User:KForeman/sandbox: Difference between revisions

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Could Kinnamon be missing the hyperbolic, extravagant, and preposterous humor of the man, the ill-tempered, grotesque, intentionally skewed malice? What drives Mailer to proclaim that the crowd in the bullring is “[. . .] brutal to a man”? Why does he go out of his way to describe them in the following terms: “In the Plaza de Mexico, the Indians in the cheap seats buy a paper cup of beer and when they are done drinking, the walk to the W.C. is miles away, and besides they are usually feeling sullen, so they urinate in their paper cup and hurl it down in a cascade of harvest gold, Indian piss” (3–4)? When the matador has difficulty “[. . .] the crowd would jeer and the piss would fly in yellow arcs of the rainbow through the rain down from the cheap seats [. . .]” (4). Then comes perhaps the acme of tastelessness: “[. . .] and the whores would make farting sounds with their spoiled knowledgeable mouths, while the aficionados would roll their eyes and the sound of Mexican laughter, that operative definition of the echo of total disgust, would shake along like jelly gasoline through the crowd” (4–5). Rather than racism, I would call it stylistically intentional misanthropy directed at the Mexicans, an ur-gonzo line or style followed to one degree or another by William S. Burroughs and later by the gonzo master and inventor Hunter S. Thompson.

It’s not just the Indians Mailer goes after: “The intellectuals and the technicians of Mexico abominate their national character because it is always in the way” (2). He rails against every level of Mexican society: “To the vampires and banshees and dried blood on the curses of the cactus in the desert is added the horror of the new technology in an old murder-ridden land” (3). Where is all this eloquent vilification headed? To the bullring, of course: “And four o’clock on Sunday is the beginning of release for some of the horrors of the week” (3). In what Hemingway would probably have called dubious sociology—a notion to which I would subscribe—Mailer blinds us with his insight into the national character of Mexicans: “If many come close to feeling the truth only by telling a lie, so Mexicans come close to love by watching the flow of blood on an animal’s flanks and the certain death of the bull before the bravery and/or humiliation of the bullfighter” (3). The operative word here is humiliation, not truth, not lie, not blood, not death— humiliation.

===Works Cited===

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 Could Kinnamon be missing the hyperbolic, extravagant, and preposterous humor of the man, the ill-tempered, grotesque, intentionally skewed malice? What drives Mailer to proclaim that the crowd in the bullring is “[. . .] brutal to a man”? Why does he go out of his way to describe them in the following terms: “In the Plaza de Mexico, the Indians in the cheap seats buy a paper cup of beer and when they are done drinking, the walk to the W.C. is miles away, and besides they are usually feeling sullen, so they urinate in their paper cup and hurl it down in a cascade of harvest gold, Indian piss” (3–4)? When the matador has difficulty “[. . .] the crowd would jeer and the piss would fly in yellow arcs of the rainbow through the rain down from the cheap seats [. . .]” (4). Then comes perhaps the acme of tastelessness: “[. . .] and the whores would make farting sounds with their spoiled knowledgeable mouths, while the aficionados would roll their eyes and the sound of Mexican laughter, that operative definition of the echo of total disgust, would shake along like jelly gasoline through the crowd” (4–5). Rather than racism, I would call it stylistically intentional misanthropy directed at the Mexicans, an ur-gonzo line or style followed to one degree or another by William S. Burroughs and later by the gonzo master and inventor Hunter S. Thompson.
+It’s not just the Indians Mailer goes after: “The intellectuals and the technicians of Mexico abominate their national character because it is always in the way” (2). He rails against every level of Mexican society: “To the vampires and banshees and dried blood on the curses of the cactus in the desert is added the horror of the new technology in an old murder-ridden land” (3). Where is all this eloquent vilification headed? To the bullring, of course: “And four o’clock on Sunday is the beginning of release for some of the horrors of the week” (3). In what Hemingway would probably have called dubious sociology—a notion to which I would subscribe—Mailer blinds us with his insight into the national character of Mexicans: “If many come close to feeling the truth only by telling a lie, so Mexicans come close to love by watching the flow of blood on an animal’s flanks and the certain death of the bull before the bravery and/or humiliation of the bullfighter” (3). The operative word here is humiliation, not truth, not lie, not blood, not death— humiliation.
 ===Works Cited===