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{{Byline|last=Kaufmann|first=Donald L.|abstract=Mailer is placed within the American literary tradition as a direct descendent of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Naturalism.}}

~~THE~~ MAILER ~~“SEEDS”~~ STIRRED, as the Twentieth Century dawned and American literature soared. The last century would climax in the late 1920s, and

{{dc|dc=T|HE MAILER "SEEDS" STIRRED}}, as the Twentieth Century dawned and American literature soared. The last century would climax in the late 1920s, and

achieve its final “coming of age,” now superior to its English and European

counterparts, soon to be the new superpower’s final word.

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Line 19:

clearly many contemporary and later writers were inseminated with Whitman “seeds.”And Norman Mailer was one of those who had more than his

share. For the Mailer scholar, legacy quotient is based more on his authorial singularity and less on the common characteristics of his generation of

contemporary writers. Whitman’s death announced that the nineteenth-century American Realism of Howells and James had ended. In its wings ~~(awkward space?)~~ {{pg|280|281}}

contemporary writers. Whitman’s death announced that the nineteenth-century American Realism of Howells and James had ended. In its wings {{pg|280|281}}

was formed the new Literary Naturalism that might be called the “dynamic

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But the “other” Davis, the literary careerist, was radically different, more

like the high-risk lifestyles of Crane and London. On news assignments, Davis actually tempted death. The press loved his go-for-broke front line {{pg|287|~~289~~}}

like the high-risk lifestyles of Crane and London. On news assignments, Davis actually tempted death. The press loved his go-for-broke front line {{pg|287|288}}

antics. He called the Spanish-American War “splendid fun” and took part in the Battle of San Juan Hill, and made Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders famous. Davis became the newspapers’ darling. He had continuous access to elite personages from presidents to kings and queens, even the

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Mailer’s “March on the Pentagon”). At age twenty, London formally joined

the Socialist Party. Immediately, his canon turned socio-political didactic.{{pg|290|291|}}

He wrote two Socialist treatises, ''War of the Classes'' and ''The Human Drift''. Zola’s “social bottom” now obsessed him. With his recently acquired fame,

he traveled to England and did a “live” documentary treatment of London slum life, a shocker about sweat dens and garbage eating in ''The People of the Abyss'' (1903). This volume was the first of later social exposés, including ''John Barleycorn'' (1913), an autobiographical memoir, a polemic in support of the

Prohibitionist Movement, his prose still highly readable and self-revealing. Soon, his hard drinking would cause serious health problems.

London's cultural and political radicalism shaped his fiction. In his 1913, ''The Valley of the Moon'', the hero and family, victimized by urban plutocrats, escape to idyllic Agrarianism. The title refers to a California utopian community, a haven from dreaded Capitalism. There the hero and wife return to the "land" and await their son's birth, a cultural and literary scenario recognized as neo-primitivism.

The more apocalyptic aspects of the classic Marxist class struggle are the centerpieces of London's ''The Iron Heel''. It was truly omniscient, structured as a fragmentary historic document, told

through a diary (1912-32) of several decades of Capitalistic persecution. Titanic class warfare was being waged between Plutocrats and the Masses, the latter's only hope of a Socialist Utopia. Such was not to be, at least in 1932, when the diary stopped. But readers were informed that after three hundred years of a dystopian nightmare, only then could blessed collectivism be restored and advanced into Utopian Socialism. Such was the tonal dichotomy of a famous writer who introduced to Literary Naturalism very readable and, yet, high quality Marxist ABCs. This radical political fallout prefigured what the 1930s "proletarian literature" and, later, would foreshadow Mailer's political odyssey from an early flirtation with Henry Wallace's tepid US communism and his gradual shift into a somewhat ambiguous, self-proclaimed "left-conservative."

With his breakthrough ''Son of the Wolf'', London was hailed as the "American Kipling," a counterpart to England's incredibly popular manly author, well known for his plain style. This development resulted in highly profitable, reader-friendly prose. it sported clear images—that is, a skilled blend of concrete sense details plus a smoothing flowing story or plot and catchy, moderate tonal passion and sincerity. Such was the formulaic prose that brought Kipling both fame and wealth.

In both the London and Mailer canons, there is a medley of thematic, tonal, and mood crossover effects. For example, London's 1905 novel, ''The'' {{pg|291|292}}

''Game'', featured a prizefighter—a Mailer fixation. And there was a plentitude of Maileresque thematic clouds, filled with metaphysical power preoccupations, hovering above one of London's best novels, ''The Sea Wolf'' (1906), famed for its Nietzschean captain of the "Ghost," a sealing schooner. Within Wolf Larson, London had transplanted the atavistic dog formula, the "Buck-half," on to a human seafaring environment, with its demonic antagonist. London said that his anti-hero symbolized "an attack on the superman philosophy." As for this novel's legacy, scholars have called Wolf Larson the "Zolaesque Captain Ahab of literary Naturalism."

London emulated Crane, Norris, and Davis, and turned into a gutsy, flashy war correspondent, covering the Russo-Japanese War and other headline chaos. He copied Twain, and embarked on a lecture tour, both street-side

among the proletariat and among eggheads at Yale and Harvard. The Klondike man, as ever, was a work beast, and now, also a spend beast. He reconditioned a great house called “Beauty Ranch”—1,500 acres, 100 employees, and at $3,000 per month a luxury mecca for worldwide guests, high and low. While this opulence was at a proliferated cost, still there was financial success. For example,

the serialization of ''The Sea Wolf'' earned $4,100, and made the novel a bestseller. During this period, London earned about $75,000 a year, but was always about $200,000 in debt, yet he still wrote about 1,000 words per day. And his fluid, inner circle friends, employees, and strangers, milked and robbed him blind, not unlike the fate of some of today’s celebrities.

In 1911 there was a new wave of fame and success, and in 1913, London unveiled “Wolf House,” a magnificent dream castle built in one year, of solid stone, and a cost of about $100,000. Soon after construction it was destroyed

by fire, probably arson. London’s luck had turned. The work beast wrote about ten hours per day to keep financially afloat. His body gave way. Those prolonged global cruises had brought him multiple tropical physical ailments and his overall health collapsed.

London became a breathing medical alert, a sick man beset with headaches, rheumatism, dysentery, painful kidney or renal nephritis, and

excess weight from overeating and heavy drinking. And there were mental maladies. He mourned the loss of an infant child. He also suffered from

spousal problems—a passive and jealous wife, which only intensified London’s melancholic yearnings for the glorious past. He was despondent over what he saw as declining sales and fame. Now, toward the end, he became

disillusioned with Socialism, and dropped pacifism and turned hawkish, a{{pg|292|293}}

supporter of World War I against Germany. He died in 1916, apparently from

uremia or a stroke or heart failure or (some whispered) suicide, but his strong legacy lived on.

The postmortem legendary London impact was impressive. In less than two decades, the work beast’s canon could boast about more than two hundred short stories, twenty novels, three plays, and over four hundred nonfiction pieces and some sizeable pulp junk. London admitted that he was

“more business man” than writer. His mammoth Darwinian-Spenserian struggle to achieve success was powerfully rendered in his “personal” novel, ''Martin Eden''.

London’s powerful legacy factor was also enhanced and sustained by American literature’s breakthrough into a global presence. In 1991, the International Copyright Law was initiated. No more foreign “pirated” editions.

Instead, both international and American literary and artistic works could

be copyrighted, and from there into a wide-open global market. This copyright bonanza, coupled with America’s Twain-fed fascination with plain prose, instantly made London America’s most translated writer. Indeed, his work was translated into more than eighty languages. In a more radical political context, London’s fame subsided in his home country, but elsewhere

it soared, especially in the young Communist Russia, and resulted in four “complete editions,” in the old USSR. London was enshrined as America’s foremost International Author.

In London’s day, when the media was still somewhat primitive, he had become a complex celebrity. On one level, he was the new flashy literary globalist. On a personal level, he concocted an idiosyncratic multiple myth

of himself, as if he were living simultaneous lives—the radical politico, the mythic Naturalist, the risky adventurer, the conspicuous consumer. And all of his front page literary agency was nurtured, clearly, by authorial megalomania. London loved being called “Wolf.” Thusly, he signed his letters and book inscriptions, and his bookplate featured an engraved picture of a wolf’s head. So in this earlier America with its quaint media, a virtual one-man show was about to exit.

On the brink of the Twentieth Century, with its media ready to go heads-on with electronics, American literature had a threesome, a trio of virtual one-man celebrity shows (Twain, London, and Davis) but only Twain would prevail with the highest legacy quotient standard. All of this notoriety was because of one book, ''Huckleberry Finn'', then as now, America’s most singu-{{pg|293|294}}

lar, quintessential book. With this media-enshrined novel, Twain had touched his (and his country's) mother tongue's central nerve. Now it was exit time for London, Davis, and all earlier American writers. At the Nineteenth Century's closing, if there were to be only one man and one book standing it would be Twain and ''Huck''.

Those who question Mailer's legacy quotient might ponder this question: Will Mailer and his literary contemporaries survive such stringent legacy quotient guidelines, previews of future "cuts." Davis is an automatic no-show, too minor and ephemeral. Crane seems pinpointed with Hemingway and, thus, a Mailer dead-end. And Dreiser, who would live on into Mailer's own time, must be considered as a potential Mailer legacy/literacy "Godfather."

The Norris-Mailer connection, indeed, was vital, and mostly from Norris's twin literary trademarks—bigness and sensationalism, especially in his more abstract prophetic stance (not found in the London canon) in his "Responsibilities of the Novelist," the lead essay in a posthumous (1903) collection. There, Norris pontificated on a cosmic-global level, on the upward march of American literature, symbolizing the fulfillment of Western civilization's destiny. All of this would seem to be strong academic "meat" for a heavy thinker like Mailer. In a "nots and bolts" more practical America, the London canon remained the best media package and best rejoinder to the legacy of Mark Twain. Yes, the London career and canon were robust with survival knowledge about the nature of authorial megalomania and media response. It all came down to control. And who had it, the writer or media?

Let us consider the life and works of Jack London and their connection to Mailer. During the heady days of literary Naturalism and its Quintet, London was the one writer who came the closest to controlling the media of his time. London was his own star performer and he played quite well for two short decades joining those few select icons (Twain, Hemingway, Fitzgerald) who are still universally recognized and respected. "Wolf" London survives today in the U.S. and overseas. His legacy quotient is well earned.

A century or more in the future, will Norman Mailer be among such august literary artists? Already there are some early positive signs for the future, those budding literary quotient seeds. For example, in their shared trait of literary megalomania, Mailer's mode, unlike London's, was expressed only secondarily through his character, personality, and career—but primarily through his protean canon. Big-theme writers tend to impress "Ivory Tower"{{pg|294|295}}

canon academicians. As for being the combative media writer, Mailer, both in the ring and on the page, was a singular battler with the media, and a controller and survivor. These qualities will play an important role in determining the Mailer Legacy.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-{{Byline|last=Kaufmann|first=Donald L.}}
+{{Byline|last=Kaufmann|first=Donald L.|abstract=Mailer is placed within the American literary tradition as a direct descendent of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Naturalism.}}
-THE MAILER “SEEDS” STIRRED, as the Twentieth Century dawned and American literature soared. The last century would climax in the late 1920s, and
+{{dc|dc=T|HE MAILER "SEEDS" STIRRED}}, as the Twentieth Century dawned and American literature soared. The last century would climax in the late 1920s, and
 achieve its final “coming of age,” now superior to its English and European
 counterparts, soon to be the new superpower’s final word.
@@ Line 18: / Line 19: @@
 clearly many contemporary and later writers were inseminated with Whitman “seeds.”And Norman Mailer was one of those who had more than his
 share. For the Mailer scholar, legacy quotient is based more on his authorial singularity and less on the common characteristics of his generation of
-contemporary writers. Whitman’s death announced that the nineteenth-century American Realism of Howells and James had ended. In its wings  (awkward space?) {{pg|280|281}}
+contemporary writers. Whitman’s death announced that the nineteenth-century American Realism of Howells and James had ended. In its wings  {{pg|280|281}}
 was formed the new Literary Naturalism that might be called the “dynamic
@@ Line 144: / Line 145: @@
 But the “other” Davis, the literary careerist, was radically different, more
-like the high-risk lifestyles of Crane and London. On news assignments, Davis actually tempted death. The press loved his go-for-broke front line {{pg|287|289}}
+like the high-risk lifestyles of Crane and London. On news assignments, Davis actually tempted death. The press loved his go-for-broke front line {{pg|287|288}}
 antics. He called the Spanish-American War “splendid fun” and took part in the Battle of San Juan Hill, and made Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders famous. Davis became the newspapers’ darling. He had continuous access to elite personages from presidents to kings and queens, even the
@@ Line 194: / Line 195: @@
 Mailer’s “March on the Pentagon”). At age twenty, London formally joined
 the Socialist Party. Immediately, his canon turned socio-political didactic.{{pg|290|291|}}
+He wrote two Socialist treatises, ''War of the Classes'' and ''The Human Drift''. Zola’s “social bottom” now obsessed him. With his recently acquired fame,
+he traveled to England and did a “live” documentary treatment of London slum life, a shocker about sweat dens and garbage eating in ''The People of the Abyss'' (1903). This volume was the first of later social exposés, including ''John Barleycorn'' (1913), an autobiographical memoir, a polemic in support of the
+Prohibitionist Movement, his prose still highly readable and self-revealing. Soon, his hard drinking would cause serious health problems.
+London's cultural and political radicalism shaped his fiction. In his 1913, ''The Valley of the Moon'', the hero and family, victimized by urban plutocrats, escape to idyllic Agrarianism. The title refers to a California utopian community, a haven from dreaded Capitalism. There the hero and wife return to the "land" and await their son's birth, a cultural and literary scenario recognized as neo-primitivism.
+The more apocalyptic aspects of the classic Marxist class struggle are the centerpieces of London's ''The Iron Heel''. It was truly omniscient, structured as a fragmentary historic document, told
+through a diary (1912-32) of several decades of Capitalistic persecution. Titanic class warfare was being waged between Plutocrats and the Masses, the latter's only hope of a Socialist Utopia. Such was not to be, at least in 1932, when the diary stopped. But readers were informed that after three hundred years of a dystopian nightmare, only then could blessed collectivism be restored and advanced into Utopian Socialism. Such was the tonal dichotomy of a famous writer who introduced to Literary Naturalism very readable and, yet, high quality Marxist ABCs. This radical political fallout prefigured what the 1930s "proletarian literature" and, later, would foreshadow Mailer's political odyssey from an early flirtation with Henry Wallace's tepid US communism and his gradual shift into a somewhat ambiguous, self-proclaimed "left-conservative."
+With his breakthrough ''Son of the Wolf'', London was hailed as the "American Kipling," a counterpart to England's incredibly popular manly author, well known for his plain style. This development resulted in highly profitable, reader-friendly prose. it sported clear images—that is, a skilled blend of concrete sense details plus a smoothing flowing story or plot and catchy, moderate tonal passion and sincerity. Such was the formulaic prose that brought Kipling both fame and wealth.
+In both the London and Mailer canons, there is a medley of thematic, tonal, and mood crossover effects. For example, London's 1905 novel, ''The'' {{pg|291|292}}
+''Game'', featured a prizefighter—a Mailer fixation. And there was a plentitude of Maileresque thematic clouds, filled with metaphysical power preoccupations, hovering above one of London's best novels, ''The Sea Wolf'' (1906), famed for its Nietzschean captain of the "Ghost," a sealing schooner. Within Wolf Larson, London had transplanted the atavistic dog formula, the "Buck-half," on to a human seafaring environment, with its demonic antagonist. London said that his anti-hero symbolized "an attack on the superman philosophy." As for this novel's legacy, scholars have called Wolf Larson the "Zolaesque Captain Ahab of literary Naturalism."
+London emulated Crane, Norris, and Davis, and turned into a gutsy, flashy war correspondent, covering the Russo-Japanese War and other headline chaos. He copied Twain, and embarked on a lecture tour, both street-side
+among the proletariat and among eggheads at Yale and Harvard. The Klondike man, as ever, was a work beast, and now, also a spend beast. He reconditioned a great house called “Beauty Ranch”—1,500 acres, 100 employees, and at $3,000 per month a luxury mecca for worldwide guests, high and low. While this opulence was at a proliferated cost, still there was financial success. For example,
+the serialization of ''The Sea Wolf'' earned $4,100, and made the novel a bestseller. During this period, London earned about $75,000 a year, but was always about $200,000 in debt, yet he still wrote about 1,000 words per day. And his fluid, inner circle friends, employees, and strangers, milked and robbed him blind, not unlike the fate of some of today’s celebrities.
+In 1911 there was a new wave of fame and success, and in 1913, London unveiled “Wolf House,” a magnificent dream castle built in one year, of solid stone, and a cost of about $100,000. Soon after construction it was destroyed
+by fire, probably arson. London’s luck had turned. The work beast wrote about ten hours per day to keep financially afloat. His body gave way. Those prolonged global cruises had brought him multiple tropical physical ailments and his overall health collapsed.
+London became a breathing medical alert, a sick man beset with headaches, rheumatism, dysentery, painful kidney or renal nephritis, and
+excess weight from overeating and heavy drinking. And there were mental maladies. He mourned the loss of an infant child. He also suffered from
+spousal problems—a passive and jealous wife, which only intensified London’s melancholic yearnings for the glorious past. He was despondent over what he saw as declining sales and fame. Now, toward the end, he became
+disillusioned with Socialism, and dropped pacifism and turned hawkish, a{{pg|292|293}}
+supporter of World War I against Germany. He died in 1916, apparently from
+uremia or a stroke or heart failure or (some whispered) suicide, but his strong legacy lived on.
+The postmortem legendary London impact was impressive. In less than two decades, the work beast’s canon could boast about more than two hundred short stories, twenty novels, three plays, and over four hundred nonfiction pieces and some sizeable pulp junk. London admitted that he was
+“more business man” than writer. His mammoth Darwinian-Spenserian struggle to achieve success was powerfully rendered in his “personal” novel, ''Martin Eden''.
+London’s powerful legacy factor was also enhanced and sustained by American literature’s breakthrough into a global presence. In 1991, the International Copyright Law was initiated. No more foreign “pirated” editions.
+Instead, both international and American literary and artistic works could
+be copyrighted, and from there into a wide-open global market. This copyright bonanza, coupled with America’s Twain-fed fascination with plain prose, instantly made London America’s most translated writer. Indeed, his work was translated into more than eighty languages. In a more radical political context, London’s fame subsided in his home country, but elsewhere
+it soared, especially in the young Communist Russia, and resulted in four “complete editions,” in the old USSR. London was enshrined as America’s foremost International Author.
+In London’s day, when the media was still somewhat primitive, he had become a complex celebrity. On one level, he was the new flashy literary globalist. On a personal level, he concocted an idiosyncratic multiple myth
+of himself, as if he were living simultaneous lives—the radical politico, the mythic Naturalist, the risky adventurer, the conspicuous consumer. And all of his front page literary agency was nurtured, clearly, by authorial megalomania. London loved being called “Wolf.” Thusly, he signed his letters and book inscriptions, and his bookplate featured an engraved picture of a wolf’s head. So in this earlier America with its quaint media, a virtual one-man show was about to exit.
+On the brink of the Twentieth Century, with its media ready to go heads-on with electronics, American literature had a threesome, a trio of virtual one-man celebrity shows (Twain, London, and Davis) but only Twain would prevail with the highest legacy quotient standard. All of this notoriety was because of one book, ''Huckleberry Finn'', then as now, America’s most singu-{{pg|293|294}}
+lar, quintessential book. With this media-enshrined novel, Twain had touched his (and his country's) mother tongue's central nerve. Now it was exit time for London, Davis, and all earlier American writers. At the Nineteenth Century's closing, if there were to be only one man and one book standing it would be Twain and ''Huck''.
+Those who question Mailer's legacy quotient might ponder this question: Will Mailer and his literary contemporaries survive such stringent legacy quotient guidelines, previews of future "cuts." Davis is an automatic no-show, too minor and ephemeral. Crane seems pinpointed with Hemingway and, thus, a Mailer dead-end. And Dreiser, who would live on into Mailer's own time, must be considered as a potential Mailer legacy/literacy "Godfather."
+The Norris-Mailer connection, indeed, was vital, and mostly from Norris's twin literary trademarks—bigness and sensationalism, especially in his more abstract prophetic stance (not found in the London canon) in his "Responsibilities of the Novelist," the lead essay in a posthumous (1903) collection. There, Norris pontificated on a cosmic-global level, on the upward march of American literature, symbolizing the fulfillment of Western civilization's destiny. All of this would seem to be strong academic "meat" for a heavy thinker like Mailer. In a "nots and bolts" more practical America, the London canon remained the best media package and best rejoinder to the legacy of Mark Twain. Yes, the London career and canon were robust with survival knowledge about the nature of authorial megalomania and media response. It all came down to control. And who had it, the writer or media?
+Let us consider the life and works of Jack London and their connection to Mailer. During the heady days of literary Naturalism and its Quintet, London was the one writer who came the closest to controlling the media of his time. London was his own star performer and he played quite well for two short decades joining those few select icons (Twain, Hemingway, Fitzgerald) who are still universally recognized and respected. "Wolf" London survives today in the U.S. and overseas. His legacy quotient is well earned.
+A century or more in the future, will Norman Mailer be among such august literary artists? Already there are some early positive signs for the future, those budding literary quotient seeds. For example, in their shared trait of literary megalomania, Mailer's mode, unlike London's, was expressed only secondarily through his character, personality, and career—but primarily through his protean canon. Big-theme writers tend to impress "Ivory Tower"{{pg|294|295}}
+canon academicians. As for being the combative media writer, Mailer, both in the ring and on the page, was a singular battler with the media, and a controller and survivor. These qualities will play an important role in determining the Mailer Legacy.
+{{Review}}