The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/From Here to Eternity and The Naked and the Dead: Premiere to Eternity?: Difference between revisions
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but I dont like even you that much. Thirty year man! Not me, buddy. If I’m goin to be a valet, yard man, and general handyman for some fuckin officer, I’m goin to get paid for it, see?” | but I dont like even you that much. Thirty year man! Not me, buddy. If I’m goin to be a valet, yard man, and general handyman for some fuckin officer, I’m goin to get paid for it, see?” | ||
“You’ll re-enlist,” Prew said. | “You’ll re-enlist,” Prew said.</blockquote> | ||
{{pg|320|321}} | {{pg|320|321}} | ||
“I’ll re-enlist,” Maggio said chanting the old bugle call par- ody, “in a pig’s ass hole. If anybody should of had that rating, man, you should of had it. You’re the best soljer in this outfit for my dough. By a hunert million miles.”{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=127}}</blockquote> | <blockquote>“I’ll re-enlist,” Maggio said chanting the old bugle call par- ody, “in a pig’s ass hole. If anybody should of had that rating, man, you should of had it. You’re the best soljer in this outfit for my dough. By a hunert million miles.”{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=127}}</blockquote> | ||
Dramatic conflict arises with great naturalness and force from the well- etched milieu: | Dramatic conflict arises with great naturalness and force from the well- etched milieu: | ||
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More generally, lesser characters like Martinez and Goldstein show de- velopment, and the dialogue and accounts of soldiering ring forcefully true. Indeed, the physical action of men in battle with the Japanese and with na- ture is often eloquent. For example, the opening rises to the level of Tolstoy in his epic descriptive mode on Napoleon’s Russian campaign. Here it is: “Nobody could sleep. When the morning came, assault craft would be low- ered and a first wave of troops would ride through the surf and charge ashore on the beach of Anapopei. All over the ship, all through the convoy, there was a knowledge that in a few hours some of them were going to be dead” {{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=3}}. The description of a storm hitting base camp is especially memorable: | More generally, lesser characters like Martinez and Goldstein show de- velopment, and the dialogue and accounts of soldiering ring forcefully true. Indeed, the physical action of men in battle with the Japanese and with na- ture is often eloquent. For example, the opening rises to the level of Tolstoy in his epic descriptive mode on Napoleon’s Russian campaign. Here it is: “Nobody could sleep. When the morning came, assault craft would be low- ered and a first wave of troops would ride through the surf and charge ashore on the beach of Anapopei. All over the ship, all through the convoy, there was a knowledge that in a few hours some of them were going to be dead” {{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=3}}. The description of a storm hitting base camp is especially memorable: | ||
<blockquote>The wind tore through the bivouac area like a great scythe, slashing the palm fronds from the coconut trees, blasting the rain before it. As they looked, they saw a tent jerk upward from its{{pg|332|333}} mooring, steam away in the wind, flapping like a terrified bird... | <blockquote>The wind tore through the bivouac area like a great scythe, slashing the palm fronds from the coconut trees, blasting the rain before it. As they looked, they saw a tent jerk upward from its</blockquote>{{pg|332|333}} <blockquote>mooring, steam away in the wind, flapping like a terrified bird... | ||
A tremendous gust of wind bellied under the tent blew it out like a balloon, and then the ridgepole snapped, tearing a rent in the poncho. The tent fell upon the four men like a wet sheet . . . . “Where are you?” he shouted, and then the folds of the tent filled out again like a sail, ripped loose altogether, and went eddying and twisting through the air . . . . All the tents were down in the bivouac area, and here and there a soldier would go skittering through the mud, staggering from the force of the wind with the odd jerking motions of a man walking in a motion picture when the film is unwinding too rapidly.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=86-88}}</blockquote> | A tremendous gust of wind bellied under the tent blew it out like a balloon, and then the ridgepole snapped, tearing a rent in the poncho. The tent fell upon the four men like a wet sheet . . . . “Where are you?” he shouted, and then the folds of the tent filled out again like a sail, ripped loose altogether, and went eddying and twisting through the air . . . . All the tents were down in the bivouac area, and here and there a soldier would go skittering through the mud, staggering from the force of the wind with the odd jerking motions of a man walking in a motion picture when the film is unwinding too rapidly.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=86-88}}</blockquote> | ||