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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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This is not to say that the conceptualization of ''Naked'' as a modern epic provides any defense of criticisms of ''Naked’s'' use of language in a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph literary style. Much of Mailer’s style shows the limitations of its reliance on a simple combination of dialogue, transparent physical description of the speakers and their settings, and the use of first-person indirect (after the models of James T. Farrell’s ''Studs Lonegan'' and Tolstoy’s ''War and Peace'' and ''Anna Karenina'').  
This is not to say that the conceptualization of ''Naked'' as a modern epic provides any defense of criticisms of ''Naked’s'' use of language in a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph literary style. Much of Mailer’s style shows the limitations of its reliance on a simple combination of dialogue, transparent physical description of the speakers and their settings, and the use of first-person indirect (after the models of James T. Farrell’s ''Studs Lonegan'' and Tolstoy’s ''War and Peace'' and ''Anna Karenina'').{{efn|The atmosphere of The Naked and the Dead, the overspirit, is Tolstoyan; the rococo comes out of Dos Passos; the fundamental slogging style from Farrell, and the occasional overrich descriptions from Wolfe,” said Mailer to interviewer Peter Manso.}}


However, I would argue that this style is very serviceable for expressing the characters and character interactions at the center of much of the book. The characters are memorable, with several—at least Hearn, Cummings, and Croft— drawn with depth and dynamism. For example, we see Hearn’s intellectual confidence with Cummings and insecurity with ‘the men” of his platoon’; we see Cummings both as aloof intellectual and commander, as schemer maneuvering Hearn into the dangerous patrol, and as the deflated figure who must acknowledge Dalleson’s credit as victor of the Anopopei campaign; and we see Croft as not just a hard and capable commander of men but as one in the throes of a mythic conflict with Mt. Anaka that resonates with Ahab’s quest for Moby Dick.
However, I would argue that this style is very serviceable for expressing the characters and character interactions at the center of much of the book. The characters are memorable, with several—at least Hearn, Cummings, and Croft— drawn with depth and dynamism. For example, we see Hearn’s intellectual confidence with Cummings and insecurity with ‘the men” of his platoon’; we see Cummings both as aloof intellectual and commander, as schemer maneuvering Hearn into the dangerous patrol, and as the deflated figure who must acknowledge Dalleson’s credit as victor of the Anopopei campaign; and we see Croft as not just a hard and capable commander of men but as one in the throes of a mythic conflict with Mt. Anaka that resonates with Ahab’s quest for Moby Dick.
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==Notes==
==Notes==
 
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# *Dickstein refers to Jones’s The Thin Red Line as “a tighter, more disciplined rejoinder to The Naked and the Dead” and charges Mailer with filling in his characters’ backgrounds “clumsily”.{{sfn|Dickstein|2005|p=25}}
#
# *The atmosphere of The Naked and the Dead, the overspirit, is Tolstoyan; the rococo comes out of Dos Passos; the fundamental slogging style from Farrell, and the occasional overrich descriptions from Wolfe,” said Mailer to interviewer Peter Manso. {{sfn|Manso|1985|p=101}}


==Citations==
==Citations==
{{Reflist}}
{{Reflist}}
==Notes==
 
{{notelist}}
==Work Cited==
==Work Cited==
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