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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A second concentration of stylistic criticism refers to instances of straightforward third-person narration, a voice mainly confined to the tellingly italsized introductory pages to “Book Four: The Stockade.” | A second concentration of stylistic criticism refers to instances of straightforward third-person narration, a voice mainly confined to the tellingly italsized introductory pages to “Book Four: The Stockade.” | ||
Examples of the first sort of faulted writing mainly occur when Jones gages in extended attempts at first-person indirect and free indirect, and his language grows either too arcane to ring true as a plausible voice of the character overheard or too oddly vernacular to work as a shift into authorial voice. Even writing in a tone ostensibly close to a character, Jones may move into an oddly eccentric rhetoric that manages to violate the standards of verisimilitude in the mimicry of a character’s use of language required of the first-person indirect or the standards of good authorial rhetoric, or both standards at once. An example of a double violation arises in the early pages of “Book Four: The Stockade” where Jones describes Prewitt’s thoughts or feelings regarding “a great conflict of fear” that “lay rises flapping from the depth {{pg|327|328}}like a giant manta ray, looming larger and bigger, looming huge, up out of the green depths that you can look down into through a water glass and see the anchor cable dwindling in a long arch down into invisibility, up from far below that even, flapping the two wing fins of choice and ego caught square in the middle”.{{sfn|Jones|1951| | Examples of the first sort of faulted writing mainly occur when Jones gages in extended attempts at first-person indirect and free indirect, and his language grows either too arcane to ring true as a plausible voice of the character overheard or too oddly vernacular to work as a shift into authorial voice. Even writing in a tone ostensibly close to a character, Jones may move into an oddly eccentric rhetoric that manages to violate the standards of verisimilitude in the mimicry of a character’s use of language required of the first-person indirect or the standards of good authorial rhetoric, or both standards at once. An example of a double violation arises in the early pages of “Book Four: The Stockade” where Jones describes Prewitt’s thoughts or feelings regarding “a great conflict of fear” that “lay rises flapping from the depth {{pg|327|328}}like a giant manta ray, looming larger and bigger, looming huge, up out of the green depths that you can look down into through a water glass and see the anchor cable dwindling in a long arch down into invisibility, up from far below that even, flapping the two wing fins of choice and ego caught square in the middle”.{{sfn|Jones|1951|pp=410-411}} This refers to fears that Prewitt thinks his unthinking candor precipitates in the minds of others (in this case fears of homosexuality in the mind of Maggio). | ||
Examples of the second sort of blemished writing arise in “Book Four: The Stockade” when we shift into an authorial voice far from that dramatic mode in which the book’s style approximates a dramatic mode in which the audience experiences content directly. In the straight-out italics with which “The Stockade” opens, Jones writes, “''He was held in confinement at the Stockade as a general prisoner while he waited for trial''”.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=405}} Clearly, “awaited” is the appropriate word. Later, still writing in a straight-forward third-person narrator (or omniscient narrator) voice, Jones describes the “many officers, officers’ wives and officers’ children” near Honolulu’s “tennis courts, golf course, and bridle paths as all are looking very tanned and sportive”. {{sfn|Jones|1951|p=409}}. Clearly, “sporty” is the appropriate word. | Examples of the second sort of blemished writing arise in “Book Four: The Stockade” when we shift into an authorial voice far from that dramatic mode in which the book’s style approximates a dramatic mode in which the audience experiences content directly. In the straight-out italics with which “The Stockade” opens, Jones writes, “''He was held in confinement at the Stockade as a general prisoner while he waited for trial''”.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=405}} Clearly, “awaited” is the appropriate word. Later, still writing in a straight-forward third-person narrator (or omniscient narrator) voice, Jones describes the “many officers, officers’ wives and officers’ children” near Honolulu’s “tennis courts, golf course, and bridle paths as all are looking very tanned and sportive”. {{sfn|Jones|1951|p=409}}. Clearly, “sporty” is the appropriate word. | ||
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<blockquote>The wind tore through the bivouac area like a great scythe, slashing the palm fronds from the coconut trees, blasting the rain before it. As they looked, they saw a tent jerk upward from its</blockquote>{{pg|332|333}} <blockquote>mooring, steam away in the wind, flapping like a terrified bird... | <blockquote>The wind tore through the bivouac area like a great scythe, slashing the palm fronds from the coconut trees, blasting the rain before it. As they looked, they saw a tent jerk upward from its</blockquote>{{pg|332|333}} <blockquote>mooring, steam away in the wind, flapping like a terrified bird... | ||
A tremendous gust of wind bellied under the tent blew it out like a balloon, and then the ridgepole snapped, tearing a rent in the poncho. The tent fell upon the four men like a wet sheet . . . . “Where are you?” he shouted, and then the folds of the tent filled out again like a sail, ripped loose altogether, and went eddying and twisting through the air . . . . All the tents were down in the bivouac area, and here and there a soldier would go skittering through the mud, staggering from the force of the wind with the odd jerking motions of a man walking in a motion picture when the film is unwinding too rapidly.{{sfn|Mailer|1948| | A tremendous gust of wind bellied under the tent blew it out like a balloon, and then the ridgepole snapped, tearing a rent in the poncho. The tent fell upon the four men like a wet sheet . . . . “Where are you?” he shouted, and then the folds of the tent filled out again like a sail, ripped loose altogether, and went eddying and twisting through the air . . . . All the tents were down in the bivouac area, and here and there a soldier would go skittering through the mud, staggering from the force of the wind with the odd jerking motions of a man walking in a motion picture when the film is unwinding too rapidly.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|pp=86-88}}</blockquote> | ||
The descriptions of the platoon's frequent physical exhaustion achieve a visceral force: | The descriptions of the platoon's frequent physical exhaustion achieve a visceral force: | ||