The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/On Reading Mailer Too Young: Difference between revisions

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   <blockquote>In the literary eye of the thirteen-year-old boy, this is the highest compliment. Forget the studied sincerity of, say, ''To Kill A Mockingbird.''.Down with the ''The Old Man and The Sea'', too, (which even at thirteen we thought was enough to put you off Hemingway before you discover the good stuff.)This Mailer, he was Good vs. Evil, world catasrophe, official lies, violence, sex, madness, the whole crazy, lurid world was there in Mailer's pages, and even better, this was a guy who was respected and could write like a son of bitch.</blockquote>
 ''
-  </blockquote> And if a “real writer” could put something like “BEE-YOWWWW! . . .
+  </blockquote> And if a “real writer” could put something like “BEE-YOWWWW! . . .BEE-YOOWWWW!” in his book, if he could huddle so dangerously close to
-BEE-YOOWWWW!” in his book, if he could huddle so dangerously close to
 “Sgt. Rock of Easy Company” and “SpyVs. Spy” then by God, a writer could
-do anything.
+do anything.</blockquote> I mean, listen. It would be great to proclaim that we were drawn in by the sex scenes.</blockquote> The only thing is, until An American Dream, Mailer wouldn’t get a shake of the hand from the dedicated literary onanist. Maybe The Time of Her Time.A bit of The Deer Park. But, hey, we’d already read Terry Southern’s Candy. We’d scampered into Lady Chatterley’s Love,r and ’ was the year of the court fight over Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, a book that showed up,{{pg| 414#|415#}} literally in brown paper wrappers, in the school hall from time to time. We were veterans of post-war war novels. Battle Cry by Leon Uris with the bedroom wrestling that always ended in “. . .” and at least two of us were collectors of the fantastic and now much-mourned Monarch Books, a long gone and sadly missed paperback company that had dissected the soul of the thirteen-year-old boy. Titles like: Bloody Beaches (Marines die hard!), Baby Face Nelson, Reptilicus, Tarawa, Marine War Heroes, The Indian Wars series, Nikki (One night with Nikki was like a lifetime)—the company put out a forest’s worth of original paperbacks that skipped their way into the welcoming thirteen-year-old mind. And in each book, even the historical The Apache Indian Wars (even in the novelization of the monster movie Reptilicus, f’Christ’s-sake!), there was always a surprise sex scene. You’d be sitting around, reading about the Apaches or the Marines or a primordial monster, and suddenly there’d be a breathless unhooking of bras, there’d be nipples, panting and moaning and then the final ellipsis or white space. You stumbled upon these surprises in your reading when you least expected it, although, after some experience, you knew it would be there like a gift in a Cracker Jack's box. Apropos of nothing. Just apropos of they know their audience. Monarch Books was young adult reading at its best. We practically supported the company with purchases from the swiveling metal rack at Virginia Variety and an occasional secretive mail order. And the only reason to go on about all this is . . . into this reading world we invited Norman
- </blockquote> I mean, listen. It would be great to proclaim that we were drawn in by the
-sex scenes.</blockquote> The only thing is, until An American Dream, Mailer wouldn’t get a shake of the hand from the dedicated literary onanist. Maybe The Time of Her Time.A bit of The Deer Park. But, hey, we’d already read Terry Southern’s Candy. We’d scampered into Lady Chatterley’s Love,r and ’ was the year of the court fight over Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, a book that showed up,{{pg| 414#|415#}} literally in brown paper wrappers, in the school hall from time to time. We were veterans of post-war war novels. Battle Cry by Leon Uris with the bedroom wrestling that always ended in “. . .” and at least two of us were collectors of the fantastic and now much-mourned Monarch Books, a long gone and sadly missed paperback company that had dissected the soul of the
-thirteen-year-old boy. Titles like: Bloody Beaches (Marines die hard!), Baby
-Face Nelson, Reptilicus, Tarawa, Marine War Heroes, The Indian Wars series,
-Nikki (One night with Nikki was like a lifetime)—the company put out a
-forest’s worth of original paperbacks that skipped their way into the welcoming thirteen-year-old mind. And in each book, even the historical The
-Apache Indian Wars (even in the novelization of the monster movie Reptilicus, f’Christ’s-sake!), there was always a surprise sex scene. You’d be sitting
-around, reading about the Apaches or the Marines or a primordial monster, and suddenly there’d be a breathless unhooking of bras, there’d be nipples,
-panting and moaning and then the final ellipsis or white space. You stumbled upon these surprises in your reading when you least expected it, although, after some experience, you knew it would be there like a gift in a
-Cracker Jack's box. Apropos of nothing. Just apropos of they know their audience. Monarch Books was young adult reading at its best. We practically
-supported the company with purchases from the swiveling metal rack at Virginia Variety and an occasional secretive mail order. And the only reason to go on about all this is . . . into this reading world we invited Norman
 Mailer.
    Because, OK, Mad and comics and these books . . . they were all great, and we knew a good piece of junk when we read it. But we were optimistic that there was something else out there, too, good and tasty, and it wasn’t To Kill