User:Kamyers/sandbox: Difference between revisions

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{{Byline|last=Toback|first=James|note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967}}

With Deborah’s death begins the arduous process of Rojack’s rebirth; he realizes that if murder is sometimes necessary, it is never simple. The gods, like furies, haunt him; he is acutely conscious of everything he thinks or says or does, for now cowardice or weakness or smallness will bring swift retribution—Dread, insanity, and the abyss. To strengthen himself, and to find, once again, something he can honestly call love are the ends of Rojack’s quest, but fulfillment of it and freedom from these new furies can be attained only through heroism, through seeking danger and daring death.

~~{{quote|. . . I believed that God was not love but courage. Love can come only as a reward . . . . A voice said in my mind: “That which you fear most is what you must do.”}}~~

The very phrasing of the passage is related to the nature of the punishment that will accrue if the command goes unheeded. Rojack’s mental life is split into a “voice” and “mind,” a separation dangerously close to the empty panic of schizophrenia.

But if madness looms as the penalty for prudence and cowardice (Mailer uses the two as almost indistinguishable), it is also possible that Dread will overwhelm even the bold Promethean. Rojack knows that “if man wished to steal the secret of the gods . . . they would defend themselves and destroy whichever man came too close.” With so narrow a chance of escape from insanity and an eternity in the abyss, suicide quite naturally presents itself as an alternative. What is to hold one back?

Despite all his frenetic activity, it is not merely a sensual lust for experience that keeps Rojack going. On the contrary, while his senses are irrepressibly active (especially his sense of smell), his mind persists relentlessly in observation, commentary, and criticism. Any physical sensation is immediately subject to conscious analysis. In Rojack, sex is the effort of the body to rape the mind, to pulsate in waves of ecstasy transcending consciousness. But even here he fails. Whether it is with the German maid, Ruta, or with the Southern chanteuse, Cherry, Rojack’s concern is with power rather than with pleasure, with the psychic domination he achieves after ''her'' orgasm rather than with the physical rapture of his own. Like his creator, Rojack is far more a Puritan than a hedonist; life is struggle rather than joy.

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 {{Byline|last=Toback|first=James|note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967}}
-With Deborah’s death begins the arduous process of Rojack’s rebirth; he realizes that if murder is sometimes necessary, it is never simple. The gods, like furies, haunt him; he is acutely conscious of everything he thinks or says or does, for now cowardice or weakness or smallness will bring swift retribution—Dread, insanity, and the abyss. To strengthen himself, and to find, once again, something he can honestly call love are the ends of Rojack’s quest, but fulfillment of it and freedom from these new furies can be attained only through heroism, through seeking danger and daring death.
-{{quote|. . . I believed that God was not love but courage. Love can come only as a reward . . . . A voice said in my mind: “That which you fear most is what you must do.”}}
-The very phrasing of the passage is related to the nature of the punishment that will accrue if the command goes unheeded. Rojack’s mental life is split into a “voice” and “mind,” a separation dangerously close to the empty panic of schizophrenia.
-But if madness looms as the penalty for prudence and cowardice (Mailer uses the two as almost indistinguishable), it is also possible that Dread will overwhelm even the bold Promethean. Rojack knows that “if man wished to steal the secret of the gods . . . they would defend themselves and destroy whichever man came too close.” With so narrow a chance of escape from insanity and an eternity in the abyss, suicide quite naturally presents itself as an alternative. What is to hold one back?
 Despite all his frenetic activity, it is not merely a sensual lust for experience that keeps Rojack going. On the contrary, while his senses are irrepressibly active (especially his sense of smell), his mind persists relentlessly in observation, commentary, and criticism. Any physical sensation is immediately subject to conscious analysis. In Rojack, sex is the effort of the body to rape the mind, to pulsate in waves of ecstasy transcending consciousness. But even here he fails. Whether it is with the German maid, Ruta, or with the Southern chanteuse, Cherry, Rojack’s concern is with power rather than with pleasure, with the psychic domination he achieves after ''her'' orgasm rather than with the physical rapture of his own. Like his creator, Rojack is far more a Puritan than a hedonist; life is struggle rather than joy.