . now it was there, murder between them under all friendship, for god was a beast, not a man, and god said, “Go out and kill—fulfill my will, go and kill,” and they hung there each of them on the knife of the divide in all conflict of lust to own the other . . . Killer brothers, owned by something, prince of darkness, lord of light, they did not know; they just knew that telepathy was on them, they had been touched forever by the North and each bit a drop of blood from his own finger and touched them across and met blood to blood . . . .}}

In one eternal moment the Manichean polarities that have obsessed Mailer are at last synthesized—God and the Devil, heaven and hell, nature and man, Negro and white, Dallas and Harlem, phallus and anus.

But why ''are'' we in Vietnam? What relation does the title have to D.J., Tex, Rusty, bear-hunting, Harlem, Dallas, liberated syntax, or Maileresque eschatology? In the strictest sense, nothing at all. But in a broader, metaphysical sense, the title can be explained as another urgent warning to America. We are in Vietnam because we, as a nation, are going, or have already gone, insane. Mailer’s development from politics to meta-politics is complete. The world—and especially America—is now viewed as an expression of Mailer’s own most extreme longings and fantasies. Subject and object, chaos and order, internal imagination and external reality are united in a fusion of creator and creation.
In an ultimate sense Mailer is claiming not only ''relation to'' America but ''identity with'' her. It is likely that he has himself in mind when he writes of Rusty:

{{quote|His secret is that he sees himself as one of the pillars of the firmament, yeah, man—he reads the world’s doom in his own fuckup. If he is less great than God intended him to be, then America is in Trouble.}}

One cannot help wondering whether ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'', unruly and overwhelming, is not at least as much a symptom of our “Trouble” as a cure for it.

Throughout the past decade Mailer has made the world of the hipster the stuff of his sermons—novels, essays, and plays—as well as the style of his personal life. He calls it “a muted cool religious revival,” and a better description (at least of his ''intentions'') would be hard to find. He is Zarathustra coming down from the mountain with his vision of the hero; he is Dostoevsky reminding us that “God and the Devil are fighting, and the battleground is the heart of man!”; he is a Puritan minister informing us that pain may be good, for to suffer is to be given the opportunity to grow and prepare for the mystery of death and the perils of hell; he is a preacher frustrated by his congregation’s blind faith in innocence at a time in history when innocence is not only a lie but a crime; he is a seer trying to jar complacent men into an awareness of the despair that lies beneath their conventions; he is Toynbee telling us that if a civilization stagnates, it will die, that if a nation is to survive, it must respond to the reality of challenge; and he is Jonathan Swift couching his eschatological message in the language and imagery of scatology.

It is true that Mailer’s own faith in the validity of his message is not absolute. He has admitted that “the hipster gambles that he can be terribly, tragically wrong, and therefore be doomed to Hell.” But Mailer is a gambler, and so he continues to preach, to reiterate the old verities with a new twist, opening himself to the charge of anachronism, refusing to accept the “modern,” the valueless objectivity of the novels of Robbe-Grillet, the impersonal detachment of the music of Milton Babbitt, and the faceless hotels of Conrad Hilton. He will not give up like Hemingway’s Lieutenant Henry, who trusts only in the names of bridges, cities, and battles; Mailer chooses instead still to believe in God, Love, Heroism, Courage, and Death. His life and work are a contradiction of the message contained in one of his own poems:

{{quote|''Never'' ''contemplate'' ''nothing'' ''said'' ''the saint.''}}

History is a nightmare from which Mailer is still trying to awaken; but he will not take the easy way out in his struggle.

And yet if he is singleminded in his determination to view life in terms of ultimate battle, his desire for victory is not without ambivalence. His involvement in the pop world has become more than peripheral with his play, his new underground movie (where he is cast as a Mafia gangster), his new novel, and his own life style (where he tries to enact simultaneously the roles of writer, fighter, celebrity, lover, and messiah); and like most of the major figures in this eclectic pop world, he is flirting with psychosis. To live on the edge of so many different scenes is to belong truly to none; and to act like so many different people is to endanger the self. The sign of surrender, the indication that the battle has been lost, is the sense of succumbing to Dread. It is not impossible that Mailer’s Dread is essentially the fulfillment of his own unacknowledged ''desire'' for that Dread, the intuition that all those “psychotic” ideas and actions he lives by are simply the expression of a profound longing for madness and extinction.

Mailer holds himself together, however, by virtue of his work. Through creation he is able to come closer to the unattainable goal of total victory in the struggle which is the metaphor for his vision of life. Even if we do not believe in it ourselves, even if we are impatient with the intellectual naivete of a man who only a decade ago speculated that perhaps he was the first person to state that God was in danger of dying, and even if we are annoyed by the heavily flawed style of his prose, we can still learn from, and be moved by, this belligerent prophet. At the end of the stage version of ''The Deer Park'', he speaks of debates about God and Time and Sex as constituting “part of the poor odd dialogues which give hope to us noble humans for more than one night.” If Mailer has done this in his own work even a small part of the time, he is one Puritan our age can ill afford to lose.

=== Notes ===

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{{Byline|last=Toback|first=James|note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967}}

{{dc|dc=I|n the late 50’s, Norman Mailer’s Reputation}} still stood on ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948), neither of his subsequent efforts, ''Barbary Shore'' (1951) and ''The Deer Park'' (1955), having quite convinced Mailer or anyone else that he was the major novelist he insisted he could become. By his own later account, his head was leaden with seconal, benzedrene, and marijuana: a sense of what he himself has termed passivity, stupidity, and dissipation threatened to overcome him. Only gradually, after returning to New York from Paris and giving up drugs and cigarettes, did he begin to feel that he could write once again. Then, in 1957, Mailer produced “The White Negro,” an essay which restored his faith in his literary future and presaged the forms and directions that it would take.

Mailer has always professed an umbilical attachment to the Left, but since “The White Negro” the drift has been unmistakably from political radicalism toward spiritual radicalism, from an obsession with Marx to an obsession with Reich, from economic revolution to apocalyptic orgasm, from the proletariat to heroes, demons, boxers, tycoons, bitches, murderers, suicides, pimps, and lovers. And correspondingly, concern with extreme psychic states has become more important to his work than concern with extreme political states (the center having always been a bore for Mailer in all its manifestations).

It was not that eschatology ''replaced'' politics, but rather that it came to constitute a new means of diagnosis, both of personal and social plague, and that it promised answers to the crisis in which both the individual and the nation were entrapped. The criteria by which the health of a particular man (the organ) were to be assessed—his complexity, his bravery, his daring, his capacity for love—were essentially the same as those which measured the salubrity of America (the organism). Similarly, the disease which threatened both individual and state (expressed at once literally and metaphorically as cancer) evinced identical symptoms: mediocrity, uniformity, repression, and security.

Assuming the voice of religious physician, the Mailer of the 60’s reveals a vision of malady and possible restoration that is profoundly radical; at the same time the terminology and conceptual foundation of his homily are Puritan to the core. God and the Devil, Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell, History and Eternity are as inescapably real for Mailer as they were for Jonathan Edwards—and he has repeatedly asserted that such ultimate questions are proper and indeed necessary preoccupations for the contemporary novelist. Many would dissent, but even if we do look to the novelist for salvation, can we look to Mailer? There is, at least on the surface, an insistent buffoonery to his self-projected public image that can make it difficult to take him seriously, let alone to believe he can show us the way to redemption. Yet even a cursory examination of his work suggests that he is justified in claiming to be an intellectual adventurer of broad dimension. If he sometimes seems to be more familiar with ''Captain Blood'' than ''Middlemarch'', he nevertheless possesses an uncanny ability to recall and make use of what he has read. If he is sometimes guileful, more often he strives for complete honesty and the subject of his work. If his thinking is occasionally wild and unsound, he is also capable of rigorously logical intellection. And if his emphasis on scatology is at times repugnant, his undeniable charisma excites interest in practically everything he writes or says or does.

Consequently, when a new work by Mailer appears, we turn to it eagerly—expectant and hopeful—especially when, as in the case of his latest novel, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'',{{efn|Putnam, 208 pp., $4.95}} the new work also represents a new literary departure. By itself perhaps the most ambitious and the most difficult effort of his career, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is also a crystallization and an extension of Mailer’s other major productions of the 6o’s. To do justice to its complexity, to make it more accessible, and to place it properly in the perspective of Mailer’s development as a writer, one must first look back to ''The Presidential Papers'', ''An American Dream'', ''Cannibals and Christians'', and the dramatic adaptation of ''The Deer Park''.

With ''Advertisements for Myself'' (1959), Mailer showed that whatever
stature he might or might not achieve as a novelist, he was certainly becoming a major essayist. This impression was confirmed by ''The Presidential Papers'' (1963), in which Mailer took it upon himself to indicate to John F. Kennedy the brave new paths he must follow in order to achieve greatness as a President, heroism as a man, and salvation for his country. In Mailer’s view, the only kind of hero who can appear in contemporary American life is the “existential” hero, a man who lives—in his thoughts as in his actions—by daring the unknown. On one occasion, when discussing symptoms of the national disease, Mailer remarks that no one in America is capable of tolerating a question that cannot be answered in twenty seconds. And he finds deeds courageous (and hence potentially heroic) only if there is death, or at least danger, as a possible consequence.

Heroism is the victory over Dread, the sensation that haunts not only ''The Presidential Papers'', but the whole of Mailer’s work in the 6o’s. Although doubtless a natural threat to man from the earliest days of his consciousness, Dread has become rather fashionable (to talk about if not to feel) in recent years. It has perhaps been best described by Tennessee Williams. After indicating that the war, the atom bomb, and terminal disease are not really to the point, Williams writes:

{{quote|These things are parts of the visible, sensible phenomena of every man’s experience or knowledge, but the true sense of dread is not a reaction to anything . . . strictly, materially ''knowable''. But rather it’s a kind of spiritual intuition of something almost too incredible and shocking to talk about, which underlies the whole so-called thing.}}

Either one knows what Williams is talking about or one doesn’t, and Williams implies that only artists and madmen do. Mailer, however, sees no one safe from the possibility of confrontation with the abyss, and he seems to feel a moral obligation to awaken us all to the danger. All roads lead to it, and it is only through the unmanly deceptions of right-wing politics, logical positivism, linguistic analysis, popular journalism, and Freudian psychology that “the terror which lies beneath our sedition [is hidden from us].” The vigilantes of the right wing, like the Un-American Activities Committee, the F.B.I., and the Birch Society, seek to transform metaphysical Dread into Red dread, to give internal emptiness the tangible outer shape of Communism. And Freudians tell us that Dread is merely a recurrence of the fear we feel as helpless infants. But Mailer, like the latter-day hell-fire Puritan preacher he is, asserts that the horrible intimation of Dread is that “we are going to die badly and suffer some unendurable stricture of eternity.” This is no metaphor; it is an expression of Mailer’s belief in the literal existence of hell.

The Maileresque hero—suspecting that his Dread is a real premonition of the agony that awaits him after death, an agony that can be averted only be daring death to come sooner, to come right away—will always put up an ante that amounts to more than he can afford to lose. Here, for example, is Mailer on Hemingway’s suicide:

{{quote|How likely that he had a death of the most awful proportions within him. He was exactly the one to know that the cure for such disease is to risk dying many a time . . . .

I wonder if, morning after morning, Hemingway did not go downstairs secretly in the dawn, set the base of his loaded shotgun on the floor, put the muzzle into his mouth, and press his thumb to the trigger . . . . He can move the trigger up to a point [of no man’s land] and yet not fire the gun . . . . Perhaps he tried just such a reconnaissance one hundred times before, and felt the touch of health return . . . . If he did it well, he could come close to death without dying.}}

That Hemingway eventually died as a result of his gambling with life is not so important as that he grew by it. By challenging fate he was saving his soul; by refusing to give into his dread of death, he was making whatever life was left for him more noble; and he was fortifying his spirit so that he might transcend the eternity of hell.

If the individual can save himself from madness and the abyss only by ceasing to repress even his most hidden and dangerous impulses and by flirting with death, so, too, with the nation as a whole. Devoted to the illusion of safety and security, it is condemned to mass insanity and an ignoble end, unless it redeems itself by immediate embarkation on a course of “existential” politics. This would involve a complete remolding of national objectives, not only on the large issues involving danger and death, survival or extinction, but also on less apocalyptic matters like urban housing.

For if America is not already incurably insane, she is certainly in a state of plague. Mailer sees the symptoms everywhere: in architecture, frozen food, television commercials, sleeping pills, sexual excess, sexual repression, the deterioration of the language. One has only to look at the kind of people who regulate and set the tone of the nation. Mailer lists them: politicians, medicos, policemen, professors, priests, rabbis, ministers, psychoanalysts, builders, and executives. It has not always been so:

{{quote|[Once] America was the land where people still believed in heroes: George Washington, Billy the Kid; Lincoln, Jefferson, Mark Twain, Jack London, Hemingway, Joe Louis, Dempsey, Gentleman Jim; American believed in athletes, rum-runners, aviators, even lovers. It was a country which had grown by the leap of one hero past another.}}

Now, more than ever before, America needed a hero. Was he Norman Mailer? Not yet. For the time being Mailer’s faith was in Kennedy, the inspiration for the essay, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” in which Mailer had expressed his faith in Kennedy’s capacity to lead the country in “the recovery of its imagination, its pioneer lust for the unexpected and the incalculable.” And yet no sooner had Kennedy won the election than Mailer was possessed by “a sense of awe,” an intuition that he had betrayed himself, and, as a result, he began to follow Kennedy’s career obsessively, as if he, Norman Mailer, personally “were responsible and guilty for all which was bad . . . and potentially totalitarian.” There are suggestions in this abrupt reversal of sentiment of three forces at work in Mailer: serious concern for the fate of the spiritual and political ideals he cherishes; a histrionic penchant for breast-beating; an almost petulant envy of Kennedy’s power and possibility, an irrational and vast extension of the simple literary envy he occasionally felt for James Jones.

To be sure, the heroism of which Mailer speaks is a cure which both individual and nation might decide is too hazardous and too painful to undertake. The patient is apt to protest that he does not really feel so sick as Mailer tells him he is and that even if he were, he would rather fade gradually into death than risk the unknown under surgery. If it is the “Establishment” that objects in these terms, Mailer regards it as plain cowardice, the cardinal sin, which should be avoided even if the strictures of eternity were not waiting as retribution. But with minority groups, the Negro in particular, his urgency is softened. He understands that it would be no small act of presumption on his part to demand that the Negro, who has lived with violence all his life, surrender the goals of security and stability.

{{quote|The demand for courage may have been exorbitant. Now as the Negro was beginning to come into the white man’s world, he wanted the logic of the white man’s world: annuities, mental hygiene, sociological jargon, committee solutions for the ills of the breast. He was sick of a whore’s logic and a pimp’s logic.}}

And yet the paradox here is only too obvious to Mailer. Believing that he must turn his back on the values of the ghetto, the Negro seeks recovery through assimilation into the moribund world of white liberal America. In reality, he is abandoning a way of life which is founded on those extreme states of human feeling and action which for Mailer constitute the only true possibility for spiritual rehabilitation. Mailer regrets that

{{quote|there is no one to tell [the Negro] it would be better to keep the psychology of the streets than to cultivate the contradictory desire to be . . . a great, healthy, mature, autonomous, related, integrated individual.}}

This problem is crystallized in the eleventh (and perhaps best) essay in ''The Presidential Papers'', “Death,” which focuses on the proceedings before, during, and immediately after the first Floyd Patterson-Sonny Liston heavyweight championship fight. Most Negroes wanted Patterson to win, a fact which Mailer explains by identifying Patterson as the symbol of security. Patterson was polite, quiet, humble, diligent, and Catholic; he was, in short, “White.” Liston, on the other hand, personified “the old torment,” the darker, dangerous side of life that the Negro had known only too well. Liston was surly, unpredictable, mob affiliated, and an ex-convict; he was “black.”

Most Negroes, then, wanted to see Liston beaten by Patterson for much the same reason that they would not react warmly to proposals that they seek out violence, danger, and the unknown. But if Mailer cannot blame them, he is nevertheless distressed by the insidious assimilation of Negroes (and Jews as well) into Anglo-Saxon America. For a Negro or a Jew, to stifle the rich uniqueness of his potential contribution to American life is to betray himself and to withhold the transfusion that might save this bloodless land.

Mailer likes Patterson—his loneliness, his pride, his persistent struggle against the odds. But just as the Fascist Croft had stolen Mailer’s interest from the liberal Hearn in ''The Naked and the Dead'', so Mailer’s real fascination here is not with Patterson but with Liston, whose inexorable toughness makes him the kind of Negro other Negroes refer to (sometimes in fear, sometimes in praise, sometimes in disapproval, but always in awe) as “a ''bad'' cat.” Liston takes on mythic proportions in Mailer’s mind, a mind which by nature tends to intensify, to exaggerate, and to think in terms of extremes. He is “near to beautiful” and one can think of “very few men who have beauty.” But that is in no way all.

{{quote|Liston was voodoo, Liston was magic . . . . Liston was the secret hero of every man who had ever given mouth to a final curse against the dispositions of the Lord and made a pact with Black magic. Liston was Faust.}}

He was the kind of Negro that any white man who imagined himself hip would have to come to terms with—either as model or as rival. Predictably, Mailer chooses the latter course, and does battle with Liston. Not physical battle, but psychic warfare that could have erupted into violence.

Liston’s incredibly fast knockout of Patterson left Mailer in a state of feverish frustration, a condition aggravated by a conscience which taunted him for his own recent failures—for too much alcohol and too little discipline. It was out of this sense of despair and defeat that another of Mailer’s obsessions was born.

{{quote|I began . . . to see myself as some sort of center about which all that had been lost must now rally. It was not simple egomania nor simple drunkenness, it was not even simple insanity: it was a kind of metaphorical leap across a gap. To believe the impossible may be won creates a strength from which the impossible may be attacked.}}

The essence of Mailer’s claim was that he was “the only man in the country” who could build the gate of a second Patterson-Liston fight into the proportions of an epic. The insistence with which he promoted his proposal the next day, the rude insults he hurled at Liston, and his petulant refusal to leave the dais (where he did not belong) all indicate that what Mailer wanted above everything was some kind of direct confrontation with Liston, some chance to prove to himself that he was still a possible hero, that he was larger than the myth into which his own mind had transformed the new heavyweight champion.

After the series of humiliations which gave reporters, detectives, by-standers, and Liston himself ample opportunity to laugh at him, Mailer finally got his chance. While obviously intoxicated, he approached Liston.

{{quote|“You called me a bum.” I said . . . “Well, you are a bum,” he said. “Everybody is a bum. I'm a bum too. It’s just that I’m a bigger bum than you are.” He stuck out his hand. “Shake, bum,” he said . . . . Could it be, was I indeed a bum? I shook his hand . . . . “Listen,” said I, leaning my head closer, speaking from the corner of my mouth as if I were whispering in a clinch, “I’m pulling this caper for a reason. I know a way to build the next fight from a $200,000 dog in Miami to a $2,000,000 gate in New York.” . . . “Say,” said Liston, “that last drink really set you up. Why don’t you go and get me a drink, you bum.”

“I’m not your flunky,” I said. It was the first punch I’d sent home. He loved me for it. The hint of corny old darky laughter, cottonfield giggles, peeped out a moment from his throat. “Oh, sheet, man!,” said the wit in his eyes. And for the crowd watching, he turned and announced at large, “I like this guy.”}}

Three phrases in this most revealing passage are particularly significant. First, Mailer views the dialogue in the terms of a fight; he speaks to Liston as if they were “in a clinch.” Secondly, Mailer’s “first punch” (“I’m not your flunky”) is delivered while he is behind on points and trapped in a corner. When he finally makes this move, he risks taking a (literal) punch in the mouth from Liston, who is not, one imagines, in the habit of being told off in public by inebriated reporters. Then, there is Liston’s remarkable reaction (“I like this guy”) to Mailer’s thrust, a totally unexpected profession of feeling for the writer that amounts to admiration, and the even more remarkable response that Liston’s concession generates in Mailer’s mind. For Mailer, Liston’s grunt becomes “a chuckle of corny old darky laughter, cottonfield giggles”: not only has Mailer taken final honors in his combat with the “Supreme Spade,” but he has metaphorically reduced him to his (ancestrally) original condition of servitude. From king of the Northern urban jungle where the white man is afraid to meet him on the street at night, Liston has been deported to a Southern cotton plantation where he knows his place and recognizes his master.

Liston is at once Mailer himself and Mailer’s alter ego. When he is the latter, Mailer becomes Patterson: “The fighters spoke as well from the countered halves of my nature.” Mailer even conjectures that perhaps Patterson is God and Liston the Devil, an idea which emanates from a conviction that every man is a potential agent for either of the two great warring cosmic powers, and that by one’s actions one affects the outcome in their ultimate struggle for control of a Manichean universe. On that night in Chicago, Liston, in his demonic role, “had shown that the Lord was dramatically weak.” Was it possible that Mailer’s press-conference comeback had restored some of the Deity’s strength? No negative answer could be given with full assurance.

In ''An American Dream'' (1964)—his first novel since ''The Deer Park''— Mailer is again concerned with the themes that inform the essays: danger, death, and heroism. The pattern of the novel, one might say, is designed on intercourse—with God, with the Devil, with voices from the inner recesses of the mind, with the vagina, and with the anus: intercourse leading to oceanic climax, coming variously in waves of love, lust, or pure aestheticism. The center of all this activity, the narrator and hero, is Stephen Richards Rojack, the embodiment of Mailer’s unrealized fantasies and of his radical Puritanism as well. A Harvard graduate ''summa cum laude'', he is also a war hero (“the one intellectual in America’s history to win a distinguished service cross”), an ex-congressman, a television personality, a professor of existentialist psychology, an author, a boxer, and an unsurpassed stud. He lives in contemporary New York amid people who, in Mailer’s view, personify the cancerous totalitarianism of our age.

The action is generated by Rojack’s murder of his wife, Deborah, a great bitch, beautiful, extremely rich, and secretly involved in international intrigue as a spy. The love he once felt for her has withered into a sense of dependence so paralyzing that she has now become the very structure of his ego. Without her, he fears he “might topple like clay.” In such a condition Rojack, who expresses Mailer’s eschatological vision, knows he is unprepared to face eternity. The first step toward reconstruction of self is to exorcise the demon that possesses him—and to exorcise Deborah is to kill her. The act of strangulation is committed with sexual passion, which is true to Mailer’s insistence that sex, love, and murder are inseparable and cathartic:

{{quote|Some blackbiled lust, some desire to go ahead (and kill her) not unlike the instant one comes in a woman against her cry that she is without protection came bursting with rage from out of me and . . . crack I choked her harder . . . and ''crack'' I gave her payment.}}

With Deborah’s death begins the arduous process of Rojack’s rebirth; he realizes that if murder is sometimes necessary, it is never simple. The gods, like furies, haunt him; he is acutely conscious of everything he thinks or says or does, for now cowardice or weakness or smallness will bring swift retribution—Dread, insanity, and the abyss. To strengthen himself, and to find, once again, something he can honestly call love are the ends of Rojack’s quest, but fulfillment of it and freedom from these new furies can be attained only through heroism, through seeking danger and daring death.

{{quote|. . . I believed that God was not love but courage. Love can come only as a reward . . . . A voice said in my mind: “That which you fear most is what you must do.”}}

The very phrasing of the passage is related to the nature of the punishment that will accrue if the command goes unheeded. Rojack’s mental life is split into a “voice” and “mind,” a separation dangerously close to the empty panic of schizophrenia.

But if madness looms as the penalty for prudence and cowardice (Mailer uses the two as almost indistinguishable), it is also possible that Dread will overwhelm even the bold Promethean. Rojack knows that “if man wished to steal the secret of the gods . . . they would defend themselves and destroy whichever man came too close.” With so narrow a chance of escape from insanity and an eternity in the abyss, suicide quite naturally presents itself as an alternative. What is to hold one back?

Despite all his frenetic activity, it is not merely a sensual lust for experience that keeps Rojack going. On the contrary, while his senses are irrepressibly active (especially his sense of smell), his mind persists relentlessly in observation, commentary, and criticism. Any physical sensation is immediately subject to conscious analysis. In Rojack, sex is the effort of the body to rape the mind, to pulsate in waves of ecstasy transcending consciousness. But even here he fails. Whether it is with the German maid, Ruta, or with the Southern chanteuse, Cherry, Rojack’s concern is with power rather than with pleasure, with the psychic domination he achieves after ''her'' orgasm rather than with the physical rapture of his own. Like his creator, Rojack is far more a Puritan than a hedonist; life is struggle rather than joy.

So the question remains: why go on? It is true that Rojack puts his life on the line more than once. The murder of his wife, the competition with mafia goons, the insults to a former boxing champion in an unfriendly bar, and, especially, the nocturnal walk on the parapet of a windy terrace thirty stories above the ground—all could easily have resulted in his death. But rather than misguided suicide attempts, these acts are a part of Rojack’s supreme effort to prepare himself for death. The goal in life is finally religious—to make oneself as fit as possible to meet the unknown after life is done, to face the judgment of eternity; and Rojack is possessed by the faith of the gambler. Like a poker player who is convinced that his next hand is bound to be the lucky one, Rojack acts on the assumption that the longer he lives, the more heroic he may become.

And the assumption is not unfounded, for Rojack’s heroism is boundless. He argues with demonic voices and then dispels them, he outwits and outfights his indomitable tycoon father-in-law, and, above all, he humiliates and beats up a sexually magnetic Negro hero, Shago Martin. Not only does Rojack cause Cherry to have her first sexual explosion, after Shago had failed with her for months, but through a combination of psychic intuition and physical power he changes a situation where Shago is standing over him with a knife to one in which he is standing over Shago, who is now writhing pulp at the bottom of a staircase (and all in the space of ten minutes).

Practically everything Rojack says or does suggests parallels to his creator’s personal life, and the episode with Shago Martin, recalling the Mailer-Liston confrontation, is perhaps the richest example. If Liston was a large part of Mailer, Shago’s ode to himself is easily applicable to the dark sides of both Rojack and Mailer.

{{quote|“I’m a lily-white devil . . . . I’m just the future, in love with myself, that’s the future. I got twenty faces, I talk the tongues, I’m a devil . . . . I’m cut off from my own lines, I try to speak from my heart and it gets snatched.”}}

If Mailer’s encounter with Liston faintly suggested repressed homosexuality transformed into manly fortitude, Rojack’s encounter with Shago positively smacks of it. Like Shago, he has Cherry, and his immediate concern after intercourse is in comparison. He can hardly hide his elation when she implies that he was better, a predictable response when one recalls his reaction the night before to Cherry’s paean to Shago’s sexual prowess. Her emphasis on the word “stud” had made Rojack uneasy.

{{quote|The word went in like a blow to the soft part of my belly. There was something final in the verdict as if there were a sexual round robin where the big people played. All the big Negroes and the big whites.}}

Like Mailer, Rojack lives his life as if it were some dark experiment which has gradually but relentlessly gained the upper hand so that he is free to act only within its prescribed limits. Again like Mailer, Rojack is paying the price for a lifelong habit of thinking in metaphor; image (like God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell) has become reality, and that reality has become a master demanding undivided attention. It is a reality of dreams, and the dreams in ''An American Dream'' are endless: the sexual dreams of Don Juan, the Alger dream of the self-made man, the outsider’s dream of the inside, the Mafia’s dream of money and power, the square’s dream of the life of the hipster, and the hipster’s dream of death. None of these dreams has turned entirely into nightmare, but each has gone sour, like the soul of the nation which fabricated them. But the saddest dream of all is Stephen Rojack’s (and perhaps Mailer’s) dream of sanity.

{{quote|I was caught. I wanted to escape from that intelligence which let me know of murders in one direction and conceive of [love] from the other, I wanted to be free of magic, the tongue of the devil, the dread of the Lord, I wanted to be some sort of rational man again . . . But I could not move.}}

But what if, unlike Mailer and Rojack, one is ''not'' obsessed with psychopathic extremes? What if one’s patience expires at exhibitions of braggadocio? What if one appreciates wit (of which there is some) but loves humor (of which there is none)? Probably one would call ''An American Dream'' a joke, and a bad joke at that. The infantile demand for intermediate and complete attention; the insistence on being taken seriously, literally, and on his own terms at all times; the inability to treat his agony with even a suggestion of laughter or a trace of irony; the sloppy inconsistency of much of the dialogue; and, finally, the sheer loudness that informs the whole novel, a tone alternating between agitation and hysteria—all this works to tire, frustrate, and, at times, infuriate even the most sympathetic reader.

And yet somehow exasperation yields to the suspicion that Mailer’s is a mind which understands as much about the quality of contemporary American life as any now active, a mind which could well represent the last intellectually significant and articulate thrust of an eschatological and religious fervor that may be sorely missed once it is gone. So one is willing to indulge Mailer further, even to thank him once again. And one is willing to accept Rojack’s vision of himself as a fair description of Mailer:

{{quote|I had leverage; I was one of the more active figures of the city—no one could be certain finally that nothing large would come to me.}}

In 1960 there was reason to hope for a dramatic rebirth of energy and heroism; even the darkest passages of ''The Presidential Papers'' were balanced by intimations that America was not yet doomed. A man could function in society and still find opportunity to grow. By 1966, dream had at last soured into nightmare. ''Cannibals and Christians'', a collection of essays, “poems” (or, more accurately, epigrams and graffiti), and interviews (both real and imaginary), is a sermon whose vision of hell has become dire and inevitable. From Mailer’s pulpit comes a most disconcerting premonition:

{{quote|The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again; it has perhaps not been here so intensely in thirty years, not since the Nazis were prospering, but it is coming . . . . The world is entering a time of plague.}}

Totalitarianism has suffocated individuality; the Hilton in San Francisco is emulated before the Plaza in New York; housing projects look like nurseries and nurseries look like hospitals; appliances are plastic rather than metal; vile bully tactics in Vietnam have developed from simple occupation of Southeast Asia; the psychotic has taken over from the psychopath; pornography has gained another step on sexuality. In a word, Lyndon Johnson has replaced John Kennedy.

Johnson, Mailer tells us, is the archetypically alienated figure—a fact which can be observed in his prose (perhaps “the worst ever written by any political leader anywhere”), in his boorish manners, in his deceitfulness, in his voracious ego, and in his almost arrogant lack of style. If a President has a profound effect on the quality of life during his era—and Mailer is convinced that he does—then hope is indeed dim. And the consequences may be far worse than possible loss of prestige, power, or land; for there is the unknown to face after death, and the possibility that there is no absolution for cowardly sins.

But Mailer’s exhortations against the insanities of the age of Johnson do not come from one whose own tensions—between radicalism and Puritanism, heroism, and buffoonery, the playboy’s life and the intellectual’s vocation—are anywhere near control. And there is a further complication in Mailer’s complex personality, an unmistakably reactionary streak, not unrelated in impulse to his intense religiosity, which challenges his natural and professed political radicalism. Apart from the kind of conservatism that is common property among many contemporary radicals—a quasi-isolationism that urges America to terminate involvement in practically all foreign countries and a profound distrust of the liberal establishment—Mailer holds positions on matters not directly political which fall neatly into line with the conservative spirit (he is, for example, strongly opposed to birth control and abortion, and he speaks of homosexuality as a “vice”). But two pieces of evidence (both from the essay on the 1964 Republican Convention) are particularly striking. First, Mailer confesses to a buried urge to see Barry Goldwater elected:

{{quote|I knew Goldwater could win because something in me leaped out at the thought; a part of me, a devil, wished to take that choice.}}

Secondly, Mailer’s ambivalence toward Negroes, manifested earlier only in the individual cases of Sonny Liston and Shago Martin, is now explicitly broadened. His reaction to James Baldwin’s suggestion that there may be no remission for the white man’s sins against the Negro is violent:

{{quote|I had to throttle an impulse to . . . call Baldwin, and say, “You get this, baby. There’s a shit storm coming like nothing you ever knew. So ask yourself if what you desire is for the white to kill every black so that there be total remission of guilt in your black soul.”}}

If the relief of such tensions and conflicts and the consequent fortification of the self can come only from bold action, then Mailer’s primary means of personal salvation lies in his work. It is in the very act of creating the artistic sermons which he claims will show us the way to redemption that Mailer redeems himself. His influence has given rise to several “cults.” At one extreme there is a segment of the underground hipster community, closely involved with drugs, which worships him as the high priest of God and Sex. At the other end is that increasingly large group of liberal and radical intellectuals, centered in New York and comprised of such critics as Norman Podhoretz, Steven Marcus, and Richard Poirier who see in Mailer, as Marcus once put it, the embodiment of extraordinary literary talent, personal honesty and loyalty, and penetrating social criticism. And yet, in the last analysis, Mailer’s influence is limited, for the Word has hardly reached, let alone changed, the heart of the land he is trying to transform.

From the first three sermons of the 1960’s, the congregation is likely to walk away interested and, sometimes, excited, rather than transformed. Entertainment overshadows eschatology. And in Mailer’s fourth effort of the 6o’s, ''The Deer Park'', a stage adaption of his novel of 1956, religion gives way completely to comedy (both intentional and unintentional).{{efn|One ignores, for Mailer’s sake as much as for one’s own, ''Deaths for the Ladies'', a collection of words which the author extravagantly describes as poetry.}}

This is not to imply that Mailer has abandoned his urgent message; practically all his obsessions of the 6o’s are here: sex, love, lust, heroism, cowardice, power, God, and the Devil. If Mailer has added anything new to his philosophy, it lies in the expansion of his idea as sexual freedom and it is expressed through the pimp Marion Faye, who “follows sex to the end, turns queer, bangs dogs, and sniffs toes.” But in the figure of Herman Teppis (or
“H.T.”), a Hollywood mogul in the tradition of Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn, genuine humor replaces heavy rhetoric and caustic wit. In the desert of endless debates over who is—and who is not—a genius in bed, Teppis’s pronouncements are oases.

{{quote|You know what an artist is? He's a crook. They even got a Frenchman now, you know what, he picks people’s pockets at society parties. They say he’s the greatest writer in France. No wonder they need a dictator, those crazy French. I could never get along with the French.}}

But Mailer pays a price for his success in the comic mode. One laughs so hard at Teppis that one keeps right on laughing, even at the tortured, self-searching characters—spokesmen all for traditional Maileresque values—one is meant to take seriously. If there is a lesson to be learned from this play, it is that comedy may be suitable to many dramatic modes, including tragedy, but that it has no place at all in eschatological homily.

After a pop play perhaps one should have expected, or at least have been prepared for, a pop novel from Mailer’s pen. Nevertheless, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' comes as a shock. Radical as the ideas contained in them may have been, Mailer’s earlier novels were more or less conservative in form: except for ''Barbary Shore'', they were all clearly in the mainstream of the realist-naturalist tradition. But in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' ordered syntax has yielded to the total liberation of the word; intricate plot structure has given way to hallucinatory fantasy; fully realized characters living in what we know as the real world have been replaced by the protean apparitions in Mailer’s mind; the last trace of ratiocination has been obliterated by a relentless bombardment of sensual impressions and apocalyptic utterances. Dreiser and Farrell have disappeared in favor of Joyce, Faulkner, Burroughs, McLuhan, and Norman O. Brown.

At one point or another virtually every theory Mailer has ever had appears—but now with an important difference. Rather than preaching his messages baldly as in the past, Mailer drops them mockingly. And the mockery is directed both at himself and at those he would edify.

{{quote|The world is going shazam, hahray harout, fart in my toot, air we breathe is the prez, present dent, and god has always wanted more from man than man has wished to give him. Zig a zig a zig. That is why we live in dread of god.}}

Even the seminal concept of Dread is translated into the pop language of rock-and-roll. A vast chasm of culture and sensibility separates the tone of Rojack’s agonized monologues from the narrative voice of the present novel.

{{quote|. . . Mr. Sender, who sends out that Awe and Dread is up on their back . . . because they ''alone'', man, you dig? They all ''alone'', it’s a fright wig, man, that Upper silence alone is enough to bugger you, whoo-ee.}}

Indeed, the very claim to a prophetic stance in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is established in a similarly (and intentionally) ambiguous tone.

{{quote|This is your own wandering troubadour brought right up to date, here to sell America its new handbook on how to live . . . . We’re going to tell you what it’s all about.}}

Although there is a bare minimum of dramatic tension or external conflict, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' has several “characters,” each significant primarily on a symbolic plane. D.J. (Disc Jockey, Dr. Jekyll), the adolescent hero narrator of patrician Texas blood, is sometimes convinced that he is really a “Harlem Nigger,” and since “there is no such thing as a totally false perception,” perhaps he is. Not literally, of course, but rather in the same way that Mailer recognized Sonny Liston in himself and in the same way that the white hipster of “The White Negro” is, in his psychic makeup, black. If D.J. is the hipster, Rusty, his father, is the square, a corporation tycoon in Dallas—coarse, selfish, and, at heart, a coward. Tex (the Mr. Hyde to D.J.’s Dr. Jekyll) is part Indian, manly, bisexual, and the son of an undertaker.

The three go bear hunting in Alaska, but the most important action takes place in D.J.’s mind. At one point he has an urge to turn his gun on his father and “blast a shot, thump in his skull.” Although he resists, he soon commits the act symbolically by contradicting his father’s warning and courageously approaching a wounded bear, putting his life on the line, while his father lies hidden, waiting for the bear to become helpless before firing the fatal shot. Thus liberated from paternal authority, D.J. finds his instincts for love and battle shifted to Tex, D.J. encounters nakedly for the first time his other self. And through a mutual awareness of their mutual desire for both intercourse and fratricide, D.J. and Tex finally achieve a sense of purification and personal integration.

{{quote|. . . Tex Hyde . . . was finally afraid to prong D.J., because D.J. once become a bitch would kill him, and D.J. breathing that in by the wide-awake of the dark with Aurora Borealis jumping to the beat of his heart knew he could make a try to prong Tex, there was a chance to get in and steal the iron from Texas’ ass and put it on his own . . . now it was there, murder between them under all friendship, for god was a beast, not a man, and god said, “Go out and kill—fulfill my will, go and kill,” and they hung there each of them on the knife of the divide in all conflict of lust to own the other . . . Killer brothers, owned by something, prince of darkness, lord of light, they did not know; they just knew that telepathy was on them, they had been touched forever by the North and each bit a drop of blood from his own finger and touched them across and met blood to blood . . . .}}

In one eternal moment the Manichean polarities that have obsessed Mailer are at last synthesized—God and the Devil, heaven and hell, nature and man, Negro and white, Dallas and Harlem, phallus and anus.

But why ''are'' we in Vietnam? What relation does the title have to D.J., Tex, Rusty, bear-hunting, Harlem, Dallas, liberated syntax, or Maileresque eschatology? In the strictest sense, nothing at all. But in a broader, metaphysical sense, the title can be explained as another urgent warning to America. We are in Vietnam because we, as a nation, are going, or have already gone, insane. Mailer’s development from politics to meta-politics is complete. The world—and especially America—is now viewed as an expression of Mailer’s own most extreme longings and fantasies. Subject and object, chaos and order, internal imagination and external reality are united in a fusion of creator and creation.
In an ultimate sense Mailer is claiming not only ''relation to'' America but ''identity with'' her. It is likely that he has himself in mind when he writes of Rusty:

{{quote|His secret is that he sees himself as one of the pillars of the firmament, yeah, man—he reads the world’s doom in his own fuckup. If he is less great than God intended him to be, then America is in Trouble.}}

One cannot help wondering whether ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'', unruly and overwhelming, is not at least as much a symptom of our “Trouble” as a cure for it.

Throughout the past decade Mailer has made the world of the hipster the stuff of his sermons—novels, essays, and plays—as well as the style of his personal life. He calls it “a muted cool religious revival,” and a better description (at least of his ''intentions'') would be hard to find. He is Zarathustra coming down from the mountain with his vision of the hero; he is Dostoevsky reminding us that “God and the Devil are fighting, and the battleground is the heart of man!”; he is a Puritan minister informing us that pain may be good, for to suffer is to be given the opportunity to grow and prepare for the mystery of death and the perils of hell; he is a preacher frustrated by his congregation’s blind faith in innocence at a time in history when innocence is not only a lie but a crime; he is a seer trying to jar complacent men into an awareness of the despair that lies beneath their conventions; he is Toynbee telling us that if a civilization stagnates, it will die, that if a nation is to survive, it must respond to the reality of challenge; and he is Jonathan Swift couching his eschatological message in the language and imagery of scatology.

It is true that Mailer’s own faith in the validity of his message is not absolute. He has admitted that “the hipster gambles that he can be terribly, tragically wrong, and therefore be doomed to Hell.” But Mailer is a gambler, and so he continues to preach, to reiterate the old verities with a new twist, opening himself to the charge of anachronism, refusing to accept the “modern,” the valueless objectivity of the novels of Robbe-Grillet, the impersonal detachment of the music of Milton Babbitt, and the faceless hotels of Conrad Hilton. He will not give up like Hemingway’s Lieutenant Henry, who trusts only in the names of bridges, cities, and battles; Mailer chooses instead still to believe in God, Love, Heroism, Courage, and Death. His life and work are a contradiction of the message contained in one of his own poems:

{{quote|''Never'' ''contemplate'' ''nothing'' ''said'' ''the saint.''}}

=== Notes ===

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The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Norman Mailer Today

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Kamyers: added another page

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{{Byline|last=Toback|first=James|note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967}}

{{dc|dc=I|n the late 50’s, Norman Mailer’s Reputation}} still stood on ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948), neither of his subsequent efforts, ''Barbary Shore'' (1951) and ''The Deer Park'' (1955), having quite convinced Mailer or anyone else that he was the major novelist he insisted he could become. By his own later account, his head was leaden with seconal, benzedrene, and marijuana: a sense of what he himself has termed passivity, stupidity, and dissipation threatened to overcome him. Only gradually, after returning to New York from Paris and giving up drugs and cigarettes, did he begin to feel that he could write once again. Then, in 1957, Mailer produced “The White Negro,” an essay which restored his faith in his literary future and presaged the forms and directions that it would take.

Mailer has always professed an umbilical attachment to the Left, but since “The White Negro” the drift has been unmistakably from political radicalism toward spiritual radicalism, from an obsession with Marx to an obsession with Reich, from economic revolution to apocalyptic orgasm, from the proletariat to heroes, demons, boxers, tycoons, bitches, murderers, suicides, pimps, and lovers. And correspondingly, concern with extreme psychic states has become more important to his work than concern with extreme political states (the center having always been a bore for Mailer in all its manifestations).

It was not that eschatology ''replaced'' politics, but rather that it came to constitute a new means of diagnosis, both of personal and social plague, and that it promised answers to the crisis in which both the individual and the nation were entrapped. The criteria by which the health of a particular man (the organ) were to be assessed—his complexity, his bravery, his daring, his capacity for love—were essentially the same as those which measured the salubrity of America (the organism). Similarly, the disease which threatened both individual and state (expressed at once literally and metaphorically as cancer) evinced identical symptoms: mediocrity, uniformity, repression, and security.

Assuming the voice of religious physician, the Mailer of the 60’s reveals a vision of malady and possible restoration that is profoundly radical; at the same time the terminology and conceptual foundation of his homily are Puritan to the core. God and the Devil, Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell, History and Eternity are as inescapably real for Mailer as they were for Jonathan Edwards—and he has repeatedly asserted that such ultimate questions are proper and indeed necessary preoccupations for the contemporary novelist. Many would dissent, but even if we do look to the novelist for salvation, can we look to Mailer? There is, at least on the surface, an insistent buffoonery to his self-projected public image that can make it difficult to take him seriously, let alone to believe he can show us the way to redemption. Yet even a cursory examination of his work suggests that he is justified in claiming to be an intellectual adventurer of broad dimension. If he sometimes seems to be more familiar with ''Captain Blood'' than ''Middlemarch'', he nevertheless possesses an uncanny ability to recall and make use of what he has read. If he is sometimes guileful, more often he strives for complete honesty and the subject of his work. If his thinking is occasionally wild and unsound, he is also capable of rigorously logical intellection. And if his emphasis on scatology is at times repugnant, his undeniable charisma excites interest in practically everything he writes or says or does.

Consequently, when a new work by Mailer appears, we turn to it eagerly—expectant and hopeful—especially when, as in the case of his latest novel, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'',{{efn|Putnam, 208 pp., $4.95}} the new work also represents a new literary departure. By itself perhaps the most ambitious and the most difficult effort of his career, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is also a crystallization and an extension of Mailer’s other major productions of the 6o’s. To do justice to its complexity, to make it more accessible, and to place it properly in the perspective of Mailer’s development as a writer, one must first look back to ''The Presidential Papers'', ''An American Dream'', ''Cannibals and Christians'', and the dramatic adaptation of ''The Deer Park''.

With ''Advertisements for Myself'' (1959), Mailer showed that whatever
stature he might or might not achieve as a novelist, he was certainly becoming a major essayist. This impression was confirmed by ''The Presidential Papers'' (1963), in which Mailer took it upon himself to indicate to John F. Kennedy the brave new paths he must follow in order to achieve greatness as a President, heroism as a man, and salvation for his country. In Mailer’s view, the only kind of hero who can appear in contemporary American life is the “existential” hero, a man who lives—in his thoughts as in his actions—by daring the unknown. On one occasion, when discussing symptoms of the national disease, Mailer remarks that no one in America is capable of tolerating a question that cannot be answered in twenty seconds. And he finds deeds courageous (and hence potentially heroic) only if there is death, or at least danger, as a possible consequence.

Heroism is the victory over Dread, the sensation that haunts not only ''The Presidential Papers'', but the whole of Mailer’s work in the 6o’s. Although doubtless a natural threat to man from the earliest days of his consciousness, Dread has become rather fashionable (to talk about if not to feel) in recent years. It has perhaps been best described by Tennessee Williams. After indicating that the war, the atom bomb, and terminal disease are not really to the point, Williams writes:

{{quote|These things are parts of the visible, sensible phenomena of every man’s experience or knowledge, but the true sense of dread is not a reaction to anything . . . strictly, materially ''knowable''. But rather it’s a kind of spiritual intuition of something almost too incredible and shocking to talk about, which underlies the whole so-called thing.}}

Either one knows what Williams is talking about or one doesn’t, and Williams implies that only artists and madmen do. Mailer, however, sees no one safe from the possibility of confrontation with the abyss, and he seems to feel a moral obligation to awaken us all to the danger. All roads lead to it, and it is only through the unmanly deceptions of right-wing politics, logical positivism, linguistic analysis, popular journalism, and Freudian psychology that “the terror which lies beneath our sedition [is hidden from us].” The vigilantes of the right wing, like the Un-American Activities Committee, the F.B.I., and the Birch Society, seek to transform metaphysical Dread into Red dread, to give internal emptiness the tangible outer shape of Communism. And Freudians tell us that Dread is merely a recurrence of the fear we feel as helpless infants. But Mailer, like the latter-day hell-fire Puritan preacher he is, asserts that the horrible intimation of Dread is that “we are going to die badly and suffer some unendurable stricture of eternity.” This is no metaphor; it is an expression of Mailer’s belief in the literal existence of hell.

The Maileresque hero—suspecting that his Dread is a real premonition of the agony that awaits him after death, an agony that can be averted only be daring death to come sooner, to come right away—will always put up an ante that amounts to more than he can afford to lose. Here, for example, is Mailer on Hemingway’s suicide:

{{quote|How likely that he had a death of the most awful proportions within him. He was exactly the one to know that the cure for such disease is to risk dying many a time . . . .

I wonder if, morning after morning, Hemingway did not go downstairs secretly in the dawn, set the base of his loaded shotgun on the floor, put the muzzle into his mouth, and press his thumb to the trigger . . . . He can move the trigger up to a point [of no man’s land] and yet not fire the gun . . . . Perhaps he tried just such a reconnaissance one hundred times before, and felt the touch of health return . . . . If he did it well, he could come close to death without dying.}}

That Hemingway eventually died as a result of his gambling with life is not so important as that he grew by it. By challenging fate he was saving his soul; by refusing to give into his dread of death, he was making whatever life was left for him more noble; and he was fortifying his spirit so that he might transcend the eternity of hell.

If the individual can save himself from madness and the abyss only by ceasing to repress even his most hidden and dangerous impulses and by flirting with death, so, too, with the nation as a whole. Devoted to the illusion of safety and security, it is condemned to mass insanity and an ignoble end, unless it redeems itself by immediate embarkation on a course of “existential” politics. This would involve a complete remolding of national objectives, not only on the large issues involving danger and death, survival or extinction, but also on less apocalyptic matters like urban housing.

For if America is not already incurably insane, she is certainly in a state of plague. Mailer sees the symptoms everywhere: in architecture, frozen food, television commercials, sleeping pills, sexual excess, sexual repression, the deterioration of the language. One has only to look at the kind of people who regulate and set the tone of the nation. Mailer lists them: politicians, medicos, policemen, professors, priests, rabbis, ministers, psychoanalysts, builders, and executives. It has not always been so:

{{quote|[Once] America was the land where people still believed in heroes: George Washington, Billy the Kid; Lincoln, Jefferson, Mark Twain, Jack London, Hemingway, Joe Louis, Dempsey, Gentleman Jim; American believed in athletes, rum-runners, aviators, even lovers. It was a country which had grown by the leap of one hero past another.}}

Now, more than ever before, America needed a hero. Was he Norman Mailer? Not yet. For the time being Mailer’s faith was in Kennedy, the inspiration for the essay, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” in which Mailer had expressed his faith in Kennedy’s capacity to lead the country in “the recovery of its imagination, its pioneer lust for the unexpected and the incalculable.” And yet no sooner had Kennedy won the election than Mailer was possessed by “a sense of awe,” an intuition that he had betrayed himself, and, as a result, he began to follow Kennedy’s career obsessively, as if he, Norman Mailer, personally “were responsible and guilty for all which was bad . . . and potentially totalitarian.” There are suggestions in this abrupt reversal of sentiment of three forces at work in Mailer: serious concern for the fate of the spiritual and political ideals he cherishes; a histrionic penchant for breast-beating; an almost petulant envy of Kennedy’s power and possibility, an irrational and vast extension of the simple literary envy he occasionally felt for James Jones.

To be sure, the heroism of which Mailer speaks is a cure which both individual and nation might decide is too hazardous and too painful to undertake. The patient is apt to protest that he does not really feel so sick as Mailer tells him he is and that even if he were, he would rather fade gradually into death than risk the unknown under surgery. If it is the “Establishment” that objects in these terms, Mailer regards it as plain cowardice, the cardinal sin, which should be avoided even if the strictures of eternity were not waiting as retribution. But with minority groups, the Negro in particular, his urgency is softened. He understands that it would be no small act of presumption on his part to demand that the Negro, who has lived with violence all his life, surrender the goals of security and stability.

{{quote|The demand for courage may have been exorbitant. Now as the Negro was beginning to come into the white man’s world, he wanted the logic of the white man’s world: annuities, mental hygiene, sociological jargon, committee solutions for the ills of the breast. He was sick of a whore’s logic and a pimp’s logic.}}

And yet the paradox here is only too obvious to Mailer. Believing that he must turn his back on the values of the ghetto, the Negro seeks recovery through assimilation into the moribund world of white liberal America. In reality, he is abandoning a way of life which is founded on those extreme states of human feeling and action which for Mailer constitute the only true possibility for spiritual rehabilitation. Mailer regrets that

{{quote|there is no one to tell [the Negro] it would be better to keep the psychology of the streets than to cultivate the contradictory desire to be . . . a great, healthy, mature, autonomous, related, integrated individual.}}

This problem is crystallized in the eleventh (and perhaps best) essay in ''The Presidential Papers'', “Death,” which focuses on the proceedings before, during, and immediately after the first Floyd Patterson-Sonny Liston heavyweight championship fight. Most Negroes wanted Patterson to win, a fact which Mailer explains by identifying Patterson as the symbol of security. Patterson was polite, quiet, humble, diligent, and Catholic; he was, in short, “White.” Liston, on the other hand, personified “the old torment,” the darker, dangerous side of life that the Negro had known only too well. Liston was surly, unpredictable, mob affiliated, and an ex-convict; he was “black.”

Most Negroes, then, wanted to see Liston beaten by Patterson for much the same reason that they would not react warmly to proposals that they seek out violence, danger, and the unknown. But if Mailer cannot blame them, he is nevertheless distressed by the insidious assimilation of Negroes (and Jews as well) into Anglo-Saxon America. For a Negro or a Jew, to stifle the rich uniqueness of his potential contribution to American life is to betray himself and to withhold the transfusion that might save this bloodless land.

Mailer likes Patterson—his loneliness, his pride, his persistent struggle against the odds. But just as the Fascist Croft had stolen Mailer’s interest from the liberal Hearn in ''The Naked and the Dead'', so Mailer’s real fascination here is not with Patterson but with Liston, whose inexorable toughness makes him the kind of Negro other Negroes refer to (sometimes in fear, sometimes in praise, sometimes in disapproval, but always in awe) as “a ''bad'' cat.” Liston takes on mythic proportions in Mailer’s mind, a mind which by nature tends to intensify, to exaggerate, and to think in terms of extremes. He is “near to beautiful” and one can think of “very few men who have beauty.” But that is in no way all.

{{quote|Liston was voodoo, Liston was magic . . . . Liston was the secret hero of every man who had ever given mouth to a final curse against the dispositions of the Lord and made a pact with Black magic. Liston was Faust.}}

He was the kind of Negro that any white man who imagined himself hip would have to come to terms with—either as model or as rival. Predictably, Mailer chooses the latter course, and does battle with Liston. Not physical battle, but psychic warfare that could have erupted into violence.

Liston’s incredibly fast knockout of Patterson left Mailer in a state of feverish frustration, a condition aggravated by a conscience which taunted him for his own recent failures—for too much alcohol and too little discipline. It was out of this sense of despair and defeat that another of Mailer’s obsessions was born.

{{quote|I began . . . to see myself as some sort of center about which all that had been lost must now rally. It was not simple egomania nor simple drunkenness, it was not even simple insanity: it was a kind of metaphorical leap across a gap. To believe the impossible may be won creates a strength from which the impossible may be attacked.}}

The essence of Mailer’s claim was that he was “the only man in the country” who could build the gate of a second Patterson-Liston fight into the proportions of an epic. The insistence with which he promoted his proposal the next day, the rude insults he hurled at Liston, and his petulant refusal to leave the dais (where he did not belong) all indicate that what Mailer wanted above everything was some kind of direct confrontation with Liston, some chance to prove to himself that he was still a possible hero, that he was larger than the myth into which his own mind had transformed the new heavyweight champion.

After the series of humiliations which gave reporters, detectives, by-standers, and Liston himself ample opportunity to laugh at him, Mailer finally got his chance. While obviously intoxicated, he approached Liston.

{{quote|“You called me a bum.” I said . . . “Well, you are a bum,” he said. “Everybody is a bum. I'm a bum too. It’s just that I’m a bigger bum than you are.” He stuck out his hand. “Shake, bum,” he said . . . . Could it be, was I indeed a bum? I shook his hand . . . . “Listen,” said I, leaning my head closer, speaking from the corner of my mouth as if I were whispering in a clinch, “I’m pulling this caper for a reason. I know a way to build the next fight from a $200,000 dog in Miami to a $2,000,000 gate in New York.” . . . “Say,” said Liston, “that last drink really set you up. Why don’t you go and get me a drink, you bum.”

“I’m not your flunky,” I said. It was the first punch I’d sent home. He loved me for it. The hint of corny old darky laughter, cottonfield giggles, peeped out a moment from his throat. “Oh, sheet, man!,” said the wit in his eyes. And for the crowd watching, he turned and announced at large, “I like this guy.”}}

Three phrases in this most revealing passage are particularly significant. First, Mailer views the dialogue in the terms of a fight; he speaks to Liston as if they were “in a clinch.” Secondly, Mailer’s “first punch” (“I’m not your flunky”) is delivered while he is behind on points and trapped in a corner. When he finally makes this move, he risks taking a (literal) punch in the mouth from Liston, who is not, one imagines, in the habit of being told off in public by inebriated reporters. Then, there is Liston’s remarkable reaction (“I like this guy”) to Mailer’s thrust, a totally unexpected profession of feeling for the writer that amounts to admiration, and the even more remarkable response that Liston’s concession generates in Mailer’s mind. For Mailer, Liston’s grunt becomes “a chuckle of corny old darky laughter, cottonfield giggles”: not only has Mailer taken final honors in his combat with the “Supreme Spade,” but he has metaphorically reduced him to his (ancestrally) original condition of servitude. From king of the Northern urban jungle where the white man is afraid to meet him on the street at night, Liston has been deported to a Southern cotton plantation where he knows his place and recognizes his master.

Liston is at once Mailer himself and Mailer’s alter ego. When he is the latter, Mailer becomes Patterson: “The fighters spoke as well from the countered halves of my nature.” Mailer even conjectures that perhaps Patterson is God and Liston the Devil, an idea which emanates from a conviction that every man is a potential agent for either of the two great warring cosmic powers, and that by one’s actions one affects the outcome in their ultimate struggle for control of a Manichean universe. On that night in Chicago, Liston, in his demonic role, “had shown that the Lord was dramatically weak.” Was it possible that Mailer’s press-conference comeback had restored some of the Deity’s strength? No negative answer could be given with full assurance.

In ''An American Dream'' (1964)—his first novel since ''The Deer Park''— Mailer is again concerned with the themes that inform the essays: danger, death, and heroism. The pattern of the novel, one might say, is designed on intercourse—with God, with the Devil, with voices from the inner recesses of the mind, with the vagina, and with the anus: intercourse leading to oceanic climax, coming variously in waves of love, lust, or pure aestheticism. The center of all this activity, the narrator and hero, is Stephen Richards Rojack, the embodiment of Mailer’s unrealized fantasies and of his radical Puritanism as well. A Harvard graduate ''summa cum laude'', he is also a war hero (“the one intellectual in America’s history to win a distinguished service cross”), an ex-congressman, a television personality, a professor of existentialist psychology, an author, a boxer, and an unsurpassed stud. He lives in contemporary New York amid people who, in Mailer’s view, personify the cancerous totalitarianism of our age.

The action is generated by Rojack’s murder of his wife, Deborah, a great bitch, beautiful, extremely rich, and secretly involved in international intrigue as a spy. The love he once felt for her has withered into a sense of dependence so paralyzing that she has now become the very structure of his ego. Without her, he fears he “might topple like clay.” In such a condition Rojack, who expresses Mailer’s eschatological vision, knows he is unprepared to face eternity. The first step toward reconstruction of self is to exorcise the demon that possesses him—and to exorcise Deborah is to kill her. The act of strangulation is committed with sexual passion, which is true to Mailer’s insistence that sex, love, and murder are inseparable and cathartic:

{{quote|Some blackbiled lust, some desire to go ahead (and kill her) not unlike the instant one comes in a woman against her cry that she is without protection came bursting with rage from out of me and . . . crack I choked her harder . . . and ''crack'' I gave her payment.}}

With Deborah’s death begins the arduous process of Rojack’s rebirth; he realizes that if murder is sometimes necessary, it is never simple. The gods, like furies, haunt him; he is acutely conscious of everything he thinks or says or does, for now cowardice or weakness or smallness will bring swift retribution—Dread, insanity, and the abyss. To strengthen himself, and to find, once again, something he can honestly call love are the ends of Rojack’s quest, but fulfillment of it and freedom from these new furies can be attained only through heroism, through seeking danger and daring death.

{{quote|. . . I believed that God was not love but courage. Love can come only as a reward . . . . A voice said in my mind: “That which you fear most is what you must do.”}}

The very phrasing of the passage is related to the nature of the punishment that will accrue if the command goes unheeded. Rojack’s mental life is split into a “voice” and “mind,” a separation dangerously close to the empty panic of schizophrenia.

But if madness looms as the penalty for prudence and cowardice (Mailer uses the two as almost indistinguishable), it is also possible that Dread will overwhelm even the bold Promethean. Rojack knows that “if man wished to steal the secret of the gods . . . they would defend themselves and destroy whichever man came too close.” With so narrow a chance of escape from insanity and an eternity in the abyss, suicide quite naturally presents itself as an alternative. What is to hold one back?

Despite all his frenetic activity, it is not merely a sensual lust for experience that keeps Rojack going. On the contrary, while his senses are irrepressibly active (especially his sense of smell), his mind persists relentlessly in observation, commentary, and criticism. Any physical sensation is immediately subject to conscious analysis. In Rojack, sex is the effort of the body to rape the mind, to pulsate in waves of ecstasy transcending consciousness. But even here he fails. Whether it is with the German maid, Ruta, or with the Southern chanteuse, Cherry, Rojack’s concern is with power rather than with pleasure, with the psychic domination he achieves after ''her'' orgasm rather than with the physical rapture of his own. Like his creator, Rojack is far more a Puritan than a hedonist; life is struggle rather than joy.

So the question remains: why go on? It is true that Rojack puts his life on the line more than once. The murder of his wife, the competition with mafia goons, the insults to a former boxing champion in an unfriendly bar, and, especially, the nocturnal walk on the parapet of a windy terrace thirty stories above the ground—all could easily have resulted in his death. But rather than misguided suicide attempts, these acts are a part of Rojack’s supreme effort to prepare himself for death. The goal in life is finally religious—to make oneself as fit as possible to meet the unknown after life is done, to face the judgment of eternity; and Rojack is possessed by the faith of the gambler. Like a poker player who is convinced that his next hand is bound to be the lucky one, Rojack acts on the assumption that the longer he lives, the more heroic he may become.

And the assumption is not unfounded, for Rojack’s heroism is boundless. He argues with demonic voices and then dispels them, he outwits and outfights his indomitable tycoon father-in-law, and, above all, he humiliates and beats up a sexually magnetic Negro hero, Shago Martin. Not only does Rojack cause Cherry to have her first sexual explosion, after Shago had failed with her for months, but through a combination of psychic intuition and physical power he changes a situation where Shago is standing over him with a knife to one in which he is standing over Shago, who is now writhing pulp at the bottom of a staircase (and all in the space of ten minutes).

Practically everything Rojack says or does suggests parallels to his creator’s personal life, and the episode with Shago Martin, recalling the Mailer-Liston confrontation, is perhaps the richest example. If Liston was a large part of Mailer, Shago’s ode to himself is easily applicable to the dark sides of both Rojack and Mailer.

{{quote|“I’m a lily-white devil . . . . I’m just the future, in love with myself, that’s the future. I got twenty faces, I talk the tongues, I’m a devil . . . . I’m cut off from my own lines, I try to speak from my heart and it gets snatched.”}}

If Mailer’s encounter with Liston faintly suggested repressed homosexuality transformed into manly fortitude, Rojack’s encounter with Shago positively smacks of it. Like Shago, he has Cherry, and his immediate concern after intercourse is in comparison. He can hardly hide his elation when she implies that he was better, a predictable response when one recalls his reaction the night before to Cherry’s paean to Shago’s sexual prowess. Her emphasis on the word “stud” had made Rojack uneasy.

{{quote|The word went in like a blow to the soft part of my belly. There was something final in the verdict as if there were a sexual round robin where the big people played. All the big Negroes and the big whites.}}

Like Mailer, Rojack lives his life as if it were some dark experiment which has gradually but relentlessly gained the upper hand so that he is free to act only within its prescribed limits. Again like Mailer, Rojack is paying the price for a lifelong habit of thinking in metaphor; image (like God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell) has become reality, and that reality has become a master demanding undivided attention. It is a reality of dreams, and the dreams in ''An American Dream'' are endless: the sexual dreams of Don Juan, the Alger dream of the self-made man, the outsider’s dream of the inside, the Mafia’s dream of money and power, the square’s dream of the life of the hipster, and the hipster’s dream of death. None of these dreams has turned entirely into nightmare, but each has gone sour, like the soul of the nation which fabricated them. But the saddest dream of all is Stephen Rojack’s (and perhaps Mailer’s) dream of sanity.

{{quote|I was caught. I wanted to escape from that intelligence which let me know of murders in one direction and conceive of [love] from the other, I wanted to be free of magic, the tongue of the devil, the dread of the Lord, I wanted to be some sort of rational man again . . . But I could not move.}}

But what if, unlike Mailer and Rojack, one is ''not'' obsessed with psychopathic extremes? What if one’s patience expires at exhibitions of braggadocio? What if one appreciates wit (of which there is some) but loves humor (of which there is none)? Probably one would call ''An American Dream'' a joke, and a bad joke at that. The infantile demand for intermediate and complete attention; the insistence on being taken seriously, literally, and on his own terms at all times; the inability to treat his agony with even a suggestion of laughter or a trace of irony; the sloppy inconsistency of much of the dialogue; and, finally, the sheer loudness that informs the whole novel, a tone alternating between agitation and hysteria—all this works to tire, frustrate, and, at times, infuriate even the most sympathetic reader.

And yet somehow exasperation yields to the suspicion that Mailer’s is a mind which understands as much about the quality of contemporary American life as any now active, a mind which could well represent the last intellectually significant and articulate thrust of an eschatological and religious fervor that may be sorely missed once it is gone. So one is willing to indulge Mailer further, even to thank him once again. And one is willing to accept Rojack’s vision of himself as a fair description of Mailer:

{{quote|I had leverage; I was one of the more active figures of the city—no one could be certain finally that nothing large would come to me.}}

In 1960 there was reason to hope for a dramatic rebirth of energy and heroism; even the darkest passages of ''The Presidential Papers'' were balanced by intimations that America was not yet doomed. A man could function in society and still find opportunity to grow. By 1966, dream had at last soured into nightmare. ''Cannibals and Christians'', a collection of essays, “poems” (or, more accurately, epigrams and graffiti), and interviews (both real and imaginary), is a sermon whose vision of hell has become dire and inevitable. From Mailer’s pulpit comes a most disconcerting premonition:

{{quote|The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again; it has perhaps not been here so intensely in thirty years, not since the Nazis were prospering, but it is coming . . . . The world is entering a time of plague.}}

Totalitarianism has suffocated individuality; the Hilton in San Francisco is emulated before the Plaza in New York; housing projects look like nurseries and nurseries look like hospitals; appliances are plastic rather than metal; vile bully tactics in Vietnam have developed from simple occupation of Southeast Asia; the psychotic has taken over from the psychopath; pornography has gained another step on sexuality. In a word, Lyndon Johnson has replaced John Kennedy.

Johnson, Mailer tells us, is the archetypically alienated figure—a fact which can be observed in his prose (perhaps “the worst ever written by any political leader anywhere”), in his boorish manners, in his deceitfulness, in his voracious ego, and in his almost arrogant lack of style. If a President has a profound effect on the quality of life during his era—and Mailer is convinced that he does—then hope is indeed dim. And the consequences may be far worse than possible loss of prestige, power, or land; for there is the unknown to face after death, and the possibility that there is no absolution for cowardly sins.

But Mailer’s exhortations against the insanities of the age of Johnson do not come from one whose own tensions—between radicalism and Puritanism, heroism, and buffoonery, the playboy’s life and the intellectual’s vocation—are anywhere near control. And there is a further complication in Mailer’s complex personality, an unmistakably reactionary streak, not unrelated in impulse to his intense religiosity, which challenges his natural and professed political radicalism. Apart from the kind of conservatism that is common property among many contemporary radicals—a quasi-isolationism that urges America to terminate involvement in practically all foreign countries and a profound distrust of the liberal establishment—Mailer holds positions on matters not directly political which fall neatly into line with the conservative spirit (he is, for example, strongly opposed to birth control and abortion, and he speaks of homosexuality as a “vice”). But two pieces of evidence (both from the essay on the 1964 Republican Convention) are particularly striking. First, Mailer confesses to a buried urge to see Barry Goldwater elected:

{{quote|I knew Goldwater could win because something in me leaped out at the thought; a part of me, a devil, wished to take that choice.}}

Secondly, Mailer’s ambivalence toward Negroes, manifested earlier only in the individual cases of Sonny Liston and Shago Martin, is now explicitly broadened. His reaction to James Baldwin’s suggestion that there may be no remission for the white man’s sins against the Negro is violent:

{{quote|I had to throttle an impulse to . . . call Baldwin, and say, “You get this, baby. There’s a shit storm coming like nothing you ever knew. So ask yourself if what you desire is for the white to kill every black so that there be total remission of guilt in your black soul.”}}

If the relief of such tensions and conflicts and the consequent fortification of the self can come only from bold action, then Mailer’s primary means of personal salvation lies in his work. It is in the very act of creating the artistic sermons which he claims will show us the way to redemption that Mailer redeems himself. His influence has given rise to several “cults.” At one extreme there is a segment of the underground hipster community, closely involved with drugs, which worships him as the high priest of God and Sex. At the other end is that increasingly large group of liberal and radical intellectuals, centered in New York and comprised of such critics as Norman Podhoretz, Steven Marcus, and Richard Poirier who see in Mailer, as Marcus once put it, the embodiment of extraordinary literary talent, personal honesty and loyalty, and penetrating social criticism. And yet, in the last analysis, Mailer’s influence is limited, for the Word has hardly reached, let alone changed, the heart of the land he is trying to transform.

From the first three sermons of the 1960’s, the congregation is likely to walk away interested and, sometimes, excited, rather than transformed. Entertainment overshadows eschatology. And in Mailer’s fourth effort of the 6o’s, ''The Deer Park'', a stage adaption of his novel of 1956, religion gives way completely to comedy (both intentional and unintentional).{{efn|One ignores, for Mailer’s sake as much as for one’s own, ''Deaths for the Ladies'', a collection of words which the author extravagantly describes as poetry.}}

This is not to imply that Mailer has abandoned his urgent message; practically all his obsessions of the 6o’s are here: sex, love, lust, heroism, cowardice, power, God, and the Devil. If Mailer has added anything new to his philosophy, it lies in the expansion of his idea as sexual freedom and it is expressed through the pimp Marion Faye, who “follows sex to the end, turns queer, bangs dogs, and sniffs toes.” But in the figure of Herman Teppis (or
“H.T.”), a Hollywood mogul in the tradition of Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn, genuine humor replaces heavy rhetoric and caustic wit. In the desert of endless debates over who is—and who is not—a genius in bed, Teppis’s pronouncements are oases.

{{quote|You know what an artist is? He's a crook. They even got a Frenchman now, you know what, he picks people’s pockets at society parties. They say he’s the greatest writer in France. No wonder they need a dictator, those crazy French. I could never get along with the French.}}

But Mailer pays a price for his success in the comic mode. One laughs so hard at Teppis that one keeps right on laughing, even at the tortured, self-searching characters—spokesmen all for traditional Maileresque values—one is meant to take seriously. If there is a lesson to be learned from this play, it is that comedy may be suitable to many dramatic modes, including tragedy, but that it has no place at all in eschatological homily.

After a pop play perhaps one should have expected, or at least have been prepared for, a pop novel from Mailer’s pen. Nevertheless, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' comes as a shock. Radical as the ideas contained in them may have been, Mailer’s earlier novels were more or less conservative in form: except for ''Barbary Shore'', they were all clearly in the mainstream of the realist-naturalist tradition. But in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' ordered syntax has yielded to the total liberation of the word; intricate plot structure has given way to hallucinatory fantasy; fully realized characters living in what we know as the real world have been replaced by the protean apparitions in Mailer’s mind; the last trace of ratiocination has been obliterated by a relentless bombardment of sensual impressions and apocalyptic utterances. Dreiser and Farrell have disappeared in favor of Joyce, Faulkner, Burroughs, McLuhan, and Norman O. Brown.

At one point or another virtually every theory Mailer has ever had appears—but now with an important difference. Rather than preaching his messages baldly as in the past, Mailer drops them mockingly. And the mockery is directed both at himself and at those he would edify.

{{quote|The world is going shazam, hahray harout, fart in my toot, air we breathe is the prez, present dent, and god has always wanted more from man than man has wished to give him. Zig a zig a zig. That is why we live in dread of god.}}

Even the seminal concept of Dread is translated into the pop language of rock-and-roll. A vast chasm of culture and sensibility separates the tone of Rojack’s agonized monologues from the narrative voice of the present novel.

{{quote|. . . Mr. Sender, who sends out that Awe and Dread is up on their back . . . because they ''alone'', man, you dig? They all ''alone'', it’s a fright wig, man, that Upper silence alone is enough to bugger you, whoo-ee.}}

Indeed, the very claim to a prophetic stance in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is established in a similarly (and intentionally) ambiguous tone.

{{quote|This is your own wandering troubadour brought right up to date, here to sell America its new handbook on how to live . . . . We’re going to tell you what it’s all about.}}

Although there is a bare minimum of dramatic tension or external conflict, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' has several “characters,” each significant primarily on a symbolic plane. D.J. (Disc Jockey, Dr. Jekyll), the adolescent hero narrator of patrician Texas blood, is sometimes convinced that he is really a “Harlem Nigger,” and since “there is no such thing as a totally false perception,” perhaps he is. Not literally, of course, but rather in the same way that Mailer recognized Sonny Liston in himself and in the same way that the white hipster of “The White Negro” is, in his psychic makeup, black. If D.J. is the hipster, Rusty, his father, is the square, a corporation tycoon in Dallas—coarse, selfish, and, at heart, a coward. Tex (the Mr. Hyde to D.J.’s Dr. Jekyll) is part Indian, manly, bisexual, and the son of an undertaker.

The three go bear hunting in Alaska, but the most important action takes place in D.J.’s mind. At one point he has an urge to turn his gun on his father and “blast a shot, thump in his skull.” Although he resists, he soon commits the act symbolically by contradicting his father’s warning and courageously approaching a wounded bear, putting his life on the line, while his father lies hidden, waiting for the bear to become helpless before firing the fatal shot. Thus liberated from paternal authority, D.J. finds his instincts for love and battle shifted to Tex, D.J. encounters nakedly for the first time his other self. And through a mutual awareness of their mutual desire for both intercourse and fratricide, D.J. and Tex finally achieve a sense of purification and personal integration.

{{quote|. . . Tex Hyde . . . was finally afraid to prong D.J., because D.J. once become a bitch would kill him, and D.J. breathing that in by the wide-awake of the dark with Aurora Borealis jumping to the beat of his heart knew he could make a try to prong Tex, there was a chance to get in and steal the iron from Texas’ ass and put it on his own . . . now it was there, murder between them under all friendship, for god was a beast, not a man, and god said, “Go out and kill—fulfill my will, go and kill,” and they hung there each of them on the knife of the divide in all conflict of lust to own the other . . . Killer brothers, owned by something, prince of darkness, lord of light, they did not know; they just knew that telepathy was on them, they had been touched forever by the North and each bit a drop of blood from his own finger and touched them across and met blood to blood . . . .}}

In one eternal moment the Manichean polarities that have obsessed Mailer are at last synthesized—God and the Devil, heaven and hell, nature and man, Negro and white, Dallas and Harlem, phallus and anus.

But why ''are'' we in Vietnam? What relation does the title have to D.J., Tex, Rusty, bear-hunting, Harlem, Dallas, liberated syntax, or Maileresque eschatology? In the strictest sense, nothing at all. But in a broader, metaphysical sense, the title can be explained as another urgent warning to America. We are in Vietnam because we, as a nation, are going, or have already gone, insane. Mailer’s development from politics to meta-politics is complete. The world—and especially America—is now viewed as an expression of Mailer’s own most extreme longings and fantasies. Subject and object, chaos and order, internal imagination and external reality are united in a fusion of creator and creation.
In an ultimate sense Mailer is claiming not only ''relation to'' America but ''identity with'' her. It is likely that he has himself in mind when he writes of Rusty:

{{quote|His secret is that he sees himself as one of the pillars of the firmament, yeah, man—he reads the world’s doom in his own fuckup. If he is less great than God intended him to be, then America is in Trouble.}}

=== Notes ===

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The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Norman Mailer Today

2025-03-27T00:25:43Z

Kamyers: added another page

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{{Byline|last=Toback|first=James|note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967}}

{{dc|dc=I|n the late 50’s, Norman Mailer’s Reputation}} still stood on ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948), neither of his subsequent efforts, ''Barbary Shore'' (1951) and ''The Deer Park'' (1955), having quite convinced Mailer or anyone else that he was the major novelist he insisted he could become. By his own later account, his head was leaden with seconal, benzedrene, and marijuana: a sense of what he himself has termed passivity, stupidity, and dissipation threatened to overcome him. Only gradually, after returning to New York from Paris and giving up drugs and cigarettes, did he begin to feel that he could write once again. Then, in 1957, Mailer produced “The White Negro,” an essay which restored his faith in his literary future and presaged the forms and directions that it would take.

Mailer has always professed an umbilical attachment to the Left, but since “The White Negro” the drift has been unmistakably from political radicalism toward spiritual radicalism, from an obsession with Marx to an obsession with Reich, from economic revolution to apocalyptic orgasm, from the proletariat to heroes, demons, boxers, tycoons, bitches, murderers, suicides, pimps, and lovers. And correspondingly, concern with extreme psychic states has become more important to his work than concern with extreme political states (the center having always been a bore for Mailer in all its manifestations).

It was not that eschatology ''replaced'' politics, but rather that it came to constitute a new means of diagnosis, both of personal and social plague, and that it promised answers to the crisis in which both the individual and the nation were entrapped. The criteria by which the health of a particular man (the organ) were to be assessed—his complexity, his bravery, his daring, his capacity for love—were essentially the same as those which measured the salubrity of America (the organism). Similarly, the disease which threatened both individual and state (expressed at once literally and metaphorically as cancer) evinced identical symptoms: mediocrity, uniformity, repression, and security.

Assuming the voice of religious physician, the Mailer of the 60’s reveals a vision of malady and possible restoration that is profoundly radical; at the same time the terminology and conceptual foundation of his homily are Puritan to the core. God and the Devil, Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell, History and Eternity are as inescapably real for Mailer as they were for Jonathan Edwards—and he has repeatedly asserted that such ultimate questions are proper and indeed necessary preoccupations for the contemporary novelist. Many would dissent, but even if we do look to the novelist for salvation, can we look to Mailer? There is, at least on the surface, an insistent buffoonery to his self-projected public image that can make it difficult to take him seriously, let alone to believe he can show us the way to redemption. Yet even a cursory examination of his work suggests that he is justified in claiming to be an intellectual adventurer of broad dimension. If he sometimes seems to be more familiar with ''Captain Blood'' than ''Middlemarch'', he nevertheless possesses an uncanny ability to recall and make use of what he has read. If he is sometimes guileful, more often he strives for complete honesty and the subject of his work. If his thinking is occasionally wild and unsound, he is also capable of rigorously logical intellection. And if his emphasis on scatology is at times repugnant, his undeniable charisma excites interest in practically everything he writes or says or does.

Consequently, when a new work by Mailer appears, we turn to it eagerly—expectant and hopeful—especially when, as in the case of his latest novel, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'',{{efn|Putnam, 208 pp., $4.95}} the new work also represents a new literary departure. By itself perhaps the most ambitious and the most difficult effort of his career, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is also a crystallization and an extension of Mailer’s other major productions of the 6o’s. To do justice to its complexity, to make it more accessible, and to place it properly in the perspective of Mailer’s development as a writer, one must first look back to ''The Presidential Papers'', ''An American Dream'', ''Cannibals and Christians'', and the dramatic adaptation of ''The Deer Park''.

With ''Advertisements for Myself'' (1959), Mailer showed that whatever
stature he might or might not achieve as a novelist, he was certainly becoming a major essayist. This impression was confirmed by ''The Presidential Papers'' (1963), in which Mailer took it upon himself to indicate to John F. Kennedy the brave new paths he must follow in order to achieve greatness as a President, heroism as a man, and salvation for his country. In Mailer’s view, the only kind of hero who can appear in contemporary American life is the “existential” hero, a man who lives—in his thoughts as in his actions—by daring the unknown. On one occasion, when discussing symptoms of the national disease, Mailer remarks that no one in America is capable of tolerating a question that cannot be answered in twenty seconds. And he finds deeds courageous (and hence potentially heroic) only if there is death, or at least danger, as a possible consequence.

Heroism is the victory over Dread, the sensation that haunts not only ''The Presidential Papers'', but the whole of Mailer’s work in the 6o’s. Although doubtless a natural threat to man from the earliest days of his consciousness, Dread has become rather fashionable (to talk about if not to feel) in recent years. It has perhaps been best described by Tennessee Williams. After indicating that the war, the atom bomb, and terminal disease are not really to the point, Williams writes:

{{quote|These things are parts of the visible, sensible phenomena of every man’s experience or knowledge, but the true sense of dread is not a reaction to anything . . . strictly, materially ''knowable''. But rather it’s a kind of spiritual intuition of something almost too incredible and shocking to talk about, which underlies the whole so-called thing.}}

Either one knows what Williams is talking about or one doesn’t, and Williams implies that only artists and madmen do. Mailer, however, sees no one safe from the possibility of confrontation with the abyss, and he seems to feel a moral obligation to awaken us all to the danger. All roads lead to it, and it is only through the unmanly deceptions of right-wing politics, logical positivism, linguistic analysis, popular journalism, and Freudian psychology that “the terror which lies beneath our sedition [is hidden from us].” The vigilantes of the right wing, like the Un-American Activities Committee, the F.B.I., and the Birch Society, seek to transform metaphysical Dread into Red dread, to give internal emptiness the tangible outer shape of Communism. And Freudians tell us that Dread is merely a recurrence of the fear we feel as helpless infants. But Mailer, like the latter-day hell-fire Puritan preacher he is, asserts that the horrible intimation of Dread is that “we are going to die badly and suffer some unendurable stricture of eternity.” This is no metaphor; it is an expression of Mailer’s belief in the literal existence of hell.

The Maileresque hero—suspecting that his Dread is a real premonition of the agony that awaits him after death, an agony that can be averted only be daring death to come sooner, to come right away—will always put up an ante that amounts to more than he can afford to lose. Here, for example, is Mailer on Hemingway’s suicide:

{{quote|How likely that he had a death of the most awful proportions within him. He was exactly the one to know that the cure for such disease is to risk dying many a time . . . .

I wonder if, morning after morning, Hemingway did not go downstairs secretly in the dawn, set the base of his loaded shotgun on the floor, put the muzzle into his mouth, and press his thumb to the trigger . . . . He can move the trigger up to a point [of no man’s land] and yet not fire the gun . . . . Perhaps he tried just such a reconnaissance one hundred times before, and felt the touch of health return . . . . If he did it well, he could come close to death without dying.}}

That Hemingway eventually died as a result of his gambling with life is not so important as that he grew by it. By challenging fate he was saving his soul; by refusing to give into his dread of death, he was making whatever life was left for him more noble; and he was fortifying his spirit so that he might transcend the eternity of hell.

If the individual can save himself from madness and the abyss only by ceasing to repress even his most hidden and dangerous impulses and by flirting with death, so, too, with the nation as a whole. Devoted to the illusion of safety and security, it is condemned to mass insanity and an ignoble end, unless it redeems itself by immediate embarkation on a course of “existential” politics. This would involve a complete remolding of national objectives, not only on the large issues involving danger and death, survival or extinction, but also on less apocalyptic matters like urban housing.

For if America is not already incurably insane, she is certainly in a state of plague. Mailer sees the symptoms everywhere: in architecture, frozen food, television commercials, sleeping pills, sexual excess, sexual repression, the deterioration of the language. One has only to look at the kind of people who regulate and set the tone of the nation. Mailer lists them: politicians, medicos, policemen, professors, priests, rabbis, ministers, psychoanalysts, builders, and executives. It has not always been so:

{{quote|[Once] America was the land where people still believed in heroes: George Washington, Billy the Kid; Lincoln, Jefferson, Mark Twain, Jack London, Hemingway, Joe Louis, Dempsey, Gentleman Jim; American believed in athletes, rum-runners, aviators, even lovers. It was a country which had grown by the leap of one hero past another.}}

Now, more than ever before, America needed a hero. Was he Norman Mailer? Not yet. For the time being Mailer’s faith was in Kennedy, the inspiration for the essay, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” in which Mailer had expressed his faith in Kennedy’s capacity to lead the country in “the recovery of its imagination, its pioneer lust for the unexpected and the incalculable.” And yet no sooner had Kennedy won the election than Mailer was possessed by “a sense of awe,” an intuition that he had betrayed himself, and, as a result, he began to follow Kennedy’s career obsessively, as if he, Norman Mailer, personally “were responsible and guilty for all which was bad . . . and potentially totalitarian.” There are suggestions in this abrupt reversal of sentiment of three forces at work in Mailer: serious concern for the fate of the spiritual and political ideals he cherishes; a histrionic penchant for breast-beating; an almost petulant envy of Kennedy’s power and possibility, an irrational and vast extension of the simple literary envy he occasionally felt for James Jones.

To be sure, the heroism of which Mailer speaks is a cure which both individual and nation might decide is too hazardous and too painful to undertake. The patient is apt to protest that he does not really feel so sick as Mailer tells him he is and that even if he were, he would rather fade gradually into death than risk the unknown under surgery. If it is the “Establishment” that objects in these terms, Mailer regards it as plain cowardice, the cardinal sin, which should be avoided even if the strictures of eternity were not waiting as retribution. But with minority groups, the Negro in particular, his urgency is softened. He understands that it would be no small act of presumption on his part to demand that the Negro, who has lived with violence all his life, surrender the goals of security and stability.

{{quote|The demand for courage may have been exorbitant. Now as the Negro was beginning to come into the white man’s world, he wanted the logic of the white man’s world: annuities, mental hygiene, sociological jargon, committee solutions for the ills of the breast. He was sick of a whore’s logic and a pimp’s logic.}}

And yet the paradox here is only too obvious to Mailer. Believing that he must turn his back on the values of the ghetto, the Negro seeks recovery through assimilation into the moribund world of white liberal America. In reality, he is abandoning a way of life which is founded on those extreme states of human feeling and action which for Mailer constitute the only true possibility for spiritual rehabilitation. Mailer regrets that

{{quote|there is no one to tell [the Negro] it would be better to keep the psychology of the streets than to cultivate the contradictory desire to be . . . a great, healthy, mature, autonomous, related, integrated individual.}}

This problem is crystallized in the eleventh (and perhaps best) essay in ''The Presidential Papers'', “Death,” which focuses on the proceedings before, during, and immediately after the first Floyd Patterson-Sonny Liston heavyweight championship fight. Most Negroes wanted Patterson to win, a fact which Mailer explains by identifying Patterson as the symbol of security. Patterson was polite, quiet, humble, diligent, and Catholic; he was, in short, “White.” Liston, on the other hand, personified “the old torment,” the darker, dangerous side of life that the Negro had known only too well. Liston was surly, unpredictable, mob affiliated, and an ex-convict; he was “black.”

Most Negroes, then, wanted to see Liston beaten by Patterson for much the same reason that they would not react warmly to proposals that they seek out violence, danger, and the unknown. But if Mailer cannot blame them, he is nevertheless distressed by the insidious assimilation of Negroes (and Jews as well) into Anglo-Saxon America. For a Negro or a Jew, to stifle the rich uniqueness of his potential contribution to American life is to betray himself and to withhold the transfusion that might save this bloodless land.

Mailer likes Patterson—his loneliness, his pride, his persistent struggle against the odds. But just as the Fascist Croft had stolen Mailer’s interest from the liberal Hearn in ''The Naked and the Dead'', so Mailer’s real fascination here is not with Patterson but with Liston, whose inexorable toughness makes him the kind of Negro other Negroes refer to (sometimes in fear, sometimes in praise, sometimes in disapproval, but always in awe) as “a ''bad'' cat.” Liston takes on mythic proportions in Mailer’s mind, a mind which by nature tends to intensify, to exaggerate, and to think in terms of extremes. He is “near to beautiful” and one can think of “very few men who have beauty.” But that is in no way all.

{{quote|Liston was voodoo, Liston was magic . . . . Liston was the secret hero of every man who had ever given mouth to a final curse against the dispositions of the Lord and made a pact with Black magic. Liston was Faust.}}

He was the kind of Negro that any white man who imagined himself hip would have to come to terms with—either as model or as rival. Predictably, Mailer chooses the latter course, and does battle with Liston. Not physical battle, but psychic warfare that could have erupted into violence.

Liston’s incredibly fast knockout of Patterson left Mailer in a state of feverish frustration, a condition aggravated by a conscience which taunted him for his own recent failures—for too much alcohol and too little discipline. It was out of this sense of despair and defeat that another of Mailer’s obsessions was born.

{{quote|I began . . . to see myself as some sort of center about which all that had been lost must now rally. It was not simple egomania nor simple drunkenness, it was not even simple insanity: it was a kind of metaphorical leap across a gap. To believe the impossible may be won creates a strength from which the impossible may be attacked.}}

The essence of Mailer’s claim was that he was “the only man in the country” who could build the gate of a second Patterson-Liston fight into the proportions of an epic. The insistence with which he promoted his proposal the next day, the rude insults he hurled at Liston, and his petulant refusal to leave the dais (where he did not belong) all indicate that what Mailer wanted above everything was some kind of direct confrontation with Liston, some chance to prove to himself that he was still a possible hero, that he was larger than the myth into which his own mind had transformed the new heavyweight champion.

After the series of humiliations which gave reporters, detectives, by-standers, and Liston himself ample opportunity to laugh at him, Mailer finally got his chance. While obviously intoxicated, he approached Liston.

{{quote|“You called me a bum.” I said . . . “Well, you are a bum,” he said. “Everybody is a bum. I'm a bum too. It’s just that I’m a bigger bum than you are.” He stuck out his hand. “Shake, bum,” he said . . . . Could it be, was I indeed a bum? I shook his hand . . . . “Listen,” said I, leaning my head closer, speaking from the corner of my mouth as if I were whispering in a clinch, “I’m pulling this caper for a reason. I know a way to build the next fight from a $200,000 dog in Miami to a $2,000,000 gate in New York.” . . . “Say,” said Liston, “that last drink really set you up. Why don’t you go and get me a drink, you bum.”

“I’m not your flunky,” I said. It was the first punch I’d sent home. He loved me for it. The hint of corny old darky laughter, cottonfield giggles, peeped out a moment from his throat. “Oh, sheet, man!,” said the wit in his eyes. And for the crowd watching, he turned and announced at large, “I like this guy.”}}

Three phrases in this most revealing passage are particularly significant. First, Mailer views the dialogue in the terms of a fight; he speaks to Liston as if they were “in a clinch.” Secondly, Mailer’s “first punch” (“I’m not your flunky”) is delivered while he is behind on points and trapped in a corner. When he finally makes this move, he risks taking a (literal) punch in the mouth from Liston, who is not, one imagines, in the habit of being told off in public by inebriated reporters. Then, there is Liston’s remarkable reaction (“I like this guy”) to Mailer’s thrust, a totally unexpected profession of feeling for the writer that amounts to admiration, and the even more remarkable response that Liston’s concession generates in Mailer’s mind. For Mailer, Liston’s grunt becomes “a chuckle of corny old darky laughter, cottonfield giggles”: not only has Mailer taken final honors in his combat with the “Supreme Spade,” but he has metaphorically reduced him to his (ancestrally) original condition of servitude. From king of the Northern urban jungle where the white man is afraid to meet him on the street at night, Liston has been deported to a Southern cotton plantation where he knows his place and recognizes his master.

Liston is at once Mailer himself and Mailer’s alter ego. When he is the latter, Mailer becomes Patterson: “The fighters spoke as well from the countered halves of my nature.” Mailer even conjectures that perhaps Patterson is God and Liston the Devil, an idea which emanates from a conviction that every man is a potential agent for either of the two great warring cosmic powers, and that by one’s actions one affects the outcome in their ultimate struggle for control of a Manichean universe. On that night in Chicago, Liston, in his demonic role, “had shown that the Lord was dramatically weak.” Was it possible that Mailer’s press-conference comeback had restored some of the Deity’s strength? No negative answer could be given with full assurance.

In ''An American Dream'' (1964)—his first novel since ''The Deer Park''— Mailer is again concerned with the themes that inform the essays: danger, death, and heroism. The pattern of the novel, one might say, is designed on intercourse—with God, with the Devil, with voices from the inner recesses of the mind, with the vagina, and with the anus: intercourse leading to oceanic climax, coming variously in waves of love, lust, or pure aestheticism. The center of all this activity, the narrator and hero, is Stephen Richards Rojack, the embodiment of Mailer’s unrealized fantasies and of his radical Puritanism as well. A Harvard graduate ''summa cum laude'', he is also a war hero (“the one intellectual in America’s history to win a distinguished service cross”), an ex-congressman, a television personality, a professor of existentialist psychology, an author, a boxer, and an unsurpassed stud. He lives in contemporary New York amid people who, in Mailer’s view, personify the cancerous totalitarianism of our age.

The action is generated by Rojack’s murder of his wife, Deborah, a great bitch, beautiful, extremely rich, and secretly involved in international intrigue as a spy. The love he once felt for her has withered into a sense of dependence so paralyzing that she has now become the very structure of his ego. Without her, he fears he “might topple like clay.” In such a condition Rojack, who expresses Mailer’s eschatological vision, knows he is unprepared to face eternity. The first step toward reconstruction of self is to exorcise the demon that possesses him—and to exorcise Deborah is to kill her. The act of strangulation is committed with sexual passion, which is true to Mailer’s insistence that sex, love, and murder are inseparable and cathartic:

{{quote|Some blackbiled lust, some desire to go ahead (and kill her) not unlike the instant one comes in a woman against her cry that she is without protection came bursting with rage from out of me and . . . crack I choked her harder . . . and ''crack'' I gave her payment.}}

With Deborah’s death begins the arduous process of Rojack’s rebirth; he realizes that if murder is sometimes necessary, it is never simple. The gods, like furies, haunt him; he is acutely conscious of everything he thinks or says or does, for now cowardice or weakness or smallness will bring swift retribution—Dread, insanity, and the abyss. To strengthen himself, and to find, once again, something he can honestly call love are the ends of Rojack’s quest, but fulfillment of it and freedom from these new furies can be attained only through heroism, through seeking danger and daring death.

{{quote|. . . I believed that God was not love but courage. Love can come only as a reward . . . . A voice said in my mind: “That which you fear most is what you must do.”}}

The very phrasing of the passage is related to the nature of the punishment that will accrue if the command goes unheeded. Rojack’s mental life is split into a “voice” and “mind,” a separation dangerously close to the empty panic of schizophrenia.

But if madness looms as the penalty for prudence and cowardice (Mailer uses the two as almost indistinguishable), it is also possible that Dread will overwhelm even the bold Promethean. Rojack knows that “if man wished to steal the secret of the gods . . . they would defend themselves and destroy whichever man came too close.” With so narrow a chance of escape from insanity and an eternity in the abyss, suicide quite naturally presents itself as an alternative. What is to hold one back?

Despite all his frenetic activity, it is not merely a sensual lust for experience that keeps Rojack going. On the contrary, while his senses are irrepressibly active (especially his sense of smell), his mind persists relentlessly in observation, commentary, and criticism. Any physical sensation is immediately subject to conscious analysis. In Rojack, sex is the effort of the body to rape the mind, to pulsate in waves of ecstasy transcending consciousness. But even here he fails. Whether it is with the German maid, Ruta, or with the Southern chanteuse, Cherry, Rojack’s concern is with power rather than with pleasure, with the psychic domination he achieves after ''her'' orgasm rather than with the physical rapture of his own. Like his creator, Rojack is far more a Puritan than a hedonist; life is struggle rather than joy.

So the question remains: why go on? It is true that Rojack puts his life on the line more than once. The murder of his wife, the competition with mafia goons, the insults to a former boxing champion in an unfriendly bar, and, especially, the nocturnal walk on the parapet of a windy terrace thirty stories above the ground—all could easily have resulted in his death. But rather than misguided suicide attempts, these acts are a part of Rojack’s supreme effort to prepare himself for death. The goal in life is finally religious—to make oneself as fit as possible to meet the unknown after life is done, to face the judgment of eternity; and Rojack is possessed by the faith of the gambler. Like a poker player who is convinced that his next hand is bound to be the lucky one, Rojack acts on the assumption that the longer he lives, the more heroic he may become.

And the assumption is not unfounded, for Rojack’s heroism is boundless. He argues with demonic voices and then dispels them, he outwits and outfights his indomitable tycoon father-in-law, and, above all, he humiliates and beats up a sexually magnetic Negro hero, Shago Martin. Not only does Rojack cause Cherry to have her first sexual explosion, after Shago had failed with her for months, but through a combination of psychic intuition and physical power he changes a situation where Shago is standing over him with a knife to one in which he is standing over Shago, who is now writhing pulp at the bottom of a staircase (and all in the space of ten minutes).

Practically everything Rojack says or does suggests parallels to his creator’s personal life, and the episode with Shago Martin, recalling the Mailer-Liston confrontation, is perhaps the richest example. If Liston was a large part of Mailer, Shago’s ode to himself is easily applicable to the dark sides of both Rojack and Mailer.

{{quote|“I’m a lily-white devil . . . . I’m just the future, in love with myself, that’s the future. I got twenty faces, I talk the tongues, I’m a devil . . . . I’m cut off from my own lines, I try to speak from my heart and it gets snatched.”}}

If Mailer’s encounter with Liston faintly suggested repressed homosexuality transformed into manly fortitude, Rojack’s encounter with Shago positively smacks of it. Like Shago, he has Cherry, and his immediate concern after intercourse is in comparison. He can hardly hide his elation when she implies that he was better, a predictable response when one recalls his reaction the night before to Cherry’s paean to Shago’s sexual prowess. Her emphasis on the word “stud” had made Rojack uneasy.

{{quote|The word went in like a blow to the soft part of my belly. There was something final in the verdict as if there were a sexual round robin where the big people played. All the big Negroes and the big whites.}}

Like Mailer, Rojack lives his life as if it were some dark experiment which has gradually but relentlessly gained the upper hand so that he is free to act only within its prescribed limits. Again like Mailer, Rojack is paying the price for a lifelong habit of thinking in metaphor; image (like God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell) has become reality, and that reality has become a master demanding undivided attention. It is a reality of dreams, and the dreams in ''An American Dream'' are endless: the sexual dreams of Don Juan, the Alger dream of the self-made man, the outsider’s dream of the inside, the Mafia’s dream of money and power, the square’s dream of the life of the hipster, and the hipster’s dream of death. None of these dreams has turned entirely into nightmare, but each has gone sour, like the soul of the nation which fabricated them. But the saddest dream of all is Stephen Rojack’s (and perhaps Mailer’s) dream of sanity.

{{quote|I was caught. I wanted to escape from that intelligence which let me know of murders in one direction and conceive of [love] from the other, I wanted to be free of magic, the tongue of the devil, the dread of the Lord, I wanted to be some sort of rational man again . . . But I could not move.}}

But what if, unlike Mailer and Rojack, one is ''not'' obsessed with psychopathic extremes? What if one’s patience expires at exhibitions of braggadocio? What if one appreciates wit (of which there is some) but loves humor (of which there is none)? Probably one would call ''An American Dream'' a joke, and a bad joke at that. The infantile demand for intermediate and complete attention; the insistence on being taken seriously, literally, and on his own terms at all times; the inability to treat his agony with even a suggestion of laughter or a trace of irony; the sloppy inconsistency of much of the dialogue; and, finally, the sheer loudness that informs the whole novel, a tone alternating between agitation and hysteria—all this works to tire, frustrate, and, at times, infuriate even the most sympathetic reader.

And yet somehow exasperation yields to the suspicion that Mailer’s is a mind which understands as much about the quality of contemporary American life as any now active, a mind which could well represent the last intellectually significant and articulate thrust of an eschatological and religious fervor that may be sorely missed once it is gone. So one is willing to indulge Mailer further, even to thank him once again. And one is willing to accept Rojack’s vision of himself as a fair description of Mailer:

{{quote|I had leverage; I was one of the more active figures of the city—no one could be certain finally that nothing large would come to me.}}

In 1960 there was reason to hope for a dramatic rebirth of energy and heroism; even the darkest passages of ''The Presidential Papers'' were balanced by intimations that America was not yet doomed. A man could function in society and still find opportunity to grow. By 1966, dream had at last soured into nightmare. ''Cannibals and Christians'', a collection of essays, “poems” (or, more accurately, epigrams and graffiti), and interviews (both real and imaginary), is a sermon whose vision of hell has become dire and inevitable. From Mailer’s pulpit comes a most disconcerting premonition:

{{quote|The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again; it has perhaps not been here so intensely in thirty years, not since the Nazis were prospering, but it is coming . . . . The world is entering a time of plague.}}

Totalitarianism has suffocated individuality; the Hilton in San Francisco is emulated before the Plaza in New York; housing projects look like nurseries and nurseries look like hospitals; appliances are plastic rather than metal; vile bully tactics in Vietnam have developed from simple occupation of Southeast Asia; the psychotic has taken over from the psychopath; pornography has gained another step on sexuality. In a word, Lyndon Johnson has replaced John Kennedy.

Johnson, Mailer tells us, is the archetypically alienated figure—a fact which can be observed in his prose (perhaps “the worst ever written by any political leader anywhere”), in his boorish manners, in his deceitfulness, in his voracious ego, and in his almost arrogant lack of style. If a President has a profound effect on the quality of life during his era—and Mailer is convinced that he does—then hope is indeed dim. And the consequences may be far worse than possible loss of prestige, power, or land; for there is the unknown to face after death, and the possibility that there is no absolution for cowardly sins.

But Mailer’s exhortations against the insanities of the age of Johnson do not come from one whose own tensions—between radicalism and Puritanism, heroism, and buffoonery, the playboy’s life and the intellectual’s vocation—are anywhere near control. And there is a further complication in Mailer’s complex personality, an unmistakably reactionary streak, not unrelated in impulse to his intense religiosity, which challenges his natural and professed political radicalism. Apart from the kind of conservatism that is common property among many contemporary radicals—a quasi-isolationism that urges America to terminate involvement in practically all foreign countries and a profound distrust of the liberal establishment—Mailer holds positions on matters not directly political which fall neatly into line with the conservative spirit (he is, for example, strongly opposed to birth control and abortion, and he speaks of homosexuality as a “vice”). But two pieces of evidence (both from the essay on the 1964 Republican Convention) are particularly striking. First, Mailer confesses to a buried urge to see Barry Goldwater elected:

{{quote|I knew Goldwater could win because something in me leaped out at the thought; a part of me, a devil, wished to take that choice.}}

Secondly, Mailer’s ambivalence toward Negroes, manifested earlier only in the individual cases of Sonny Liston and Shago Martin, is now explicitly broadened. His reaction to James Baldwin’s suggestion that there may be no remission for the white man’s sins against the Negro is violent:

{{quote|I had to throttle an impulse to . . . call Baldwin, and say, “You get this, baby. There’s a shit storm coming like nothing you ever knew. So ask yourself if what you desire is for the white to kill every black so that there be total remission of guilt in your black soul.”}}

If the relief of such tensions and conflicts and the consequent fortification of the self can come only from bold action, then Mailer’s primary means of personal salvation lies in his work. It is in the very act of creating the artistic sermons which he claims will show us the way to redemption that Mailer redeems himself. His influence has given rise to several “cults.” At one extreme there is a segment of the underground hipster community, closely involved with drugs, which worships him as the high priest of God and Sex. At the other end is that increasingly large group of liberal and radical intellectuals, centered in New York and comprised of such critics as Norman Podhoretz, Steven Marcus, and Richard Poirier who see in Mailer, as Marcus once put it, the embodiment of extraordinary literary talent, personal honesty and loyalty, and penetrating social criticism. And yet, in the last analysis, Mailer’s influence is limited, for the Word has hardly reached, let alone changed, the heart of the land he is trying to transform.

From the first three sermons of the 1960’s, the congregation is likely to walk away interested and, sometimes, excited, rather than transformed. Entertainment overshadows eschatology. And in Mailer’s fourth effort of the 6o’s, ''The Deer Park'', a stage adaption of his novel of 1956, religion gives way completely to comedy (both intentional and unintentional).{{efn|One ignores, for Mailer’s sake as much as for one’s own, ''Deaths for the Ladies'', a collection of words which the author extravagantly describes as poetry.}}

This is not to imply that Mailer has abandoned his urgent message; practically all his obsessions of the 6o’s are here: sex, love, lust, heroism, cowardice, power, God, and the Devil. If Mailer has added anything new to his philosophy, it lies in the expansion of his idea as sexual freedom and it is expressed through the pimp Marion Faye, who “follows sex to the end, turns queer, bangs dogs, and sniffs toes.” But in the figure of Herman Teppis (or
“H.T.”), a Hollywood mogul in the tradition of Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn, genuine humor replaces heavy rhetoric and caustic wit. In the desert of endless debates over who is—and who is not—a genius in bed, Teppis’s pronouncements are oases.

{{quote|You know what an artist is? He's a crook. They even got a Frenchman now, you know what, he picks people’s pockets at society parties. They say he’s the greatest writer in France. No wonder they need a dictator, those crazy French. I could never get along with the French.}}

But Mailer pays a price for his success in the comic mode. One laughs so hard at Teppis that one keeps right on laughing, even at the tortured, self-searching characters—spokesmen all for traditional Maileresque values—one is meant to take seriously. If there is a lesson to be learned from this play, it is that comedy may be suitable to many dramatic modes, including tragedy, but that it has no place at all in eschatological homily.

After a pop play perhaps one should have expected, or at least have been prepared for, a pop novel from Mailer’s pen. Nevertheless, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' comes as a shock. Radical as the ideas contained in them may have been, Mailer’s earlier novels were more or less conservative in form: except for ''Barbary Shore'', they were all clearly in the mainstream of the realist-naturalist tradition. But in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' ordered syntax has yielded to the total liberation of the word; intricate plot structure has given way to hallucinatory fantasy; fully realized characters living in what we know as the real world have been replaced by the protean apparitions in Mailer’s mind; the last trace of ratiocination has been obliterated by a relentless bombardment of sensual impressions and apocalyptic utterances. Dreiser and Farrell have disappeared in favor of Joyce, Faulkner, Burroughs, McLuhan, and Norman O. Brown.

At one point or another virtually every theory Mailer has ever had appears—but now with an important difference. Rather than preaching his messages baldly as in the past, Mailer drops them mockingly. And the mockery is directed both at himself and at those he would edify.

{{quote|The world is going shazam, hahray harout, fart in my toot, air we breathe is the prez, present dent, and god has always wanted more from man than man has wished to give him. Zig a zig a zig. That is why we live in dread of god.}}

Even the seminal concept of Dread is translated into the pop language of rock-and-roll. A vast chasm of culture and sensibility separates the tone of Rojack’s agonized monologues from the narrative voice of the present novel.

{{quote|. . . Mr. Sender, who sends out that Awe and Dread is up on their back . . . because they ''alone'', man, you dig? They all ''alone'', it’s a fright wig, man, that Upper silence alone is enough to bugger you, whoo-ee.}}

Indeed, the very claim to a prophetic stance in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is established in a similarly (and intentionally) ambiguous tone.

{{quote|This is your own wandering troubadour brought right up to date, here to sell America its new handbook on how to live . . . . We’re going to tell you what it’s all about.}}

Although there is a bare minimum of dramatic tension or external conflict, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' has several “characters,” each significant primarily on a symbolic plane. D.J. (Disc Jockey, Dr. Jekyll), the adolescent hero narrator of patrician Texas blood, is sometimes convinced that he is really a “Harlem Nigger,” and since “there is no such thing as a totally false perception,” perhaps he is. Not literally, of course, but rather in the same way that Mailer recognized Sonny Liston in himself and in the same way that the white hipster of “The White Negro” is, in his psychic makeup, black. If D.J. is the hipster, Rusty, his father, is the square, a corporation tycoon in Dallas—coarse, selfish, and, at heart, a coward. Tex (the Mr. Hyde to D.J.’s Dr. Jekyll) is part Indian, manly, bisexual, and the son of an undertaker.

The three go bear hunting in Alaska, but the most important action takes place in D.J.’s mind. At one point he has an urge to turn his gun on his father and “blast a shot, thump in his skull.” Although he resists, he soon commits the act symbolically by contradicting his father’s warning and courageously approaching a wounded bear, putting his life on the line, while his father lies hidden, waiting for the bear to become helpless before firing the fatal shot. Thus liberated from paternal authority, D.J. finds his instincts for love and battle shifted to Tex, D.J. encounters nakedly for the first time his other self. And through a mutual awareness of their mutual desire for both intercourse and fratricide, D.J. and Tex finally achieve a sense of purification and personal integration.

=== Notes ===

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The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Norman Mailer Today

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Kamyers: added another page

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{{Byline|last=Toback|first=James|note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967}}

{{dc|dc=I|n the late 50’s, Norman Mailer’s Reputation}} still stood on ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948), neither of his subsequent efforts, ''Barbary Shore'' (1951) and ''The Deer Park'' (1955), having quite convinced Mailer or anyone else that he was the major novelist he insisted he could become. By his own later account, his head was leaden with seconal, benzedrene, and marijuana: a sense of what he himself has termed passivity, stupidity, and dissipation threatened to overcome him. Only gradually, after returning to New York from Paris and giving up drugs and cigarettes, did he begin to feel that he could write once again. Then, in 1957, Mailer produced “The White Negro,” an essay which restored his faith in his literary future and presaged the forms and directions that it would take.

Mailer has always professed an umbilical attachment to the Left, but since “The White Negro” the drift has been unmistakably from political radicalism toward spiritual radicalism, from an obsession with Marx to an obsession with Reich, from economic revolution to apocalyptic orgasm, from the proletariat to heroes, demons, boxers, tycoons, bitches, murderers, suicides, pimps, and lovers. And correspondingly, concern with extreme psychic states has become more important to his work than concern with extreme political states (the center having always been a bore for Mailer in all its manifestations).

It was not that eschatology ''replaced'' politics, but rather that it came to constitute a new means of diagnosis, both of personal and social plague, and that it promised answers to the crisis in which both the individual and the nation were entrapped. The criteria by which the health of a particular man (the organ) were to be assessed—his complexity, his bravery, his daring, his capacity for love—were essentially the same as those which measured the salubrity of America (the organism). Similarly, the disease which threatened both individual and state (expressed at once literally and metaphorically as cancer) evinced identical symptoms: mediocrity, uniformity, repression, and security.

Assuming the voice of religious physician, the Mailer of the 60’s reveals a vision of malady and possible restoration that is profoundly radical; at the same time the terminology and conceptual foundation of his homily are Puritan to the core. God and the Devil, Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell, History and Eternity are as inescapably real for Mailer as they were for Jonathan Edwards—and he has repeatedly asserted that such ultimate questions are proper and indeed necessary preoccupations for the contemporary novelist. Many would dissent, but even if we do look to the novelist for salvation, can we look to Mailer? There is, at least on the surface, an insistent buffoonery to his self-projected public image that can make it difficult to take him seriously, let alone to believe he can show us the way to redemption. Yet even a cursory examination of his work suggests that he is justified in claiming to be an intellectual adventurer of broad dimension. If he sometimes seems to be more familiar with ''Captain Blood'' than ''Middlemarch'', he nevertheless possesses an uncanny ability to recall and make use of what he has read. If he is sometimes guileful, more often he strives for complete honesty and the subject of his work. If his thinking is occasionally wild and unsound, he is also capable of rigorously logical intellection. And if his emphasis on scatology is at times repugnant, his undeniable charisma excites interest in practically everything he writes or says or does.

Consequently, when a new work by Mailer appears, we turn to it eagerly—expectant and hopeful—especially when, as in the case of his latest novel, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'',{{efn|Putnam, 208 pp., $4.95}} the new work also represents a new literary departure. By itself perhaps the most ambitious and the most difficult effort of his career, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is also a crystallization and an extension of Mailer’s other major productions of the 6o’s. To do justice to its complexity, to make it more accessible, and to place it properly in the perspective of Mailer’s development as a writer, one must first look back to ''The Presidential Papers'', ''An American Dream'', ''Cannibals and Christians'', and the dramatic adaptation of ''The Deer Park''.

With ''Advertisements for Myself'' (1959), Mailer showed that whatever
stature he might or might not achieve as a novelist, he was certainly becoming a major essayist. This impression was confirmed by ''The Presidential Papers'' (1963), in which Mailer took it upon himself to indicate to John F. Kennedy the brave new paths he must follow in order to achieve greatness as a President, heroism as a man, and salvation for his country. In Mailer’s view, the only kind of hero who can appear in contemporary American life is the “existential” hero, a man who lives—in his thoughts as in his actions—by daring the unknown. On one occasion, when discussing symptoms of the national disease, Mailer remarks that no one in America is capable of tolerating a question that cannot be answered in twenty seconds. And he finds deeds courageous (and hence potentially heroic) only if there is death, or at least danger, as a possible consequence.

Heroism is the victory over Dread, the sensation that haunts not only ''The Presidential Papers'', but the whole of Mailer’s work in the 6o’s. Although doubtless a natural threat to man from the earliest days of his consciousness, Dread has become rather fashionable (to talk about if not to feel) in recent years. It has perhaps been best described by Tennessee Williams. After indicating that the war, the atom bomb, and terminal disease are not really to the point, Williams writes:

{{quote|These things are parts of the visible, sensible phenomena of every man’s experience or knowledge, but the true sense of dread is not a reaction to anything . . . strictly, materially ''knowable''. But rather it’s a kind of spiritual intuition of something almost too incredible and shocking to talk about, which underlies the whole so-called thing.}}

Either one knows what Williams is talking about or one doesn’t, and Williams implies that only artists and madmen do. Mailer, however, sees no one safe from the possibility of confrontation with the abyss, and he seems to feel a moral obligation to awaken us all to the danger. All roads lead to it, and it is only through the unmanly deceptions of right-wing politics, logical positivism, linguistic analysis, popular journalism, and Freudian psychology that “the terror which lies beneath our sedition [is hidden from us].” The vigilantes of the right wing, like the Un-American Activities Committee, the F.B.I., and the Birch Society, seek to transform metaphysical Dread into Red dread, to give internal emptiness the tangible outer shape of Communism. And Freudians tell us that Dread is merely a recurrence of the fear we feel as helpless infants. But Mailer, like the latter-day hell-fire Puritan preacher he is, asserts that the horrible intimation of Dread is that “we are going to die badly and suffer some unendurable stricture of eternity.” This is no metaphor; it is an expression of Mailer’s belief in the literal existence of hell.

The Maileresque hero—suspecting that his Dread is a real premonition of the agony that awaits him after death, an agony that can be averted only be daring death to come sooner, to come right away—will always put up an ante that amounts to more than he can afford to lose. Here, for example, is Mailer on Hemingway’s suicide:

{{quote|How likely that he had a death of the most awful proportions within him. He was exactly the one to know that the cure for such disease is to risk dying many a time . . . .

I wonder if, morning after morning, Hemingway did not go downstairs secretly in the dawn, set the base of his loaded shotgun on the floor, put the muzzle into his mouth, and press his thumb to the trigger . . . . He can move the trigger up to a point [of no man’s land] and yet not fire the gun . . . . Perhaps he tried just such a reconnaissance one hundred times before, and felt the touch of health return . . . . If he did it well, he could come close to death without dying.}}

That Hemingway eventually died as a result of his gambling with life is not so important as that he grew by it. By challenging fate he was saving his soul; by refusing to give into his dread of death, he was making whatever life was left for him more noble; and he was fortifying his spirit so that he might transcend the eternity of hell.

If the individual can save himself from madness and the abyss only by ceasing to repress even his most hidden and dangerous impulses and by flirting with death, so, too, with the nation as a whole. Devoted to the illusion of safety and security, it is condemned to mass insanity and an ignoble end, unless it redeems itself by immediate embarkation on a course of “existential” politics. This would involve a complete remolding of national objectives, not only on the large issues involving danger and death, survival or extinction, but also on less apocalyptic matters like urban housing.

For if America is not already incurably insane, she is certainly in a state of plague. Mailer sees the symptoms everywhere: in architecture, frozen food, television commercials, sleeping pills, sexual excess, sexual repression, the deterioration of the language. One has only to look at the kind of people who regulate and set the tone of the nation. Mailer lists them: politicians, medicos, policemen, professors, priests, rabbis, ministers, psychoanalysts, builders, and executives. It has not always been so:

{{quote|[Once] America was the land where people still believed in heroes: George Washington, Billy the Kid; Lincoln, Jefferson, Mark Twain, Jack London, Hemingway, Joe Louis, Dempsey, Gentleman Jim; American believed in athletes, rum-runners, aviators, even lovers. It was a country which had grown by the leap of one hero past another.}}

Now, more than ever before, America needed a hero. Was he Norman Mailer? Not yet. For the time being Mailer’s faith was in Kennedy, the inspiration for the essay, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” in which Mailer had expressed his faith in Kennedy’s capacity to lead the country in “the recovery of its imagination, its pioneer lust for the unexpected and the incalculable.” And yet no sooner had Kennedy won the election than Mailer was possessed by “a sense of awe,” an intuition that he had betrayed himself, and, as a result, he began to follow Kennedy’s career obsessively, as if he, Norman Mailer, personally “were responsible and guilty for all which was bad . . . and potentially totalitarian.” There are suggestions in this abrupt reversal of sentiment of three forces at work in Mailer: serious concern for the fate of the spiritual and political ideals he cherishes; a histrionic penchant for breast-beating; an almost petulant envy of Kennedy’s power and possibility, an irrational and vast extension of the simple literary envy he occasionally felt for James Jones.

To be sure, the heroism of which Mailer speaks is a cure which both individual and nation might decide is too hazardous and too painful to undertake. The patient is apt to protest that he does not really feel so sick as Mailer tells him he is and that even if he were, he would rather fade gradually into death than risk the unknown under surgery. If it is the “Establishment” that objects in these terms, Mailer regards it as plain cowardice, the cardinal sin, which should be avoided even if the strictures of eternity were not waiting as retribution. But with minority groups, the Negro in particular, his urgency is softened. He understands that it would be no small act of presumption on his part to demand that the Negro, who has lived with violence all his life, surrender the goals of security and stability.

{{quote|The demand for courage may have been exorbitant. Now as the Negro was beginning to come into the white man’s world, he wanted the logic of the white man’s world: annuities, mental hygiene, sociological jargon, committee solutions for the ills of the breast. He was sick of a whore’s logic and a pimp’s logic.}}

And yet the paradox here is only too obvious to Mailer. Believing that he must turn his back on the values of the ghetto, the Negro seeks recovery through assimilation into the moribund world of white liberal America. In reality, he is abandoning a way of life which is founded on those extreme states of human feeling and action which for Mailer constitute the only true possibility for spiritual rehabilitation. Mailer regrets that

{{quote|there is no one to tell [the Negro] it would be better to keep the psychology of the streets than to cultivate the contradictory desire to be . . . a great, healthy, mature, autonomous, related, integrated individual.}}

This problem is crystallized in the eleventh (and perhaps best) essay in ''The Presidential Papers'', “Death,” which focuses on the proceedings before, during, and immediately after the first Floyd Patterson-Sonny Liston heavyweight championship fight. Most Negroes wanted Patterson to win, a fact which Mailer explains by identifying Patterson as the symbol of security. Patterson was polite, quiet, humble, diligent, and Catholic; he was, in short, “White.” Liston, on the other hand, personified “the old torment,” the darker, dangerous side of life that the Negro had known only too well. Liston was surly, unpredictable, mob affiliated, and an ex-convict; he was “black.”

Most Negroes, then, wanted to see Liston beaten by Patterson for much the same reason that they would not react warmly to proposals that they seek out violence, danger, and the unknown. But if Mailer cannot blame them, he is nevertheless distressed by the insidious assimilation of Negroes (and Jews as well) into Anglo-Saxon America. For a Negro or a Jew, to stifle the rich uniqueness of his potential contribution to American life is to betray himself and to withhold the transfusion that might save this bloodless land.

Mailer likes Patterson—his loneliness, his pride, his persistent struggle against the odds. But just as the Fascist Croft had stolen Mailer’s interest from the liberal Hearn in ''The Naked and the Dead'', so Mailer’s real fascination here is not with Patterson but with Liston, whose inexorable toughness makes him the kind of Negro other Negroes refer to (sometimes in fear, sometimes in praise, sometimes in disapproval, but always in awe) as “a ''bad'' cat.” Liston takes on mythic proportions in Mailer’s mind, a mind which by nature tends to intensify, to exaggerate, and to think in terms of extremes. He is “near to beautiful” and one can think of “very few men who have beauty.” But that is in no way all.

{{quote|Liston was voodoo, Liston was magic . . . . Liston was the secret hero of every man who had ever given mouth to a final curse against the dispositions of the Lord and made a pact with Black magic. Liston was Faust.}}

He was the kind of Negro that any white man who imagined himself hip would have to come to terms with—either as model or as rival. Predictably, Mailer chooses the latter course, and does battle with Liston. Not physical battle, but psychic warfare that could have erupted into violence.

Liston’s incredibly fast knockout of Patterson left Mailer in a state of feverish frustration, a condition aggravated by a conscience which taunted him for his own recent failures—for too much alcohol and too little discipline. It was out of this sense of despair and defeat that another of Mailer’s obsessions was born.

{{quote|I began . . . to see myself as some sort of center about which all that had been lost must now rally. It was not simple egomania nor simple drunkenness, it was not even simple insanity: it was a kind of metaphorical leap across a gap. To believe the impossible may be won creates a strength from which the impossible may be attacked.}}

The essence of Mailer’s claim was that he was “the only man in the country” who could build the gate of a second Patterson-Liston fight into the proportions of an epic. The insistence with which he promoted his proposal the next day, the rude insults he hurled at Liston, and his petulant refusal to leave the dais (where he did not belong) all indicate that what Mailer wanted above everything was some kind of direct confrontation with Liston, some chance to prove to himself that he was still a possible hero, that he was larger than the myth into which his own mind had transformed the new heavyweight champion.

After the series of humiliations which gave reporters, detectives, by-standers, and Liston himself ample opportunity to laugh at him, Mailer finally got his chance. While obviously intoxicated, he approached Liston.

{{quote|“You called me a bum.” I said . . . “Well, you are a bum,” he said. “Everybody is a bum. I'm a bum too. It’s just that I’m a bigger bum than you are.” He stuck out his hand. “Shake, bum,” he said . . . . Could it be, was I indeed a bum? I shook his hand . . . . “Listen,” said I, leaning my head closer, speaking from the corner of my mouth as if I were whispering in a clinch, “I’m pulling this caper for a reason. I know a way to build the next fight from a $200,000 dog in Miami to a $2,000,000 gate in New York.” . . . “Say,” said Liston, “that last drink really set you up. Why don’t you go and get me a drink, you bum.”

“I’m not your flunky,” I said. It was the first punch I’d sent home. He loved me for it. The hint of corny old darky laughter, cottonfield giggles, peeped out a moment from his throat. “Oh, sheet, man!,” said the wit in his eyes. And for the crowd watching, he turned and announced at large, “I like this guy.”}}

Three phrases in this most revealing passage are particularly significant. First, Mailer views the dialogue in the terms of a fight; he speaks to Liston as if they were “in a clinch.” Secondly, Mailer’s “first punch” (“I’m not your flunky”) is delivered while he is behind on points and trapped in a corner. When he finally makes this move, he risks taking a (literal) punch in the mouth from Liston, who is not, one imagines, in the habit of being told off in public by inebriated reporters. Then, there is Liston’s remarkable reaction (“I like this guy”) to Mailer’s thrust, a totally unexpected profession of feeling for the writer that amounts to admiration, and the even more remarkable response that Liston’s concession generates in Mailer’s mind. For Mailer, Liston’s grunt becomes “a chuckle of corny old darky laughter, cottonfield giggles”: not only has Mailer taken final honors in his combat with the “Supreme Spade,” but he has metaphorically reduced him to his (ancestrally) original condition of servitude. From king of the Northern urban jungle where the white man is afraid to meet him on the street at night, Liston has been deported to a Southern cotton plantation where he knows his place and recognizes his master.

Liston is at once Mailer himself and Mailer’s alter ego. When he is the latter, Mailer becomes Patterson: “The fighters spoke as well from the countered halves of my nature.” Mailer even conjectures that perhaps Patterson is God and Liston the Devil, an idea which emanates from a conviction that every man is a potential agent for either of the two great warring cosmic powers, and that by one’s actions one affects the outcome in their ultimate struggle for control of a Manichean universe. On that night in Chicago, Liston, in his demonic role, “had shown that the Lord was dramatically weak.” Was it possible that Mailer’s press-conference comeback had restored some of the Deity’s strength? No negative answer could be given with full assurance.

In ''An American Dream'' (1964)—his first novel since ''The Deer Park''— Mailer is again concerned with the themes that inform the essays: danger, death, and heroism. The pattern of the novel, one might say, is designed on intercourse—with God, with the Devil, with voices from the inner recesses of the mind, with the vagina, and with the anus: intercourse leading to oceanic climax, coming variously in waves of love, lust, or pure aestheticism. The center of all this activity, the narrator and hero, is Stephen Richards Rojack, the embodiment of Mailer’s unrealized fantasies and of his radical Puritanism as well. A Harvard graduate ''summa cum laude'', he is also a war hero (“the one intellectual in America’s history to win a distinguished service cross”), an ex-congressman, a television personality, a professor of existentialist psychology, an author, a boxer, and an unsurpassed stud. He lives in contemporary New York amid people who, in Mailer’s view, personify the cancerous totalitarianism of our age.

The action is generated by Rojack’s murder of his wife, Deborah, a great bitch, beautiful, extremely rich, and secretly involved in international intrigue as a spy. The love he once felt for her has withered into a sense of dependence so paralyzing that she has now become the very structure of his ego. Without her, he fears he “might topple like clay.” In such a condition Rojack, who expresses Mailer’s eschatological vision, knows he is unprepared to face eternity. The first step toward reconstruction of self is to exorcise the demon that possesses him—and to exorcise Deborah is to kill her. The act of strangulation is committed with sexual passion, which is true to Mailer’s insistence that sex, love, and murder are inseparable and cathartic:

{{quote|Some blackbiled lust, some desire to go ahead (and kill her) not unlike the instant one comes in a woman against her cry that she is without protection came bursting with rage from out of me and . . . crack I choked her harder . . . and ''crack'' I gave her payment.}}

With Deborah’s death begins the arduous process of Rojack’s rebirth; he realizes that if murder is sometimes necessary, it is never simple. The gods, like furies, haunt him; he is acutely conscious of everything he thinks or says or does, for now cowardice or weakness or smallness will bring swift retribution—Dread, insanity, and the abyss. To strengthen himself, and to find, once again, something he can honestly call love are the ends of Rojack’s quest, but fulfillment of it and freedom from these new furies can be attained only through heroism, through seeking danger and daring death.

{{quote|. . . I believed that God was not love but courage. Love can come only as a reward . . . . A voice said in my mind: “That which you fear most is what you must do.”}}

The very phrasing of the passage is related to the nature of the punishment that will accrue if the command goes unheeded. Rojack’s mental life is split into a “voice” and “mind,” a separation dangerously close to the empty panic of schizophrenia.

But if madness looms as the penalty for prudence and cowardice (Mailer uses the two as almost indistinguishable), it is also possible that Dread will overwhelm even the bold Promethean. Rojack knows that “if man wished to steal the secret of the gods . . . they would defend themselves and destroy whichever man came too close.” With so narrow a chance of escape from insanity and an eternity in the abyss, suicide quite naturally presents itself as an alternative. What is to hold one back?

Despite all his frenetic activity, it is not merely a sensual lust for experience that keeps Rojack going. On the contrary, while his senses are irrepressibly active (especially his sense of smell), his mind persists relentlessly in observation, commentary, and criticism. Any physical sensation is immediately subject to conscious analysis. In Rojack, sex is the effort of the body to rape the mind, to pulsate in waves of ecstasy transcending consciousness. But even here he fails. Whether it is with the German maid, Ruta, or with the Southern chanteuse, Cherry, Rojack’s concern is with power rather than with pleasure, with the psychic domination he achieves after ''her'' orgasm rather than with the physical rapture of his own. Like his creator, Rojack is far more a Puritan than a hedonist; life is struggle rather than joy.

So the question remains: why go on? It is true that Rojack puts his life on the line more than once. The murder of his wife, the competition with mafia goons, the insults to a former boxing champion in an unfriendly bar, and, especially, the nocturnal walk on the parapet of a windy terrace thirty stories above the ground—all could easily have resulted in his death. But rather than misguided suicide attempts, these acts are a part of Rojack’s supreme effort to prepare himself for death. The goal in life is finally religious—to make oneself as fit as possible to meet the unknown after life is done, to face the judgment of eternity; and Rojack is possessed by the faith of the gambler. Like a poker player who is convinced that his next hand is bound to be the lucky one, Rojack acts on the assumption that the longer he lives, the more heroic he may become.

And the assumption is not unfounded, for Rojack’s heroism is boundless. He argues with demonic voices and then dispels them, he outwits and outfights his indomitable tycoon father-in-law, and, above all, he humiliates and beats up a sexually magnetic Negro hero, Shago Martin. Not only does Rojack cause Cherry to have her first sexual explosion, after Shago had failed with her for months, but through a combination of psychic intuition and physical power he changes a situation where Shago is standing over him with a knife to one in which he is standing over Shago, who is now writhing pulp at the bottom of a staircase (and all in the space of ten minutes).

Practically everything Rojack says or does suggests parallels to his creator’s personal life, and the episode with Shago Martin, recalling the Mailer-Liston confrontation, is perhaps the richest example. If Liston was a large part of Mailer, Shago’s ode to himself is easily applicable to the dark sides of both Rojack and Mailer.

{{quote|“I’m a lily-white devil . . . . I’m just the future, in love with myself, that’s the future. I got twenty faces, I talk the tongues, I’m a devil . . . . I’m cut off from my own lines, I try to speak from my heart and it gets snatched.”}}

If Mailer’s encounter with Liston faintly suggested repressed homosexuality transformed into manly fortitude, Rojack’s encounter with Shago positively smacks of it. Like Shago, he has Cherry, and his immediate concern after intercourse is in comparison. He can hardly hide his elation when she implies that he was better, a predictable response when one recalls his reaction the night before to Cherry’s paean to Shago’s sexual prowess. Her emphasis on the word “stud” had made Rojack uneasy.

{{quote|The word went in like a blow to the soft part of my belly. There was something final in the verdict as if there were a sexual round robin where the big people played. All the big Negroes and the big whites.}}

Like Mailer, Rojack lives his life as if it were some dark experiment which has gradually but relentlessly gained the upper hand so that he is free to act only within its prescribed limits. Again like Mailer, Rojack is paying the price for a lifelong habit of thinking in metaphor; image (like God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell) has become reality, and that reality has become a master demanding undivided attention. It is a reality of dreams, and the dreams in ''An American Dream'' are endless: the sexual dreams of Don Juan, the Alger dream of the self-made man, the outsider’s dream of the inside, the Mafia’s dream of money and power, the square’s dream of the life of the hipster, and the hipster’s dream of death. None of these dreams has turned entirely into nightmare, but each has gone sour, like the soul of the nation which fabricated them. But the saddest dream of all is Stephen Rojack’s (and perhaps Mailer’s) dream of sanity.

{{quote|I was caught. I wanted to escape from that intelligence which let me know of murders in one direction and conceive of [love] from the other, I wanted to be free of magic, the tongue of the devil, the dread of the Lord, I wanted to be some sort of rational man again . . . But I could not move.}}

But what if, unlike Mailer and Rojack, one is ''not'' obsessed with psychopathic extremes? What if one’s patience expires at exhibitions of braggadocio? What if one appreciates wit (of which there is some) but loves humor (of which there is none)? Probably one would call ''An American Dream'' a joke, and a bad joke at that. The infantile demand for intermediate and complete attention; the insistence on being taken seriously, literally, and on his own terms at all times; the inability to treat his agony with even a suggestion of laughter or a trace of irony; the sloppy inconsistency of much of the dialogue; and, finally, the sheer loudness that informs the whole novel, a tone alternating between agitation and hysteria—all this works to tire, frustrate, and, at times, infuriate even the most sympathetic reader.

And yet somehow exasperation yields to the suspicion that Mailer’s is a mind which understands as much about the quality of contemporary American life as any now active, a mind which could well represent the last intellectually significant and articulate thrust of an eschatological and religious fervor that may be sorely missed once it is gone. So one is willing to indulge Mailer further, even to thank him once again. And one is willing to accept Rojack’s vision of himself as a fair description of Mailer:

{{quote|I had leverage; I was one of the more active figures of the city—no one could be certain finally that nothing large would come to me.}}

In 1960 there was reason to hope for a dramatic rebirth of energy and heroism; even the darkest passages of ''The Presidential Papers'' were balanced by intimations that America was not yet doomed. A man could function in society and still find opportunity to grow. By 1966, dream had at last soured into nightmare. ''Cannibals and Christians'', a collection of essays, “poems” (or, more accurately, epigrams and graffiti), and interviews (both real and imaginary), is a sermon whose vision of hell has become dire and inevitable. From Mailer’s pulpit comes a most disconcerting premonition:

{{quote|The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again; it has perhaps not been here so intensely in thirty years, not since the Nazis were prospering, but it is coming . . . . The world is entering a time of plague.}}

Totalitarianism has suffocated individuality; the Hilton in San Francisco is emulated before the Plaza in New York; housing projects look like nurseries and nurseries look like hospitals; appliances are plastic rather than metal; vile bully tactics in Vietnam have developed from simple occupation of Southeast Asia; the psychotic has taken over from the psychopath; pornography has gained another step on sexuality. In a word, Lyndon Johnson has replaced John Kennedy.

Johnson, Mailer tells us, is the archetypically alienated figure—a fact which can be observed in his prose (perhaps “the worst ever written by any political leader anywhere”), in his boorish manners, in his deceitfulness, in his voracious ego, and in his almost arrogant lack of style. If a President has a profound effect on the quality of life during his era—and Mailer is convinced that he does—then hope is indeed dim. And the consequences may be far worse than possible loss of prestige, power, or land; for there is the unknown to face after death, and the possibility that there is no absolution for cowardly sins.

But Mailer’s exhortations against the insanities of the age of Johnson do not come from one whose own tensions—between radicalism and Puritanism, heroism, and buffoonery, the playboy’s life and the intellectual’s vocation—are anywhere near control. And there is a further complication in Mailer’s complex personality, an unmistakably reactionary streak, not unrelated in impulse to his intense religiosity, which challenges his natural and professed political radicalism. Apart from the kind of conservatism that is common property among many contemporary radicals—a quasi-isolationism that urges America to terminate involvement in practically all foreign countries and a profound distrust of the liberal establishment—Mailer holds positions on matters not directly political which fall neatly into line with the conservative spirit (he is, for example, strongly opposed to birth control and abortion, and he speaks of homosexuality as a “vice”). But two pieces of evidence (both from the essay on the 1964 Republican Convention) are particularly striking. First, Mailer confesses to a buried urge to see Barry Goldwater elected:

{{quote|I knew Goldwater could win because something in me leaped out at the thought; a part of me, a devil, wished to take that choice.}}

Secondly, Mailer’s ambivalence toward Negroes, manifested earlier only in the individual cases of Sonny Liston and Shago Martin, is now explicitly broadened. His reaction to James Baldwin’s suggestion that there may be no remission for the white man’s sins against the Negro is violent:

{{quote|I had to throttle an impulse to . . . call Baldwin, and say, “You get this, baby. There’s a shit storm coming like nothing you ever knew. So ask yourself if what you desire is for the white to kill every black so that there be total remission of guilt in your black soul.”}}

If the relief of such tensions and conflicts and the consequent fortification of the self can come only from bold action, then Mailer’s primary means of personal salvation lies in his work. It is in the very act of creating the artistic sermons which he claims will show us the way to redemption that Mailer redeems himself. His influence has given rise to several “cults.” At one extreme there is a segment of the underground hipster community, closely involved with drugs, which worships him as the high priest of God and Sex. At the other end is that increasingly large group of liberal and radical intellectuals, centered in New York and comprised of such critics as Norman Podhoretz, Steven Marcus, and Richard Poirier who see in Mailer, as Marcus once put it, the embodiment of extraordinary literary talent, personal honesty and loyalty, and penetrating social criticism. And yet, in the last analysis, Mailer’s influence is limited, for the Word has hardly reached, let alone changed, the heart of the land he is trying to transform.

From the first three sermons of the 1960’s, the congregation is likely to walk away interested and, sometimes, excited, rather than transformed. Entertainment overshadows eschatology. And in Mailer’s fourth effort of the 6o’s, ''The Deer Park'', a stage adaption of his novel of 1956, religion gives way completely to comedy (both intentional and unintentional).{{efn|One ignores, for Mailer’s sake as much as for one’s own, ''Deaths for the Ladies'', a collection of words which the author extravagantly describes as poetry.}}

This is not to imply that Mailer has abandoned his urgent message; practically all his obsessions of the 6o’s are here: sex, love, lust, heroism, cowardice, power, God, and the Devil. If Mailer has added anything new to his philosophy, it lies in the expansion of his idea as sexual freedom and it is expressed through the pimp Marion Faye, who “follows sex to the end, turns queer, bangs dogs, and sniffs toes.” But in the figure of Herman Teppis (or
“H.T.”), a Hollywood mogul in the tradition of Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn, genuine humor replaces heavy rhetoric and caustic wit. In the desert of endless debates over who is—and who is not—a genius in bed, Teppis’s pronouncements are oases.

{{quote|You know what an artist is? He's a crook. They even got a Frenchman now, you know what, he picks people’s pockets at society parties. They say he’s the greatest writer in France. No wonder they need a dictator, those crazy French. I could never get along with the French.}}

But Mailer pays a price for his success in the comic mode. One laughs so hard at Teppis that one keeps right on laughing, even at the tortured, self-searching characters—spokesmen all for traditional Maileresque values—one is meant to take seriously. If there is a lesson to be learned from this play, it is that comedy may be suitable to many dramatic modes, including tragedy, but that it has no place at all in eschatological homily.

After a pop play perhaps one should have expected, or at least have been prepared for, a pop novel from Mailer’s pen. Nevertheless, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' comes as a shock. Radical as the ideas contained in them may have been, Mailer’s earlier novels were more or less conservative in form: except for ''Barbary Shore'', they were all clearly in the mainstream of the realist-naturalist tradition. But in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' ordered syntax has yielded to the total liberation of the word; intricate plot structure has given way to hallucinatory fantasy; fully realized characters living in what we know as the real world have been replaced by the protean apparitions in Mailer’s mind; the last trace of ratiocination has been obliterated by a relentless bombardment of sensual impressions and apocalyptic utterances. Dreiser and Farrell have disappeared in favor of Joyce, Faulkner, Burroughs, McLuhan, and Norman O. Brown.

At one point or another virtually every theory Mailer has ever had appears—but now with an important difference. Rather than preaching his messages baldly as in the past, Mailer drops them mockingly. And the mockery is directed both at himself and at those he would edify.

{{quote|The world is going shazam, hahray harout, fart in my toot, air we breathe is the prez, present dent, and god has always wanted more from man than man has wished to give him. Zig a zig a zig. That is why we live in dread of god.}}

=== Notes ===

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The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Norman Mailer Today

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Kamyers: added another page

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{{Byline|last=Toback|first=James|note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967}}

{{dc|dc=I|n the late 50’s, Norman Mailer’s Reputation}} still stood on ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948), neither of his subsequent efforts, ''Barbary Shore'' (1951) and ''The Deer Park'' (1955), having quite convinced Mailer or anyone else that he was the major novelist he insisted he could become. By his own later account, his head was leaden with seconal, benzedrene, and marijuana: a sense of what he himself has termed passivity, stupidity, and dissipation threatened to overcome him. Only gradually, after returning to New York from Paris and giving up drugs and cigarettes, did he begin to feel that he could write once again. Then, in 1957, Mailer produced “The White Negro,” an essay which restored his faith in his literary future and presaged the forms and directions that it would take.

Mailer has always professed an umbilical attachment to the Left, but since “The White Negro” the drift has been unmistakably from political radicalism toward spiritual radicalism, from an obsession with Marx to an obsession with Reich, from economic revolution to apocalyptic orgasm, from the proletariat to heroes, demons, boxers, tycoons, bitches, murderers, suicides, pimps, and lovers. And correspondingly, concern with extreme psychic states has become more important to his work than concern with extreme political states (the center having always been a bore for Mailer in all its manifestations).

It was not that eschatology ''replaced'' politics, but rather that it came to constitute a new means of diagnosis, both of personal and social plague, and that it promised answers to the crisis in which both the individual and the nation were entrapped. The criteria by which the health of a particular man (the organ) were to be assessed—his complexity, his bravery, his daring, his capacity for love—were essentially the same as those which measured the salubrity of America (the organism). Similarly, the disease which threatened both individual and state (expressed at once literally and metaphorically as cancer) evinced identical symptoms: mediocrity, uniformity, repression, and security.

Assuming the voice of religious physician, the Mailer of the 60’s reveals a vision of malady and possible restoration that is profoundly radical; at the same time the terminology and conceptual foundation of his homily are Puritan to the core. God and the Devil, Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell, History and Eternity are as inescapably real for Mailer as they were for Jonathan Edwards—and he has repeatedly asserted that such ultimate questions are proper and indeed necessary preoccupations for the contemporary novelist. Many would dissent, but even if we do look to the novelist for salvation, can we look to Mailer? There is, at least on the surface, an insistent buffoonery to his self-projected public image that can make it difficult to take him seriously, let alone to believe he can show us the way to redemption. Yet even a cursory examination of his work suggests that he is justified in claiming to be an intellectual adventurer of broad dimension. If he sometimes seems to be more familiar with ''Captain Blood'' than ''Middlemarch'', he nevertheless possesses an uncanny ability to recall and make use of what he has read. If he is sometimes guileful, more often he strives for complete honesty and the subject of his work. If his thinking is occasionally wild and unsound, he is also capable of rigorously logical intellection. And if his emphasis on scatology is at times repugnant, his undeniable charisma excites interest in practically everything he writes or says or does.

Consequently, when a new work by Mailer appears, we turn to it eagerly—expectant and hopeful—especially when, as in the case of his latest novel, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'',{{efn|Putnam, 208 pp., $4.95}} the new work also represents a new literary departure. By itself perhaps the most ambitious and the most difficult effort of his career, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is also a crystallization and an extension of Mailer’s other major productions of the 6o’s. To do justice to its complexity, to make it more accessible, and to place it properly in the perspective of Mailer’s development as a writer, one must first look back to ''The Presidential Papers'', ''An American Dream'', ''Cannibals and Christians'', and the dramatic adaptation of ''The Deer Park''.

With ''Advertisements for Myself'' (1959), Mailer showed that whatever
stature he might or might not achieve as a novelist, he was certainly becoming a major essayist. This impression was confirmed by ''The Presidential Papers'' (1963), in which Mailer took it upon himself to indicate to John F. Kennedy the brave new paths he must follow in order to achieve greatness as a President, heroism as a man, and salvation for his country. In Mailer’s view, the only kind of hero who can appear in contemporary American life is the “existential” hero, a man who lives—in his thoughts as in his actions—by daring the unknown. On one occasion, when discussing symptoms of the national disease, Mailer remarks that no one in America is capable of tolerating a question that cannot be answered in twenty seconds. And he finds deeds courageous (and hence potentially heroic) only if there is death, or at least danger, as a possible consequence.

Heroism is the victory over Dread, the sensation that haunts not only ''The Presidential Papers'', but the whole of Mailer’s work in the 6o’s. Although doubtless a natural threat to man from the earliest days of his consciousness, Dread has become rather fashionable (to talk about if not to feel) in recent years. It has perhaps been best described by Tennessee Williams. After indicating that the war, the atom bomb, and terminal disease are not really to the point, Williams writes:

{{quote|These things are parts of the visible, sensible phenomena of every man’s experience or knowledge, but the true sense of dread is not a reaction to anything . . . strictly, materially ''knowable''. But rather it’s a kind of spiritual intuition of something almost too incredible and shocking to talk about, which underlies the whole so-called thing.}}

Either one knows what Williams is talking about or one doesn’t, and Williams implies that only artists and madmen do. Mailer, however, sees no one safe from the possibility of confrontation with the abyss, and he seems to feel a moral obligation to awaken us all to the danger. All roads lead to it, and it is only through the unmanly deceptions of right-wing politics, logical positivism, linguistic analysis, popular journalism, and Freudian psychology that “the terror which lies beneath our sedition [is hidden from us].” The vigilantes of the right wing, like the Un-American Activities Committee, the F.B.I., and the Birch Society, seek to transform metaphysical Dread into Red dread, to give internal emptiness the tangible outer shape of Communism. And Freudians tell us that Dread is merely a recurrence of the fear we feel as helpless infants. But Mailer, like the latter-day hell-fire Puritan preacher he is, asserts that the horrible intimation of Dread is that “we are going to die badly and suffer some unendurable stricture of eternity.” This is no metaphor; it is an expression of Mailer’s belief in the literal existence of hell.

The Maileresque hero—suspecting that his Dread is a real premonition of the agony that awaits him after death, an agony that can be averted only be daring death to come sooner, to come right away—will always put up an ante that amounts to more than he can afford to lose. Here, for example, is Mailer on Hemingway’s suicide:

{{quote|How likely that he had a death of the most awful proportions within him. He was exactly the one to know that the cure for such disease is to risk dying many a time . . . .

I wonder if, morning after morning, Hemingway did not go downstairs secretly in the dawn, set the base of his loaded shotgun on the floor, put the muzzle into his mouth, and press his thumb to the trigger . . . . He can move the trigger up to a point [of no man’s land] and yet not fire the gun . . . . Perhaps he tried just such a reconnaissance one hundred times before, and felt the touch of health return . . . . If he did it well, he could come close to death without dying.}}

That Hemingway eventually died as a result of his gambling with life is not so important as that he grew by it. By challenging fate he was saving his soul; by refusing to give into his dread of death, he was making whatever life was left for him more noble; and he was fortifying his spirit so that he might transcend the eternity of hell.

If the individual can save himself from madness and the abyss only by ceasing to repress even his most hidden and dangerous impulses and by flirting with death, so, too, with the nation as a whole. Devoted to the illusion of safety and security, it is condemned to mass insanity and an ignoble end, unless it redeems itself by immediate embarkation on a course of “existential” politics. This would involve a complete remolding of national objectives, not only on the large issues involving danger and death, survival or extinction, but also on less apocalyptic matters like urban housing.

For if America is not already incurably insane, she is certainly in a state of plague. Mailer sees the symptoms everywhere: in architecture, frozen food, television commercials, sleeping pills, sexual excess, sexual repression, the deterioration of the language. One has only to look at the kind of people who regulate and set the tone of the nation. Mailer lists them: politicians, medicos, policemen, professors, priests, rabbis, ministers, psychoanalysts, builders, and executives. It has not always been so:

{{quote|[Once] America was the land where people still believed in heroes: George Washington, Billy the Kid; Lincoln, Jefferson, Mark Twain, Jack London, Hemingway, Joe Louis, Dempsey, Gentleman Jim; American believed in athletes, rum-runners, aviators, even lovers. It was a country which had grown by the leap of one hero past another.}}

Now, more than ever before, America needed a hero. Was he Norman Mailer? Not yet. For the time being Mailer’s faith was in Kennedy, the inspiration for the essay, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” in which Mailer had expressed his faith in Kennedy’s capacity to lead the country in “the recovery of its imagination, its pioneer lust for the unexpected and the incalculable.” And yet no sooner had Kennedy won the election than Mailer was possessed by “a sense of awe,” an intuition that he had betrayed himself, and, as a result, he began to follow Kennedy’s career obsessively, as if he, Norman Mailer, personally “were responsible and guilty for all which was bad . . . and potentially totalitarian.” There are suggestions in this abrupt reversal of sentiment of three forces at work in Mailer: serious concern for the fate of the spiritual and political ideals he cherishes; a histrionic penchant for breast-beating; an almost petulant envy of Kennedy’s power and possibility, an irrational and vast extension of the simple literary envy he occasionally felt for James Jones.

To be sure, the heroism of which Mailer speaks is a cure which both individual and nation might decide is too hazardous and too painful to undertake. The patient is apt to protest that he does not really feel so sick as Mailer tells him he is and that even if he were, he would rather fade gradually into death than risk the unknown under surgery. If it is the “Establishment” that objects in these terms, Mailer regards it as plain cowardice, the cardinal sin, which should be avoided even if the strictures of eternity were not waiting as retribution. But with minority groups, the Negro in particular, his urgency is softened. He understands that it would be no small act of presumption on his part to demand that the Negro, who has lived with violence all his life, surrender the goals of security and stability.

{{quote|The demand for courage may have been exorbitant. Now as the Negro was beginning to come into the white man’s world, he wanted the logic of the white man’s world: annuities, mental hygiene, sociological jargon, committee solutions for the ills of the breast. He was sick of a whore’s logic and a pimp’s logic.}}

And yet the paradox here is only too obvious to Mailer. Believing that he must turn his back on the values of the ghetto, the Negro seeks recovery through assimilation into the moribund world of white liberal America. In reality, he is abandoning a way of life which is founded on those extreme states of human feeling and action which for Mailer constitute the only true possibility for spiritual rehabilitation. Mailer regrets that

{{quote|there is no one to tell [the Negro] it would be better to keep the psychology of the streets than to cultivate the contradictory desire to be . . . a great, healthy, mature, autonomous, related, integrated individual.}}

This problem is crystallized in the eleventh (and perhaps best) essay in ''The Presidential Papers'', “Death,” which focuses on the proceedings before, during, and immediately after the first Floyd Patterson-Sonny Liston heavyweight championship fight. Most Negroes wanted Patterson to win, a fact which Mailer explains by identifying Patterson as the symbol of security. Patterson was polite, quiet, humble, diligent, and Catholic; he was, in short, “White.” Liston, on the other hand, personified “the old torment,” the darker, dangerous side of life that the Negro had known only too well. Liston was surly, unpredictable, mob affiliated, and an ex-convict; he was “black.”

Most Negroes, then, wanted to see Liston beaten by Patterson for much the same reason that they would not react warmly to proposals that they seek out violence, danger, and the unknown. But if Mailer cannot blame them, he is nevertheless distressed by the insidious assimilation of Negroes (and Jews as well) into Anglo-Saxon America. For a Negro or a Jew, to stifle the rich uniqueness of his potential contribution to American life is to betray himself and to withhold the transfusion that might save this bloodless land.

Mailer likes Patterson—his loneliness, his pride, his persistent struggle against the odds. But just as the Fascist Croft had stolen Mailer’s interest from the liberal Hearn in ''The Naked and the Dead'', so Mailer’s real fascination here is not with Patterson but with Liston, whose inexorable toughness makes him the kind of Negro other Negroes refer to (sometimes in fear, sometimes in praise, sometimes in disapproval, but always in awe) as “a ''bad'' cat.” Liston takes on mythic proportions in Mailer’s mind, a mind which by nature tends to intensify, to exaggerate, and to think in terms of extremes. He is “near to beautiful” and one can think of “very few men who have beauty.” But that is in no way all.

{{quote|Liston was voodoo, Liston was magic . . . . Liston was the secret hero of every man who had ever given mouth to a final curse against the dispositions of the Lord and made a pact with Black magic. Liston was Faust.}}

He was the kind of Negro that any white man who imagined himself hip would have to come to terms with—either as model or as rival. Predictably, Mailer chooses the latter course, and does battle with Liston. Not physical battle, but psychic warfare that could have erupted into violence.

Liston’s incredibly fast knockout of Patterson left Mailer in a state of feverish frustration, a condition aggravated by a conscience which taunted him for his own recent failures—for too much alcohol and too little discipline. It was out of this sense of despair and defeat that another of Mailer’s obsessions was born.

{{quote|I began . . . to see myself as some sort of center about which all that had been lost must now rally. It was not simple egomania nor simple drunkenness, it was not even simple insanity: it was a kind of metaphorical leap across a gap. To believe the impossible may be won creates a strength from which the impossible may be attacked.}}

The essence of Mailer’s claim was that he was “the only man in the country” who could build the gate of a second Patterson-Liston fight into the proportions of an epic. The insistence with which he promoted his proposal the next day, the rude insults he hurled at Liston, and his petulant refusal to leave the dais (where he did not belong) all indicate that what Mailer wanted above everything was some kind of direct confrontation with Liston, some chance to prove to himself that he was still a possible hero, that he was larger than the myth into which his own mind had transformed the new heavyweight champion.

After the series of humiliations which gave reporters, detectives, by-standers, and Liston himself ample opportunity to laugh at him, Mailer finally got his chance. While obviously intoxicated, he approached Liston.

{{quote|“You called me a bum.” I said . . . “Well, you are a bum,” he said. “Everybody is a bum. I'm a bum too. It’s just that I’m a bigger bum than you are.” He stuck out his hand. “Shake, bum,” he said . . . . Could it be, was I indeed a bum? I shook his hand . . . . “Listen,” said I, leaning my head closer, speaking from the corner of my mouth as if I were whispering in a clinch, “I’m pulling this caper for a reason. I know a way to build the next fight from a $200,000 dog in Miami to a $2,000,000 gate in New York.” . . . “Say,” said Liston, “that last drink really set you up. Why don’t you go and get me a drink, you bum.”

“I’m not your flunky,” I said. It was the first punch I’d sent home. He loved me for it. The hint of corny old darky laughter, cottonfield giggles, peeped out a moment from his throat. “Oh, sheet, man!,” said the wit in his eyes. And for the crowd watching, he turned and announced at large, “I like this guy.”}}

Three phrases in this most revealing passage are particularly significant. First, Mailer views the dialogue in the terms of a fight; he speaks to Liston as if they were “in a clinch.” Secondly, Mailer’s “first punch” (“I’m not your flunky”) is delivered while he is behind on points and trapped in a corner. When he finally makes this move, he risks taking a (literal) punch in the mouth from Liston, who is not, one imagines, in the habit of being told off in public by inebriated reporters. Then, there is Liston’s remarkable reaction (“I like this guy”) to Mailer’s thrust, a totally unexpected profession of feeling for the writer that amounts to admiration, and the even more remarkable response that Liston’s concession generates in Mailer’s mind. For Mailer, Liston’s grunt becomes “a chuckle of corny old darky laughter, cottonfield giggles”: not only has Mailer taken final honors in his combat with the “Supreme Spade,” but he has metaphorically reduced him to his (ancestrally) original condition of servitude. From king of the Northern urban jungle where the white man is afraid to meet him on the street at night, Liston has been deported to a Southern cotton plantation where he knows his place and recognizes his master.

Liston is at once Mailer himself and Mailer’s alter ego. When he is the latter, Mailer becomes Patterson: “The fighters spoke as well from the countered halves of my nature.” Mailer even conjectures that perhaps Patterson is God and Liston the Devil, an idea which emanates from a conviction that every man is a potential agent for either of the two great warring cosmic powers, and that by one’s actions one affects the outcome in their ultimate struggle for control of a Manichean universe. On that night in Chicago, Liston, in his demonic role, “had shown that the Lord was dramatically weak.” Was it possible that Mailer’s press-conference comeback had restored some of the Deity’s strength? No negative answer could be given with full assurance.

In ''An American Dream'' (1964)—his first novel since ''The Deer Park''— Mailer is again concerned with the themes that inform the essays: danger, death, and heroism. The pattern of the novel, one might say, is designed on intercourse—with God, with the Devil, with voices from the inner recesses of the mind, with the vagina, and with the anus: intercourse leading to oceanic climax, coming variously in waves of love, lust, or pure aestheticism. The center of all this activity, the narrator and hero, is Stephen Richards Rojack, the embodiment of Mailer’s unrealized fantasies and of his radical Puritanism as well. A Harvard graduate ''summa cum laude'', he is also a war hero (“the one intellectual in America’s history to win a distinguished service cross”), an ex-congressman, a television personality, a professor of existentialist psychology, an author, a boxer, and an unsurpassed stud. He lives in contemporary New York amid people who, in Mailer’s view, personify the cancerous totalitarianism of our age.

The action is generated by Rojack’s murder of his wife, Deborah, a great bitch, beautiful, extremely rich, and secretly involved in international intrigue as a spy. The love he once felt for her has withered into a sense of dependence so paralyzing that she has now become the very structure of his ego. Without her, he fears he “might topple like clay.” In such a condition Rojack, who expresses Mailer’s eschatological vision, knows he is unprepared to face eternity. The first step toward reconstruction of self is to exorcise the demon that possesses him—and to exorcise Deborah is to kill her. The act of strangulation is committed with sexual passion, which is true to Mailer’s insistence that sex, love, and murder are inseparable and cathartic:

{{quote|Some blackbiled lust, some desire to go ahead (and kill her) not unlike the instant one comes in a woman against her cry that she is without protection came bursting with rage from out of me and . . . crack I choked her harder . . . and ''crack'' I gave her payment.}}

With Deborah’s death begins the arduous process of Rojack’s rebirth; he realizes that if murder is sometimes necessary, it is never simple. The gods, like furies, haunt him; he is acutely conscious of everything he thinks or says or does, for now cowardice or weakness or smallness will bring swift retribution—Dread, insanity, and the abyss. To strengthen himself, and to find, once again, something he can honestly call love are the ends of Rojack’s quest, but fulfillment of it and freedom from these new furies can be attained only through heroism, through seeking danger and daring death.

{{quote|. . . I believed that God was not love but courage. Love can come only as a reward . . . . A voice said in my mind: “That which you fear most is what you must do.”}}

The very phrasing of the passage is related to the nature of the punishment that will accrue if the command goes unheeded. Rojack’s mental life is split into a “voice” and “mind,” a separation dangerously close to the empty panic of schizophrenia.

But if madness looms as the penalty for prudence and cowardice (Mailer uses the two as almost indistinguishable), it is also possible that Dread will overwhelm even the bold Promethean. Rojack knows that “if man wished to steal the secret of the gods . . . they would defend themselves and destroy whichever man came too close.” With so narrow a chance of escape from insanity and an eternity in the abyss, suicide quite naturally presents itself as an alternative. What is to hold one back?

Despite all his frenetic activity, it is not merely a sensual lust for experience that keeps Rojack going. On the contrary, while his senses are irrepressibly active (especially his sense of smell), his mind persists relentlessly in observation, commentary, and criticism. Any physical sensation is immediately subject to conscious analysis. In Rojack, sex is the effort of the body to rape the mind, to pulsate in waves of ecstasy transcending consciousness. But even here he fails. Whether it is with the German maid, Ruta, or with the Southern chanteuse, Cherry, Rojack’s concern is with power rather than with pleasure, with the psychic domination he achieves after ''her'' orgasm rather than with the physical rapture of his own. Like his creator, Rojack is far more a Puritan than a hedonist; life is struggle rather than joy.

So the question remains: why go on? It is true that Rojack puts his life on the line more than once. The murder of his wife, the competition with mafia goons, the insults to a former boxing champion in an unfriendly bar, and, especially, the nocturnal walk on the parapet of a windy terrace thirty stories above the ground—all could easily have resulted in his death. But rather than misguided suicide attempts, these acts are a part of Rojack’s supreme effort to prepare himself for death. The goal in life is finally religious—to make oneself as fit as possible to meet the unknown after life is done, to face the judgment of eternity; and Rojack is possessed by the faith of the gambler. Like a poker player who is convinced that his next hand is bound to be the lucky one, Rojack acts on the assumption that the longer he lives, the more heroic he may become.

And the assumption is not unfounded, for Rojack’s heroism is boundless. He argues with demonic voices and then dispels them, he outwits and outfights his indomitable tycoon father-in-law, and, above all, he humiliates and beats up a sexually magnetic Negro hero, Shago Martin. Not only does Rojack cause Cherry to have her first sexual explosion, after Shago had failed with her for months, but through a combination of psychic intuition and physical power he changes a situation where Shago is standing over him with a knife to one in which he is standing over Shago, who is now writhing pulp at the bottom of a staircase (and all in the space of ten minutes).

Practically everything Rojack says or does suggests parallels to his creator’s personal life, and the episode with Shago Martin, recalling the Mailer-Liston confrontation, is perhaps the richest example. If Liston was a large part of Mailer, Shago’s ode to himself is easily applicable to the dark sides of both Rojack and Mailer.

{{quote|“I’m a lily-white devil . . . . I’m just the future, in love with myself, that’s the future. I got twenty faces, I talk the tongues, I’m a devil . . . . I’m cut off from my own lines, I try to speak from my heart and it gets snatched.”}}

If Mailer’s encounter with Liston faintly suggested repressed homosexuality transformed into manly fortitude, Rojack’s encounter with Shago positively smacks of it. Like Shago, he has Cherry, and his immediate concern after intercourse is in comparison. He can hardly hide his elation when she implies that he was better, a predictable response when one recalls his reaction the night before to Cherry’s paean to Shago’s sexual prowess. Her emphasis on the word “stud” had made Rojack uneasy.

{{quote|The word went in like a blow to the soft part of my belly. There was something final in the verdict as if there were a sexual round robin where the big people played. All the big Negroes and the big whites.}}

Like Mailer, Rojack lives his life as if it were some dark experiment which has gradually but relentlessly gained the upper hand so that he is free to act only within its prescribed limits. Again like Mailer, Rojack is paying the price for a lifelong habit of thinking in metaphor; image (like God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell) has become reality, and that reality has become a master demanding undivided attention. It is a reality of dreams, and the dreams in ''An American Dream'' are endless: the sexual dreams of Don Juan, the Alger dream of the self-made man, the outsider’s dream of the inside, the Mafia’s dream of money and power, the square’s dream of the life of the hipster, and the hipster’s dream of death. None of these dreams has turned entirely into nightmare, but each has gone sour, like the soul of the nation which fabricated them. But the saddest dream of all is Stephen Rojack’s (and perhaps Mailer’s) dream of sanity.

{{quote|I was caught. I wanted to escape from that intelligence which let me know of murders in one direction and conceive of [love] from the other, I wanted to be free of magic, the tongue of the devil, the dread of the Lord, I wanted to be some sort of rational man again . . . But I could not move.}}

But what if, unlike Mailer and Rojack, one is ''not'' obsessed with psychopathic extremes? What if one’s patience expires at exhibitions of braggadocio? What if one appreciates wit (of which there is some) but loves humor (of which there is none)? Probably one would call ''An American Dream'' a joke, and a bad joke at that. The infantile demand for intermediate and complete attention; the insistence on being taken seriously, literally, and on his own terms at all times; the inability to treat his agony with even a suggestion of laughter or a trace of irony; the sloppy inconsistency of much of the dialogue; and, finally, the sheer loudness that informs the whole novel, a tone alternating between agitation and hysteria—all this works to tire, frustrate, and, at times, infuriate even the most sympathetic reader.

And yet somehow exasperation yields to the suspicion that Mailer’s is a mind which understands as much about the quality of contemporary American life as any now active, a mind which could well represent the last intellectually significant and articulate thrust of an eschatological and religious fervor that may be sorely missed once it is gone. So one is willing to indulge Mailer further, even to thank him once again. And one is willing to accept Rojack’s vision of himself as a fair description of Mailer:

{{quote|I had leverage; I was one of the more active figures of the city—no one could be certain finally that nothing large would come to me.}}

In 1960 there was reason to hope for a dramatic rebirth of energy and heroism; even the darkest passages of ''The Presidential Papers'' were balanced by intimations that America was not yet doomed. A man could function in society and still find opportunity to grow. By 1966, dream had at last soured into nightmare. ''Cannibals and Christians'', a collection of essays, “poems” (or, more accurately, epigrams and graffiti), and interviews (both real and imaginary), is a sermon whose vision of hell has become dire and inevitable. From Mailer’s pulpit comes a most disconcerting premonition:

{{quote|The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again; it has perhaps not been here so intensely in thirty years, not since the Nazis were prospering, but it is coming . . . . The world is entering a time of plague.}}

Totalitarianism has suffocated individuality; the Hilton in San Francisco is emulated before the Plaza in New York; housing projects look like nurseries and nurseries look like hospitals; appliances are plastic rather than metal; vile bully tactics in Vietnam have developed from simple occupation of Southeast Asia; the psychotic has taken over from the psychopath; pornography has gained another step on sexuality. In a word, Lyndon Johnson has replaced John Kennedy.

Johnson, Mailer tells us, is the archetypically alienated figure—a fact which can be observed in his prose (perhaps “the worst ever written by any political leader anywhere”), in his boorish manners, in his deceitfulness, in his voracious ego, and in his almost arrogant lack of style. If a President has a profound effect on the quality of life during his era—and Mailer is convinced that he does—then hope is indeed dim. And the consequences may be far worse than possible loss of prestige, power, or land; for there is the unknown to face after death, and the possibility that there is no absolution for cowardly sins.

But Mailer’s exhortations against the insanities of the age of Johnson do not come from one whose own tensions—between radicalism and Puritanism, heroism, and buffoonery, the playboy’s life and the intellectual’s vocation—are anywhere near control. And there is a further complication in Mailer’s complex personality, an unmistakably reactionary streak, not unrelated in impulse to his intense religiosity, which challenges his natural and professed political radicalism. Apart from the kind of conservatism that is common property among many contemporary radicals—a quasi-isolationism that urges America to terminate involvement in practically all foreign countries and a profound distrust of the liberal establishment—Mailer holds positions on matters not directly political which fall neatly into line with the conservative spirit (he is, for example, strongly opposed to birth control and abortion, and he speaks of homosexuality as a “vice”). But two pieces of evidence (both from the essay on the 1964 Republican Convention) are particularly striking. First, Mailer confesses to a buried urge to see Barry Goldwater elected:

{{quote|I knew Goldwater could win because something in me leaped out at the thought; a part of me, a devil, wished to take that choice.}}

Secondly, Mailer’s ambivalence toward Negroes, manifested earlier only in the individual cases of Sonny Liston and Shago Martin, is now explicitly broadened. His reaction to James Baldwin’s suggestion that there may be no remission for the white man’s sins against the Negro is violent:

{{quote|I had to throttle an impulse to . . . call Baldwin, and say, “You get this, baby. There’s a shit storm coming like nothing you ever knew. So ask yourself if what you desire is for the white to kill every black so that there be total remission of guilt in your black soul.”}}

If the relief of such tensions and conflicts and the consequent fortification of the self can come only from bold action, then Mailer’s primary means of personal salvation lies in his work. It is in the very act of creating the artistic sermons which he claims will show us the way to redemption that Mailer redeems himself. His influence has given rise to several “cults.” At one extreme there is a segment of the underground hipster community, closely involved with drugs, which worships him as the high priest of God and Sex. At the other end is that increasingly large group of liberal and radical intellectuals, centered in New York and comprised of such critics as Norman Podhoretz, Steven Marcus, and Richard Poirier who see in Mailer, as Marcus once put it, the embodiment of extraordinary literary talent, personal honesty and loyalty, and penetrating social criticism. And yet, in the last analysis, Mailer’s influence is limited, for the Word has hardly reached, let alone changed, the heart of the land he is trying to transform.

From the first three sermons of the 1960’s, the congregation is likely to walk away interested and, sometimes, excited, rather than transformed. Entertainment overshadows eschatology. And in Mailer’s fourth effort of the 6o’s, ''The Deer Park'', a stage adaption of his novel of 1956, religion gives way completely to comedy (both intentional and unintentional).{{efn|One ignores, for Mailer’s sake as much as for one’s own, ''Deaths for the Ladies'', a collection of words which the author extravagantly describes as poetry.}}

This is not to imply that Mailer has abandoned his urgent message; practically all his obsessions of the 6o’s are here: sex, love, lust, heroism, cowardice, power, God, and the Devil. If Mailer has added anything new to his philosophy, it lies in the expansion of his idea as sexual freedom and it is expressed through the pimp Marion Faye, who “follows sex to the end, turns queer, bangs dogs, and sniffs toes.” But in the figure of Herman Teppis (or
“H.T.”), a Hollywood mogul in the tradition of Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn, genuine humor replaces heavy rhetoric and caustic wit. In the desert of endless debates over who is—and who is not—a genius in bed, Teppis’s pronouncements are oases.

=== Notes ===

{{notelist}}

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{{Byline|last=Toback|first=James|note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967}}

But what if, unlike Mailer and Rojack, one is ''not'' obsessed with psychopathic extremes? What if one’s patience expires at exhibitions of braggadocio? What if one appreciates wit (of which there is some) but loves humor (of which there is none)? Probably one would call ''An American Dream'' a joke, and a bad joke at that. The infantile demand for intermediate and complete attention; the insistence on being taken seriously, literally, and on his own terms at all times; the inability to treat his agony with even a suggestion of laughter or a trace of irony; the sloppy inconsistency of much of the dialogue; and, finally, the sheer loudness that informs the whole novel, a tone alternating between agitation and hysteria—all this works to tire, frustrate, and, at times, infuriate even the most sympathetic reader.

And yet somehow exasperation yields to the suspicion that Mailer’s is a mind which understands as much about the quality of contemporary American life as any now active, a mind which could well represent the last intellectually significant and articulate thrust of an eschatological and religious fervor that may be sorely missed once it is gone. So one is willing to indulge Mailer further, even to thank him once again. And one is willing to accept Rojack’s vision of himself as a fair description of Mailer:

{{quote|I had leverage; I was one of the more active figures of the city—no one could be certain finally that nothing large would come to me.}}

In 1960 there was reason to hope for a dramatic rebirth of energy and heroism; even the darkest passages of ''The Presidential Papers'' were balanced by intimations that America was not yet doomed. A man could function in society and still find opportunity to grow. By 1966, dream had at last soured into nightmare. ''Cannibals and Christians'', a collection of essays, “poems” (or, more accurately, epigrams and graffiti), and interviews (both real and imaginary), is a sermon whose vision of hell has become dire and inevitable. From Mailer’s pulpit comes a most disconcerting premonition:

{{quote|The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again; it has perhaps not been here so intensely in thirty years, not since the Nazis were prospering, but it is coming . . . . The world is entering a time of plague.}}

Totalitarianism has suffocated individuality; the Hilton in San Francisco is emulated before the Plaza in New York; housing projects look like nurseries and nurseries look like hospitals; appliances are plastic rather than metal; vile bully tactics in Vietnam have developed from simple occupation of Southeast Asia; the psychotic has taken over from the psychopath; pornography has gained another step on sexuality. In a word, Lyndon Johnson has replaced John Kennedy.

Johnson, Mailer tells us, is the archetypically alienated figure—a fact which can be observed in his prose (perhaps “the worst ever written by any political leader anywhere”), in his boorish manners, in his deceitfulness, in his voracious ego, and in his almost arrogant lack of style. If a President has a profound effect on the quality of life during his era—and Mailer is convinced that he does—then hope is indeed dim. And the consequences may be far worse than possible loss of prestige, power, or land; for there is the unknown to face after death, and the possibility that there is no absolution for cowardly sins.

But Mailer’s exhortations against the insanities of the age of Johnson do not come from one whose own tensions—between radicalism and Puritanism, heroism, and buffoonery, the playboy’s life and the intellectual’s vocation—are anywhere near control. And there is a further complication in Mailer’s complex personality, an unmistakably reactionary streak, not unrelated in impulse to his intense religiosity, which challenges his natural and professed political radicalism. Apart from the kind of conservatism that is common property among many contemporary radicals—a quasi-isolationism that urges America to terminate involvement in practically all foreign countries and a profound distrust of the liberal establishment—Mailer holds positions on matters not directly political which fall neatly into line with the conservative spirit (he is, for example, strongly opposed to birth control and abortion, and he speaks of homosexuality as a “vice”). But two pieces of evidence (both from the essay on the 1964 Republican Convention) are particularly striking. First, Mailer confesses to a buried urge to see Barry Goldwater elected:

{{quote|I knew Goldwater could win because something in me leaped out at the thought; a part of me, a devil, wished to take that choice.}}

Secondly, Mailer’s ambivalence toward Negroes, manifested earlier only in the individual cases of Sonny Liston and Shago Martin, is now explicitly broadened. His reaction to James Baldwin’s suggestion that there may be no remission for the white man’s sins against the Negro is violent:

{{quote|I had to throttle an impulse to . . . call Baldwin, and say, “You get this, baby. There’s a shit storm coming like nothing you ever knew. So ask yourself if what you desire is for the white to kill every black so that there be total remission of guilt in your black soul.”}}

If the relief of such tensions and conflicts and the consequent fortification of the self can come only from bold action, then Mailer’s primary means of personal salvation lies in his work. It is in the very act of creating the artistic sermons which he claims will show us the way to redemption that Mailer redeems himself. His influence has given rise to several “cults.” At one extreme there is a segment of the underground hipster community, closely involved with drugs, which worships him as the high priest of God and Sex. At the other end is that increasingly large group of liberal and radical intellectuals, centered in New York and comprised of such critics as Norman Podhoretz, Steven Marcus, and Richard Poirier who see in Mailer, as Marcus once put it, the embodiment of extraordinary literary talent, personal honesty and loyalty, and penetrating social criticism. And yet, in the last analysis, Mailer’s influence is limited, for the Word has hardly reached, let alone changed, the heart of the land he is trying to transform.

From the first three sermons of the 1960’s, the congregation is likely to walk away interested and, sometimes, excited, rather than transformed. Entertainment overshadows eschatology. And in Mailer’s fourth effort of the 6o’s, ''The Deer Park'', a stage adaption of his novel of 1956, religion gives way completely to comedy (both intentional and unintentional).{{efn|One ignores, for Mailer’s sake as much as for one’s own, ''Deaths for the Ladies'', a collection of words which the author extravagantly describes as poetry.}}

This is not to imply that Mailer has abandoned his urgent message; practically all his obsessions of the 6o’s are here: sex, love, lust, heroism, cowardice, power, God, and the Devil. If Mailer has added anything new to his philosophy, it lies in the expansion of his idea as sexual freedom and it is expressed through the pimp Marion Faye, who “follows sex to the end, turns queer, bangs dogs, and sniffs toes.” But in the figure of Herman Teppis (or
“H.T.”), a Hollywood mogul in the tradition of Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn, genuine humor replaces heavy rhetoric and caustic wit. In the desert of endless debates over who is—and who is not—a genius in bed, Teppis's pronouncements are oases.

{{quote|You know what an artist is? He's a crook. They even got a Frenchman now, you know what, he picks people’s pockets at society parties. They say he’s the greatest writer in France. No wonder they need a dictator, those crazy French. I could never get along with the French.}}

But Mailer pays a price for his success in the comic mode. One laughs so hard at Teppis that one keeps right on laughing, even at the tortured, self-searching characters—spokesmen all for traditional Maileresque values—one is meant to take seriously. If there is a lesson to be learned from this play, it is that comedy may be suitable to many dramatic modes, including tragedy, but that it has no place at all in eschatological homily.

After a pop play perhaps one should have expected, or at least have been prepared for, a pop novel from Mailer’s pen. Nevertheless, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' comes as a shock. Radical as the ideas contained in them may have been, Mailer’s earlier novels were more or less conservative in form: except for ''Barbary Shore'', they were all clearly in the mainstream of the realist-naturalist tradition. But in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' ordered syntax has yielded to the total liberation of the word; intricate plot structure has given way to hallucinatory fantasy; fully realized characters living in what we know as the real world have been replaced by the protean apparitions in Mailer’s mind; the last trace of ratiocination has been obliterated by a relentless bombardment of sensual impressions and apocalyptic utterances. Dreiser and Farrell have disappeared in favor of Joyce, Faulkner, Burroughs, McLuhan, and Norman O. Brown.

At one point or another virtually every theory Mailer has ever had appears—but now with an important difference. Rather than preaching his messages baldly as in the past, Mailer drops them mockingly. And the mockery is directed both at himself and at those he would edify.

{{quote|The world is going shazam, hahray harout, fart in my toot, air we breathe is the prez, present dent, and god has always wanted more from man than man has wished to give him. Zig a zig a zig. That is why we live in dread of god.}}

Even the seminal concept of Dread is translated into the pop language of rock-and-roll. A vast chasm of culture and sensibility separates the tone of Rojack’s agonized monologues from the narrative voice of the present novel.

{{quote|. . . Mr. Sender, who sends out that Awe and Dread is up on their back . . . because they ''alone'', man, you dig? They all ''alone'', it’s a fright wig, man, that Upper silence alone is enough to bugger you, whoo-ee.}}

Indeed, the very claim to a prophetic stance in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is established in a similarly (and intentionally) ambiguous tone.

{{quote|This is your own wandering troubadour brought right up to date, here to sell America its new handbook on how to live . . . . We're going to tell you what it's all about.}}

Although there is a bare minimum of dramatic tension or external conflict, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' has several “characters,” each significant primarily on a symbolic plane. D.J. (Disc Jockey, Dr. Jekyll), the adolescent hero narrator of patrician Texas blood, is sometimes convinced that he is really a “Harlem Nigger,” and since “there is no such thing as a totally false perception,” perhaps he is. Not literally, of course, but rather in the same way that Mailer recognized Sonny Liston in himself and in the same way that the white hipster of “The White Negro” is, in his psychic makeup, black. If D.J. is the hipster, Rusty, his father, is the square, a corporation tycoon in Dallas—coarse, selfish, and, at heart, a coward. Tex (the Mr. Hyde to D.J.’s Dr. Jekyll) is part Indian, manly, bisexual, and the son of an undertaker.

The three go bear hunting in Alaska, but the most important action takes place in D.J.’s mind. At one point he has an urge to turn his gun on his father and “blast a shot, thump in his skull.” Although he resists, he soon commits the act symbolically by contradicting his father’s warning and courageously approaching a wounded bear, putting his life on the line, while his father lies hidden, waiting for the bear to become helpless before firing the fatal shot. Thus liberated from paternal authority, D.J. finds his instincts for love and battle shifted to Tex, D.J. encounters nakedly for the first time his other self. And through a mutual awareness of their mutual desire for both intercourse and fratricide, D.J. and Tex finally achieve a sense of purification and personal integration.

{{quote|. . . Tex Hyde . . . was finally afraid to prong D.J., because D.J. once become a bitch would kill him, and D.J. breathing that in by the wide-awake of the dark with Aurora Borealis jumping to the beat of his heart knew he could make a try to prong Tex, there was a chance to get in and steal the iron from Texas’ ass and put it on his own . . . now it was there, murder between them under all friendship, for god was a beast, not a man, and god said, “Go out and kill—fulfill my will, go and kill,” and they hung there each of them on the knife of the divide in all conflict of lust to own the other . . . Killer brothers, owned by something, prince of darkness, lord of light, they did not know; they just knew that telepathy was on them, they had been touched forever by the North and each bit a drop of blood from his own finger and touched them across and met blood to blood . . . .}}

In one eternal moment the Manichean polarities that have obsessed Mailer are at last synthesized—God and the Devil, heaven and hell, nature and man, Negro and white, Dallas and Harlem, phallus and anus.

But why ''are we'' in Vietnam? What relation does the title have to D.J., Tex, Rusty, bear-hunting, Harlem, Dallas, liberated syntax, or Maileresque eschatology? In the strictest sense, nothing at all. But in a broader, metaphysical sense, the title can be explained as another urgent warning to America. We are in Vietnam because we, as a nation, are going, or have already gone, insane. Mailer’s development from politics to meta-politics is complete. The world—and especially America—is now viewed as an expression of Mailer’s own most extreme longings and fantasies. Subject and object, chaos and order, internal imagination and external reality are united in a fusion of creator and creation.
In an ultimate sense Mailer is claiming not only relation to America but identity with her. It is likely that he has himself in mind when he writes of Rusty:

{{quote|His secret is that he sees himself as one of the pillars of the firmament, yeah, man—he reads the world’s doom in his own fuckup. If he is less great than God intended him to be, then America is in Trouble. One cannot help wondering whether ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'', unruly and overwhelming, is not at least as much a symptom of our “Trouble” as a cure for it.

Throughout the past decade Mailer has made the world of the hipster the stuff of his sermons—novels, essays, and plays—as well as the style of his personal life. He calls it “a muted cool religious revival,” and a better description (at least of his ''intentions'') would be hard to find. He is Zarathustra coming down from the mountain with his vision of the hero; he is Dostoevsky reminding us that “God and the Devil are fighting, and the battleground is the heart of man!”; he is a Puritan minister informing us that pain may be good, for to suffer is to be given the opportunity to grow and prepare for the mystery of death and the perils of hell; he is a preacher frustrated by his congregation's blind faith in innocence at a time in history when innocence is not only a lie but a crime; he is a seer trying to jar complacent men into an awareness of the despair that lies beneath their conventions; he is Toynbee telling us that if a civilization stagnates, it will die, that if a nation is to survive, it must respond to the reality of challenge; and he is Jonathan Swift couching his eschatological message in the language and imagery of scatology.

It is true that Mailer’s own faith in the validity of his message is not absolute. He has admitted that “the hipster gambles that he can be terribly, tragically wrong, and therefore be doomed to Hell.” But Mailer is a gambler, and so he continues to preach, to reiterate the old verities with a new twist, opening himself to the charge of anachronism, refusing to accept the “modern,” the valueless objectivity of the novels of Robbe-Grillet, the impersonal detachment of the music of Milton Babbitt, and the faceless hotels of Conrad Hilton. He will not give up like Hemingway’s Lieutenant Henry, who trusts only in the names of bridges, cities, and battles; Mailer chooses instead still to believe in God, Love, Heroism, Courage, and Death. His life and work are a contradiction of the message contained in one of his own poems:

{{quote|''Never'' ''contemplate'' ''nothing'' ''said'' ''the saint.''}}

History is a nightmare from which Mailer is still trying to awaken; but he will not take the easy way out in his struggle.

And yet if he is singleminded in his determination to view life in terms of ultimate battle, his desire for victory is not without ambivalence. His involvement in the pop world has become more than peripheral with his play, his new underground movie (where he is cast as a Mafia gangster), his new novel, and his own life style (where he tries to enact simultaneously the roles of writer, fighter, celebrity, lover, and messiah); and like most of the major figures in this eclectic pop world, he is flirting with psychosis. To live on the edge of so many different scenes is to belong truly to none; and to act like so many different people is to endanger the self. The sign of surrender, the indication that the battle has been lost, is the sense of succumbing to Dread. It is not impossible that Mailer’s Dread is essentially the fulfillment of his own unacknowledged ''desire'' for that Dread, the intuition that all those "psychotic" ideas and actions he lives by are simply the expression of a profound longing for madness and extinction.

Mailer holds himself together, however, by virtue of his work. Through creation he is able to come closer to the unattainable goal of total victory in the struggle which is the metaphor for his vision of life. Even if we do not believe in it ourselves, even if we are impatient with the intellectual naivete of a man who only a decade ago speculated that perhaps he was the first person to state that God was in danger of dying, and even if we are annoyed by the heavily flawed style of his prose, we can still learn from, and be moved by, this belligerent prophet. At the end of the stage version of ''The Deer Park'', he speaks of debates about God and Time and Sex as constituting “part of the poor odd dialogues which give hope to us noble humans for more than one night.” If Mailer has done this in his own work even a small part of the time, he is one Puritan our age can ill afford to lose.

=== Notes ===

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The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Norman Mailer Today

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{{Byline|last=Toback|first=James|note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967}}

{{quote|“I’m a lily-white devil . . . . I’m just the future, in love with myself, that’s the future. I got twenty faces, I talk the tongues, I’m a devil . . . . I’m cut off from my own lines, I try to speak from my heart and it gets snatched.”}}

If Mailer’s encounter with Liston faintly suggested repressed homosexuality transformed into manly fortitude, Rojack’s encounter with Shago positively smacks of it. Like Shago, he has Cherry, and his immediate concern after intercourse is in comparison. He can hardly hide his elation when she implies that he was better, a predictable response when one recalls his reaction the night before to Cherry’s paean to Shago’s sexual prowess. Her emphasis on the word “stud” had made Rojack uneasy.

{{quote|The word went in like a blow to the soft part of my belly. There was something final in the verdict as if there were a sexual round robin where the big people played. All the big Negroes and the big whites.}}

Like Mailer, Rojack lives his life as if it were some dark experiment which has gradually but relentlessly gained the upper hand so that he is free to act only within its prescribed limits. Again like Mailer, Rojack is paying the price for a lifelong habit of thinking in metaphor; image (like God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell) has become reality, and that reality has become a master demanding undivided attention. It is a reality of dreams, and the dreams in ''An American Dream'' are endless: the sexual dreams of Don Juan, the Alger dream of the self-made man, the outsider’s dream of the inside, the Mafia’s dream of money and power, the square’s dream of the life of the hipster, and the hipster’s dream of death. None of these dreams has turned entirely into nightmare, but each has gone sour, like the soul of the nation which fabricated them. But the saddest dream of all is Stephen Rojack’s (and perhaps Mailer’s) dream of sanity.

{{quote|I was caught. I wanted to escape from that intelligence which let me know of murders in one direction and conceive of [love] from the other, I wanted to be free of magic, the tongue of the devil, the dread of the Lord, I wanted to be some sort of rational man again . . . But I could not move.}}

But what if, unlike Mailer and Rojack, one is ''not'' obsessed with psychopathic extremes? What if one’s patience expires at exhibitions of braggadocio? What if one appreciates wit (of which there is some) but loves humor (of which there is none)? Probably one would call ''An American Dream'' a joke, and a bad joke at that. The infantile demand for intermediate and complete attention; the insistence on being taken seriously, literally, and on his own terms at all times; the inability to treat his agony with even a suggestion of laughter or a trace of irony; the sloppy inconsistency of much of the dialogue; and, finally, the sheer loudness that informs the whole novel, a tone alternating between agitation and hysteria—all this works to tire, frustrate, and, at times, infuriate even the most sympathetic reader.

And yet somehow exasperation yields to the suspicion that Mailer’s is a mind which understands as much about the quality of contemporary American life as any now active, a mind which could well represent the last intellectually significant and articulate thrust of an eschatological and religious fervor that may be sorely missed once it is gone. So one is willing to indulge Mailer further, even to thank him once again. And one is willing to accept Rojack’s vision of himself as a fair description of Mailer:

{{quote|I had leverage; I was one of the more active figures of the city—no one could be certain finally that nothing large would come to me.}}

In 1960 there was reason to hope for a dramatic rebirth of energy and heroism; even the darkest passages of ''The Presidential Papers'' were balanced by intimations that America was not yet doomed. A man could function in society and still find opportunity to grow. By 1966, dream had at last soured into nightmare. ''Cannibals and Christians'', a collection of essays, “poems” (or, more accurately, epigrams and graffiti), and interviews (both real and imaginary), is a sermon whose vision of hell has become dire and inevitable. From Mailer’s pulpit comes a most disconcerting premonition:

{{quote|The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again; it has perhaps not been here so intensely in thirty years, not since the Nazis were prospering, but it is coming . . . . The world is entering a time of plague.}}

Totalitarianism has suffocated individuality; the Hilton in San Francisco is emulated before the Plaza in New York; housing projects look like nurseries and nurseries look like hospitals; appliances are plastic rather than metal; vile bully tactics in Vietnam have developed from simple occupation of Southeast Asia; the psychotic has taken over from the psychopath; pornography has gained another step on sexuality. In a word, Lyndon Johnson has replaced John Kennedy.

Johnson, Mailer tells us, is the archetypically alienated figure—a fact which can be observed in his prose (perhaps “the worst ever written by any political leader anywhere”), in his boorish manners, in his deceitfulness, in his voracious ego, and in his almost arrogant lack of style. If a President has a profound effect on the quality of life during his era—and Mailer is convinced that he does—then hope is indeed dim. And the consequences may be far worse than possible loss of prestige, power, or land; for there is the unknown to face after death, and the possibility that there is no absolution for cowardly sins.

But Mailer’s exhortations against the insanities of the age of Johnson do not come from one whose own tensions—between radicalism and Puritanism, heroism, and buffoonery, the playboy’s life and the intellectual’s vocation—are anywhere near control. And there is a further complication in Mailer’s complex personality, an unmistakably reactionary streak, not unrelated in impulse to his intense religiosity, which challenges his natural and professed political radicalism. Apart from the kind of conservatism that is common property among many contemporary radicals—a quasi-isolationism that urges America to terminate involvement in practically all foreign countries and a profound distrust of the liberal establishment—Mailer holds positions on matters not directly political which fall neatly into line with the conservative spirit (he is, for example, strongly opposed to birth control and abortion, and he speaks of homosexuality as a “vice”). But two pieces of evidence (both from the essay on the 1964 Republican Convention) are particularly striking. First, Mailer confesses to a buried urge to see Barry Goldwater elected:

{{quote|I knew Goldwater could win because something in me leaped out at the thought; a part of me, a devil, wished to take that choice.}}

Secondly, Mailer’s ambivalence toward Negroes, manifested earlier only in the individual cases of Sonny Liston and Shago Martin, is now explicitly broadened. His reaction to James Baldwin’s suggestion that there may be no remission for the white man’s sins against the Negro is violent:

{{quote|I had to throttle an impulse to . . . call Baldwin, and say, “You get this, baby. There’s a shit storm coming like nothing you ever knew. So ask yourself if what you desire is for the white to kill every black so that there be total remission of guilt in your black soul.”}}

If the relief of such tensions and conflicts and the consequent fortification of the self can come only from bold action, then Mailer’s primary means of personal salvation lies in his work. It is in the very act of creating the artistic sermons which he claims will show us the way to redemption that Mailer redeems himself. His influence has given rise to several “cults.” At one extreme there is a segment of the underground hipster community, closely involved with drugs, which worships him as the high priest of God and Sex. At the other end is that increasingly large group of liberal and radical intellectuals, centered in New York and comprised of such critics as Norman Podhoretz, Steven Marcus, and Richard Poirier who see in Mailer, as Marcus once put it, the embodiment of extraordinary literary talent, personal honesty and loyalty, and penetrating social criticism. And yet, in the last analysis, Mailer’s influence is limited, for the Word has hardly reached, let alone changed, the heart of the land he is trying to transform.

From the first three sermons of the 1960’s, the congregation is likely to walk away interested and, sometimes, excited, rather than transformed. Entertainment overshadows eschatology. And in Mailer’s fourth effort of the 6o’s, ''The Deer Park'', a stage adaption of his novel of 1956, religion gives way completely to comedy (both intentional and unintentional).{{efn|One ignores, for Mailer’s sake as much as for one’s own, ''Deaths for the Ladies'', a collection of words which the author extravagantly describes as poetry.}}

This is not to imply that Mailer has abandoned his urgent message; practically all his obsessions of the 6o’s are here: sex, love, lust, heroism, cowardice, power, God, and the Devil. If Mailer has added anything new to his philosophy, it lies in the expansion of his idea as sexual freedom and it is expressed through the pimp Marion Faye, who “follows sex to the end, turns queer, bangs dogs, and sniffs toes.” But in the figure of Herman Teppis (or
“H.T.”), a Hollywood mogul in the tradition of Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn, genuine humor replaces heavy rhetoric and caustic wit. In the desert of endless debates over who is—and who is not—a genius in bed, Teppis's pronouncements are oases.

{{quote|You know what an artist is? He's a crook. They even got a Frenchman now, you know what, he picks people’s pockets at society parties. They say he’s the greatest writer in France. No wonder they need a dictator, those crazy French. I could never get along with the French.}}

But Mailer pays a price for his success in the comic mode. One laughs so hard at Teppis that one keeps right on laughing, even at the tortured, self-searching characters—spokesmen all for traditional Maileresque values—one is meant to take seriously. If there is a lesson to be learned from this play, it is that comedy may be suitable to many dramatic modes, including tragedy, but that it has no place at all in eschatological homily.

After a pop play perhaps one should have expected, or at least have been prepared for, a pop novel from Mailer’s pen. Nevertheless, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' comes as a shock. Radical as the ideas contained in them may have been, Mailer’s earlier novels were more or less conservative in form: except for ''Barbary Shore'', they were all clearly in the mainstream of the realist-naturalist tradition. But in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' ordered syntax has yielded to the total liberation of the word; intricate plot structure has given way to hallucinatory fantasy; fully realized characters living in what we know as the real world have been replaced by the protean apparitions in Mailer’s mind; the last trace of ratiocination has been obliterated by a relentless bombardment of sensual impressions and apocalyptic utterances. Dreiser and Farrell have disappeared in favor of Joyce, Faulkner, Burroughs, McLuhan, and Norman O. Brown.

At one point or another virtually every theory Mailer has ever had appears—but now with an important difference. Rather than preaching his messages baldly as in the past, Mailer drops them mockingly. And the mockery is directed both at himself and at those he would edify.

{{quote|The world is going shazam, hahray harout, fart in my toot, air we breathe is the prez, present dent, and god has always wanted more from man than man has wished to give him. Zig a zig a zig. That is why we live in dread of god.}}

Even the seminal concept of Dread is translated into the pop language of rock-and-roll. A vast chasm of culture and sensibility separates the tone of Rojack’s agonized monologues from the narrative voice of the present novel.

{{quote|. . . Mr. Sender, who sends out that Awe and Dread is up on their back . . . because they ''alone'', man, you dig? They all ''alone'', it’s a fright wig, man, that Upper silence alone is enough to bugger you, whoo-ee.}}

Indeed, the very claim to a prophetic stance in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is established in a similarly (and intentionally) ambiguous tone.

{{quote|This is your own wandering troubadour brought right up to date, here to sell America its new handbook on how to live . . . . We're going to tell you what it's all about.}}

Although there is a bare minimum of dramatic tension or external conflict, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' has several “characters,” each significant primarily on a symbolic plane. D.J. (Disc Jockey, Dr. Jekyll), the adolescent hero narrator of patrician Texas blood, is sometimes convinced that he is really a “Harlem Nigger,” and since “there is no such thing as a totally false perception,” perhaps he is. Not literally, of course, but rather in the same way that Mailer recognized Sonny Liston in himself and in the same way that the white hipster of “The White Negro” is, in his psychic makeup, black. If D.J. is the hipster, Rusty, his father, is the square, a corporation tycoon in Dallas—coarse, selfish, and, at heart, a coward. Tex (the Mr. Hyde to D.J.’s Dr. Jekyll) is part Indian, manly, bisexual, and the son of an undertaker.

The three go bear hunting in Alaska, but the most important action takes place in D.J.’s mind. At one point he has an urge to turn his gun on his father and “blast a shot, thump in his skull.” Although he resists, he soon commits the act symbolically by contradicting his father’s warning and courageously approaching a wounded bear, putting his life on the line, while his father lies hidden, waiting for the bear to become helpless before firing the fatal shot. Thus liberated from paternal authority, D.J. finds his instincts for love and battle shifted to Tex, D.J. encounters nakedly for the first time his other self. And through a mutual awareness of their mutual desire for both intercourse and fratricide, D.J. and Tex finally achieve a sense of purification and personal integration.

{{quote|. . . Tex Hyde . . . was finally afraid to prong D.J., because D.J. once become a bitch would kill him, and D.J. breathing that in by the wide-awake of the dark with Aurora Borealis jumping to the beat of his heart knew he could make a try to prong Tex, there was a chance to get in and steal the iron from Texas’ ass and put it on his own . . . now it was there, murder between them under all friendship, for god was a beast, not a man, and god said, “Go out and kill—fulfill my will, go and kill,” and they hung there each of them on the knife of the divide in all conflict of lust to own the other . . . Killer brothers, owned by something, prince of darkness, lord of light, they did not know; they just knew that telepathy was on them, they had been touched forever by the North and each bit a drop of blood from his own finger and touched them across and met blood to blood . . . .}}

In one eternal moment the Manichean polarities that have obsessed Mailer are at last synthesized—God and the Devil, heaven and hell, nature and man, Negro and white, Dallas and Harlem, phallus and anus.

But why ''are we'' in Vietnam? What relation does the title have to D.J., Tex, Rusty, bear-hunting, Harlem, Dallas, liberated syntax, or Maileresque eschatology? In the strictest sense, nothing at all. But in a broader, metaphysical sense, the title can be explained as another urgent warning to America. We are in Vietnam because we, as a nation, are going, or have already gone, insane. Mailer’s development from politics to meta-politics is complete. The world—and especially America—is now viewed as an expression of Mailer’s own most extreme longings and fantasies. Subject and object, chaos and order, internal imagination and external reality are united in a fusion of creator and creation.
In an ultimate sense Mailer is claiming not only relation to America but identity with her. It is likely that he has himself in mind when he writes of Rusty:

{{quote|His secret is that he sees himself as one of the pillars of the firmament, yeah, man—he reads the world’s doom in his own fuckup. If he is less great than God intended him to be, then America is in Trouble. One cannot help wondering whether ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'', unruly and overwhelming, is not at least as much a symptom of our “Trouble” as a cure for it.

Throughout the past decade Mailer has made the world of the hipster the stuff of his sermons—novels, essays, and plays—as well as the style of his personal life. He calls it “a muted cool religious revival,” and a better description (at least of his ''intentions'') would be hard to find. He is Zarathustra coming down from the mountain with his vision of the hero; he is Dostoevsky reminding us that “God and the Devil are fighting, and the battleground is the heart of man!”; he is a Puritan minister informing us that pain may be good, for to suffer is to be given the opportunity to grow and prepare for the mystery of death and the perils of hell; he is a preacher frustrated by his congregation's blind faith in innocence at a time in history when innocence is not only a lie but a crime; he is a seer trying to jar complacent men into an awareness of the despair that lies beneath their conventions; he is Toynbee telling us that if a civilization stagnates, it will die, that if a nation is to survive, it must respond to the reality of challenge; and he is Jonathan Swift couching his eschatological message in the language and imagery of scatology.

It is true that Mailer’s own faith in the validity of his message is not absolute. He has admitted that “the hipster gambles that he can be terribly, tragically wrong, and therefore be doomed to Hell.” But Mailer is a gambler, and so he continues to preach, to reiterate the old verities with a new twist, opening himself to the charge of anachronism, refusing to accept the “modern,” the valueless objectivity of the novels of Robbe-Grillet, the impersonal detachment of the music of Milton Babbitt, and the faceless hotels of Conrad Hilton. He will not give up like Hemingway’s Lieutenant Henry, who trusts only in the names of bridges, cities, and battles; Mailer chooses instead still to believe in God, Love, Heroism, Courage, and Death. His life and work are a contradiction of the message contained in one of his own poems:

{{quote|''Never'' ''contemplate'' ''nothing'' ''said'' ''the saint.''}}

History is a nightmare from which Mailer is still trying to awaken; but he will not take the easy way out in his struggle.

And yet if he is singleminded in his determination to view life in terms of ultimate battle, his desire for victory is not without ambivalence. His involvement in the pop world has become more than peripheral with his play, his new underground movie (where he is cast as a Mafia gangster), his new novel, and his own life style (where he tries to enact simultaneously the roles of writer, fighter, celebrity, lover, and messiah); and like most of the major figures in this eclectic pop world, he is flirting with psychosis. To live on the edge of so many different scenes is to belong truly to none; and to act like so many different people is to endanger the self. The sign of surrender, the indication that the battle has been lost, is the sense of succumbing to Dread. It is not impossible that Mailer’s Dread is essentially the fulfillment of his own unacknowledged ''desire'' for that Dread, the intuition that all those "psychotic" ideas and actions he lives by are simply the expression of a profound longing for madness and extinction.

Mailer holds himself together, however, by virtue of his work. Through creation he is able to come closer to the unattainable goal of total victory in the struggle which is the metaphor for his vision of life. Even if we do not believe in it ourselves, even if we are impatient with the intellectual naivete of a man who only a decade ago speculated that perhaps he was the first person to state that God was in danger of dying, and even if we are annoyed by the heavily flawed style of his prose, we can still learn from, and be moved by, this belligerent prophet. At the end of the stage version of ''The Deer Park'', he speaks of debates about God and Time and Sex as constituting “part of the poor odd dialogues which give hope to us noble humans for more than one night.” If Mailer has done this in his own work even a small part of the time, he is one Puritan our age can ill afford to lose.

=== Notes ===

{{notelist}}

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Norman Mailer Today

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{{Byline|last=Toback|first=James|note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967}}

Despite all his frenetic activity, it is not merely a sensual lust for experience that keeps Rojack going. On the contrary, while his senses are irrepressibly active (especially his sense of smell), his mind persists relentlessly in observation, commentary, and criticism. Any physical sensation is immediately subject to conscious analysis. In Rojack, sex is the effort of the body to rape the mind, to pulsate in waves of ecstasy transcending consciousness. But even here he fails. Whether it is with the German maid, Ruta, or with the Southern chanteuse, Cherry, Rojack’s concern is with power rather than with pleasure, with the psychic domination he achieves after ''her'' orgasm rather than with the physical rapture of his own. Like his creator, Rojack is far more a Puritan than a hedonist; life is struggle rather than joy.

So the question remains: why go on? It is true that Rojack puts his life on the line more than once. The murder of his wife, the competition with mafia goons, the insults to a former boxing champion in an unfriendly bar, and, especially, the nocturnal walk on the parapet of a windy terrace thirty stories above the ground—all could easily have resulted in his death. But rather than misguided suicide attempts, these acts are a part of Rojack’s supreme effort to prepare himself for death. The goal in life is finally religious—to make oneself as fit as possible to meet the unknown after life is done, to face the judgment of eternity; and Rojack is possessed by the faith of the gambler. Like a poker player who is convinced that his next hand is bound to be the lucky one, Rojack acts on the assumption that the longer he lives, the more heroic he may become.

And the assumption is not unfounded, for Rojack’s heroism is boundless. He argues with demonic voices and then dispels them, he outwits and outfights his indomitable tycoon father-in-law, and, above all, he humiliates and beats up a sexually magnetic Negro hero, Shago Martin. Not only does Rojack cause Cherry to have her first sexual explosion, after Shago had failed with her for months, but through a combination of psychic intuition and physical power he changes a situation where Shago is standing over him with a knife to one in which he is standing over Shago, who is now writhing pulp at the bottom of a staircase (and all in the space of ten minutes).

Practically everything Rojack says or does suggests parallels to his creator’s personal life, and the episode with Shago Martin, recalling the Mailer-Liston confrontation, is perhaps the richest example. If Liston was a large part of Mailer, Shago’s ode to himself is easily applicable to the dark sides of both Rojack and Mailer.

{{quote|“I’m a lily-white devil . . . . I’m just the future, in love with myself, that’s the future. I got twenty faces, I talk the tongues, I’m a devil . . . . I’m cut off from my own lines, I try to speak from my heart and it gets snatched.”}}

If Mailer’s encounter with Liston faintly suggested repressed homosexuality transformed into manly fortitude, Rojack’s encounter with Shago positively smacks of it. Like Shago, he has Cherry, and his immediate concern after intercourse is in comparison. He can hardly hide his elation when she implies that he was better, a predictable response when one recalls his reaction the night before to Cherry’s paean to Shago’s sexual prowess. Her emphasis on the word “stud” had made Rojack uneasy.

{{quote|The word went in like a blow to the soft part of my belly. There was something final in the verdict as if there were a sexual round robin where the big people played. All the big Negroes and the big whites.}}

Like Mailer, Rojack lives his life as if it were some dark experiment which has gradually but relentlessly gained the upper hand so that he is free to act only within its prescribed limits. Again like Mailer, Rojack is paying the price for a lifelong habit of thinking in metaphor; image (like God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell) has become reality, and that reality has become a master demanding undivided attention. It is a reality of dreams, and the dreams in ''An American Dream'' are endless: the sexual dreams of Don Juan, the Alger dream of the self-made man, the outsider’s dream of the inside, the Mafia’s dream of money and power, the square’s dream of the life of the hipster, and the hipster’s dream of death. None of these dreams has turned entirely into nightmare, but each has gone sour, like the soul of the nation which fabricated them. But the saddest dream of all is Stephen Rojack’s (and perhaps Mailer’s) dream of sanity.

{{quote|I was caught. I wanted to escape from that intelligence which let me know of murders in one direction and conceive of [love] from the other, I wanted to be free of magic, the tongue of the devil, the dread of the Lord, I wanted to be some sort of rational man again . . . But I could not move.}}

But what if, unlike Mailer and Rojack, one is ''not'' obsessed with psychopathic extremes? What if one’s patience expires at exhibitions of braggadocio? What if one appreciates wit (of which there is some) but loves humor (of which there is none)? Probably one would call ''An American Dream'' a joke, and a bad joke at that. The infantile demand for intermediate and complete attention; the insistence on being taken seriously, literally, and on his own terms at all times; the inability to treat his agony with even a suggestion of laughter or a trace of irony; the sloppy inconsistency of much of the dialogue; and, finally, the sheer loudness that informs the whole novel, a tone alternating between agitation and hysteria—all this works to tire, frustrate, and, at times, infuriate even the most sympathetic reader.

And yet somehow exasperation yields to the suspicion that Mailer’s is a mind which understands as much about the quality of contemporary American life as any now active, a mind which could well represent the last intellectually significant and articulate thrust of an eschatological and religious fervor that may be sorely missed once it is gone. So one is willing to indulge Mailer further, even to thank him once again. And one is willing to accept Rojack’s vision of himself as a fair description of Mailer:

{{quote|I had leverage; I was one of the more active figures of the city—no one could be certain finally that nothing large would come to me.}}

In 1960 there was reason to hope for a dramatic rebirth of energy and heroism; even the darkest passages of ''The Presidential Papers'' were balanced by intimations that America was not yet doomed. A man could function in society and still find opportunity to grow. By 1966, dream had at last soured into nightmare. ''Cannibals and Christians'', a collection of essays, “poems” (or, more accurately, epigrams and graffiti), and interviews (both real and imaginary), is a sermon whose vision of hell has become dire and inevitable. From Mailer’s pulpit comes a most disconcerting premonition:

{{quote|The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again; it has perhaps not been here so intensely in thirty years, not since the Nazis were prospering, but it is coming . . . . The world is entering a time of plague.}}

Totalitarianism has suffocated individuality; the Hilton in San Francisco is emulated before the Plaza in New York; housing projects look like nurseries and nurseries look like hospitals; appliances are plastic rather than metal; vile bully tactics in Vietnam have developed from simple occupation of Southeast Asia; the psychotic has taken over from the psychopath; pornography has gained another step on sexuality. In a word, Lyndon Johnson has replaced John Kennedy.

Johnson, Mailer tells us, is the archetypically alienated figure—a fact which can be observed in his prose (perhaps “the worst ever written by any political leader anywhere”), in his boorish manners, in his deceitfulness, in his voracious ego, and in his almost arrogant lack of style. If a President has a profound effect on the quality of life during his era—and Mailer is convinced that he does—then hope is indeed dim. And the consequences may be far worse than possible loss of prestige, power, or land; for there is the unknown to face after death, and the possibility that there is no absolution for cowardly sins.

But Mailer’s exhortations against the insanities of the age of Johnson do not come from one whose own tensions—between radicalism and Puritanism, heroism, and buffoonery, the playboy’s life and the intellectual’s vocation—are anywhere near control. And there is a further complication in Mailer’s complex personality, an unmistakably reactionary streak, not unrelated in impulse to his intense religiosity, which challenges his natural and professed political radicalism. Apart from the kind of conservatism that is common property among many contemporary radicals—a quasi-isolationism that urges America to terminate involvement in practically all foreign countries and a profound distrust of the liberal establishment—Mailer holds positions on matters not directly political which fall neatly into line with the conservative spirit (he is, for example, strongly opposed to birth control and abortion, and he speaks of homosexuality as a “vice”). But two pieces of evidence (both from the essay on the 1964 Republican Convention) are particularly striking. First, Mailer confesses to a buried urge to see Barry Goldwater elected:

{{quote|I knew Goldwater could win because something in me leaped out at the thought; a part of me, a devil, wished to take that choice.}}

Secondly, Mailer’s ambivalence toward Negroes, manifested earlier only in the individual cases of Sonny Liston and Shago Martin, is now explicitly broadened. His reaction to James Baldwin’s suggestion that there may be no remission for the white man’s sins against the Negro is violent:

{{quote|I had to throttle an impulse to . . . call Baldwin, and say, “You get this, baby. There’s a shit storm coming like nothing you ever knew. So ask yourself if what you desire is for the white to kill every black so that there be total remission of guilt in your black soul.”}}

If the relief of such tensions and conflicts and the consequent fortification of the self can come only from bold action, then Mailer’s primary means of personal salvation lies in his work. It is in the very act of creating the artistic sermons which he claims will show us the way to redemption that Mailer redeems himself. His influence has given rise to several “cults.” At one extreme there is a segment of the underground hipster community, closely involved with drugs, which worships him as the high priest of God and Sex. At the other end is that increasingly large group of liberal and radical intellectuals, centered in New York and comprised of such critics as Norman Podhoretz, Steven Marcus, and Richard Poirier who see in Mailer, as Marcus once put it, the embodiment of extraordinary literary talent, personal honesty and loyalty, and penetrating social criticism. And yet, in the last analysis, Mailer’s influence is limited, for the Word has hardly reached, let alone changed, the heart of the land he is trying to transform.

From the first three sermons of the 1960’s, the congregation is likely to walk away interested and, sometimes, excited, rather than transformed. Entertainment overshadows eschatology. And in Mailer’s fourth effort of the 6o’s, ''The Deer Park'', a stage adaption of his novel of 1956, religion gives way completely to comedy (both intentional and unintentional).{{efn|One ignores, for Mailer’s sake as much as for one’s own, ''Deaths for the Ladies'', a collection of words which the author extravagantly describes as poetry.}}

This is not to imply that Mailer has abandoned his urgent message; practically all his obsessions of the 6o’s are here: sex, love, lust, heroism, cowardice, power, God, and the Devil. If Mailer has added anything new to his philosophy, it lies in the expansion of his idea as sexual freedom and it is expressed through the pimp Marion Faye, who “follows sex to the end, turns queer, bangs dogs, and sniffs toes.” But in the figure of Herman Teppis (or
“H.T.”), a Hollywood mogul in the tradition of Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn, genuine humor replaces heavy rhetoric and caustic wit. In the desert of endless debates over who is—and who is not—a genius in bed, Teppis's pronouncements are oases.

{{quote|You know what an artist is? He's a crook. They even got a Frenchman now, you know what, he picks people’s pockets at society parties. They say he’s the greatest writer in France. No wonder they need a dictator, those crazy French. I could never get along with the French.}}

But Mailer pays a price for his success in the comic mode. One laughs so hard at Teppis that one keeps right on laughing, even at the tortured, self-searching characters—spokesmen all for traditional Maileresque values—one is meant to take seriously. If there is a lesson to be learned from this play, it is that comedy may be suitable to many dramatic modes, including tragedy, but that it has no place at all in eschatological homily.

After a pop play perhaps one should have expected, or at least have been prepared for, a pop novel from Mailer’s pen. Nevertheless, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' comes as a shock. Radical as the ideas contained in them may have been, Mailer’s earlier novels were more or less conservative in form: except for ''Barbary Shore'', they were all clearly in the mainstream of the realist-naturalist tradition. But in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' ordered syntax has yielded to the total liberation of the word; intricate plot structure has given way to hallucinatory fantasy; fully realized characters living in what we know as the real world have been replaced by the protean apparitions in Mailer’s mind; the last trace of ratiocination has been obliterated by a relentless bombardment of sensual impressions and apocalyptic utterances. Dreiser and Farrell have disappeared in favor of Joyce, Faulkner, Burroughs, McLuhan, and Norman O. Brown.

At one point or another virtually every theory Mailer has ever had appears—but now with an important difference. Rather than preaching his messages baldly as in the past, Mailer drops them mockingly. And the mockery is directed both at himself and at those he would edify.

{{quote|The world is going shazam, hahray harout, fart in my toot, air we breathe is the prez, present dent, and god has always wanted more from man than man has wished to give him. Zig a zig a zig. That is why we live in dread of god.}}

Even the seminal concept of Dread is translated into the pop language of rock-and-roll. A vast chasm of culture and sensibility separates the tone of Rojack’s agonized monologues from the narrative voice of the present novel.

{{quote|. . . Mr. Sender, who sends out that Awe and Dread is up on their back . . . because they ''alone'', man, you dig? They all ''alone'', it’s a fright wig, man, that Upper silence alone is enough to bugger you, whoo-ee.}}

Indeed, the very claim to a prophetic stance in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is established in a similarly (and intentionally) ambiguous tone.

{{quote|This is your own wandering troubadour brought right up to date, here to sell America its new handbook on how to live . . . . We're going to tell you what it's all about.}}

Although there is a bare minimum of dramatic tension or external conflict, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' has several “characters,” each significant primarily on a symbolic plane. D.J. (Disc Jockey, Dr. Jekyll), the adolescent hero narrator of patrician Texas blood, is sometimes convinced that he is really a “Harlem Nigger,” and since “there is no such thing as a totally false perception,” perhaps he is. Not literally, of course, but rather in the same way that Mailer recognized Sonny Liston in himself and in the same way that the white hipster of “The White Negro” is, in his psychic makeup, black. If D.J. is the hipster, Rusty, his father, is the square, a corporation tycoon in Dallas—coarse, selfish, and, at heart, a coward. Tex (the Mr. Hyde to D.J.’s Dr. Jekyll) is part Indian, manly, bisexual, and the son of an undertaker.

The three go bear hunting in Alaska, but the most important action takes place in D.J.’s mind. At one point he has an urge to turn his gun on his father and “blast a shot, thump in his skull.” Although he resists, he soon commits the act symbolically by contradicting his father’s warning and courageously approaching a wounded bear, putting his life on the line, while his father lies hidden, waiting for the bear to become helpless before firing the fatal shot. Thus liberated from paternal authority, D.J. finds his instincts for love and battle shifted to Tex, D.J. encounters nakedly for the first time his other self. And through a mutual awareness of their mutual desire for both intercourse and fratricide, D.J. and Tex finally achieve a sense of purification and personal integration.

{{quote|. . . Tex Hyde . . . was finally afraid to prong D.J., because D.J. once become a bitch would kill him, and D.J. breathing that in by the wide-awake of the dark with Aurora Borealis jumping to the beat of his heart knew he could make a try to prong Tex, there was a chance to get in and steal the iron from Texas’ ass and put it on his own . . . now it was there, murder between them under all friendship, for god was a beast, not a man, and god said, “Go out and kill—fulfill my will, go and kill,” and they hung there each of them on the knife of the divide in all conflict of lust to own the other . . . Killer brothers, owned by something, prince of darkness, lord of light, they did not know; they just knew that telepathy was on them, they had been touched forever by the North and each bit a drop of blood from his own finger and touched them across and met blood to blood . . . .}}

In one eternal moment the Manichean polarities that have obsessed Mailer are at last synthesized—God and the Devil, heaven and hell, nature and man, Negro and white, Dallas and Harlem, phallus and anus.

But why ''are we'' in Vietnam? What relation does the title have to D.J., Tex, Rusty, bear-hunting, Harlem, Dallas, liberated syntax, or Maileresque eschatology? In the strictest sense, nothing at all. But in a broader, metaphysical sense, the title can be explained as another urgent warning to America. We are in Vietnam because we, as a nation, are going, or have already gone, insane. Mailer’s development from politics to meta-politics is complete. The world—and especially America—is now viewed as an expression of Mailer’s own most extreme longings and fantasies. Subject and object, chaos and order, internal imagination and external reality are united in a fusion of creator and creation.
In an ultimate sense Mailer is claiming not only relation to America but identity with her. It is likely that he has himself in mind when he writes of Rusty:

{{quote|His secret is that he sees himself as one of the pillars of the firmament, yeah, man—he reads the world’s doom in his own fuckup. If he is less great than God intended him to be, then America is in Trouble. One cannot help wondering whether ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'', unruly and overwhelming, is not at least as much a symptom of our “Trouble” as a cure for it.

Throughout the past decade Mailer has made the world of the hipster the stuff of his sermons—novels, essays, and plays—as well as the style of his personal life. He calls it “a muted cool religious revival,” and a better description (at least of his ''intentions'') would be hard to find. He is Zarathustra coming down from the mountain with his vision of the hero; he is Dostoevsky reminding us that “God and the Devil are fighting, and the battleground is the heart of man!”; he is a Puritan minister informing us that pain may be good, for to suffer is to be given the opportunity to grow and prepare for the mystery of death and the perils of hell; he is a preacher frustrated by his congregation's blind faith in innocence at a time in history when innocence is not only a lie but a crime; he is a seer trying to jar complacent men into an awareness of the despair that lies beneath their conventions; he is Toynbee telling us that if a civilization stagnates, it will die, that if a nation is to survive, it must respond to the reality of challenge; and he is Jonathan Swift couching his eschatological message in the language and imagery of scatology.

It is true that Mailer’s own faith in the validity of his message is not absolute. He has admitted that “the hipster gambles that he can be terribly, tragically wrong, and therefore be doomed to Hell.” But Mailer is a gambler, and so he continues to preach, to reiterate the old verities with a new twist, opening himself to the charge of anachronism, refusing to accept the “modern,” the valueless objectivity of the novels of Robbe-Grillet, the impersonal detachment of the music of Milton Babbitt, and the faceless hotels of Conrad Hilton. He will not give up like Hemingway’s Lieutenant Henry, who trusts only in the names of bridges, cities, and battles; Mailer chooses instead still to believe in God, Love, Heroism, Courage, and Death. His life and work are a contradiction of the message contained in one of his own poems:

{{quote|''Never'' ''contemplate'' ''nothing'' ''said'' ''the saint.''}}

History is a nightmare from which Mailer is still trying to awaken; but he will not take the easy way out in his struggle.

And yet if he is singleminded in his determination to view life in terms of ultimate battle, his desire for victory is not without ambivalence. His involvement in the pop world has become more than peripheral with his play, his new underground movie (where he is cast as a Mafia gangster), his new novel, and his own life style (where he tries to enact simultaneously the roles of writer, fighter, celebrity, lover, and messiah); and like most of the major figures in this eclectic pop world, he is flirting with psychosis. To live on the edge of so many different scenes is to belong truly to none; and to act like so many different people is to endanger the self. The sign of surrender, the indication that the battle has been lost, is the sense of succumbing to Dread. It is not impossible that Mailer’s Dread is essentially the fulfillment of his own unacknowledged ''desire'' for that Dread, the intuition that all those "psychotic" ideas and actions he lives by are simply the expression of a profound longing for madness and extinction.

Mailer holds himself together, however, by virtue of his work. Through creation he is able to come closer to the unattainable goal of total victory in the struggle which is the metaphor for his vision of life. Even if we do not believe in it ourselves, even if we are impatient with the intellectual naivete of a man who only a decade ago speculated that perhaps he was the first person to state that God was in danger of dying, and even if we are annoyed by the heavily flawed style of his prose, we can still learn from, and be moved by, this belligerent prophet. At the end of the stage version of ''The Deer Park'', he speaks of debates about God and Time and Sex as constituting “part of the poor odd dialogues which give hope to us noble humans for more than one night.” If Mailer has done this in his own work even a small part of the time, he is one Puritan our age can ill afford to lose.

=== Notes ===

{{notelist}}

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Norman Mailer Today

2025-03-26T01:21:15Z

Kamyers: Adding paragraphs

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2025-03-25T00:36:28Z

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{{Byline|last=Toback|first=James|note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967}}

With Deborah’s death begins the arduous process of Rojack’s rebirth; he realizes that if murder is sometimes necessary, it is never simple. The gods, like furies, haunt him; he is acutely conscious of everything he thinks or says or does, for now cowardice or weakness or smallness will bring swift retribution—Dread, insanity, and the abyss. To strengthen himself, and to find, once again, something he can honestly call love are the ends of Rojack’s quest, but fulfillment of it and freedom from these new furies can be attained only through heroism, through seeking danger and daring death.

{{quote|. . . I believed that God was not love but courage. Love can come only as a reward . . . . A voice said in my mind: “That which you fear most is what you must do.”}}

The very phrasing of the passage is related to the nature of the punishment that will accrue if the command goes unheeded. Rojack’s mental life is split into a “voice” and “mind,” a separation dangerously close to the empty panic of schizophrenia.

But if madness looms as the penalty for prudence and cowardice (Mailer uses the two as almost indistinguishable), it is also possible that Dread will overwhelm even the bold Promethean. Rojack knows that “if man wished to steal the secret of the gods . . . they would defend themselves and destroy whichever man came too close.” With so narrow a chance of escape from insanity and an eternity in the abyss, suicide quite naturally presents itself as an alternative. What is to hold one back?

Despite all his frenetic activity, it is not merely a sensual lust for experience that keeps Rojack going. On the contrary, while his senses are irrepressibly active (especially his sense of smell), his mind persists relentlessly in observation, commentary, and criticism. Any physical sensation is immediately subject to conscious analysis. In Rojack, sex is the effort of the body to rape the mind, to pulsate in waves of ecstasy transcending consciousness. But even here he fails. Whether it is with the German maid, Ruta, or with the Southern chanteuse, Cherry, Rojack’s concern is with power rather than with pleasure, with the psychic domination he achieves after ''her'' orgasm rather than with the physical rapture of his own. Like his creator, Rojack is far more a Puritan than a hedonist; life is struggle rather than joy.

So the question remains: why go on? It is true that Rojack puts his life on the line more than once. The murder of his wife, the competition with mafia goons, the insults to a former boxing champion in an unfriendly bar, and, especially, the nocturnal walk on the parapet of a windy terrace thirty stories above the ground—all could easily have resulted in his death. But rather than misguided suicide attempts, these acts are a part of Rojack’s supreme effort to prepare himself for death. The goal in life is finally religious—to make oneself as fit as possible to meet the unknown after life is done, to face the judgment of eternity; and Rojack is possessed by the faith of the gambler. Like a poker player who is convinced that his next hand is bound to be the lucky one, Rojack acts on the assumption that the longer he lives, the more heroic he may become.

And the assumption is not unfounded, for Rojack’s heroism is boundless. He argues with demonic voices and then dispels them, he outwits and outfights his indomitable tycoon father-in-law, and, above all, he humiliates and beats up a sexually magnetic Negro hero, Shago Martin. Not only does Rojack cause Cherry to have her first sexual explosion, after Shago had failed with her for months, but through a combination of psychic intuition and physical power he changes a situation where Shago is standing over him with a knife to one in which he is standing over Shago, who is now writhing pulp at the bottom of a staircase (and all in the space of ten minutes).

Practically everything Rojack says or does suggests parallels to his creator’s personal life, and the episode with Shago Martin, recalling the Mailer-Liston confrontation, is perhaps the richest example. If Liston was a large part of Mailer, Shago’s ode to himself is easily applicable to the dark sides of both Rojack and Mailer.

{{quote|“I’m a lily-white devil . . . . I’m just the future, in love with myself, that’s the future. I got twenty faces, I talk the tongues, I’m a devil . . . . I’m cut off from my own lines, I try to speak from my heart and it gets snatched.”}}

If Mailer’s encounter with Liston faintly suggested repressed homosexuality transformed into manly fortitude, Rojack’s encounter with Shago positively smacks of it. Like Shago, he has Cherry, and his immediate concern after intercourse is in comparison. He can hardly hide his elation when she implies that he was better, a predictable response when one recalls his reaction the night before to Cherry’s paean to Shago’s sexual prowess. Her emphasis on the word “stud” had made Rojack uneasy.

{{quote|The word went in like a blow to the soft part of my belly. There was something final in the verdict as if there were a sexual round robin where the big people played. All the big Negroes and the big whites.}}

Like Mailer, Rojack lives his life as if it were some dark experiment which has gradually but relentlessly gained the upper hand so that he is free to act only within its prescribed limits. Again like Mailer, Rojack is paying the price for a lifelong habit of thinking in metaphor; image (like God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell) has become reality, and that reality has become a master demanding undivided attention. It is a reality of dreams, and the dreams in ''An American Dream'' are endless: the sexual dreams of Don Juan, the Alger dream of the self-made man, the outsider’s dream of the inside, the Mafia’s dream of money and power, the square’s dream of the life of the hipster, and the hipster’s dream of death. None of these dreams has turned entirely into nightmare, but each has gone sour, like the soul of the nation which fabricated them. But the saddest dream of all is Stephen Rojack’s (and perhaps Mailer’s) dream of sanity.

{{quote|I was caught. I wanted to escape from that intelligence which let me know of murders in one direction and conceive of [love] from the other, I wanted to be free of magic, the tongue of the devil, the dread of the Lord, I wanted to be some sort of rational man again . . . But I could not move.}}

But what if, unlike Mailer and Rojack, one is ''not'' obsessed with psychopathic extremes? What if one’s patience expires at exhibitions of braggadocio? What if one appreciates wit (of which there is some) but loves humor (of which there is none)? Probably one would call ''An American Dream'' a joke, and a bad joke at that. The infantile demand for intermediate and complete attention; the insistence on being taken seriously, literally, and on his own terms at all times; the inability to treat his agony with even a suggestion of laughter or a trace of irony; the sloppy inconsistency of much of the dialogue; and, finally, the sheer loudness that informs the whole novel, a tone alternating between agitation and hysteria—all this works to tire, frustrate, and, at times, infuriate even the most sympathetic reader.

And yet somehow exasperation yields to the suspicion that Mailer’s is a mind which understands as much about the quality of contemporary American life as any now active, a mind which could well represent the last intellectually significant and articulate thrust of an eschatological and religious fervor that may be sorely missed once it is gone. So one is willing to indulge Mailer further, even to thank him once again. And one is willing to accept Rojack’s vision of himself as a fair description of Mailer:

{{quote|I had leverage; I was one of the more active figures of the city—no one could be certain finally that nothing large would come to me.}}

In 1960 there was reason to hope for a dramatic rebirth of energy and heroism; even the darkest passages of ''The Presidential Papers'' were balanced by intimations that America was not yet doomed. A man could function in society and still find opportunity to grow. By 1966, dream had at last soured into nightmare. ''Cannibals and Christians'', a collection of essays, “poems” (or, more accurately, epigrams and graffiti), and interviews (both real and imaginary), is a sermon whose vision of hell has become dire and inevitable. From Mailer’s pulpit comes a most disconcerting premonition:

{{quote|The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again; it has perhaps not been here so intensely in thirty years, not since the Nazis were prospering, but it is coming . . . . The world is entering a time of plague.}}

Totalitarianism has suffocated individuality; the Hilton in San Francisco is emulated before the Plaza in New York; housing projects look like nurseries and nurseries look like hospitals; appliances are plastic rather than metal; vile bully tactics in Vietnam have developed from simple occupation of Southeast Asia; the psychotic has taken over from the psychopath; pornography has gained another step on sexuality. In a word, Lyndon Johnson has replaced John Kennedy.

Johnson, Mailer tells us, is the archetypically alienated figure—a fact which can be observed in his prose (perhaps “the worst ever written by any political leader anywhere”), in his boorish manners, in his deceitfulness, in his voracious ego, and in his almost arrogant lack of style. If a President has a profound effect on the quality of life during his era—and Mailer is convinced that he does—then hope is indeed dim. And the consequences may be far worse than possible loss of prestige, power, or land; for there is the unknown to face after death, and the possibility that there is no absolution for cowardly sins.

But Mailer’s exhortations against the insanities of the age of Johnson do not come from one whose own tensions—between radicalism and Puritanism, heroism, and buffoonery, the playboy’s life and the intellectual’s vocation—are anywhere near control. And there is a further complication in Mailer’s complex personality, an unmistakably reactionary streak, not unrelated in impulse to his intense religiosity, which challenges his natural and professed political radicalism. Apart from the kind of conservatism that is common property among many contemporary radicals—a quasi-isolationism that urges America to terminate involvement in practically all foreign countries and a profound distrust of the liberal establishment—Mailer holds positions on matters not directly political which fall neatly into line with the conservative spirit (he is, for example, strongly opposed to birth control and abortion, and he speaks of homosexuality as a “vice”). But two pieces of evidence (both from the essay on the 1964 Republican Convention) are particularly striking. First, Mailer confesses to a buried urge to see Barry Goldwater elected:

{{quote|I knew Goldwater could win because something in me leaped out at the thought; a part of me, a devil, wished to take that choice.}}

Secondly, Mailer’s ambivalence toward Negroes, manifested earlier only in the individual cases of Sonny Liston and Shago Martin, is now explicitly broadened. His reaction to James Baldwin’s suggestion that there may be no remission for the white man’s sins against the Negro is violent:

{{quote|I had to throttle an impulse to . . . call Baldwin, and say, “You get this, baby. There’s a shit storm coming like nothing you ever knew. So ask yourself if what you desire is for the white to kill every black so that there be total remission of guilt in your black soul.”}}

If the relief of such tensions and conflicts and the consequent fortification of the self can come only from bold action, then Mailer’s primary means of personal salvation lies in his work. It is in the very act of creating the artistic sermons which he claims will show us the way to redemption that Mailer redeems himself. His influence has given rise to several “cults.” At one extreme there is a segment of the underground hipster community, closely involved with drugs, which worships him as the high priest of God and Sex. At the other end is that increasingly large group of liberal and radical intellectuals, centered in New York and comprised of such critics as Norman Podhoretz, Steven Marcus, and Richard Poirier who see in Mailer, as Marcus once put it, the embodiment of extraordinary literary talent, personal honesty and loyalty, and penetrating social criticism. And yet, in the last analysis, Mailer’s influence is limited, for the Word has hardly reached, let alone changed, the heart of the land he is trying to transform.

From the first three sermons of the 1960’s, the congregation is likely to walk away interested and, sometimes, excited, rather than transformed. Entertainment overshadows eschatology. And in Mailer’s fourth effort of the 6o’s, ''The Deer Park'', a stage adaption of his novel of 1956, religion gives way completely to comedy (both intentional and unintentional).{{efn|One ignores, for Mailer’s sake as much as for one’s own, ''Deaths for the Ladies'', a collection of words which the author extravagantly describes as poetry.}}

This is not to imply that Mailer has abandoned his urgent message; practically all his obsessions of the 6o’s are here: sex, love, lust, heroism, cowardice, power, God, and the Devil. If Mailer has added anything new to his philosophy, it lies in the expansion of his idea as sexual freedom and it is expressed through the pimp Marion Faye, who “follows sex to the end, turns queer, bangs dogs, and sniffs toes.” But in the figure of Herman Teppis (or
“H.T.”), a Hollywood mogul in the tradition of Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn, genuine humor replaces heavy rhetoric and caustic wit. In the desert of endless debates over who is—and who is not—a genius in bed, Teppis's pronouncements are oases.

{{quote|You know what an artist is? He's a crook. They even got a Frenchman now, you know what, he picks people’s pockets at society parties. They say he’s the greatest writer in France. No wonder they need a dictator, those crazy French. I could never get along with the French.}}

But Mailer pays a price for his success in the comic mode. One laughs so hard at Teppis that one keeps right on laughing, even at the tortured, self-searching characters—spokesmen all for traditional Maileresque values—one is meant to take seriously. If there is a lesson to be learned from this play, it is that comedy may be suitable to many dramatic modes, including tragedy, but that it has no place at all in eschatological homily.

After a pop play perhaps one should have expected, or at least have been prepared for, a pop novel from Mailer’s pen. Nevertheless, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' comes as a shock. Radical as the ideas contained in them may have been, Mailer’s earlier novels were more or less conservative in form: except for ''Barbary Shore'', they were all clearly in the mainstream of the realist-naturalist tradition. But in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' ordered syntax has yielded to the total liberation of the word; intricate plot structure has given way to hallucinatory fantasy; fully realized characters living in what we know as the real world have been replaced by the protean apparitions in Mailer’s mind; the last trace of ratiocination has been obliterated by a relentless bombardment of sensual impressions and apocalyptic utterances. Dreiser and Farrell have disappeared in favor of Joyce, Faulkner, Burroughs, McLuhan, and Norman O. Brown.

At one point or another virtually every theory Mailer has ever had appears—but now with an important difference. Rather than preaching his messages baldly as in the past, Mailer drops them mockingly. And the mockery is directed both at himself and at those he would edify.

{{quote|The world is going shazam, hahray harout, fart in my toot, air we breathe is the prez, present dent, and god has always wanted more from man than man has wished to give him. Zig a zig a zig. That is why we live in dread of god.}}

Even the seminal concept of Dread is translated into the pop language of rock-and-roll. A vast chasm of culture and sensibility separates the tone of Rojack’s agonized monologues from the narrative voice of the present novel.

{{quote|. . . Mr. Sender, who sends out that Awe and Dread is up on their back . . . because they ''alone'', man, you dig? They all ''alone'', it’s a fright wig, man, that Upper silence alone is enough to bugger you, whoo-ee.}}

Indeed, the very claim to a prophetic stance in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is established in a similarly (and intentionally) ambiguous tone.

{{quote|This is your own wandering troubadour brought right up to date, here to sell America its new handbook on how to live . . . . We're going to tell you what it's all about.}}

Although there is a bare minimum of dramatic tension or external conflict, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' has several “characters,” each significant primarily on a symbolic plane. D.J. (Disc Jockey, Dr. Jekyll), the adolescent hero narrator of patrician Texas blood, is sometimes convinced that he is really a “Harlem Nigger,” and since “there is no such thing as a totally false perception,” perhaps he is. Not literally, of course, but rather in the same way that Mailer recognized Sonny Liston in himself and in the same way that the white hipster of “The White Negro” is, in his psychic makeup, black. If D.J. is the hipster, Rusty, his father, is the square, a corporation tycoon in Dallas—coarse, selfish, and, at heart, a coward. Tex (the Mr. Hyde to D.J.’s Dr. Jekyll) is part Indian, manly, bisexual, and the son of an undertaker.

The three go bear hunting in Alaska, but the most important action takes place in D.J.’s mind. At one point he has an urge to turn his gun on his father and “blast a shot, thump in his skull.” Although he resists, he soon commits the act symbolically by contradicting his father’s warning and courageously approaching a wounded bear, putting his life on the line, while his father lies hidden, waiting for the bear to become helpless before firing the fatal shot. Thus liberated from paternal authority, D.J. finds his instincts for love and battle shifted to Tex, D.J. encounters nakedly for the first time his other self. And through a mutual awareness of their mutual desire for both intercourse and fratricide, D.J. and Tex finally achieve a sense of purification and personal integration.

{{quote|. . . Tex Hyde . . . was finally afraid to prong D.J., because D.J. once become a bitch would kill him, and D.J. breathing that in by the wide-awake of the dark with Aurora Borealis jumping to the beat of his heart knew he could make a try to prong Tex, there was a chance to get in and steal the iron from Texas’ ass and put it on his own . . . now it was there, murder between them under all friendship, for god was a beast, not a man, and god said, “Go out and kill—fulfill my will, go and kill,” and they hung there each of them on the knife of the divide in all conflict of lust to own the other . . . Killer brothers, owned by something, prince of darkness, lord of light, they did not know; they just knew that telepathy was on them, they had been touched forever by the North and each bit a drop of blood from his own finger and touched them across and met blood to blood . . . .}}

In one eternal moment the Manichean polarities that have obsessed Mailer are at last synthesized—God and the Devil, heaven and hell, nature and man, Negro and white, Dallas and Harlem, phallus and anus.

But why ''are we'' in Vietnam? What relation does the title have to D.J., Tex, Rusty, bear-hunting, Harlem, Dallas, liberated syntax, or Maileresque eschatology? In the strictest sense, nothing at all. But in a broader, metaphysical sense, the title can be explained as another urgent warning to America. We are in Vietnam because we, as a nation, are going, or have already gone, insane. Mailer’s development from politics to meta-politics is complete. The world—and especially America—is now viewed as an expression of Mailer’s own most extreme longings and fantasies. Subject and object, chaos and order, internal imagination and external reality are united in a fusion of creator and creation.
In an ultimate sense Mailer is claiming not only relation to America but identity with her. It is likely that he has himself in mind when he writes of Rusty:

{{quote|His secret is that he sees himself as one of the pillars of the firmament, yeah, man—he reads the world’s doom in his own fuckup. If he is less great than God intended him to be, then America is in Trouble. One cannot help wondering whether ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'', unruly and overwhelming, is not at least as much a symptom of our “Trouble” as a cure for it.

Throughout the past decade Mailer has made the world of the hipster the stuff of his sermons—novels, essays, and plays—as well as the style of his personal life. He calls it “a muted cool religious revival,” and a better description (at least of his ''intentions'') would be hard to find. He is Zarathustra coming down from the mountain with his vision of the hero; he is Dostoevsky reminding us that “God and the Devil are fighting, and the battleground is the heart of man!”; he is a Puritan minister informing us that pain may be good, for to suffer is to be given the opportunity to grow and prepare for the mystery of death and the perils of hell; he is a preacher frustrated by his congregation's blind faith in innocence at a time in history when innocence is not only a lie but a crime; he is a seer trying to jar complacent men into an awareness of the despair that lies beneath their conventions; he is Toynbee telling us that if a civilization stagnates, it will die, that if a nation is to survive, it must respond to the reality of challenge; and he is Jonathan Swift couching his eschatological message in the language and imagery of scatology.

It is true that Mailer’s own faith in the validity of his message is not absolute. He has admitted that “the hipster gambles that he can be terribly, tragically wrong, and therefore be doomed to Hell.” But Mailer is a gambler, and so he continues to preach, to reiterate the old verities with a new twist, opening himself to the charge of anachronism, refusing to accept the “modern,” the valueless objectivity of the novels of Robbe-Grillet, the impersonal detachment of the music of Milton Babbitt, and the faceless hotels of Conrad Hilton. He will not give up like Hemingway’s Lieutenant Henry, who trusts only in the names of bridges, cities, and battles; Mailer chooses instead still to believe in God, Love, Heroism, Courage, and Death. His life and work are a contradiction of the message contained in one of his own poems:

{{quote|''Never'' ''contemplate'' ''nothing'' ''said'' ''the saint.''}}

History is a nightmare from which Mailer is still trying to awaken; but he will not take the easy way out in his struggle.

And yet if he is singleminded in his determination to view life in terms of ultimate battle, his desire for victory is not without ambivalence. His involvement in the pop world has become more than peripheral with his play, his new underground movie (where he is cast as a Mafia gangster), his new novel, and his own life style (where he tries to enact simultaneously the roles of writer, fighter, celebrity, lover, and messiah); and like most of the major figures in this eclectic pop world, he is flirting with psychosis. To live on the edge of so many different scenes is to belong truly to none; and to act like so many different people is to endanger the self. The sign of surrender, the indication that the battle has been lost, is the sense of succumbing to Dread. It is not impossible that Mailer’s Dread is essentially the fulfillment of his own unacknowledged ''desire'' for that Dread, the intuition that all those "psychotic" ideas and actions he lives by are simply the expression of a profound longing for madness and extinction.

Mailer holds himself together, however, by virtue of his work. Through creation he is able to come closer to the unattainable goal of total victory in the struggle which is the metaphor for his vision of life. Even if we do not believe in it ourselves, even if we are impatient with the intellectual naivete of a man who only a decade ago speculated that perhaps he was the first person to state that God was in danger of dying, and even if we are annoyed by the heavily flawed style of his prose, we can still learn from, and be moved by, this belligerent prophet. At the end of the stage version of ''The Deer Park'', he speaks of debates about God and Time and Sex as constituting “part of the poor odd dialogues which give hope to us noble humans for more than one night.” If Mailer has done this in his own work even a small part of the time, he is one Puritan our age can ill afford to lose.

=== Notes ===

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{{Byline|last=Toback|first=James|note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967}}

With Deborah’s death begins the arduous process of Rojack’s rebirth; he realizes that if murder is sometimes necessary, it is never simple. The gods, like furies, haunt him; he is acutely conscious of everything he thinks or says or does, for now cowardice or weakness or smallness will bring swift retribution—Dread, insanity, and the abyss. To strengthen himself, and to find, once again, something he can honestly call love are the ends of Rojack’s quest, but fulfillment of it and freedom from these new furies can be attained only through heroism, through seeking danger and daring death.

{{quote|. . . I believed that God was not love but courage. Love can come only as a reward . . . . A voice said in my mind: “That which you fear most is what you must do.”}}

The very phrasing of the passage is related to the nature of the punishment that will accrue if the command goes unheeded. Rojack’s mental life is split into a “voice” and “mind,” a separation dangerously close to the empty panic of schizophrenia.

But if madness looms as the penalty for prudence and cowardice (Mailer uses the two as almost indistinguishable), it is also possible that Dread will overwhelm even the bold Promethean. Rojack knows that “if man wished to steal the secret of the gods . . . they would defend themselves and destroy whichever man came too close.” With so narrow a chance of escape from insanity and an eternity in the abyss, suicide quite naturally presents itself as an alternative. What is to hold one back?

Despite all his frenetic activity, it is not merely a sensual lust for experience that keeps Rojack going. On the contrary, while his senses are irrepressibly active (especially his sense of smell), his mind persists relentlessly in observation, commentary, and criticism. Any physical sensation is immediately subject to conscious analysis. In Rojack, sex is the effort of the body to rape the mind, to pulsate in waves of ecstasy transcending consciousness. But even here he fails. Whether it is with the German maid, Ruta, or with the Southern chanteuse, Cherry, Rojack’s concern is with power rather than with pleasure, with the psychic domination he achieves after ''her'' orgasm rather than with the physical rapture of his own. Like his creator, Rojack is far more a Puritan than a hedonist; life is struggle rather than joy.

So the question remains: why go on? It is true that Rojack puts his life on the line more than once. The murder of his wife, the competition with mafia goons, the insults to a former boxing champion in an unfriendly bar, and, especially, the nocturnal walk on the parapet of a windy terrace thirty stories above the ground—all could easily have resulted in his death. But rather than misguided suicide attempts, these acts are a part of Rojack’s supreme effort to prepare himself for death. The goal in life is finally religious—to make oneself as fit as possible to meet the unknown after life is done, to face the judgment of eternity; and Rojack is possessed by the faith of the gambler. Like a poker player who is convinced that his next hand is bound to be the lucky one, Rojack acts on the assumption that the longer he lives, the more heroic he may become.

And the assumption is not unfounded, for Rojack’s heroism is boundless. He argues with demonic voices and then dispels them, he outwits and outfights his indomitable tycoon father-in-law, and, above all, he humiliates and beats up a sexually magnetic Negro hero, Shago Martin. Not only does Rojack cause Cherry to have her first sexual explosion, after Shago had failed with her for months, but through a combination of psychic intuition and physical power he changes a situation where Shago is standing over him with a knife to one in which he is standing over Shago, who is now writhing pulp at the bottom of a staircase (and all in the space of ten minutes).

Practically everything Rojack says or does suggests parallels to his creator’s personal life, and the episode with Shago Martin, recalling the Mailer-Liston confrontation, is perhaps the richest example. If Liston was a large part of Mailer, Shago’s ode to himself is easily applicable to the dark sides of both Rojack and Mailer.

{{quote|“I’m a lily-white devil . . . . I’m just the future, in love with myself, that’s the future. I got twenty faces, I talk the tongues, I’m a devil . . . . I’m cut off from my own lines, I try to speak from my heart and it gets snatched.”}}

If Mailer’s encounter with Liston faintly suggested repressed homosexuality transformed into manly fortitude, Rojack’s encounter with Shago positively smacks of it. Like Shago, he has Cherry, and his immediate concern after intercourse is in comparison. He can hardly hide his elation when she implies that he was better, a predictable response when one recalls his reaction the night before to Cherry’s paean to Shago’s sexual prowess. Her emphasis on the word “stud” had made Rojack uneasy.

{{quote|The word went in like a blow to the soft part of my belly. There was something final in the verdict as if there were a sexual round robin where the big people played. All the big Negroes and the big whites.}}

Like Mailer, Rojack lives his life as if it were some dark experiment which has gradually but relentlessly gained the upper hand so that he is free to act only within its prescribed limits. Again like Mailer, Rojack is paying the price for a lifelong habit of thinking in metaphor; image (like God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell) has become reality, and that reality has become a master demanding undivided attention. It is a reality of dreams, and the dreams in ''An American Dream'' are endless: the sexual dreams of Don Juan, the Alger dream of the self-made man, the outsider’s dream of the inside, the Mafia’s dream of money and power, the square’s dream of the life of the hipster, and the hipster’s dream of death. None of these dreams has turned entirely into nightmare, but each has gone sour, like the soul of the nation which fabricated them. But the saddest dream of all is Stephen Rojack’s (and perhaps Mailer’s) dream of sanity.

{{quote|I was caught. I wanted to escape from that intelligence which let me know of murders in one direction and conceive of [love] from the other, I wanted to be free of magic, the tongue of the devil, the dread of the Lord, I wanted to be some sort of rational man again . . . But I could not move.}}

But what if, unlike Mailer and Rojack, one is ''not'' obsessed with psychopathic extremes? What if one’s patience expires at exhibitions of braggadocio? What if one appreciates wit (of which there is some) but loves humor (of which there is none)? Probably one would call ''An American Dream'' a joke, and a bad joke at that. The infantile demand for intermediate and complete attention; the insistence on being taken seriously, literally, and on his own terms at all times; the inability to treat his agony with even a suggestion of laughter or a trace of irony; the sloppy inconsistency of much of the dialogue; and, finally, the sheer loudness that informs the whole novel, a tone alternating between agitation and hysteria—all this works to tire, frustrate, and, at times, infuriate even the most sympathetic reader.

And yet somehow exasperation yields to the suspicion that Mailer’s is a mind which understands as much about the quality of contemporary American life as any now active, a mind which could well represent the last intellectually significant and articulate thrust of an eschatological and religious fervor that may be sorely missed once it is gone. So one is willing to indulge Mailer further, even to thank him once again. And one is willing to accept Rojack’s vision of himself as a fair description of Mailer:

{{quote|I had leverage; I was one of the more active figures of the city—no one could be certain finally that nothing large would come to me.}}

In 1960 there was reason to hope for a dramatic rebirth of energy and heroism; even the darkest passages of ''The Presidential Papers'' were balanced by intimations that America was not yet doomed. A man could function in society and still find opportunity to grow. By 1966, dream had at last soured into nightmare. ''Cannibals and Christians'', a collection of essays, “poems” (or, more accurately, epigrams and graffiti), and interviews (both real and imaginary), is a sermon whose vision of hell has become dire and inevitable. From Mailer’s pulpit comes a most disconcerting premonition:

{{quote|The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again; it has perhaps not been here so intensely in thirty years, not since the Nazis were prospering, but it is coming . . . . The world is entering a time of plague.}}

Totalitarianism has suffocated individuality; the Hilton in San Francisco is emulated before the Plaza in New York; housing projects look like nurseries and nurseries look like hospitals; appliances are plastic rather than metal; vile bully tactics in Vietnam have developed from simple occupation of Southeast Asia; the psychotic has taken over from the psychopath; pornography has gained another step on sexuality. In a word, Lyndon Johnson has replaced John Kennedy.

Johnson, Mailer tells us, is the archetypically alienated figure—a fact which can be observed in his prose (perhaps “the worst ever written by any political leader anywhere”), in his boorish manners, in his deceitfulness, in his voracious ego, and in his almost arrogant lack of style. If a President has a profound effect on the quality of life during his era—and Mailer is convinced that he does—then hope is indeed dim. And the consequences may be far worse than possible loss of prestige, power, or land; for there is the unknown to face after death, and the possibility that there is no absolution for cowardly sins.

But Mailer’s exhortations against the insanities of the age of Johnson do not come from one whose own tensions—between radicalism and Puritanism, heroism, and buffoonery, the playboy’s life and the intellectual’s vocation—are anywhere near control. And there is a further complication in Mailer’s complex personality, an unmistakably reactionary streak, not unrelated in impulse to his intense religiosity, which challenges his natural and professed political radicalism. Apart from the kind of conservatism that is common property among many contemporary radicals—a quasi-isolationism that urges America to terminate involvement in practically all foreign countries and a profound distrust of the liberal establishment—Mailer holds positions on matters not directly political which fall neatly into line with the conservative spirit (he is, for example, strongly opposed to birth control and abortion, and he speaks of homosexuality as a “vice”). But two pieces of evidence (both from the essay on the 1964 Republican Convention) are particularly striking. First, Mailer confesses to a buried urge to see Barry Goldwater elected:

{{quote|I knew Goldwater could win because something in me leaped out at the thought; a part of me, a devil, wished to take that choice.}}

Secondly, Mailer’s ambivalence toward Negroes, manifested earlier only in the individual cases of Sonny Liston and Shago Martin, is now explicitly broadened. His reaction to James Baldwin’s suggestion that there may be no remission for the white man’s sins against the Negro is violent:

{{quote|I had to throttle an impulse to . . . call Baldwin, and say, “You get this, baby. There’s a shit storm coming like nothing you ever knew. So ask yourself if what you desire is for the white to kill every black so that there be total remission of guilt in your black soul.”}}

If the relief of such tensions and conflicts and the consequent fortification of the self can come only from bold action, then Mailer’s primary means of personal salvation lies in his work. It is in the very act of creating the artistic sermons which he claims will show us the way to redemption that Mailer redeems himself. His influence has given rise to several “cults.” At one extreme there is a segment of the underground hipster community, closely involved with drugs, which worships him as the high priest of God and Sex. At the other end is that increasingly large group of liberal and radical intellectuals, centered in New York and comprised of such critics as Norman Podhoretz, Steven Marcus, and Richard Poirier who see in Mailer, as Marcus once put it, the embodiment of extraordinary literary talent, personal honesty and loyalty, and penetrating social criticism. And yet, in the last analysis, Mailer’s influence is limited, for the Word has hardly reached, let alone changed, the heart of the land he is trying to transform.

From the first three sermons of the 1960’s, the congregation is likely to walk away interested and, sometimes, excited, rather than transformed. Entertainment overshadows eschatology. And in Mailer’s fourth effort of the 6o’s, ''The Deer Park'', a stage adaption of his novel of 1956, religion gives way completely to comedy (both intentional and unintentional).{{efn|One ignores, for Mailer’s sake as much as for one’s own, ''Deaths for the Ladies'', a collection of words which the author extravagantly describes as poetry.}}

This is not to imply that Mailer has abandoned his urgent message; practically all his obsessions of the 6o’s are here: sex, love, lust, heroism, cowardice, power, God, and the Devil. If Mailer has added anything new to his philosophy, it lies in the expansion of his idea as sexual freedom and it is expressed through the pimp Marion Faye, who “follows sex to the end, turns queer, bangs dogs, and sniffs toes.” But in the figure of Herman Teppis (or
“H.T.”), a Hollywood mogul in the tradition of Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn, genuine humor replaces heavy rhetoric and caustic wit. In the desert of endless debates over who is—and who is not—a genius in bed, Teppis's pronouncements are oases.

{{quote|You know what an artist is? He's a crook. They even got a Frenchman now, you know what, he picks people’s pockets at society parties. They say he’s the greatest writer in France. No wonder they need a dictator, those crazy French. I could never get along with the French.}}

But Mailer pays a price for his success in the comic mode. One laughs so hard at Teppis that one keeps right on laughing, even at the tortured, self-searching characters—spokesmen all for traditional Maileresque values—one is meant to take seriously. If there is a lesson to be learned from this play, it is that comedy may be suitable to many dramatic modes, including tragedy, but that it has no place at all in eschatological homily.

After a pop play perhaps one should have expected, or at least have been prepared for, a pop novel from Mailer’s pen. Nevertheless, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' comes as a shock. Radical as the ideas contained in them may have been, Mailer’s earlier novels were more or less conservative in form: except for ''Barbary Shore'', they were all clearly in the mainstream of the realist-naturalist tradition. But in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' ordered syntax has yielded to the total liberation of the word; intricate plot structure has given way to hallucinatory fantasy; fully realized characters living in what we know as the real world have been replaced by the protean apparitions in Mailer’s mind; the last trace of ratiocination has been obliterated by a relentless bombardment of sensual impressions and apocalyptic utterances. Dreiser and Farrell have disappeared in favor of Joyce, Faulkner, Burroughs, McLuhan, and Norman O. Brown.

At one point or another virtually every theory Mailer has ever had appears—but now with an important difference. Rather than preaching his messages baldly as in the past, Mailer drops them mockingly. And the mockery is directed both at himself and at those he would edify.

{{quote|The world is going shazam, hahray harout, fart in my toot, air we breathe is the prez, present dent, and god has always wanted more from man than man has wished to give him. Zig a zig a zig. That is why we live in dread of god.}}

Even the seminal concept of Dread is translated into the pop language of rock-and-roll. A vast chasm of culture and sensibility separates the tone of Rojack’s agonized monologues from the narrative voice of the present novel.

{{quote|. . . Mr. Sender, who sends out that Awe and Dread is up on their back . . . because they ''alone'', man, you dig? They all ''alone'', it’s a fright wig, man, that Upper silence alone is enough to bugger you, whoo-ee.}}

Indeed, the very claim to a prophetic stance in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is established in a similarly (and intentionally) ambiguous tone.

{{quote|This is your own wandering troubadour brought right up to date, here to sell America its new handbook on how to live . . . . We're going to tell you what it's all about.}}

Although there is a bare minimum of dramatic tension or external conflict, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' has several “characters,” each significant primarily on a symbolic plane. D.J. (Disc Jockey, Dr. Jekyll), the adolescent hero narrator of patrician Texas blood, is sometimes convinced that he is really a “Harlem Nigger,” and since “there is no such thing as a totally false perception,” perhaps he is. Not literally, of course, but rather in the same way that Mailer recognized Sonny Liston in himself and in the same way that the white hipster of “The White Negro” is, in his psychic makeup, black. If D.J. is the hipster, Rusty, his father, is the square, a corporation tycoon in Dallas—coarse, selfish, and, at heart, a coward. Tex (the Mr. Hyde to D.J.’s Dr. Jekyll) is part Indian, manly, bisexual, and the son of an undertaker.

The three go bear hunting in Alaska, but the most important action takes place in D.J.’s mind. At one point he has an urge to turn his gun on his father and “blast a shot, thump in his skull.” Although he resists, he soon commits the act symbolically by contradicting his father’s warning and courageously approaching a wounded bear, putting his life on the line, while his father lies hidden, waiting for the bear to become helpless before firing the fatal shot. Thus liberated from paternal authority, D.J. finds his instincts for love and battle shifted to Tex, D.J. encounters nakedly for the first time his other self. And through a mutual awareness of their mutual desire for both intercourse and fratricide, D.J. and Tex finally achieve a sense of purification and personal integration.

{{quote|. . . Tex Hyde . . . was finally afraid to prong D.J., because D.J. once become a bitch would kill him, and D.J. breathing that in by the wide-awake of the dark with Aurora Borealis jumping to the beat of his heart knew he could make a try to prong Tex, there was a chance to get in and steal the iron from Texas’ ass and put it on his own . . . now it was there, murder between them under all friendship, for god was a beast, not a man, and god said, “Go out and kill—fulfill my will, go and kill,” and they hung there each of them on the knife of the divide in all conflict of lust to own the other . . . Killer brothers, owned by something, prince of darkness, lord of light, they did not know; they just knew that telepathy was on them, they had been touched forever by the North and each bit a drop of blood from his own finger and touched them across and met blood to blood . . . .}}

In one eternal moment the Manichean polarities that have obsessed Mailer are at last synthesized—God and the Devil, heaven and hell, nature and man, Negro and white, Dallas and Harlem, phallus and anus.

But why ''are we'' in Vietnam? What relation does the title have to D.J., Tex, Rusty, bear-hunting, Harlem, Dallas, liberated syntax, or Maileresque eschatology? In the strictest sense, nothing at all. But in a broader, metaphysical sense, the title can be explained as another urgent warning to America. We are in Vietnam because we, as a nation, are going, or have already gone, insane. Mailer’s development from politics to meta-politics is complete. The world—and especially America—is now viewed as an expression of Mailer’s own most extreme longings and fantasies. Subject and object, chaos and order, internal imagination and external reality are united in a fusion of creator and creation.
In an ultimate sense Mailer is claiming not only relation to America but identity with her. It is likely that he has himself in mind when he writes of Rusty:

{{quote|His secret is that he sees himself as one of the pillars of the firmament, yeah, man—he reads the world’s doom in his own fuckup. If he is less great than God intended him to be, then America is in Trouble. One cannot help wondering whether ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'', unruly and overwhelming, is not at least as much a symptom of our “Trouble” as a cure for it.

Throughout the past decade Mailer has made the world of the hipster the stuff of his sermons—novels, essays, and plays—as well as the style of his personal life. He calls it “a muted cool religious revival,” and a better description (at least of his ''intentions'') would be hard to find. He is Zarathustra coming down from the mountain with his vision of the hero; he is Dostoevsky reminding us that “God and the Devil are fighting, and the battleground is the heart of man!”; he is a Puritan minister informing us that pain may be good, for to suffer is to be given the opportunity to grow and prepare for the mystery of death and the perils of hell; he is a preacher frustrated by his congregation's blind faith in innocence at a time in history when innocence is not only a lie but a crime; he is a seer trying to jar complacent men into an awareness of the despair that lies beneath their conventions; he is Toynbee telling us that if a civilization stagnates, it will die, that if a nation is to survive, it must respond to the reality of challenge; and he is Jonathan Swift couching his eschatological message in the language and imagery of scatology.

It is true that Mailer’s own faith in the validity of his message is not absolute. He has admitted that “the hipster gambles that he can be terribly, tragically wrong, and therefore be doomed to Hell.” But Mailer is a gambler, and so he continues to preach, to reiterate the old verities with a new twist, opening himself to the charge of anachronism, refusing to accept the “modern,” the valueless objectivity of the novels of Robbe-Grillet, the impersonal detachment of the music of Milton Babbitt, and the faceless hotels of Conrad Hilton. He will not give up like Hemingway’s Lieutenant Henry, who trusts only in the names of bridges, cities, and battles; Mailer chooses instead still to believe in God, Love, Heroism, Courage, and Death. His life and work are a contradiction of the message contained in one of his own poems:

{{quote|''Never''
''contemplate''
''nothing''
''said''
''the saint.''}}

History is a nightmare from which Mailer is still trying to awaken; but he will not take the easy way out in his struggle.

And yet if he is singleminded in his determination to view life in terms of ultimate battle, his desire for victory is not without ambivalence. His involvement in the pop world has become more than peripheral with his play, his new underground movie (where he is cast as a Mafia gangster), his new novel, and his own life style (where he tries to enact simultaneously the roles of writer, fighter, celebrity, lover, and messiah); and like most of the major figures in this eclectic pop world, he is flirting with psychosis. To live on the edge of so many different scenes is to belong truly to none; and to act like so many different people is to endanger the self. The sign of surrender, the indication that the battle has been lost, is the sense of succumbing to Dread. It is not impossible that Mailer’s Dread is essentially the fulfillment of his own unacknowledged ''desire'' for that Dread, the intuition that all those "psychotic" ideas and actions he lives by are simply the expression of a profound longing for madness and extinction.

Mailer holds himself together, however, by virtue of his work. Through creation he is able to come closer to the unattainable goal of total victory in the struggle which is the metaphor for his vision of life. Even if we do not believe in it ourselves, even if we are impatient with the intellectual naivete of a man who only a decade ago speculated that perhaps he was the first person to state that God was in danger of dying, and even if we are annoyed by the heavily flawed style of his prose, we can still learn from, and be moved by, this belligerent prophet. At the end of the stage version of ''The Deer Park'', he speaks of debates about God and Time and Sex as constituting “part of the poor odd dialogues which give hope to us noble humans for more than one night.” If Mailer has done this in his own work even a small part of the time, he is one Puritan our age can ill afford to lose.

=== Notes ===

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