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The Mailer Review/Volume 10, 2016/The Collision: Difference between revisions
The Mailer Review/Volume 10, 2016/The Collision (view source)
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{{byline|last=Mailer|first=Norman | {{byline|last=Mailer|first=Norman|note=Mailer’s first short story written in January 1933, when Mailer was ten-years-old. (See [[16.2]].)|url=https://prmlr.us/mr16mail}} | ||
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{{hatnote|In the fall of 1932, the Mailer family — Barney and Fanny, and their children, Norman (who turned ten the following January), and Barbara (six in April) — moved from Flatbush, to another section of Brooklyn, Crown Heights, a middle-class Jewish neighborhood about a mile from Ebbets Field and Prospect Park. The Mailers remained there until the summer of 1943, when they moved to Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn Heights. Working in his second-floor bedroom at 555 Crown Street during the winter of 1933–34, Mailer wrote his most important juvenile work, “The Martian Invasion, a 35,000-word science fiction novel which had one root in the Buck Rogers radio show, and a second in the Princess of Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Barbara remembers her brother encouraging her to read this series, which she also gulped down. | |||
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But before composing the Martian novel, {{NM}} wrote his first real short story, “The Collision,” about a hockey game between two undefeated high school teams. According to the date on a typescript of the story provided by Stephen Chipkin, Barbara and Norman’s cousin, the story was written in January 1933. Mailer’s parents mailed this copy to Barney’s family in South Africa in that year, and it remained with them until a few months ago when Mr. Chipkin brought it to a family gathering at Barbara’s home in New York. | But before composing the Martian novel, {{NM}} wrote his first real short story, “The Collision,” about a hockey game between two undefeated high school teams. According to the date on a typescript of the story provided by Stephen Chipkin, Barbara and Norman’s cousin, the story was written in January 1933. Mailer’s parents mailed this copy to Barney’s family in South Africa in that year, and it remained with them until a few months ago when Mr. Chipkin brought it to a family gathering at Barbara’s home in New York. | ||
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During his Crown Heights years, Mailer went to some New York Rangers hockey games, (probably with Barney, who also took him to see the Dodgers), and it seems likely that he saw some high school games as well. Drawing on these ice-rink memories, he wrote this thousand word-story about the comeback win of Sedley High over rival Bartel (both fictitious names) in breathless prose, and an over-reliance on the adverb “desperately.” If the depiction of the collision trick of the Bartel team during face-offs is a touch inchoate, the story rides on the juice of pre-adolescent energy, and a slam-bang conclusion as Sedley’s star, Bob Murray crashes through the Bartel line to make the final goal in overtime, and in consequence, is asked by the coach to captain next year’s team. | During his Crown Heights years, Mailer went to some New York Rangers hockey games, (probably with Barney, who also took him to see the Dodgers), and it seems likely that he saw some high school games as well. Drawing on these ice-rink memories, he wrote this thousand word-story about the comeback win of Sedley High over rival Bartel (both fictitious names) in breathless prose, and an over-reliance on the adverb “desperately.” If the depiction of the collision trick of the Bartel team during face-offs is a touch inchoate, the story rides on the juice of pre-adolescent energy, and a slam-bang conclusion as Sedley’s star, Bob Murray crashes through the Bartel line to make the final goal in overtime, and in consequence, is asked by the coach to captain next year’s team. | ||
Are there premonitory glimpses of Mailer’s future prose in the cumbersome, tense-confused rhythms of his first major fictional outing? Perhaps. As Mark Edmundson writes in his fine essay, “[[Mailer’s Greatness: A Note]],” in this issue of the ''Review'', the immediate jewel of his writing is his ability “to grasp the present in its full complexity, glory and grief,” as he does so memorably in ''[[The Presidential Papers]]'', ''[[The Armies of the Night]]'', and ''[[Miami and the Siege of Chicago]]'', among others. It may be that Mailer’s life-long effort to create “writing . . . steeped in a sense of the uniqueness of his present,” the time of his time, began with “The Collision.” | Are there premonitory glimpses of Mailer’s future prose in the cumbersome, tense-confused rhythms of his first major fictional outing? Perhaps. As Mark Edmundson writes in his fine essay, “[[Mailer’s Greatness: A Note]],” in this issue of the ''Review'', the immediate jewel of his writing is his ability “to grasp the present in its full complexity, glory and grief,” as he does so memorably in ''[[The Presidential Papers]]'', ''[[The Armies of the Night]]'', and ''[[Miami and the Siege of Chicago]]'', among others. It may be that Mailer’s life-long effort to create “writing . . . steeped in a sense of the uniqueness of his present,” the time of his time, began with “The Collision.” —[[J. Michael Lennon]]}} | ||