User:Chelsey.brantley/sandbox - Revision history

Chelsey.brantley: Added abstract

2025-04-20T22:02:23Z

Added abstract

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:02, 20 April 2025
Line 5:		Line 5:
	{{MR04}}		{{MR04}}
	<!-- EDIT BELOW THIS LINE -->		<!-- EDIT BELOW THIS LINE -->
	{{Byline\|last=Westaway\|first=Katharine\|url=https://prmlr.us/mr07dick\|abstract=Mailer ~~has been~~ . . . uniform edition~~.\|note=This paper served . . . me to participate~~.}}		{{Byline\|last=Westaway\|first=Katharine\|url=https://prmlr.us/mr07dick\|abstract=One of the achievements of ''The Armies of the Night'' is that Norman Mailer is able to designate the marchers as patriots, a far cry from the criticism that labeled them “draft dodgers,” “communists,” and “rabble rousers.” Mailer aligns the march itself with America’s long tradition of ostensibly just and triumphant empire-building conflict.He describes theMarch on the Pentagon as a rite of passage and connects this to a collection of American moments that could be understood as similar rites of passage.uniform edition.}}

	{{dc\|dc=O\|n a weekend in October of 1967,}} tens of thousands of demonstrators		{{dc\|dc=O\|n a weekend in October of 1967,}} tens of thousands of demonstrators

Chelsey.brantley: Corrected typos; replaced dashes with em dashes in citation page numbers

2025-04-19T15:35:51Z

Corrected typos; replaced dashes with em dashes in citation page numbers

Chelsey.brantley: Corrected type in first line

2025-04-19T15:27:43Z

Corrected type in first line

← Older revision		Revision as of 11:27, 19 April 2025
Line 7:		Line 7:
	{{Byline\|last=Westaway\|first=Katharine\|url=https://prmlr.us/mr07dick\|abstract=Mailer has been . . . uniform edition.\|note=This paper served . . . me to participate.}}		{{Byline\|last=Westaway\|first=Katharine\|url=https://prmlr.us/mr07dick\|abstract=Mailer has been . . . uniform edition.\|note=This paper served . . . me to participate.}}

	{{dc\|dc=O\|n a in weekend in October of 1967,}} tens of thousands of demonstrators		{{dc\|dc=O\|n a weekend in October of 1967,}} tens of thousands of demonstrators
	amassed in Washington DC to protest the war in Vietnam. Intending ''The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History'' (1968) to record and commemorate this eventful weekend, Norman Mailer enlarged the march on the Pentagon’s meaning, working as a novelist to make it more		amassed in Washington DC to protest the war in Vietnam. Intending ''The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History'' (1968) to record and commemorate this eventful weekend, Norman Mailer enlarged the march on the Pentagon’s meaning, working as a novelist to make it more
	than a four-day set of tremors in the nation’s capital. Some consider the		than a four-day set of tremors in the nation’s capital. Some consider the

Chelsey.brantley: Added final page numbers and paragraph

2025-04-19T15:25:33Z

Added final page numbers and paragraph

@@ Line 208: / Line 208: @@
 America. Contemporary reviewers were generous with their praise. The
 {{pg|491|492}}
 ===Citations===

Chelsey.brantley: Added paragraphs and page numbers

2025-04-19T15:12:10Z

Added paragraphs and page numbers

@@ Line 172: / Line 172: @@
 of Mailer’s to make change, his “extra-literary hunger for things to change
 and change now, in palpable ways rather than in the imaginary, alternative{{pg|490|491}}
 ===Citations===

Chelsey.brantley: Added paragraphs and page numbers

2025-04-19T15:03:33Z

Added paragraphs and page numbers

@@ Line 148: / Line 148: @@
 to protest.
+The novel, first in serial and then in book form, was meant to prod readers to action. In fact, it is specifically the expansiveness of the novel genre that Mailer finds useful toward a moral end. Mailer understood the great
 ===Citations===

Chelsey.brantley: Added another paragraph

2025-04-19T14:50:39Z

Added another paragraph

@@ Line 132: / Line 132: @@
 ''Armies'' represents, for Mailer, a test of his moral strength, an examination of whether Mailer could stand behind his highest moral principles. The story of ''Armies'' offers a way for Mailer to put his philosophy into action and to answer the question, Are you willing to put your life on the line? David Wyatt calls Mailer “a man so obsessed by courage,” which is a persistent theme in Mailer’s famous essay “The White Negro” (1957).{{sfn|Wyatt|2008|p=318}} In many ways ''Armies'' is tied to all of Mailer’s preceding writing. The most obvious connection is to ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' (1967), but the themes and challenges of ''Armies'' are also indebted to ''Cannibals and Christians'' (1966) and ''The Presidential Papers'' (1963). These books variously tested the warrior in Mailer. Even his first book, ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948), plays a role in the conception of ''Armies''. Mary Dearborn claims that ''Armies'' is a recapitulation of his first novel bringing up questions of “confrontation with and the reaction to authority."{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|p=244}} In ''Armies'', Mailer’s critique of structures of power and his own civil disobedience stands in clear defiance of authoritarian establishments, the same authoritarian establishments which thwarted characters in his previous texts. Mailer’s working out of his own demons in this
 journey from author to activist was also meant to engage the hearts and minds of his readers in the important business of opening their eyes to the truth about the war in Vietnam. But it is not just a story about Mailer or the many Mailer characters; Mailer serves as an entry to the predicament of the war in Vietnam and a people’s various ways to protest it.
 ===Citations===

Chelsey.brantley: Added page numbers and paragraph

2025-04-19T14:27:18Z

Added page numbers and paragraph

@@ Line 120: / Line 120: @@
 grace."{{sfn|Mailer|1988|p=88}} Mailer recasts draft dodgers as draft resisters, those willing to risk their lives for peace rather than war. Furthermore, Mailer aligns the march itself with America’s long tradition of ostensibly just and triumphant empire-building conflict. He describes the March on the Pentagon as a rite of passage and connects this to a collection of American moments that could be understood as similar rites of passage, for “each generation
 of Americans had forged their own rite, in the forest of the Alleghenies and the Adirondacks, at Valley Forge, at New Orleans in 1812, with Rogers and Clark or at Sutter’s Mill, at Gettysburg, the Alamo, the Klondike, the Argonne, Normandy, Pusan."{{sfn|Mailer|1988|p=308}} Such a comparison implies that without undergoing such crises the U.S. would not have become a sovereign republic, and so the March on the Pentagon is figured as another historic challenge for the country. This lofty rhetoric is meant to stir a reader’s patriotic sympathies, and Mailer is determined that his audience will see the marchers not as subversives but as patriots within the traditions of American democracy.
 ===Citations===

Chelsey.brantley: Added another paragraph

2025-04-19T14:11:41Z

Added another paragraph

← Older revision		Revision as of 10:11, 19 April 2025
Line 109:		Line 109:
	memory and interpretations of . . . [these events] are truly breathtaking.”{{pg\|487\|488}}		memory and interpretations of . . . [these events] are truly breathtaking.”{{pg\|487\|488}}

			This speaks well of Mailer’s journalistic sensibilities and his hope to avoid a
			forest of inaccuracies himself. To this end, it is important to recall that ''Armies''
			won a Polk Award for excellence in journalism.

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

	===Citations===		===Citations===

Chelsey.brantley: Added another paragraph and page numbers

2025-04-19T14:04:20Z

Added another paragraph and page numbers

← Older revision		Revision as of 10:04, 19 April 2025
Line 103:		Line 103:
	of the protestors, not the defenders of the Pentagon."{{sfn\|Small\|1994\|p=76, 78}} ''Time'' came out with its story a few days after the march on October 27 in which they marginalized the protestors as “left-wing radicals, hippies, acid		of the protestors, not the defenders of the Pentagon."{{sfn\|Small\|1994\|p=76, 78}} ''Time'' came out with its story a few days after the march on October 27 in which they marginalized the protestors as “left-wing radicals, hippies, acid
	heads, and people with painted faces in bizarre costumes” while at the same time “applaud[ing] the government for its restraint."{{sfn\|Small\|1994\|p=79-80}}		heads, and people with painted faces in bizarre costumes” while at the same time “applaud[ing] the government for its restraint."{{sfn\|Small\|1994\|p=79-80}}

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

← Older revision		Revision as of 11:35, 19 April 2025
Line 91:		Line 91:
	of the soldiers in the front line at the Pentagon and goaded them with the most vicious personal slander. . . . [M]any officials here are surprised that		of the soldiers in the front line at the Pentagon and goaded them with the most vicious personal slander. . . . [M]any officials here are surprised that
	there was not much more violence."{{sfn\|Mailer\|1988\|p=313}} Notice that the ''Times'' does not mention any specific violence of the MPs. Numerous commentators condemned ''not'' the beatings meted out to the demonstrators, but the protest		there was not much more violence."{{sfn\|Mailer\|1988\|p=313}} Notice that the ''Times'' does not mention any specific violence of the MPs. Numerous commentators condemned ''not'' the beatings meted out to the demonstrators, but the protest
	itself; David Brinkley called it a “coarse, vulgar episode."{{sfn\|Wells\|1994\|p=~~202-3~~}} However,		itself; David Brinkley called it a “coarse, vulgar episode."{{sfn\|Wells\|1994\|p=202–3}} However,
	Maurice Isserman, one marcher, remembers the marchers for the most part as peaceful, remaining “pretty true to Gandhian principles."{{sfn\|Isserman\|2007\|p=B15}}		Maurice Isserman, one marcher, remembers the marchers for the most part as peaceful, remaining “pretty true to Gandhian principles."{{sfn\|Isserman\|2007\|p=B15}}

Line 102:		Line 102:
	night before the police began employing more militant tactics. But on Monday in another story of the march the ''New York Times'' still ignored “the bloody military sweep of early Sunday morning;” the ''Washington Post''’s Monday coverage was similar in that it “continued to emphasize the violence		night before the police began employing more militant tactics. But on Monday in another story of the march the ''New York Times'' still ignored “the bloody military sweep of early Sunday morning;” the ''Washington Post''’s Monday coverage was similar in that it “continued to emphasize the violence
	of the protestors, not the defenders of the Pentagon."{{sfn\|Small\|1994\|p=76, 78}} ''Time'' came out with its story a few days after the march on October 27 in which they marginalized the protestors as “left-wing radicals, hippies, acid		of the protestors, not the defenders of the Pentagon."{{sfn\|Small\|1994\|p=76, 78}} ''Time'' came out with its story a few days after the march on October 27 in which they marginalized the protestors as “left-wing radicals, hippies, acid
	heads, and people with painted faces in bizarre costumes” while at the same time “applaud[ing] the government for its restraint."{{sfn\|Small\|1994\|p=~~79-80~~}}		heads, and people with painted faces in bizarre costumes” while at the same time “applaud[ing] the government for its restraint."{{sfn\|Small\|1994\|p=79–80}}

	Mailer is unwilling to let the picture that the mainstream press drew of demonstrators become the only permanent record, and“he scolded the press for their lies, and their misrepresentation, for their guilt in creating a psychology over the last twenty years in the average American which made wars like Vietnam possible."{{sfn\|Mailer\|1988\|p=93}} Mailer understands that the press is pivotal in a nation’s critique of its culture and policies, and he takes the press to task for their failure to cultivate an informed public. Eventually, Mailer’s ''Armies'' would stand with media accounts as a record of the event. Before ''Armies'' was published as a book in 1968, it appeared in periodicals (almost the entire issues of ''Harper’s'' and ''Commentary'' were given to this story). So		Mailer is unwilling to let the picture that the mainstream press drew of demonstrators become the only permanent record, and“he scolded the press for their lies, and their misrepresentation, for their guilt in creating a psychology over the last twenty years in the average American which made wars like Vietnam possible."{{sfn\|Mailer\|1988\|p=93}} Mailer understands that the press is pivotal in a nation’s critique of its culture and policies, and he takes the press to task for their failure to cultivate an informed public. Eventually, Mailer’s ''Armies'' would stand with media accounts as a record of the event. Before ''Armies'' was published as a book in 1968, it appeared in periodicals (almost the entire issues of ''Harper’s'' and ''Commentary'' were given to this story). So
Line 124:		Line 124:
	Even if his readers were persuaded to believe in a peaceful resolution to the Vietnam War, what would these readers do with this new consciousness,		Even if his readers were persuaded to believe in a peaceful resolution to the Vietnam War, what would these readers do with this new consciousness,
	a consciousness which was “itself a central ingredient in power”{{sfn\|Miller\|year\|p=394}}? It is difficult to measure how readers enact their power, but we can watch how Mailer enacts his own. He undertakes his own civil disobedience, getting arrested in hopes of gaining publicity and offering credence to the		a consciousness which was “itself a central ingredient in power”{{sfn\|Miller\|year\|p=394}}? It is difficult to measure how readers enact their power, but we can watch how Mailer enacts his own. He undertakes his own civil disobedience, getting arrested in hopes of gaining publicity and offering credence to the
	cause of the march, and he understands that his symbolic action must be captured by the press to multiply its effect. When writing the story of ''Armies'',		cause of the march, and he understands that his symbolic action must be captured by the press to multiply its effect. When writing the story of ''Armies'', Mailer tracks his own movement from critic to supporter to war protester to{{pg\|488\|489}}
	Mailer tracks his own movement from critic to supporter to war protester to{{pg\|488\|489}}

	prisoner of conscience, and we see that he “feels the claims of imagination		prisoner of conscience, and we see that he “feels the claims of imagination
Line 135:		Line 134:
	Mailer admits early in the story his growing belief that his own writing about the Vietnam War is not enough, that “no project had seemed to cost		Mailer admits early in the story his growing belief that his own writing about the Vietnam War is not enough, that “no project had seemed to cost
	him enough,” for his writing was one thing, but action was another. And by simply writing about the Vietnam War “he had been suffering more and more in the past few years from the private conviction that he was getting a		him enough,” for his writing was one thing, but action was another. And by simply writing about the Vietnam War “he had been suffering more and more in the past few years from the private conviction that he was getting a
	little soft, a hint curdled."{{sfn\|Mailer\|1988\|p=~~70-1~~}} This may have served as a barb at		little soft, a hint curdled."{{sfn\|Mailer\|1988\|p=70–1}} This may have served as a barb at
	his audience of readers, among whom surely numbered many armchair revolutionaries.		his audience of readers, among whom surely numbered many armchair revolutionaries.
	To keep from getting soft and to resist being contented with a		To keep from getting soft and to resist being contented with a
Line 145:		Line 144:
	aware, but not yet ''involved'' in a cause. Readers might appreciate that having their consciousness raised was not the same as protesting the war in		aware, but not yet ''involved'' in a cause. Readers might appreciate that having their consciousness raised was not the same as protesting the war in
	their own communities, not at all the same as stepping out into the streets		their own communities, not at all the same as stepping out into the streets
	to form a human protest. One had to move from words to action, from page		to form a human protest. One had to move from words to action, from page to protest.
	to protest.

	Mailer asks serious questions of his readers, as Alfred Kazin points out,		Mailer asks serious questions of his readers, as Alfred Kazin points out, describing him as the first “leading American peacenik and resister addressing urgent questions to his ‘army’—Are we good enough? How can we overcome
	describing him as the first “leading American peacenik and resister addressing urgent questions to his ‘army’—Are we good enough? How can we overcome
	the ‘mediocrity of the middle-class middle-aged masses of the Left?’		the ‘mediocrity of the middle-class middle-aged masses of the Left?’
	The general shoddiness of American standards just now? The tendency of authorities to lie?”{{sfn\|Kazin\|1968\|p=BR 1}} Mailer artfully places such questions within the		The general shoddiness of American standards just now? The tendency of authorities to lie?”{{sfn\|Kazin\|1968\|p=BR 1}} Mailer artfully places such questions within the