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In this passage, Norman Mailer’s response to his daughter’s question conveys a prodigiously blunt bohemian hedonism and, yes, a full-fledged narcissism to boot. The phrase “to be honest,” however, dominates the semantics of their conversation. For the most part, it guides the father-daughter future interactions until his death. It is no mean achievement by any standard. As it was his wont to do, Norman Mailer’s answer to his first daughter’s question is remarkably unsparing. All the same, it also proves that being honest (from Latin ''honestus'') connotes honor with it as an onto-ethical intention, which redeems the authoritarian harshness of Norman Mailer’s true statement. | In this passage, Norman Mailer’s response to his daughter’s question conveys a prodigiously blunt bohemian hedonism and, yes, a full-fledged narcissism to boot. The phrase “to be honest,” however, dominates the semantics of their conversation. For the most part, it guides the father-daughter future interactions until his death. It is no mean achievement by any standard. As it was his wont to do, Norman Mailer’s answer to his first daughter’s question is remarkably unsparing. All the same, it also proves that being honest (from Latin ''honestus'') connotes honor with it as an onto-ethical intention, which redeems the authoritarian harshness of Norman Mailer’s true statement. | ||
One such implication of giving honor where honor is due is the suggestion that a certain psychological healing process begins when little Susan accepts the tough and unvarnished truth as she hears it. She graduates with honors from the proverbial elite “University of Hard Knocks” with a silent dissertation on John Dewey’s ethical pragmatism applied to her own circumstances. | One such implication of giving honor where honor is due is the suggestion that a certain psychological healing process begins when little Susan accepts the tough and unvarnished truth as she hears it. She graduates with honors from the proverbial elite “University of Hard Knocks” with a silent dissertation on John Dewey’s ethical pragmatism applied to her own circumstances. | ||
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I would say that the author accepts the ubiquitous reality of various complications in the human condition in their different modes and degrees of severity. She comes across as attentively accepting existing situational realities and creatively remaking them. She refuses the false alternative peace of mind by futile attempts at repressing them. Her courage to do so saves her from the horror of the return of the repressed, which might produce a tragic form of arrested development. | I would say that the author accepts the ubiquitous reality of various complications in the human condition in their different modes and degrees of severity. She comes across as attentively accepting existing situational realities and creatively remaking them. She refuses the false alternative peace of mind by futile attempts at repressing them. Her courage to do so saves her from the horror of the return of the repressed, which might produce a tragic form of arrested development. | ||
She accepts her father as paterfamilias. The reader gets a more illuminating glimpse of | She accepts her father as ''paterfamilias''. The reader gets a more illuminating glimpse of Norman Mailer’s gentler family life as opposed to his stormy public life. His inner life remains a secret to us a perhaps it was to himself, as it is so with the rest of us. There is an unknowable part to our psyche, which English psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion calls “O.” As ultimate Truth, it surpasses even the unconscious language of our dreams and remains ineffable. | ||
Therefore, one might say the short, hard-hitting father-daughter dialogue remarkably affects and informs the subjective-objective or phenomenological quality of the different formulations and conceptual patterns of Susan’s memoir. Along with her revelations of infantile memories, their dialogue casts a long, if crepuscular, light on the familial encounters with her father and, by extension, her mother. Her desire to allow reciprocal truthfulness to surface in intimate dialogues about family matters makes them more intelligible to the reader than they might have been otherwise. They come close to a mode of psychoanalytic sessions of various length, where language reigns supreme. In such sessions, the author focuses solely on getting a grip on her past, not as over and done with, but rather for the opposite reason. She shrewdly uses them as a springboard toward future undertakings. For example, still trying to decipher the circumstances of her mother’s sudden appearance at Long Branch to take her to Mexico, the author engages in another truth-seeking conversation. Curious about the circumstances arrested in spacetime by that invariantly upsetting second snapshot, she writes, “Years later, I found out from Mom this picture had been taken the day I left Grandma to go to Mexico. And when I heard this, I felt the same uncomfortable sensation in my belly. Only I wanted to cry for that little girl, twice | Therefore, one might say the short, hard-hitting father-daughter dialogue remarkably affects and informs the subjective-objective or phenomenological quality of the different formulations and conceptual patterns of Susan’s memoir. Along with her revelations of infantile memories, their dialogue casts a long, if crepuscular, light on the familial encounters with her father and, by extension, her mother. Her desire to allow reciprocal truthfulness to surface in intimate dialogues about family matters makes them more intelligible to the reader than they might have been otherwise. They come close to a mode of psychoanalytic sessions of various length, where language reigns supreme. In such sessions, the author focuses solely on getting a grip on her past, not as over and done with, but rather for the opposite reason. She shrewdly uses them as a springboard toward future undertakings. For example, still trying to decipher the circumstances of her mother’s sudden appearance at Long Branch to take her to Mexico, the author engages in another truth-seeking conversation. Curious about the circumstances arrested in spacetime by that invariantly upsetting second snapshot, she writes, “Years later, I found out from Mom this picture had been taken the day I left Grandma to go to Mexico. And when I heard this, I felt the same uncomfortable sensation in my belly. Only I wanted to cry for that little girl, twice | ||
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teenager and in her adult life. | teenager and in her adult life. | ||
The author clearly learns the cause of her anxiety and the resultant feeling of nausea when she would look at her picture with her mother as an infant. Thus, that exiled little girl eventually is in a position to claim the authority to repatriate herself—psychologically and otherwise. Through tenacious learning processes, she becomes a citizen of the world, by freely choosing to do so. All these dialogical activities bode well for her. They enable her to get along excellently with her extensive family members and her future endeavors with others as a psychoanalyst. Yet, I would stress again, the author cannot and, fortunately, does not repress the effects of her infantile lived experiences. She often cries while listening to her mother plays an oneiric twilit Chopin nocturne, Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” or a Brahms’ lullaby. “I probably ached for that lost period of my childhood when Mommy or Grandma had held me in their arms,” she writes ( | The author clearly learns the cause of her anxiety and the resultant feeling of nausea when she would look at her picture with her mother as an infant. Thus, that exiled little girl eventually is in a position to claim the authority to repatriate herself—psychologically and otherwise. Through tenacious learning processes, she becomes a citizen of the world, by freely choosing to do so. All these dialogical activities bode well for her. They enable her to get along excellently with her extensive family members and her future endeavors with others as a psychoanalyst. Yet, I would stress again, the author cannot and, fortunately, does not repress the effects of her infantile lived experiences. She often cries while listening to her mother plays an oneiric twilit Chopin nocturne, Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” or a Brahms’ lullaby. “I probably ached for that lost period of my childhood when Mommy or Grandma had held me in their arms,” she writes (62). That voice of mother of infancy! Which constitutes the instinctive basis of our appreciation of vocal music, indeed all music! | ||
Similarly, the author also takes her mother’s marriage to Salvador Sanchez in stride. Indeed, she genuinely cares for her stepfather and her stepbrother. Salvador was a man of the left, as is the man Marco Color, whom the author marries. The author’s main challenges, nevertheless, come from the problematics of her father’s frequent marriages and divorces, of tumultuous unions and inescapably hurtful partings. They present undeniable realities as lived experiences for the author. | Similarly, the author also takes her mother’s marriage to Salvador Sanchez in stride. Indeed, she genuinely cares for her stepfather and her stepbrother. Salvador was a man of the left, as is the man Marco Color, whom the author marries. The author’s main challenges, nevertheless, come from the problematics of her father’s frequent marriages and divorces, of tumultuous unions and inescapably hurtful partings. They present undeniable realities as lived experiences for the author. | ||