The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Identity Crisis: A State of the Union Address: Difference between revisions

In their latest analyses of America’s ills, Mailer’s ''[[Why Are We at War?]]'' (2003) and Vonnegut’s ''[[w:A Man Without a Country|A Man Without a Country]]'' (2005), Mailer and Vonnegut reaffirm their love of democracy and the U.S. Constitution as civilization’s best hopes for a more orderly and saner world. As always, both labor hard on behalf of a society, as Vonnegut writes, “dedicated to the proposition that all men, women and children are created equal and should not starve.”{{sfn|Vonnegut|2005|p=11}} “It so happens,” Vonnegut says, “that idealism enough for anyone is not made of perfumed clouds. It is the law. It is the U.S. Constitution.”{{sfn|Vonnegut|2005|p=98}} He praises his two favorite spokesmen for democratic freedoms, [[w:Carl Sandburg|Carl Sandburg]] and [[w:Eugene Victor Debs|Eugene Victor Debs]]: “I would have been tongue-tied,” he says, “in the presence of such national treasures.”{{sfn|Vonnegut|2005|p=13}} He encourages us all to read Tocqueville’s ''[[w:Democracy in America|Democracy in America]]'' as the best book ever written on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in American democracy. Vonnegut asks, “Want a taste of that great book?” Tocqueville says, “and he said it 169 years ago, that in no country other than ours has love of money taken a stronger hold on the affections of men. Okay?”{{sfn|Vonnegut|2005|p=8}} Mailer hails democracy as God’s most noble and beautiful experiment, but always “in peril.”{{sfn|Mailer|2003|p=16}}, an existential venture whose delicacy makes it dangerously vulnerable, a “state of grace” attained only by those ready to suffer and even to perish for its freedoms.{{sfn|Mailer|2003|p=71}} We’ll see later how at the end of ''Why Are We at War?'' this forewarning takes a complex and troubling turn.

Like Mailer, Vonnegut also despairs that “I don’t think people give a damn whether the planet goes or not ... I know of very few people who are dreaming of a world for their grandchildren.”{{sfn|Vonnegut|2005|p=70-71}} What he says is probably making him “unfunny” now for the rest of his life is that he knows that “there is not a chance in hell” of America becoming the humane and reasonable place of which so many of his generation used to dream.{{sfn|Vonnegut|2005|p=71-72}}

And of course, Mailer says, once we became a twentieth-century embodiment of the Old Roman Empire, fascism at home was a foregone conclusion. That totalitarian state against which he and Vonnegut had so long warned would quickly be a ''fait accompli''. “Homeland Security,” Mailer says, “has put the machinery in place.”{{sfn|Mailer|2003|p=105}}  Reminding us that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts us absolutely,” Vonnegut views our leaders as “power drunk” chimpanzees{{sfn|Vonnegut|2005|p=71-72}} with “an international military machine huge enough to conquer all adversaries,” and assuring a stronger police presence at home that Mailer calls a “species of most powerful censor over civilian life.”{{sfn|Mailer|2003|p=153}}

On the one hand, it is clear to me that ''Why Are We at War?'' and ''A Man without a Country'' read more funereally than as prescriptions for a better world. Equally clear is that neither writer believes they had the power now either personally or artistically to repair or elevate the American soul, so vast, complex, and divided. “Let’s not have a false notion of our possibilities,” Mailer says. “We’re not noble enough to fulfill that scheme. Let’s live at the level we’re at.” Those are words said in an earlier interview about the country,{{sfn|American Masters|2000}} but they apply dolefully for the role of shaman. So why with such scant reason to cheer was it not depression or remorse I heard in the canary bird’s diminished voice but something curiously buoyant and relieved, as if the shaman had been freed from some great burden? Why, for instance, would Vonnegut speak not of personal hopelessness, but of a process of becoming—an existential condition to which Mailer would readily relate? Vonnegut declares, “I really don’t know what I’m going to become from now on. I don’t think I can control my life or my writing ... I’m simply becoming.”{{sfn|Vonnegut|2005|p=130}} Why would Mailer declare almost unequivocally that he was not unhappy, a discouraged shaman, yes, but not an unhappy man? I found the answer in Mailer’s self-interview called “Mailer on Mailer.” He explains, “I’ve always felt that my relationship to America is analogous to a marriage. I love this country. I hate it. I get angry at it. I feel close to it. I’m charmed by it. I’m repelled by it. It’s a marriage that has gone on for at least the fifty years of my writing life. And in the course of that marriage what’s happened is the marriage has gotten worse. It is not what it used to be."{{sfn|American Masters|2000}} Mailer was a man without a country, too, at least the country he had loved, and ''Why Are We at War?'' and ''A Man without a Country'' are divorce proclamations. One thinks of Fitzgerald and his protagonist Dick Diver, men who must separate from hopelessly schizophrenic women to save their own sanity. If I am not taking the affirmation of ''Why Are We at War?'' and ''A Man without a Country'' too far, this severing from what D. H. Lawrence called the “bitch goddess success,” whose seductive wiles are power and material lusts, constitutes not only self-preservation, lest the healer become the patient, but an act of personal and artistic renewal. This is the classic resolution of identity in turmoil that rescues Stephen Dedalus at the end of ''[[w:A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man|A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]]''. Repudiating a country whose ideals had been grotesquely betrayed by cultural [[w:Philistinism|philistinism]], degraded religion, and wholly corrupt politics, Stephen achieves the necessary independence and self-possession to fulfill his destiny as artist. “So be it,” Stephen says, “Welcome, O Life!” As for Mailer and Vonnegut, who knows what new thinking or new art might come from such self-possession and rededication to the muse within? Wasn’t this what Vonnegut meant at the end of ''[[w:Fates Worse Than Death|Fates Worse Than Death]]'' when he says, “Hopelessness is the mother of Originality.”{{sfn|Vonnegut|1991|p=237}} “As you grow older,” Mailer says, “you have other things in your life besides your country. I have my family and I have my work.”{{sfn|American Masters|2000}} If his country is not as great or noble as he had hoped it is, it allowed him the freedom to think and write as he wished. If, as for Vonnnegut, that greatest of all human dreams were already behind him, it would be enough to serve as witness, if not to change the world—to meditate upon the perversities and wonders of his times.

* {{cite book |last= Vonnegut|first= Kurt|date= 1991|title= Fates Worse Than Death|url= |location= New York|publisher= Berkley Books |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

* {{cite web |url=https://inthesetimes.com/article/kurt-vonnegut-vs-the |title= Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@: Interview with Joel Bleifuss|last= Vonnegut|first= Kurt |authormask=1 |date= 27 January 2003|website= In These Times|publisher= |access-date= February 24, 2008|quote= |ref=harv }}

* {{cite book |last=Vonnegut |first=Kurt |authormask=1 |date=1965 |title=Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (Opinions) |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dell |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

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