User:MerAtticus/sandbox: Difference between revisions

Another possible source for Mailer's obsession with Monroe could be Mailer's competitive nature. A number of writers have suggested that has legendary ego might have been wounded by his lack of access to the era's {{pg|265|266}} consummate sex goddess, as he considered himself the epitome of the macho man. The main men in her life were such that Mailer would want to measure himself against them. Husband number one was not a consideration. Mailer interviewed James Dougherty, but the man and his remembrances are summarily dismissed as possibly unreliable since they are those of a narcotics cop. For Mailer, in terms of possible competition, Dougherty qualifies at best as a neophyte, ignorant of the finer points of the contest. Husbands two and three are another matter. They were both significant figures in their different professions. Mailer, for whom boxing was an actual hobby and metaphorical trope, may have consciously or subconsciously regretted that he never even got the chance to get in the ring with either of these champions.{{efn| Hemingway also used the boxing metaphor, famously evaluating his writing in relation to other writers in terms of staying in the ring with them.}} It was about this time in Mailer's life that Jose Torres began giving him boxing lessons in exchange for editorial assistance with the book Torres was writing about Muhammed Ali. In a contest with Monroe's second husband, Mailer is out of his class, division, or league, whichever metaphor works. Joe DiMaggio was a legendary sports hero, an icon of the masculine arena. DiMaggio had reached such mythic status that he was referenced in popular music and Hemingway's admired novella, ''The Old Man and The Sea''. {{efn| A Simon and Garfunkel lyric for a song in the Academy Award-nominated film, ''The Graduate,'' positions DiMaggio as a national hero, one whose return the nation longs for: "Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio / A nation turns its lonely eyes to you." Santiago, the heroic fisherman in Hemingway's ''The Old Man and the Sea,'' tells the boy about "the great DiMaggio."}} Bouts are not scheduled between boxers who fall in different weight classes and, in the sports league, Mailer would not even try to get in the ring with DiMaggio. Instead, Mailer presents him in an almost complimentary manner, writing, that during the years that Monroe was married to DiMaggio, she looked like she was fed on sexual candy. {{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=102}} In his need to find sufficiently lusty language, Mailer invents the term "funky" to describe how Monroe looked during the DiMaggio period. He also pays DiMaggio the high compliment of comparing him to Hemingway in terms of eminence in his art, pointing out the "consistent courage" it took to face thousands of fast balls, any which could kill or cripple him.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=99}} If there is a hero in this "novel," it would have to be "Jolting Joe." Mailer credits him with always being there for Marilyn "when she needs him, and is probably her closest friend in the months before she dies."{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=95}} A photograph of DiMaggio at Monroe's funeral is one of the last images in the book and Mailer's last line reads, "Let us then take our estimate of her worth by the grief on Joe DiMaggio's face the day of that dread funeral in Westwood west of Hollywood."{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=262}}.

=== Notes ===