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The Mailer Review/Volume 14, 2020/Mailer and Emerson: Lipton’s Journal and the Dissident Soul: Difference between revisions
The Mailer Review/Volume 14, 2020/Mailer and Emerson: Lipton’s Journal and the Dissident Soul (view source)
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Mailer entitled his journal “Lipton’s” (tea, marijuana) because cannabis, “which destroys the sense of time also destroys the sense of society and opens the soul,” was his aid to deeper self-explorations and growth.{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/December 17, 1954/63|#63]]}} He is speaking here not of intimate personal relations, which cannabis can of course enhance, but of the oppressive Collective Society and its “war upon each individual.” He then gives the example of modern advertising as one means by which society “reaches deep into each man’s soul and converts a piece of it to society.” Advertising coopts the soul’s longing for “love and power, the two things the soul seeks for in life, legitimately, finely,” by attaching that longing to commodities, which tempt the soul to “enter its contract with society.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/December 17, 1954/64|#64]]}} Modern advertising becomes, for Mailer, but one soul-trapping tool of Emerson’s 20th-century joint-stock company. | Mailer entitled his journal “Lipton’s” (tea, marijuana) because cannabis, “which destroys the sense of time also destroys the sense of society and opens the soul,” was his aid to deeper self-explorations and growth.{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/December 17, 1954/63|#63]]}} He is speaking here not of intimate personal relations, which cannabis can of course enhance, but of the oppressive Collective Society and its “war upon each individual.” He then gives the example of modern advertising as one means by which society “reaches deep into each man’s soul and converts a piece of it to society.” Advertising coopts the soul’s longing for “love and power, the two things the soul seeks for in life, legitimately, finely,” by attaching that longing to commodities, which tempt the soul to “enter its contract with society.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/December 17, 1954/64|#64]]}} Modern advertising becomes, for Mailer, but one soul-trapping tool of Emerson’s 20th-century joint-stock company. | ||
For a novelist who, by 1954, is wondering whether he might be a failed artist, who is fighting depression and felt suicidal, Mailer’s evolving theories of homeostasis/dynamism in conflict with sociostasis become of central importance to his whole project of psychic and artistic renewal. He now finds himself disappointed with the derivative ''Naked and the Dead'' (“an imposter”), the abortive ''Barbary Shore'', and the “enormous lie” and “failure” of ''The Deer Park''.{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/February 7, 1955/460|#460]]}} By “imposter” Mailer is referring to his recognition that he was imitating his literary heroes in his most successful novel so far, a literary procedure Emerson often warned against. Emerson’s broader argument throughout ''Nature'' is for the individual to create an original relation to the universe; in “Self-Reliance” he proclaimed that “imitation is suicide”{{sfn|Emerson|1960|p=65}} and “insist on yourself; never imitate”;{{sfn|Emerson|1960|p=148}} in “The American Scholar” Emerson warns, “in a degenerate state, when the victim of society, he [the scholar] tends to become a mere thinker, or still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.”{{sfn|Emerson|1960|p=165}} Imitation, for Emerson as for Mailer by the 1950s, becomes a type of literary failure. | For a novelist who, by 1954, is wondering whether he might be a failed artist, who is fighting depression and felt suicidal,{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/December 31, 1954/157|#157]]}} Mailer’s evolving theories of homeostasis/dynamism in conflict with sociostasis become of central importance to his whole project of psychic and artistic renewal. He now finds himself disappointed with the derivative ''Naked and the Dead'' (“an imposter”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/December 31, 1954/159|#159]]}}), the abortive ''Barbary Shore'', and the “enormous lie” and “failure” of ''The Deer Park''.{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/February 7, 1955/460|#460]]}} By “imposter” Mailer is referring to his recognition that he was imitating his literary heroes in his most successful novel so far, a literary procedure Emerson often warned against. Emerson’s broader argument throughout ''Nature'' is for the individual to create an original relation to the universe; in “Self-Reliance” he proclaimed that “imitation is suicide”{{sfn|Emerson|1960|p=65}} and “insist on yourself; never imitate”;{{sfn|Emerson|1960|p=148}} in “The American Scholar” Emerson warns, “in a degenerate state, when the victim of society, he [the scholar] tends to become a mere thinker, or still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.”{{sfn|Emerson|1960|p=165}} Imitation, for Emerson as for Mailer by the 1950s, becomes a type of literary failure. | ||
By questioning his previous work, Mailer is also questioning the success or failure of his rebellious soul. “A novel is the record of a sociostatic retreat if it is a great or good novel. A bad novel is the record of a sociostatic advance.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/January 24, 1955/243 | By questioning his previous work, Mailer is also questioning the success or failure of his rebellious soul. “A novel is the record of a sociostatic retreat if it is a great or good novel. A bad novel is the record of a sociostatic advance.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/January 24, 1955/243 | ||
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It is worth emphasizing here that for Emerson and Mailer, writing their journals does more than generate ideas. Writing a journal is an approach, an awakening, to the deeper psychic territory of the soul, to whatever revelation may be found within; it is a private act of self-examination, an act of devotion to one’s vocation, the completion of one’s being or identity. It is not so much a “religious” act because it is outside any practice, doctrine, or sect; it is not an interlocutory psychoanalytical act so much as a private spiritual act, a return to that inner vitality that participates in the transcendent soul, an alternative for traditional prayer. Like Emily Dickinson’s poems, a journal can be a solitary practice of self-reliance against the vagaries and expectations of the social world. As British psychotherapist Anthony Storr describes it in ''Solitude: A Return to the Self'': | It is worth emphasizing here that for Emerson and Mailer, writing their journals does more than generate ideas. Writing a journal is an approach, an awakening, to the deeper psychic territory of the soul, to whatever revelation may be found within; it is a private act of self-examination, an act of devotion to one’s vocation, the completion of one’s being or identity. It is not so much a “religious” act because it is outside any practice, doctrine, or sect; it is not an interlocutory psychoanalytical act so much as a private spiritual act, a return to that inner vitality that participates in the transcendent soul, an alternative for traditional prayer. Like Emily Dickinson’s poems, a journal can be a solitary practice of self-reliance against the vagaries and expectations of the social world. As British psychotherapist Anthony Storr describes it in ''Solitude: A Return to the Self'': | ||
{{quote|The creative person is constantly seeking to discover himself, to remodel his own identity, and to find meaning in the universe through what he creates. He finds this a valuable integrating process which, like meditation or prayer, has little to do with other people, but which has its own separate validity. His most significant moments are those in which he attains some new insight, or makes some new discovery; and those moments are chiefly, if not invariably, those in which he is alone.{{Sfn|Storr|1988|p=xiv}}}} | {{quote|The creative person is constantly seeking to discover himself, to ''remodel his own identity'', and to find meaning in the universe through what he creates. He finds this a valuable integrating process which, like meditation or prayer, has little to do with other people, but which has its own separate validity. His most significant moments are those in which he attains some new insight, or makes some new discovery; and those moments are chiefly, if not invariably, those in which he is alone.{{Sfn|Storr|1988|p=xiv}} [Emphasis mine.]}} | ||
The inner truths revealed in solitude, however, may result in social action—a distinction George Kateb makes in ''Emerson and Self-Reliance'' between Emerson’s “mental self-reliance” and his “active self-reliance” (or “democratic individuality”). Active self-reliance is ''based'' on the prior intellectual independence of mental self-reliance.{{sfn|Kateb|1995|pp=134–136}} Emerson was wary of being drawn into politics and social movements, but he did protest (in public to President Martin van Buren) the displacement of the Cherokees in 1838, was a vociferous abolitionist in the 1850s, and supported women’s rights as they were defined in his time, defined not least by his friend and editorial colleague Margaret Fuller. | The inner truths revealed in solitude, however, may result in social action—a distinction George Kateb makes in ''Emerson and Self-Reliance'' between Emerson’s “mental self-reliance” and his “active self-reliance” (or “democratic individuality”). Active self-reliance is ''based'' on the prior intellectual independence of mental self-reliance.{{sfn|Kateb|1995|pp=134–136}} Emerson was wary of being drawn into politics and social movements, but he did protest (in public to President Martin van Buren) the displacement of the Cherokees in 1838, was a vociferous abolitionist in the 1850s, and supported women’s rights as they were defined in his time, defined not least by his friend and editorial colleague Margaret Fuller. | ||