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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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“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 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 “solder” 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.
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 “solder” 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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Although ''Naked'' is hardly a romance, by the ascent of Mt. Anaka, Croft becomes a “psychological archetype” who “radiates a glow of subjective intensity”{{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}}. Indeed, with Croft, “something nihilistic and untamable” seems, in Frye’s words, “to keep breaking out of ” [Mailer’s] pages” as would occur in much subsequent writing by Mailer {{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}}. However, a novelistic romancer, even as a fiction writer, will not suffice in Mailer. His work resonates not only as novel and romance but also as confession (close to the tenor of O’Shaughnessy’s tale) and anatomy or “Mannipean satire” (with Mailer himself in ''The Armies of the Night'' and with the Presidential contenders of Mailer’s presidential campaign chronicles).
Although ''Naked'' is hardly a romance, by the ascent of Mt. Anaka, Croft becomes a “psychological archetype” who “radiates a glow of subjective intensity”{{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}}. Indeed, with Croft, “something nihilistic and untamable” seems, in Frye’s words, “to keep breaking out of ” [Mailer’s] pages” as would occur in much subsequent writing by Mailer {{sfn|Frye|1950|p=584}}. However, a novelistic romancer, even as a fiction writer, will not suffice in Mailer. His work resonates not only as novel and romance but also as confession (close to the tenor of O’Shaughnessy’s tale) and anatomy or “Mannipean satire” (with Mailer himself in ''The Armies of the Night'' and with the Presidential contenders of Mailer’s presidential campaign chronicles).
 
{{pg|323|324}}
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{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=1}}.
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{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=1}}.


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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 be dead”—and it ends with a description of the “mop up” or “successful” campaign{{sfn|Meyer|2005|p=3}}{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=715}}.
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|p=3}}{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=715}}.




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However, it articulates a more nuanced vision than the sometimes noted dystopian X-ray of fascist undercurrent at War and a possible fascistic post-war. It also voices the vision of the unexpected military victory that the hum-drum and luck Major Dalleson led right under General Cummings’s nose—a triumph of competence and good luck that is a harbinger less of fascist totalitarianism than of managerialism and centrist liberalism fringed by Cold War hysteria of the Truman and Eisenhower eras. Mailer closes off not with some extension of Cummings’s subtly maneuvered elimination of the intellectually annoying and faintly insubordinate Liberal Lieutenant Hearn.
However, it articulates a more nuanced vision than the sometimes noted dystopian X-ray of fascist undercurrent at War and a possible fascistic post-war. It also voices the vision of the unexpected military victory that the hum-drum and luck Major Dalleson led right under General Cummings’s nose—a triumph of competence and good luck that is a harbinger less of fascist totalitarianism than of managerialism and centrist liberalism fringed by Cold War hysteria of the Truman and Eisenhower eras. Mailer closes off not with some extension of Cummings’s subtly maneuvered elimination of the intellectually annoying and faintly insubordinate Liberal Lieutenant Hearn.


 
{{pg|325|326}}
Instead, he leaves us with Major Dalleson captivated by the USO poster and PR charm of the emerging, somewhat demilitarized managerial age, thinking with more innocence than is imaginable for Cummings, “He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co-ordinate grid system laid over it”{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=646}}.
Instead, he leaves us with Major Dalleson captivated by the USO poster and PR charm of the emerging, somewhat demilitarized managerial age, thinking with more innocence than is imaginable for Cummings, “He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co-ordinate grid system laid over it”{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=646}}.


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