The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/From Here to Eternity and The Naked and the Dead: Premiere to Eternity?: Difference between revisions
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In addition, Mailer’s prose sometimes attains a roiling power and dignity, most especially in its 'overspirit' mode, using its use or near use of the 'heroic' line: “Ahead, ahead, ahead, ahead, moving” catches the cadence of this pentameter, splendidly detailed for Mailer’s writings by Christopher Ricks. For example, “The moon was out, limning the deck housings”{{sfn|Ricks|2008|p=10}} | In addition, Mailer’s prose sometimes attains a roiling power and dignity, most especially in its 'overspirit' mode, using its use or near use of the 'heroic' line: “Ahead, ahead, ahead, ahead, moving” catches the cadence of this pentameter, splendidly detailed for Mailer’s writings by Christopher Ricks. For example, “The moon was out, limning the deck housings”.{{sfn|Ricks|2008|p=10}} Returning to Mailer on the movement of that 77mm artillery piece, we have a final phrase that begins with the heroic line: | ||
<blockquote>Once or twice, a flare filtered a wan and delicate bluish light over them, the light almost lost in the dense foliage through which it had to pass. In the brief moment it lasted, they were caught at their guns in classic straining motions with the form and beauty of a frieze. The water and the dark slime of the trail twice blackened their uniforms. Moreover, the light shone on them instantly, and their faces stood out, white and contorted. Even the guns had a slender articulated beauty like an insect reared back on its wire haunches. Then darkness swirled about them again, and they ground the guns forward mindlessly, a line of ants dragging their burden back to their hole.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=116}}</blockquote> | <blockquote>Once or twice, a flare filtered a wan and delicate bluish light over them, the light almost lost in the dense foliage through which it had to pass. In the brief moment it lasted, they were caught at their guns in classic straining motions with the form and beauty of a frieze. The water and the dark slime of the trail twice blackened their uniforms. Moreover, the light shone on them instantly, and their faces stood out, white and contorted. Even the guns had a slender articulated beauty like an insect reared back on its wire haunches. Then darkness swirled about them again, and they ground the guns forward mindlessly, a line of ants dragging their burden back to their hole.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=116}}</blockquote> | ||
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==Notes== | ==Notes== | ||
# *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}} | # *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 | # *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 descriptions from Wolfe,” said Mailer to interviewer Peter Manso. {{sfn|Manso|1985|p=101}} | ||
==Citations== | ==Citations== | ||