The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Jive-Ass Aficionado: Why Are We in Vietnam? and Hemingway's Moral Code: Difference between revisions

← Older edit Newer edit →

@@ Line 134: / Line 134: @@
 know when a very bad grizz is near to you (a final division of humanity)
 and D.J. knew, and D.J. was in love with himself because he did not wish to
-scream or plead, he just wished to encounter Mr. D., big-ass grizz” (140)
+scream or plead, he just wished to encounter Mr. D., big-ass grizz” (140).
+When a grizzly bear charges them and both men fire, wounding it, their
+disparate level of ''aficion'' is also made clear. Rusty’s impulse is to blame the absent guide for “‘sticking us around the chimney’” (142). D.J. is more tuned in to nature and the dynamics of the natural world, and he realizes that “no man cell in him can now forget that if the center of things is insane, it is insane with force” (143). Although Rusty is hesitant to pursue the wounded
+grizzly into thick brush, as Francis Macomber was reluctant to pursue the
+lion early in “The Short Happy Life,” D.J.’s self-encouragement—“That’s
+it”—echoes what Wilson told Macomber who seemed suddenly cheerful and
+determined to face the lion.“‘After all,what can they do to you?’”Macomber
+says, and Wilson responds, “‘That’s it. . . . Worst one can do is kill you’”
+(Hemingway,“Short Happy” 25). D.J.would rather face God than“look into
+the contempt and contumely of that State of Texas personified by Gottfried
+Tex Hyde Jr.” (Mailer, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' 143).
+Another interesting Hemingway-Mailer crossover occurs when both men shoot at the grizzly and only D.J. has the nerve to walk close to make sure he’s dead.Yet, Rusty (“wetting his pants, doubtless”) takes credit for the kill shot, ultimately choosing the respect of the other hunters over the respect of his {{pg|204|205}}
+son, none of which is lost on D.J. After the grizzly is felled by both men
+shooting and Rusty takes the credit, he forever alienates his son: “Final end
+of love of one son for one father” (147). That is different from a similar scene
+in ''Green Hills'' in which Poor Old Mama and Poppa shoot at a lion, and while
+the “killing of the lion had been confused and unsatisfactory,” Poppa
+nonetheless gives the credit to his wife, even after seeing that the bullet dug
+out of the animal came from his gun (Hemingway 36-37). As Foster notes,
+<blockquote>D.J. breaks spiritually with his father when, out of habits of competitive vanity and self-justification, his father claims the grizzly bear that D.J. has mortally wounded, violating not only the father-son bond as reinforced by the hunt (stalking their dangerous quarry D.J. sees himself and his father as ‘war buddies’) but also the sacred blood bond between killer and prey. (20)</blockquote>
+Would D.J. have gone off to war a different man had his father given him
+the credit?
+Mailer says in the introduction to ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' that he had intended to write about a murderous Charles Manson-style clan in Provincetown, but began with a chapter on hunting bear in Alaska as “a prelude,”
+with the boys “still young,still mean rather than uncontrollably murderous”
+so that “the hunting might serve as a bridge to get them ready for more”
+(Mailer, ''Pieces'' 10). As Foster summarizes,
+<blockquote>High on pot, the prose of the Marquis de Sade and William Burroughs, and the cheerfully psychotic inspiration that he may be the voice of a ‘Harlem spade’ imprisoned in the body of the son of a white Dallas tycoon, he tells the story of how he got that way. It is an initiation story (new style) as An ''American Dream'' was a new-style story of sacrifice and redemption. (19-20)</blockquote>
+How D.J. got that way explains how America got where it is, and why, by
+novel’s end, a boy who has enough aficion to know right from wrong in the
+matter of hunting etiquette seems suddenly hot to board that plane for “Vietnam, hot damn” (Mailer, ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' 208). Unless, of course, he is the voice of an ironist who asks which is worse, Harlem guiding Dallas or vice versa? The Hipster or the Redneck?{{pg|205|206}}