The Mailer Review/Volume 10, 2016/The Curious Story of Norman Mailer’s Engagement with Short Fiction: Difference between revisions

{{MR10}}

{{byline|last=Peppard|first=Victor|abstract=An analysis of strategic issues in Norman Mailer’s short fiction.|note=I presented a paper with this title at the 2015 Norman Mailer Society Conference in Provincetown, MA.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr16pepp}}

Now that we have been put on alert that Mailer favors the likes of Chekhov, Hemingway, and Poe, we may be on the lookout for traces of these masters, either in form or content. With respect to the former, that is the form, I can say that if there is a chunk of Chekhov to fasten onto here, it may be that Mailer likes to leave the fates of his characters up to our contemplation of what their future(s) may be. If we are looking for the short story structure that Poe advocated, however, I think we are going to be disappointed, because Mailer does not hesitate to veer off the track of his plots to indulge in all kinds of asides and observations, as he does in his novels. Put another way, Mailer’s inclination is toward expansion rather than direction, that is, the direction in which Poe believed all parts of a story should lead. The story of Mailer and Hemingway is, as we know well, a long and complicated one that moves between the poles of admiration, as here, and ridicule, as in his assessment of ''The Old Man and the Sea'' in ''Advertisements for Myself''.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|pp=20–21}} In brief, Mailer does not like the fact that he sees the face of Hemingway on the Cuban fisherman. Mailer also employs various echoes, stylizations, and perhaps parody of Hemingway. For example, Sergius O’Shaugnessy, the narrator of “The Time of Her Time,” teaches bullfighting, not in Spain or even Mexico, where he dabbled in this so-called sport, but in Greenwich Village. I find something incongruous about the combination of the first and last names of Sergius (the name of a character Tolstoy wrote about in “Father Sergius”) and O’Shaugnessy, a most Irish surname, one I have never encountered in a man with the first name of Sergius. But perhaps my experience is just too limited. And there is also something incongruous about teaching bullfighting out of an apartment in Greenwich Village. When I spent part of the summer of 1964 there, I didn’t see any ads for a bullfighting school. I wonder whether this, together with Mailer’s portrayal of Sergius O’Shaugnessy, as Heather Braun says, as “an aloof übermacho hipster”{{sfn|Braun|2014|p=226}} is not a double dig: the first at O’Shaugnessy, and the second at American literature’s most famous explicator of bullfighting—just a thought. In any event, in the final analysis Mailer came to recognize Hemingway’s importance to American literature.

Here I would like to examine Mailer’s “The Last Night: A Story,” partly because I find in it an interesting confluence of themes and genres, perhaps a unique one for Mailer, and partly because it is one of his stories that I believe sneaks unannounced by the author into the category of important fiction. At a minimum, “Last Night” resonates with both edenic and apocalyptic biblical motifs, contains obvious elements of science fiction, employs satire, some of which has affinities with Menippean satire, and partakes of the utopian tradition but on the dystopian side of it. Mailer begins this story with a NOTE TO THE READER in which he explains why “a movie must be based on a novel, a story, a play, or an original idea. I suppose that it could even derive from a poem. ‘Let’s do The Wasteland,’ said a character of mine named Collie Munshin” [in the play ''Deer Park''].{{sfn|Mailer|1981|p=207}} In this way, Mailer is able to make a jocular double mini-ad for himself—I call it a double advertisement, because he combines reference to his earlier play with a “note” that promotes the idea that his story could be the basis of a future film. To make sure that the reader hasn’t missed his point, Mailer further underscores his purpose by defining what he calls a “treatment . . . to present for the attention of a producer, a director, or a script reader.”{{sfn|Mailer|1981|p=207}}

==Works Cited==

* {{cite podcast |url=https://normanmailersociety.org/?s=death+is+a+celebration |last=Bozung |first=Justin |title=Death is a Celebration: An Audio Documentary about ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' |website=Norman Mailer Society |publisher= |host= |date=2016 |time= |access-date=2019-05-27 }}

* {{cite journal |last=Braun |first=Heather |date=2014 |title=Teaching Controversy in the College Classroom |url=https://prmlr.us/mr14brau |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=8 |issue=1 |pages=325–332 |access-date= |ref=harv }}