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The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Contradictory Syntheses: Norman Mailer’s Left Conservatism and the Problematic of “Totalitarianism”: Difference between revisions

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I have not readmany critics trying to follow the lead offered by Trilling here
I have not read many critics trying to follow the lead offered by Trilling here
and to explain, if Mailer’s God is indeed “a fascist,” how we might be able to
and to explain, if Mailer's God is indeed "a fascist," how we might be able to justify such a rather unexpected reversal? Yet there are places in Mailer's work
justify such a rather unexpected reversal? Yet there are places inMailer’s work
where this ''political'' exchange with fascism is more than obvious. The following example I take from "The White Negro," where we are told:
where this political exchange with fascism is more than obvious. The following
 
example I take from“TheWhite Negro,” where we are told:
<blockquote>[I]t is possible, since the hipster lives with his hatred, that many of them are the material for an élite of storm troopers ready to follow the first truly magnetic leader whose view of mass murder is phrased in a language which reaches their emotions.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=355|}}
</blockquote>
 
The first thing to note is that the very terms used by Mailer ("storm troopers," "magnetic leader," "mass murder") take us beyond the field of morality and even aesthetics and points us clearly in the direction of organized politics.
And I think that the way, finally, to explain such ironies is precisely with
reference to the first paradox I spoke about. Namely, the idea that when one works within the totalitarian discourse, the force one posits as a counterweight to the dreaded totalitarian system will often turn out to be itself totalitarian
or potentially totalitarian.
 
The work of Georges Sorel (1847–1922), a French theorist of anarcho-syndicalism, is important for the proper understanding of our second paradox.
''Réflexions sur la Violence'', his best-known work to which I will refer, was published
in 1908. For the sake of brevity I would not like to go into the details
of what I hold to be Sorel’s own “Left Conservatism.” Instead I have chosen a few quotations, which will give an idea of the basis for the comparison to
Mailer. The first comes from an essay on Sorel, written by Isaiah Berlin:
 
<blockquote>Sorel remains, as he was in his lifetime, unclassified; claimed and
repudiated both by the right and by the left. . . . He appeared to</blockquote>
 
{{pg|340|341}}
 
<blockquote>
have no fixed position. His critics often accused him of pursuing an erratic course.{{sfn|Berlin|1979|p=296, 297|}}
</blockquote>
 
I think that both the lack of political "fixity" but also, all the more so in fact, the idea of an interstitial position between "the right and the left" clearly points us in the direction of Left Conservatism. The second extract comes from the English author and painter Wyndham Lewis, according to whom
 
<blockquote>
Georges Sorel is the key to all contemporary political thought.
Sorel is, or was, a highly unstable and equivocal figure. He seems composed of a crowd of warring personalities, sometimes one being in the ascendent [sic], sometimes another, and which in any case he has not been able, or has not cared, to control. (Lewis
119){{sfn|Berlin|1979|p=296, 297|}}
</blockquote>
 
When I first read the above what instantly came tomymind wasMailer’s
description of his own personality in The Armies of the Night,where we read:
 
<blockquote>
[T]he architecture of [Mailer’s] personality bore resemblance to
some provincial cathedral which warring orders of the church
might have designed separately over several centuries, the particular
cathedral falling into the hands of one architect, then his
enemy. (The Armies of the Night 28){{sfn|Berlin|1979|p=296, 297|}}
</blockquote>
 




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* {{cite journal |last=Berlin |first=Isaiah |title=Georges Sorel|date=1979 |journal=Against the Current  |location=London |publisher=Hogarth Press|pages=296-332 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Berlin |first=Isaiah |title=Georges Sorel|date=1979 |journal=Against the Current  |location=London |publisher=Hogarth Press|pages=296-332 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lewis |first=Wyndham |date=1989 |title=The Art of Being Ruled. |location=1926. Santa Rosa |publisher=Black Sparrow Press|ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1959 |title=The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster.|location=  Advertisements for Myself. New York |publisher=G.P. Putnam's Sons
|pages=337-358 |ref=harv }}


* {{cite journal |last=Trilling |first=Diana |title=The Moral Radicalism of Norman Mailer.  |journal=Norman Mailer: The Man and His Work  
* {{cite journal |last=Trilling |first=Diana |title=The Moral Radicalism of Norman Mailer.  |journal=Norman Mailer: The Man and His Work  
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