The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/On Reading Mailer Too Young: Difference between revisions
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“Sgt. Rock of Easy Company” and “SpyVs. Spy” then by God, a writer could | “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 | </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 Lover'' and ’64 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. | Mailer. | ||
</blockquote> 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 positive that there was something else out there, too, good and tasty, and it wasn’t ''To Kill A Mockingbird''. We’d read some John Steinbeck, Stephen Crane, Jack London, Mickey Spillane. I remember reading Harold Robbins at one point; I | </blockquote> 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 positive that there was something else out there, too, good and tasty, and it wasn’t ''To Kill A Mockingbird''. We’d read some John Steinbeck, Stephen Crane, Jack London, Mickey Spillane. I remember reading Harold Robbins at one point; I | ||
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go to Stag Magazine and Men’s Bluebook, and half the time, no one would sell them to us. | go to Stag Magazine and Men’s Bluebook, and half the time, no one would sell them to us. | ||
</blockquote>This kind of special knowledge set off top-of-the-lungs debates over Mailer among the Junior High tuna sandwich-and-literary crowd. We broke down along two lines, both of a physical nature. The question? Who could Mailer take if it came down to a rough-and-tumble? The main contender, for some reason, seemed to be Jack London, who had mentioned some kind of Japanese death grip in his book The Assassination Bureau Ltd. Mailer was thought to be the victor in this contest because he knew how to stab Jap sentries and because he’d been trained in dirty fighting and hand-to-hand combat (as we’d read in ''The Naked and the Dead''.) However, in the minus column, among the literary guys walking home from school or in the cafeteria, Mailer had endorsed, on the cover, a volume called Jiu Jitsu Complete, | </blockquote>This kind of special knowledge set off top-of-the-lungs debates over Mailer among the Junior High tuna sandwich-and-literary crowd. We broke down along two lines, both of a physical nature. The question? Who could Mailer take if it came down to a rough-and-tumble? The main contender, for some reason, seemed to be Jack London, who had mentioned some kind of Japanese death grip in his book The Assassination Bureau Ltd. Mailer was thought to be the victor in this contest because he knew how to stab Jap sentries and because he’d been trained in dirty fighting and hand-to-hand combat (as we’d read in ''The Naked and the Dead''.) However, in the minus column, among the literary guys walking home from school or in the cafeteria, Mailer had endorsed, on the cover, a volume called Jiu Jitsu Complete, | ||
an early book on the Japanese combative art. This book detailed moves that we regarded | an early book on the Japanese combative art. This book detailed moves that we regarded unusable, you couldn’t even get them to work on your little brother. And believe me, we tried. | ||
</blockquote> Even so. We loved the guy. </blockquote> | </blockquote> Even so. We loved the guy. </blockquote> | ||
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</blockquote> So that was Mailer to the thirteen-year-old mind of the year that (as Andy Warhol said in Popism) “everything went young” (and at thirteen we didn’t have a choice.) | </blockquote> So that was Mailer to the thirteen-year-old mind of the year that (as Andy Warhol said in Popism) “everything went young” (and at thirteen we didn’t have a choice.) | ||
But there was something that we didn’t get out of Mailer at that age, something that I now see as central to his writing and his outlook—the overbearing presence of the threat of personal failure. The demand that one turn up the heat and try not to fail oneself. That seems to power the drive towards Ego and the thoughts always of “the big novel” and all those other adventures. At thirteen, the consciousness of personal failure may be intense in the adolescent hormones, but the spread is pretty thin. At thirteen, a person will secretly fear and struggle with himself and pick up unconsciously on the mood of the elders of the house, failures not articulated that make their way in through the pores. Still, in the understanding, there’s only the dimmest whiff of how deeply one can fail personally. And I don’t think we picked up on, for example, what happened to Croft when he failed to climb Mt. Anaka and the platoon was chased downhill by bees. We didn’t fathom {{pg|418#|419#}} what Croft had failed when he looked back at the mountain as he and the others left the island. | But there was something that we didn’t get out of Mailer at that age, something that I now see as central to his writing and his outlook—the overbearing presence of the threat of personal failure. The demand that one turn up the heat and try not to fail oneself. That seems to power the drive towards Ego and the thoughts always of “the big novel” and all those other adventures. At thirteen, the consciousness of personal failure may be intense in the adolescent hormones, but the spread is pretty thin. At thirteen, a person will secretly fear and struggle with himself and pick up unconsciously on the mood of the elders of the house, failures not articulated that make their way in through the pores. Still, in the understanding, there’s only the dimmest whiff of how deeply one can fail personally. And I don’t think we picked up on, for example, what happened to Croft when he failed to climb Mt. Anaka and the platoon was chased downhill by bees. We didn’t fathom {{pg|418#|419#}} what Croft had failed when he looked back at the mountain as he and the others left the island. | ||
I only met Mailer once, about fifteen years later. I was overseas, living in London at the time, working on a book and making a living working for the one commercial talk radio station in town, LBC. This was at the end of the s, early s, and Mailer came over to do some PR for Ancient Evenings. It had just been published in paperback. He was interviewed on the air, and then afterwards, as he was rushed out of the studio and escorted to the exit through the newsroom and production area, our crowd of young men timidly, cautiously gathered around him. One by one we approached him— reporters, writers, announcers, producers—and he slowed down and he began to talk. We were all in our late twenties up through about thirty-five, I think, and we started to cluster around Mailer and shyly ask him questions, ask to shake his hand, we traded nice-to-meet ya’s and wound up talking to him about everything. And damned if he wasn’t vastly enjoying himself. Mailer couldn’t have been more generous with his time or attention. I remember thinking even when it was happening, that ol’ Norman was being surrounded by “his boys,” the guys who’d grown up with him in the old neighborhood, the neighborhood of his books. And when we’d finished talking about those books, we talked about London, good pubs, beer, and then we ended up talking about boxing, and Mailer demonstrated a couple of combinations for us, throwing a left and right hook, an uppercut, gracefully moving with the blows. I remember him as somehow both completely relaxed and intensely in-the-moment (as actors tell it), having a hell of a good time and seeming to be genuinely interested in what any of us guys had to say. He was there a long time. And he didn’t leave until the PR woman came over, told him he was late, told him he had to go, and pulled him away from | I only met Mailer once, about fifteen years later. I was overseas, living in London at the time, working on a book and making a living working for the one commercial talk radio station in town, LBC. This was at the end of the s, early s, and Mailer came over to do some PR for Ancient Evenings. It had just been published in paperback. He was interviewed on the air, and then afterwards, as he was rushed out of the studio and escorted to the exit through the newsroom and production area, our crowd of young men timidly, cautiously gathered around him. One by one we approached him— reporters, writers, announcers, producers—and he slowed down and he began to talk. We were all in our late twenties up through about thirty-five, I think, and we started to cluster around Mailer and shyly ask him questions, ask to shake his hand, we traded nice-to-meet ya’s and wound up talking to him about everything. And damned if he wasn’t vastly enjoying himself. Mailer couldn’t have been more generous with his time or attention. I remember thinking even when it was happening, that ol’ Norman was being surrounded by “his boys,” the guys who’d grown up with him in the old neighborhood, the neighborhood of his books. And when we’d finished talking about those books, we talked about London, good pubs, beer, and then we ended up talking about boxing, and Mailer demonstrated a couple of combinations for us, throwing a left and right hook, an uppercut, gracefully moving with the blows. I remember him as somehow both completely relaxed and intensely in-the-moment (as actors tell it), having a hell of a good time and seeming to be genuinely interested in what any of us guys had to say. He was there a long time. And he didn’t leave until the PR woman came over, told him he was late, told him he had to go, and pulled him away from us. | ||