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The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/The Hitler Family: A Relational Approach to Norman Mailer: Difference between revisions
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On one level, ''Castle'' is a book about life of the lower classes of the German-speaking section of the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy and about one man, Alois Hitler, who manages to rise above the humble origins of his family. It looks at the daily life of the peasants, the education of their children, their sexual relationships, and their sometimes desperate attempts to improve their limiting life conditions. But the family that is followed in this novel in great detail on almost five hundred pages is not an ordinary family. It is the family of a man who would fatally change the course of history causing a catastrophe whose terrible consequences we are still far from having overcome. | On one level, ''Castle'' is a book about life of the lower classes of the German-speaking section of the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy and about one man, Alois Hitler, who manages to rise above the humble origins of his family. It looks at the daily life of the peasants, the education of their children, their sexual relationships, and their sometimes desperate attempts to improve their limiting life conditions. But the family that is followed in this novel in great detail on almost five hundred pages is not an ordinary family. It is the family of a man who would fatally change the course of history causing a catastrophe whose terrible consequences we are still far from having overcome. | ||
Norman Mailer has written another novel which functions very much the same way. In ''[[Oswald’s Tale]]'' (1995), he and his collaborators have sifted through and generated an incredible amount of material relating to Oswald’s time in the Soviet Union, his wife, Marina, and her family and friends. Reading through the hundreds of pages of this book, one comes to understand the tragic history of the Soviet Union and the way this history has shaped her citizens. Although readers are at times lost in the wealth of this material, at no time do they forget that the whole book has one focal point, namely the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963 in Dallas. From ''none'' of the many things we find out about Marina and her development can it be excluded that it may have influenced her in a particular way which may have contributed to the negative development of her marriage with Lee, and thus to Lee’s frustrated megalomania—or whichever else formative characteristic—which ultimately ''may'' have caused the murder of Kennedy. “This is,” says Mailer, “after all, a book that depends upon the small revelation of separate points of view. We are, in effect, studying an object... as he tumbles through the prisms of a kaleidoscope. It is as if by such means we hope to penetrate into the psychology of Lee Harvey Oswald.” | Norman Mailer has written another novel which functions very much the same way. In ''[[Oswald’s Tale]]'' (1995), he and his collaborators have sifted through and generated an incredible amount of material relating to Oswald’s time in the Soviet Union, his wife, Marina, and her family and friends. Reading through the hundreds of pages of this book, one comes to understand the tragic history of the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union Soviet Union] and the way this history has shaped her citizens. Although readers are at times lost in the wealth of this material, at no time do they forget that the whole book has one focal point, namely the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963 in Dallas. From ''none'' of the many things we find out about Marina and her development can it be excluded that it may have influenced her in a particular way which may have contributed to the negative development of her marriage with Lee, and thus to Lee’s frustrated megalomania—or whichever else formative characteristic—which ultimately ''may'' have caused the murder of Kennedy. “This is,” says Mailer, “after all, a book that depends upon the small revelation of separate points of view. We are, in effect, studying an object... as he tumbles through the prisms of a kaleidoscope. It is as if by such means we hope to penetrate into the psychology of Lee Harvey Oswald.” | ||
In readers’ minds, the massive quantity of information ''Castle'' provides concerning Hitler’s family and early childhood is equally focused on a later historical development, although in a much different manner. The catastrophe is not the murder of a man with large possibilities and the meaning of that death for his culture, but rather the extinction of a whole culture itself, a genocidal horror unequaled in human history. Mailer, by focusing on Hitler’s family and early life, seems to suggest that there must be ''some'' explanatory potential here for what happened later on. | In readers’ minds, the massive quantity of information ''Castle'' provides concerning Hitler’s family and early childhood is equally focused on a later historical development, although in a much different manner. The catastrophe is not the murder of a man with large possibilities and the meaning of that death for his culture, but rather the extinction of a whole culture itself, a genocidal horror unequaled in human history. Mailer, by focusing on Hitler’s family and early life, seems to suggest that there must be ''some'' explanatory potential here for what happened later on. | ||
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The victim, Klara, Hitler’s mother, in ''Castle'' is similarly, though much more dimly, aware of her origins. Whereas it is suggested that to her, the many versions of anal and oral sexuality Alois subjects her to—at least one of which young Adi is witness to—are evil; it is really the implicit or semiconscious knowledge of the incest condition which makes her so sexually defensive. In an early sexual situation and in a very Mailerian and very un-Austrian line, this connection is made quasi explicit: “Maybe I call you Uncle,” she said, “because you are such a big, healthy fellow of an uncle.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=129}} But it takes devil Dieter to explain the mechanism of this transference in great clarity: | The victim, Klara, Hitler’s mother, in ''Castle'' is similarly, though much more dimly, aware of her origins. Whereas it is suggested that to her, the many versions of anal and oral sexuality Alois subjects her to—at least one of which young Adi is witness to—are evil; it is really the implicit or semiconscious knowledge of the incest condition which makes her so sexually defensive. In an early sexual situation and in a very Mailerian and very un-Austrian line, this connection is made quasi explicit: “Maybe I call you Uncle,” she said, “because you are such a big, healthy fellow of an uncle.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=129}} But it takes devil Dieter to explain the mechanism of this transference in great clarity: | ||
{{quote|Most men and women are incapable of facing unpleasant truths. They have what can only be a God-given ability to conceal themselves from themselves. So I could appreciate how Klara was full of un-admitted worry over Alois junior and Angela and never spent a moment pondering whether her husband was not her uncle but her father.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=266}} }} | {{quote| | ||
Most men and women are incapable of facing unpleasant truths. They have what can only be a God-given ability to conceal themselves from themselves. So I could appreciate how Klara was full of un-admitted worry over Alois junior and Angela and never spent a moment pondering whether her husband was not her uncle but her father.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=266}} }} | |||
Having lost three children at a very early age, topped by the future loss of a fourth, Klara is extremely anxious about the well-being of young Adi. But of course the motor of all of her maternal care is her secret guilt and it will, again according to Dieter, result in the opposite: | Having lost three children at a very early age, topped by the future loss of a fourth, Klara is extremely anxious about the well-being of young Adi. But of course the motor of all of her maternal care is her secret guilt and it will, again according to Dieter, result in the opposite: | ||
{{quote|[A]n incestuous procreation followed by swarms of mother-love will offer rich possibilities.... Even the noblest, most self-sacrificing and generous mother can produce a monster.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=74}} }} | {{quote| | ||
[A]n incestuous procreation followed by swarms of mother-love will offer rich possibilities.... Even the noblest, most self-sacrificing and generous mother can produce a monster.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=74}} }} | |||
This leads us to Dieter, the object of criticism by several reviewers who are skeptical of Mailer’s latest novel and indeed question a mysterious character, although a central agent in the novel. In the German translation of Mailer’s work, the word “client” Dieter uses for those individuals the devils have recruited for their interests, is translated as “Mandant,” metaphorically translating the relationship between devil and customer into a legal context. It seems to me that some American critics have also read the meaning of client in this legal framework. My own reading, however, evokes more the therapeutic context of this word. Dieter is, after all, the one who breaks through the secrecy, who is willing to discontinue the silence; the—as quoted above—“God-given ability [of human beings] to conceal themselves from themselves.” | This leads us to Dieter, the object of criticism by several reviewers who are skeptical of Mailer’s latest novel and indeed question a mysterious character, although a central agent in the novel. In the German translation of Mailer’s work, the word “client” Dieter uses for those individuals the devils have recruited for their interests, is translated as “Mandant,” metaphorically translating the relationship between devil and customer into a legal context. It seems to me that some American critics have also read the meaning of client in this legal framework. My own reading, however, evokes more the therapeutic context of this word. Dieter is, after all, the one who breaks through the secrecy, who is willing to discontinue the silence; the—as quoted above—“God-given ability [of human beings] to conceal themselves from themselves.” | ||