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IN A LENGTHY, SINGLE-SPACED, TWO-AND-A-HALF-PAGE TYPEWRITTEN CRITIQUE


THE MAILER REVIEW VOL. 5, NO. 1, FALL 2011. Copyright 2011. The Norman Mailer Society. Published by The Norman Mailer Society.


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ject and the self-revelatory hesitations he expresses creates a correspondence between him and Monroe as they both projected a blatant forward sexuality that overlays an undercurrent of vulnerability.

Another service Marilyn/Marilyn performs for Mailer is facilitating his joys of linguistic excess.[a] Given the spectacular and extravagant nature of his subject and her reputation, he allows himself a surfeit of verbal highwire acts. On occasion the result is fun as when he catalogs the list of Monroe's early Hollywood relationships: "Snively, Schenck, Karger, and Hyde! If she had been a bargirl lookng to sue an ex-lover in a raunchy case, she would have picked her law firm out of the yellow pages with a name like that".[1] But at other times his unmonitored metaphors and imagery are definitely in need of a discerning editor.[b] In one jarring instance he writes of Monroe's final moments when "the wings of death lay wet feathers across her face."[2] "Wet feathers" is a clumsy image whereby to communicate the dark eminence of death. Rather than a sense of awe, what is evoked is annoyance; wet feathers would tickle or make one want to sneeze. Mailer's choice of metaphor to describe Monroe's inability to escape her past is to describe her behavior "as sluggish as a dinosaur's tail".[3] This metaphor is equally inept. The image conveyed is awkward rather than apt. Experience that repeats itself "with the breath of a turnip" is another of his odd images.[4] Wet feathers, dinosaur tails, and the breath of a turnip--surely a wordsmith like Mailer could do better. In his explanation of why the "detritus of the insignificant" films she played in early in her career so damaged any good will she may hav accumulated as young women and led to "retaliations" he descibes as "nihilistic," Mailer pulls out more over-the-top verbal imagery.[5] He calls Monroe "a sly leviathan of survival, and, Faust among the Faustians".[6] In addition to the lingustic abandon, he also allows himself such salaciously voyeuristic flights of the imagination as an nvented dialogue after the discovery by studie executives that their newest sensation had posed in the nude. Mailer excuses himself by pointing out that "a novelist has a right to invent the following dialogue".[7] He then devises such questions as cannot help but inflame the imagination: "Did you spread your legs?""Is your asshole showing?""Any animals in it with you?" Lest he miss the opportunity to use every profanity he knows, Mailer includes the statement, when trying to describe the divided character of Monroe's personality, that while she could be an angel, she was also "on hard and calculating

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computer of a cold and ambitious cunt" and then underlines his linguistic choice by stating parenthetically "(no other English word is near)".[8][c]

Notes

  1. ↑ I do not mean to imply that Mailer's linguistic virtuosity is sparing in other works, only that this work allows him even more occasion for unmonitored verbal hijinks.
  2. ↑ My colleague Robert Gunn suggests that Mailer's prose flaunts a lack of monitoring, that in its "gleefully exhibitionistic (and highly erotic)" display demonstrates "not an absence of artistic control, but rather a deliberate choice to refuse propriety and proportionality."
  3. ↑ I am reminded of an old graffiti:"Profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate mother-fucker." I can think of a number of words that would work as well. I am sure Mailer could too, but he liked to shock and as I argue throughout, he gives himself full license with this topic.

Citations

  1. ↑ Mailer 1973, p. 89.
  2. ↑ Mailer 1973, p. 86.
  3. ↑ Mailer 1973, p. 126.
  4. ↑ Mailer 1973, p. 143.
  5. ↑ Mailer 1973, pp. 89-90.
  6. ↑ Mailer 1973, p. 90.
  7. ↑ Mailer 1973, p. 92.
  8. ↑ Mailer 1973, p. 97.

Works Cited

  • Bailey, Jennifer (1979). Norman Mailer: Quick-Change Artist (Print). London: Macmillan.
  • Dearborn, Marilyn V. (1999). Mailer: A Biography (Print). New York: Houghton Mifflin.
  • Leeds, Barry H. (2002). The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer (Print). Bainbridge Island, WA: Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press.
  • Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (16 July 1973). "Aquarius ON Gemini - I". New York Times (Print). 27.
  • Mailer, Norman (1973). Marilyn (Print). New York: Galahad Books.
  • Manso, Peter (1985). Mailer (Print). New York: Simon & Schuster.
  • Merrill, Robert (1992). Norman Mailer Revisited (Print). New York: Twayne Publishers.
  • Rollyson, Carl (1991). The Lives of Norman Mailer: A Biography (Print). New York: Paragon House.
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