User:Chelsey.brantley/sandbox: Difference between revisions

Line 148:

to protest.

Mailer asks serious questions of his readers, as Alfred Kazin points out,

describing him as the first “leading American peacenik and resister addressing urgent questions to his ‘army’—Are we good enough? How can we overcome

the ‘mediocrity of the middle-class middle-aged masses of the Left?’

The general shoddiness of American standards just now? The tendency of authorities to lie?”{{sfn|Kazin|1968|p=BR 1}} Mailer artfully places such questions within the

framework of a narrative, addressed not only to fellow peaceniks but also to

a popular readership. It was important that this novel travel beyond the Left community, and it did. Indeed, ''Armies'' “reestablished Mailer with a wide audience"{{sfn|Whalen-Bridge|2003|p=217}} and won both the Pulitzer Prize for General

Nonfiction and the National Book Award. And it was gaining a popular audience

(a readership made up of more than those on the Left) for this topic

that was a challenge for Mailer: “walking the parapet between the intellectual

and the popular, and Mailer with his dream of making ‘a revolution in

the consciousness of our time’ is too ambitious to settle for a minority ‘art’

audience."{{sfn|Radford|1983|p=230}} Mailer was ambitious enough to take on the challenge

of telling a story that those within the anti-war movement would rally

around and those outside would give a fair hearing.

The novel, first in serial and then in book form, was meant to prod readers to action. In fact, it is specifically the expansiveness of the novel genre that Mailer finds useful toward a moral end. Mailer understood the great

potential of the genre. In one interview he contends that “art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people. In particular,

I think the novel is at its best the most moral of the art forms because

it’s the most immediate, the most overbearing . . . It is the most

inescapable."{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=384}} Did Mailer’s readers find his story

inescapable, and if so, were they catalyzed to protest the war themselves? The

answer cannot easily be quantified. We can, however, study the way in which Norman Mailer tried to activate readers. Critics picked up on this hunger

of Mailer’s to make change, his “extra-literary hunger for things to change

and change now, in palpable ways rather than in the imaginary, alternative{{pg|490|491}}

===Citations===

@@ Line 148: / Line 148: @@
 to protest.
+Mailer asks serious questions of his readers, as Alfred Kazin points out,
+describing him as the first “leading American peacenik and resister addressing urgent questions to his ‘army’—Are we good enough? How can we overcome
+the ‘mediocrity of the middle-class middle-aged masses of the Left?’
+The general shoddiness of American standards just now? The tendency of authorities to lie?”{{sfn|Kazin|1968|p=BR 1}} Mailer artfully places such questions within the
+framework of a narrative, addressed not only to fellow peaceniks but also to
+a popular readership. It was important that this novel travel beyond the Left community, and it did. Indeed, ''Armies'' “reestablished Mailer with a wide audience"{{sfn|Whalen-Bridge|2003|p=217}} and won both the Pulitzer Prize for General
+Nonfiction and the National Book Award. And it was gaining a popular audience
+(a readership made up of more than those on the Left) for this topic
+that was a challenge for Mailer: “walking the parapet between the intellectual
+and the popular, and Mailer with his dream of making ‘a revolution in
+the consciousness of our time’ is too ambitious to settle for a minority ‘art’
+audience."{{sfn|Radford|1983|p=230}} Mailer was ambitious enough to take on the challenge
+of telling a story that those within the anti-war movement would rally
+around and those outside would give a fair hearing.
+The novel, first in serial and then in book form, was meant to prod readers to action. In fact, it is specifically the expansiveness of the novel genre that Mailer finds useful toward a moral end. Mailer understood the great
+potential of the genre. In one interview he contends that “art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people. In particular,
+I think the novel is at its best the most moral of the art forms because
+it’s the most immediate, the most overbearing . . . It is the most
+inescapable."{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=384}} Did Mailer’s readers find his story
+inescapable, and if so, were they catalyzed to protest the war themselves? The
+answer cannot easily be quantified. We can, however, study the way in which Norman Mailer tried to activate readers. Critics picked up on this hunger
+of Mailer’s to make change, his “extra-literary hunger for things to change
+and change now, in palpable ways rather than in the imaginary, alternative{{pg|490|491}}
 ===Citations===