The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Looking at the Past: Nostalgia as Technique in The Naked and the Dead and For Whom the Bell Tolls: Difference between revisions

{{byline|last=Batchelor|first=Bob|abstract=An examination of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia nostalgia] as technique in ''[[The Naked and the Dead]]'' and ''[[w:For Whom the Bell Tolls|For Whom the Bell Tolls]]''. |url=. . .}}

{{dc|dc=B|reit quotes Mailer in ''The New York Times'' in 1951}}: “A great writer always goes to the root, he is always coming up with the contradictions, the impasses, the insoluble dilemmas of the particular time he lives in. The result is not to cement society but to question it and destroy it.”{{sfn|Breit|1951|p=20}}

Nostalgia is a contested word that evokes numerous, often conflicting, definitions depending on its context. In contemporary usage, however, the term most often implies a romantic look at the past, as if history’s difficulties have been bleached out of existence. Through nostalgia, people can make sense of the past in a highly personal way, essentially crafting or re-creating narratives that fit into their broader ideas about self and society. The tendency, however, is to consider this use simpleminded.