The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/From Here to Eternity and The Naked and the Dead: Premiere to Eternity?: Difference between revisions

'''James Jones was a born novelist, and Norman Mailer was a born writer'''. This distinction holds across the two authors' life work. I illustrate this distinction here for only the authors' first published novels, ''The Naked and the Dead'' and ''From Here to Eternity''. However, these illustrations help assess the quality of these two books and each author's career.

*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 de- scriptions from Wolfe,” said Mailer to interviewer Peter Manso {{sfn|Manso|1985|p=101}}.

* * {{cite book |last=Burgess |first=Anthony |url= |title=99 Novels: The Best English Novels Since 1939 |date= |publisher=New York: Summit |year=1984 |isbn= |location= |page= |access-date= |archive-url= |archive-date= |url-status=}}

*  

* * {{cite book |last=Carson |first=Tom |url= |title="The Hell with Literature: James Jones's Unvarnished Truths" |date=28 September 1984 |publisher=Village Voice Literary Supplement |year=1984 |isbn= |edition=1st |location= |page= |pages=18-20 |access-date= |archive-url= |archive-date= |url-status=}}

* * {{cite book |last=Carter |first=Steven R. |url= |title=James Jones: An American Literary Orientalist Master |date= |publisher=United States: U of Illinois P |year=1998 |isbn= |location= |page= |access-date= |archive-url= |archive-date= |url-status=}}

* * {{cite book |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |url= |title=Leopards in the Temple: The Transformation of American Fiction, 1945-1970 |date=2005 |publisher=Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP |year=2005 |isbn= |location= |page= |access-date= |archive-url= |archive-date= |url-status=}}

* * {{cite book |author=Frye |first=Northrop |url= |title=Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. |date= |publisher=Princeton: Princeton UP |year=1957 |isbn= |location= |page= |access-date=}}

* * {{cite book |title=The Four Forms of Prose Fiction |date= |publisher=Hudson Review 2.4 (Winter 1950) |year=2011 |publication-date=7 September 2011 |pages=582-595}}

* * {{cite book |last=Garret |first=George P. |url= |title=James Jones |date=1984 |publisher=New York: Harcourt,1984 |year=1984 |isbn= |location= |page= |access-date=}}

* * {{cite book |last=Jones |first=James |url= |title=From Here to Eternity |date=1951 |publisher=New York: Scribner, 1951 |year=1951 |isbn= |location= |page= |access-date=}}

* * {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |url= |title=The Naked and the Dead |date= |publisher=New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1984 |year=1984 |isbn= |location= |publication-date=1984 |page= |access-date=}}

* * {{cite book |last=Manso |first=Peter |url= |title=Mailer: His Life and Times |date=1985 |publisher=New York: Simon, 1985 |year=1985 |isbn= |location= |publication-date=1985 |page= |access-date=}}

* * {{cite book |last=Meyer |first=Michael |url= |title=The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing |date=2005 |publisher=Boston: Bedford,2005 |year=2005 |isbn= |location= |page= |access-date=}}

* * {{cite book |last=Moretti |first=Franco |title=Modern Epic: The World System from Goethe to Garcia Marquez |date=1996 |publisher=London: Verso, 1996 |isbn= |location= |page= |access-date=}}

* * {{cite book |last=Ricks |first=Christopher |title="Mailers Rhythm" The Norman Mailer Society Conference |date=2008 |year=2008 |isbn= |edition=Keynote Speaker |location=Provincetown, MA |publication-date=2008 |page= |access-date=}}