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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He leaned his elbows on the porch edge and stood looking down through the screen at the familiar scene of the barracks square laid out below, with the tiers of porches dark in the face of the three-story concrete barracks fronting the square. He felt a half-familiar affection for this vantage point that he was leaving. | He leaned his elbows on the porch edge and stood looking down through the screen at the familiar scene of the barracks square laid out below, with the tiers of porches dark in the face of the three-story concrete barracks fronting the square. He felt a half-familiar affection for this vantage point that he was leaving. | ||
Below him, under the blows of the February Hawaiian sun, the quadrangle gasped defenselessly like an exhausted fighter. Through the heat haze and the thin mid-morning film of the parched red dust, a muted orchestra of sounds emerged: the clankings of steel-wheeled carts bouncing over brick, the slappings of oiled leather sling straps, the shuffling beat of scorched shoe soles, and the hoarse expletives of irritated noncoms. | Below him, under the blows of the February Hawaiian sun, the quadrangle gasped defenselessly like an exhausted fighter. Through the heat haze and the thin mid-morning film of the parched red dust, a muted orchestra of sounds emerged: the clankings of steel-wheeled carts bouncing over brick, the slappings of oiled leather sling straps, the shuffling beat of scorched shoe soles, and the hoarse expletives of irritated noncoms. | ||
He thought these things had become your heritage somewhere along the line. You are multiplied by each sound that you hear. And you cannot deny them without denying with them the purpose of your own existence. Yet now, he told himself, you are denying them by renouncing the place they given you.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=3}}</blockquote> | He thought these things had become your heritage somewhere along the line. You are multiplied by each sound that you hear. And you cannot deny them without denying with them the purpose of your own existence. Yet now, he told himself, you are denying them by renouncing the place they given you.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=3}}</blockquote>{{pg|319|320}} | ||
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By the end of Chapter Two, we know of the principal protagonist, Prewitt, whose place in the Company he is leaving, and we know something about the Kentucky mountains from which he hails. Within a few more chapters, Prewitt is deeply engaged in his new world of Company G: the stern but fatherly Warden, the jokester's friend Pfc. Maggio, company commander Holmes, and the numerous sharply drawn men who will "soljer" and chat and play cards with Prewitt and try to force him to box for the Company or almost make him wish he had, including Anderson, Bloom, Chaote, Kowalski, Leva, Mazzioli, Preem, and Stark. | By the end of Chapter Two, we know of the principal protagonist, Prewitt, whose place in the Company he is leaving, and we know something about the Kentucky mountains from which he hails. Within a few more chapters, Prewitt is deeply engaged in his new world of Company G: the stern but fatherly Warden, the jokester's friend Pfc. Maggio, company commander Holmes, and the numerous sharply drawn men who will "soljer" and chat and play cards with Prewitt and try to force him to box for the Company or almost make him wish he had, including Anderson, Bloom, Chaote, Kowalski, Leva, Mazzioli, Preem, and Stark. | ||
The dialogue is masterful. Physical and social action is evoked by concrete description and adept use of the empathetic first-person indirect, a vivid and seamlessly shifting point of view on the action and its social circumstance. If there is a mode of writing other than Frye's ‘novel’ that is aptly evoked by ''Eternity'', it is Frye's ‘drama’ in which the author hides from the audience and their direct experience | The dialogue is masterful. Physical and social action is evoked by concrete description and adept use of the empathetic first-person indirect, a vivid and seamlessly shifting point of view on the action and its social circumstance. If there is a mode of writing other than Frye's ‘novel’ that is aptly evoked by ''Eternity'', it is Frye's ‘drama’ in which the author hides from the audience and their direct experience.{{sfn|Frye|1957|p=239}} Characters jump off the page, as in this early exchange between Prewitt and Maggio: | ||
<blockquote>“If I had knew,” he said to Prewitt, whose bunk was two beds from his own in Chief Choate’s squad, “if I had only knew what this man’s Army had been like. Of all the people in this outfit, they give that vacant Pfc to Bloom. Because he is a punchie.” | <blockquote>“If I had knew,” he said to Prewitt, whose bunk was two beds from his own in Chief Choate’s squad, “if I had only knew what this man’s Army had been like. Of all the people in this outfit, they give that vacant Pfc to Bloom. Because he is a punchie.” | ||
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but I dont like even you that much. Thirty year man! Not me, buddy. If I’m goin to be a valet, yard man, and general handyman for some fuckin officer, I’m goin to get paid for it, see?” | but I dont like even you that much. Thirty year man! Not me, buddy. If I’m goin to be a valet, yard man, and general handyman for some fuckin officer, I’m goin to get paid for it, see?” | ||
“You’ll re-enlist,” Prew said.</blockquote> | “You’ll re-enlist,” Prew said.</blockquote>{{pg|320|321}}<blockquote>“I’ll re-enlist,” Maggio said chanting the old bugle call parody, “in a pig’s asshole. If anybody should of had that rating, man, you should of had it. You’re the best soljer in this outfit for my dough. By a hunert million miles.”{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=127}}</blockquote> | ||
{{pg|320|321}} | |||
<blockquote>“I’ll re-enlist,” Maggio said chanting the old bugle call parody, “in a pig’s asshole. If anybody should of had that rating, man, you should of had it. You’re the best soljer in this outfit for my dough. By a hunert million miles.”{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=127}}</blockquote> | |||
Dramatic conflict arises with great naturalness and force from the well- etched milieu: | Dramatic conflict arises with great naturalness and force from the well- etched milieu: | ||
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“Lay off, Bloom,” Prew said, surprised at the clear loudness of his voice in the silence. “Come on and sit down, Angelo. Five up to you.” | “Lay off, Bloom,” Prew said, surprised at the clear loudness of his voice in the silence. “Come on and sit down, Angelo. Five up to you.” | ||
“I call,” Maggio said without looking around. “Take off, you bum,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away. Bloom laughed after him self-confidently and nastily.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=137}}</blockquote> | “I call,” Maggio said without looking around. “Take off, you bum,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away. Bloom laughed after him self-confidently and nastily.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=137}}</blockquote>{{pg|321|322}}Though the book does not appear to aspire to any allegorical significance beyond easily generalizable but hardly unusual outsider-insider, self-society, subordinate-superordinate tensions central to its dramatic construction, its typical ‘dramatic-novelistic’ mode of expression incisively and elaborately illustrates insights into the relation of the individual to society within the specifically military hierarchal orders. ''Eternity'' rises eloquently to nice ironies of social aspiration and class, war, and peace, as in the book’s final pages on the status distortions of Lerene’s recollections of Prewitt’s patriotism and war. Take Karen Holmes and her son on the latter as they leave Honolulu Harbor: | ||
{{pg|321|322}} | |||
Though the book does not appear to aspire to any allegorical significance beyond easily generalizable but hardly unusual outsider-insider, self-society, subordinate-superordinate tensions central to its dramatic construction, its typical ‘dramatic-novelistic’ mode of expression incisively and elaborately illustrates insights into the relation of the individual to society within the specifically military hierarchal orders. ''Eternity'' rises eloquently to nice ironies of social aspiration and class, war, and peace, as in the book’s final pages on the | |||
<blockquote>From this far out, if you did not already know it was there you couldnt have seen it. | <blockquote>From this far out, if you did not already know it was there you couldnt have seen it. | ||
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“You really think so, mother?” her son said anxiously.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=858}}</blockquote> | “You really think so, mother?” her son said anxiously.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=858}}</blockquote> | ||
The dramatic arch of the multi-stranded narrative is strong and clear. Prewitt’s refusal to box for the company, Maggio’s mounting resistance to the{{pg|322|323}} abuse of military power and class structures, and Warden’s bold consummation of his desire for Karen Holmes provide parallel disequilibria that trigger a narrative of beleaguered—and in Prewitt and Maggio’s cases, doomed quests for | The dramatic arch of the multi-stranded narrative is strong and clear. Prewitt’s refusal to box for the company, Maggio’s mounting resistance to the{{pg|322|323}} abuse of military power and class structures, and Warden’s bold consummation of his desire for Karen Holmes provide parallel disequilibria that trigger a narrative of beleaguered—and in Prewitt and Maggio’s cases, doomed quests for “soljer” autonomy within a hierarchical social order. These three central narratives cascade outward, rippling across the others: Maggio’s rebellion is intensified by Prewitt’s ‘treatment’ by Holmes and the Company Boxers, and Maggio’s destruction in the Stockade deepens Prewitt’s rebelliousness. Ironic parallels between the Prewitt-Lorene affair and the Warden-Holmes affair cap the book’s conclusion aboard the liner on which Karen Holmes and ''Alma ‘Lorene’ Burke'' leave Honolulu shortly following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor and war provide a second parallel wave of disequilibria that concentrate the book’s action, speeding it to the conclusion: the AWOL Prewitt is shot by a Wartime sentry while seeking to return to his company, and the call of war cancels Warden’s committed involvement with Karen Holmes. | ||
If there are jarring notes in ''Eternity'', they are stylistic. They are mainly comprised of faulty diction and idiosyncratic rhetoric that tends to arise when the writing veers off into an authorial voice distanced from specific characters and found within sociologically detailed dramatic situations. I address instances of the ‘bad’ writing that has tended to conspire against the book’s chances for immortality, especially after eventually falling under the shadow of extensively negative reviews reviling Jones’s style that ''Some Came Running'' cast. | If there are jarring notes in ''Eternity'', they are stylistic. They are mainly comprised of faulty diction and idiosyncratic rhetoric that tends to arise when the writing veers off into an authorial voice distanced from specific characters and found within sociologically detailed dramatic situations. I address instances of the ‘bad’ writing that has tended to conspire against the book’s chances for immortality, especially after eventually falling under the shadow of extensively negative reviews reviling Jones’s style that ''Some Came Running'' cast. | ||
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Still, not even evoking the full range of Frye’s four fictive modes will suffice to categorize much of Mailer’s work. In particular, The Naked and the Dead evokes Moretti’s reference to the appearance of literary “one-off cases, oddities, anomalies” in his discussion of that variant of the high modernist fiction he terms “the modern epic” in his 1996 The Modern Epic. | Still, not even evoking the full range of Frye’s four fictive modes will suffice to categorize much of Mailer’s work. In particular, The Naked and the Dead evokes Moretti’s reference to the appearance of literary “one-off cases, oddities, anomalies” in his discussion of that variant of the high modernist fiction he terms “the modern epic” in his 1996 The Modern Epic. | ||
If the original epic can be boiled down rather conventionally into a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation, the 'modern epic' is a variation of the epic in which the heroic is downplayed and the expression of the 'total world of a nation and epoch' extends to the 'supranational' sphere, in which we encounter a somewhat incongruous ungainly mix of modes of expression—not only the very novelistic accounts of exchanges among the tale’s principals but the confessional ardor of Ishmael’s voice when he accounts his high spirits, the cataloging of seamen’s conversation during watches, the lessons in cytology, the pseudo-Shakespearean soliloquies of Ahab along on the forecastle.{{sfn|Meyer|2005|p=2128}}{{sfn|Moretti|1996| | If the original epic can be boiled down rather conventionally into a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation, the 'modern epic' is a variation of the epic in which the heroic is downplayed and the expression of the 'total world of a nation and epoch' extends to the 'supranational' sphere, in which we encounter a somewhat incongruous ungainly mix of modes of expression—not only the very novelistic accounts of exchanges among the tale’s principals but the confessional ardor of Ishmael’s voice when he accounts his high spirits, the cataloging of seamen’s conversation during watches, the lessons in cytology, the pseudo-Shakespearean soliloquies of Ahab along on the forecastle.{{sfn|Meyer|2005|p=2128}}{{sfn|Moretti|1996|pp=11-14}} | ||
With the Ahab-like ardor of Croft ascending Mt. Anaka, the social and linguistic cataloging of social types and vernaculars in Time Machine and Chow Line segments, and the epic qualities of the book’s framing and charting, and detailed depiction of the Anopopei campaign and its combat actions; and the fundamental novelistic interactions among the principals, each with members of his immediate sphere—Cummings, Hearn, and Croft, each with his circle of underlings—''The Naked and the Dead'' fits the template of the 'modern epic' quite well. | With the Ahab-like ardor of Croft ascending Mt. Anaka, the social and linguistic cataloging of social types and vernaculars in Time Machine and Chow Line segments, and the epic qualities of the book’s framing and charting, and detailed depiction of the Anopopei campaign and its combat actions; and the fundamental novelistic interactions among the principals, each with members of his immediate sphere—Cummings, Hearn, and Croft, each with his circle of underlings—''The Naked and the Dead'' fits the template of the 'modern epic' quite well. | ||
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Although ''Naked'' has no individual hero—Croft is arguably an antihero— the action of the Army on Anopopei might be considered heroic. For example, the book begins with a statement about the invading force—the memorable “Nobody could sleep . . . all over the ship, all through the convoy, there was a knowledge that in a few hours some of them were going to{{pg|324|325}} be dead”—and it ends with a description of the “mop up” or “successful” campaign.{{sfn|Meyer|2005}}{{sfn|Moretti|1996}} | Although ''Naked'' has no individual hero—Croft is arguably an antihero— the action of the Army on Anopopei might be considered heroic. For example, the book begins with a statement about the invading force—the memorable “Nobody could sleep . . . all over the ship, all through the convoy, there was a knowledge that in a few hours some of them were going to{{pg|324|325}} be dead”—and it ends with a description of the “mop up” or “successful” campaign.{{sfn|Meyer|2005}}{{sfn|Moretti|1996}} | ||
Further, ''Naked | Further, ''Naked''’s use of its Time Machine segments reaches out toward the “expression” of the “total world of a nation and epoch”. {{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=11}} These devices democratically apply the model of Dos Passos’s elite biographic profiles of great Americans in the ''U.S.A.'' to the description of the American ‘every man’. | ||
In place of ''U.S.A. | In place of ''U.S.A.''’s Jack Reed and TR, aviators like the Wright Brothers, lovers like Rudolph Valentino, financiers like Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan, we get Hispanic Texans like Julio Martinez; Texan and Virgin- ian rednecks Sam Croft and Woodrow Wilson; Montana miner and hobo Red Velsen; working-class Bostonian Irishman Will Gallagher and working-class Jewish Brooklynite Joey Goldstein; small-town Northeastern/Midwestern middleclass William Brown; Northeastern/Midwestern, upper-class, Harvard-educated Left intellectual Robert Hearn; and Northeastern/Midwestern, upper-class, West Point-educated Far Right intellectual General Cummings. | ||
Indeed, ''Naked’s'' use of its Time Machine segments extends the ''U.S.A.’s'' encyclopedia of American social types and speech during the second and third decades of the twentieth century to the third and early fourth decades of the century, for the Time Machine profiles deal with the biographies that highlight the preponderantly 1930s and early 1940s adolescence and youth of ''Naked’s'' cast on its principal 1944-ish stage. | Indeed, ''Naked’s'' use of its Time Machine segments extends the ''U.S.A.’s'' encyclopedia of American social types and speech during the second and third decades of the twentieth century to the third and early fourth decades of the century, for the Time Machine profiles deal with the biographies that highlight the preponderantly 1930s and early 1940s adolescence and youth of ''Naked’s'' cast on its principal 1944-ish stage. | ||