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The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/Secret Agency: American Individualism in Oswald's Tale and Libra: Difference between revisions
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Neither Oswald’s politics nor his personality was easily amenable to its environment. To a large extent this was the inevitable effect of his oppositional nature, but this trait itself was at least partially the result of socioeconomic factors. Like Gilmore, Oswald was somewhat of a fish out of water in his own time. Morris Dickstein’s depiction of postwar American society as a time of “peace, prosperity and galloping consumerism,”{{Sfn|Dickstein|1999|p=17}} and when the advent of “the new therapeutic culture of psychoanalysis” was “gradually replacing [the] social consciousness” of the Depression{{Sfn|Dickstein|1999|p=53}} suggests that Oswald’s ostensibly left-wing politics were, in the affluent and contented atmosphere of the postwar, a throwback to the oppositional stance of the Old Left progressives of the 1930s. Given Oswald’s social and economic marginality, such identification on his part is not surprising. As the son of a single mother who barely earned enough to pay the rent on their series of “small rooms,” Oswald hardly felt the benefits of postwar prosperity. The “supermarkets, air-conditioning . . . and dishwashers” that could be “taken for granted by middle class Americans by the 1960s”{{Sfn|Dickstein|1999|p=17}} were not part of his experience. Generationally, Oswald should have been a part of the New Left, but his social conservatism and defensive enforcement of gender roles would most likely have alienated him from his peers. Temperamentally, Oswald was suited to neither affiliation, a conflict played out in the “double life” engendered by his simultaneous attraction to “Karl Marx and the U.S. Marine Corps manual.”{{Sfn|Mailer|1995|p=372}} | Neither Oswald’s politics nor his personality was easily amenable to its environment. To a large extent this was the inevitable effect of his oppositional nature, but this trait itself was at least partially the result of socioeconomic factors. Like Gilmore, Oswald was somewhat of a fish out of water in his own time. Morris Dickstein’s depiction of postwar American society as a time of “peace, prosperity and galloping consumerism,”{{Sfn|Dickstein|1999|p=17}} and when the advent of “the new therapeutic culture of psychoanalysis” was “gradually replacing [the] social consciousness” of the Depression{{Sfn|Dickstein|1999|p=53}} suggests that Oswald’s ostensibly left-wing politics were, in the affluent and contented atmosphere of the postwar, a throwback to the oppositional stance of the Old Left progressives of the 1930s. Given Oswald’s social and economic marginality, such identification on his part is not surprising. As the son of a single mother who barely earned enough to pay the rent on their series of “small rooms,” Oswald hardly felt the benefits of postwar prosperity. The “supermarkets, air-conditioning . . . and dishwashers” that could be “taken for granted by middle class Americans by the 1960s”{{Sfn|Dickstein|1999|p=17}} were not part of his experience. Generationally, Oswald should have been a part of the New Left, but his social conservatism and defensive enforcement of gender roles would most likely have alienated him from his peers. Temperamentally, Oswald was suited to neither affiliation, a conflict played out in the “double life” engendered by his simultaneous attraction to “Karl Marx and the U.S. Marine Corps manual.”{{Sfn|Mailer|1995|p=372}} | ||
Mailer’s personal dialectic creates inconsistencies in his depiction of Oswald, and, at times, papers over a failure to resolve conflicts in his own values. Although Mailer later hews to Oswald’s self-identification as a Marxist, Oswald’s political manifesto, “The Athenian Credo” eschews both communism and capitalism, and is arguably as right wing as it is left wing. Here Mailer points out, “Oswald, ironically, was a libertarian rather than a leftist by the end. . . . He was adamantly opposed to government, believing only small collective groups, by agreement, work.”{{sfn|DePree|1996|p=3}} Not only does Mailer later insist on Oswald’s ''rejection'' of collective action, he also ignores the ramifications of his comment that “some ultra-right-wingers do not sound like reactionaries but libertarians; that, on the evidence of the Atheian credo, appealed to Oswald.”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=515}} | |||
The credo seems to appeal to Mailer as well, for his assessment of Oswald’s politics is most in keeping with his own position as a “left conservative.” True to Mailer’s own values, Oswald’s “Atheian System” creates “a truly democratic system” by assimilating what he felt were the best features of the world’s two dominant economic systems and marrying them to American social freedoms. Oswald’s utopia abolishes nationalism, a centralized State, and the taxation of individual citizens. It maintains freedom of speech, universal suffrage, and free compulsory education. Interestingly, while both private and collective enterprises are guaranteed, “monopoly practices [will] be considered capitalistic,” “[t]hat combining of separate collective or private enterprise into single collective units [will] be considered as communistic.”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|pp=506–507}} | |||
Oswald’s credo is essentially populist, as Mailer points out. It is attractive to “the mass of Americans,”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=507}} which is to say, a wide swath of working-and middle-class people. Like Mailer’s own work, the contradictions inherent in Oswald’s system are intended to “[mount] a pincers attack on the status quo,” but are both in spite of this and because of this, peculiarly American in stance. In rejecting both the “Soviet Communist International Movement” and State intrusion into private life (centralization and taxation) Oswald’s politics are almost purely reactionary. No sooner does Oswald characterize his system as “opposed to Communism, Socialism, and capitalism (sic),” he makes it clear that his anticipation of “the final destruction of the capitalist system” makes way for a new and specifically ''American'' Communist Party. Such a party must declare independence from the “domination and influence” of its Soviet motherland, thereby acting to “free the radical movement from its inertia” and transcend its current status as a “weakened” and “stale class of fifth columnists of the Russians,” in the service of “[safeguarding] an independent course of action . . . an American course.”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|pp=506–507}} | |||
In Oswald Mailer finds the perfect marriage of Emersonian hero and the prototypical autocrat, Adolph Hitler. In summing up Oswald’s manifesto, Mailer cautions the reader against the inevitable outcome of revolutionary thought: “Has there ever been a dictator who did not issue comparable statements in the early years of his revolution?”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=508}} On the other hand, one of Mailer’s most important authorial “speculations” casts Oswald’s perception of the assassination as an Emersonian act. Extending Priscilla Johnson McMillan’s thesis in her biography, ''Marina and Lee'', Mailer claims that Oswald was “presented [with] a new conflict—to be the instrument of history or the leading man.”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=782}} While Mailer admits, “Oswald may never have read Emerson,” he encourages us to read a passage from Emerson’s “Heroism” as a primary source of insight into Oswald’s character. According to Mailer, “[the passage] ''gives us luminous insight'' into ''what had to be'' Oswald’s opinion of himself as he sat . . . waiting for the Kennedy motorcade—he was committing himself to the most heroic deed of which he was capable”{{Sfn|Mailer|1995|p=783}} (emphasis added). Here Mailer appears to depict the assassination attempt as the result of Oswald’s delusions of grandeur. Ventriloquizing Oswald’s belief that {{" '}}It had become his fate to decapitate the American political process.{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=782}}{{sfn|McMillan|1977|p=518}}{{efn|Ruby’s somewhat breathless and disjointed style may have been influenced by the habitual use of the amphetamine appetite-suppressant, Preludin, which he refers to in his testimony. While long-term use of amphetamines at high doses is known to induce what psychiatrists call “amphetamine psychosis,” Ruby’s self-awareness and insight into his state suggest a certain degree of rationality. This is not to argue that Ruby’s perceptions were entirely objective, but only that, in the service of establishing Ruby’s “tribal” Jewishness, Mailer neglects compelling evidence that Ruby’s fears may have had a basis in fact. See {{harvtxt|Warren Commission|1964|pp=196 and 199}}.}} Mailer cites Emerson on the heroism of dissent: {{" '}}[Heroism] works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is obedience to a secret impulse of an individual’s character{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=783}} | |||
Oswald did read ''Mein Kampf'', lent to him by Russian émigré and possible CIA agent, George de Mohrenschildt. Although he comes off as more Machiavellian than libertarian, de Mohrenschildt and Oswald occupy a cer- tain common ground: | |||
{{quote|Possessor of an eclecticism that made him delight in presenting himself as right-wing, left-wing, a moralist, an immoralist, . . . de Mohrenschildt could hardly have failed to see that there was a profound divide between Oswald’s ideology and his character: Absolute freedom for all was the core of his political vision, yet he treated Marina as if he were a Nazi corporal shaping up a recruit.{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=458}} }} | |||
Mailer speculates at length, but somewhat inconclusively, on what de Mohrenschildt’s attitude toward Oswald might have been, and on what his intentions might have been in presenting Oswald with Hitler’s biography. However, Mailer does quote several passages from ''Mein Kampf'', as he does from Emerson, with the understanding that they be read as a parallel to Oswald’s thinking: | |||
{{quote|[O]ne can think of no moment in Oswald’s life when he would have been more ready to . . . feel some identity with Hitler than in these weeks alone in Dallas working at a low-paying job while feeling within himself every presentiment that he was a man destined for greatness against all odds. So it is worth looking at a few of Hitler’s remarks.{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=457}} }} | |||
Mailer chooses well, for the passages he quotes concerning Hitler’s early loneliness and poverty and the comforts of reading mirror Oswald’s experience exactly. Most importantly, Mailer quotes an italicized passage that was apparently of particular importance to Hitler, and by association, Oswald: | |||
{{quote|''It must never be forgotten that nothing that is really great in this world has ever been achieved by coalitions, but that it has always been the success of a single victor . . . Great, truly world-shaking revolutions . . . are not even conceivable and realizable except as the titanic struggles of individual formations.''{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=457}} }} | |||
Mailer goes on to note {{" '}}Individual formations’ are, of course, to be understood as a synonym for ''one man''.”{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=457}} | |||
Mailer is careful to limit his association of Oswald with Adolph Hitler to what he argues is their shared belief in the individual as historical catalyst. He takes pains to disassociate him from racism or any other forms of extreme nationalism. To that end he reasserts for Oswald the very political positioning he earlier cast into doubt: | |||
{{quote|''Oswald was a Marxist''. To relax his grip on Marxism would have been equal to intellectual decomposition for himself. The concept of a fatherland was odious to him; can one conceive of his “feeling inner pride in the privilege” [qtd. in ''Mein Kampf''] of being an American? He would hate concepts of race and historically destined folk.{{sfn|Mailer|1995|p=459}} (emphasis added)}} | |||
Ultimately, Oswald’s political ideology is moot. The Great Man theory of history that Mailer imputes to Oswald is impossible to assimilate into Oswald’s Marxism without acceding to Mailer’s central argument about him. Instead, the man Mailer claims was a Marxist but “not a leftist,” casts as a libertarian but presents as a reactionary, is first and foremost, an embodiment of his Hipster or Psychopath whose radical individualism Mailer sees as a courageous stand against the conformity that composes “the partially totalitarian society”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=339}} that determines the fate of American lives. | |||
If we take into account Mailer’s division of American society into a dichotomy between the Rebel, a “frontiersman in the Wild West,” and the Conformist, “a Square cell, trapped in the totalitarian tissues of American society,”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=339}} his comparison of Oswald to Emerson and Hitler is problematic. While such a comparison immediately suggests itself as a trenchant critique of the dark side of American individualism, Mailer makes no attempt to address its ramifications. As a number of critics have pointed out ({{harvtxt|Menand|2002}}, {{harvtxt|McCann|2000}}, and {{harvtxt|Patell|2001}}) Mailer’s agon is with liberalism rather than individualism. But in this case, Mailer’s failure to address the contradictions and, perhaps more importantly, the affinities between Emerson’s Individual and Hitler’s Superman mar an otherwise sharp critique of American values in both the Cold War and the Reagan/Bush era. | |||
. . . | . . . | ||
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* {{cite journal |last=Lentricchia |first=Frank |title=Don DeLillo |url= |journal=Raritan |volume=8 |issue=4 |date=Spring 1989 |pages=1–29 |access-date= |ref=harv }} | * {{cite journal |last=Lentricchia |first=Frank |title=Don DeLillo |url= |journal=Raritan |volume=8 |issue=4 |date=Spring 1989 |pages=1–29 |access-date= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite journal |last=Lentricchia |first=Frank |author-mask=1 |title=''Libra'' as Postmodern Critique |url= |journal=South Atlantic Quarterly |volume=89 |issue=2 |date=1990 |pages=431–453 |access-date= |ref=harv }} | * {{cite journal |last=Lentricchia |first=Frank |author-mask=1 |title=''Libra'' as Postmodern Critique |url= |journal=South Atlantic Quarterly |volume=89 |issue=2 |date=1990 |pages=431–453 |access-date= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1995 |title=Oswald’s Tale |url= |location=New York |publisher=Little, Brown |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1979 |title=The Executioner's Song |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little, Brown |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1995 |title=Oswald’s Tale |url= |location=New York |publisher=Little, Brown |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1963 |title=The Presidential Papers |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=2003 |title=The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1959 |chapter=The White Negro: Superficial Reflectionson the Hipster |title=Advertisements for Myself |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages=337–371 |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite journal |last=McCann |first=Sean |title=The Imperiled Republic: Norman Mailer and the Poetics of Anti-Liberalism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30031914 |journal=ELH |volume=67 |issue= |date=2000 |pages=293–336 |access-date=2021-06-22 |ref=harv }} | * {{cite journal |last=McCann |first=Sean |title=The Imperiled Republic: Norman Mailer and the Poetics of Anti-Liberalism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30031914 |journal=ELH |volume=67 |issue= |date=2000 |pages=293–336 |access-date=2021-06-22 |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite book |last=McMillan |first=Priscilla Johnson |date=1977 |title=Marina and Lee |url= |location=New York |publisher=Harper & Row |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Menand |first=Louis |date=2002 |chapter=Norman Mailer In His Time |editor-last=Farrar | * {{cite book |last=Menand |first=Louis |date=2002 |chapter=Norman Mailer In His Time |editor-last=Farrar | ||
|editor-first=Strauss |title=American Studies |location=New York |publisher=Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux |pages=146–161 |ref=harv}} | |editor-first=Strauss |title=American Studies |location=New York |publisher=Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux |pages=146–161 |ref=harv}} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Olster |first=Stacey |date=2002 |chapter=A Mother (and a Son, and a Brother, and a Wife, et al.) in History: Stories Galore in ''Libra'' and the Warren Commission Report |title=Productive Postmodernism: Consuming Histories and Cultural Studies |editor-last=Duvall |editor-first=John N. |location=Albany |publisher=SUNY UP |pages=43–59 |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Olster |first=Stacey |date=2002 |chapter=A Mother (and a Son, and a Brother, and a Wife, et al.) in History: Stories Galore in ''Libra'' and the Warren Commission Report |title=Productive Postmodernism: Consuming Histories and Cultural Studies |editor-last=Duvall |editor-first=John N. |location=Albany |publisher=SUNY UP |pages=43–59 |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Patell |first=Cyrus K. |date=2001 |title=Negative Liberties: Morrison, Pynchon, and the Problem of Liberal Ideology |url= |location=Durham |publisher=Duke UP |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Poirier |first=Richard |date=1971 |title=The Performing Self |url= |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford UP |author-link= |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Poirier |first=Richard |date=1971 |title=The Performing Self |url= |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford UP |author-link= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite magazine |last=Sawhill |first=Ray |date=April 1995 |title=No Ordinary Secret Agent: Mailer Talks About Lee and the KGB |url= |magazine=Newsweek |pages=60 |ref=harv }} | * {{cite magazine |last=Sawhill |first=Ray |date=April 1995 |title=No Ordinary Secret Agent: Mailer Talks About Lee and the KGB |url= |magazine=Newsweek |pages=60 |ref=harv }} | ||
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* {{cite book |last=Sturken |first=Marita |date=1997 |chapter=Personal Stories and National meanings: Memory, Reenactment, and the Image |editor1-last=Rhiel |editor1-first=Mary |editor2-last=Suchoff |editor2-first=David |title=The Seductions of Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Sturken |first=Marita |date=1997 |chapter=Personal Stories and National meanings: Memory, Reenactment, and the Image |editor1-last=Rhiel |editor1-first=Mary |editor2-last=Suchoff |editor2-first=David |title=The Seductions of Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite journal |last=Thomas |first=Glen |title=History, Biography, and Narrative in Don DeLillo’s ''Libra'' |url= |journal=wentieth Century Literature |volume=43 |issue=1 |date=1997 |pages=104–124 |access-date= |ref=harv }} | * {{cite journal |last=Thomas |first=Glen |title=History, Biography, and Narrative in Don DeLillo’s ''Libra'' |url= |journal=wentieth Century Literature |volume=43 |issue=1 |date=1997 |pages=104–124 |access-date= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite book |author=United States. Warren Commission |date=1964 |title=Hearings Before the President’s Commission |volume=5 and 11 |url= |location=Washington, D.C. |publisher=United States Government Publishing Company |ref={{SfnRef|Warren Commission|1964}} }} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Žižek |first=Slavoj |date=1991 |chapter=The Obscene Object of Postmodernity |title=Looking Awry |url= |location=Cambridge |publisher=MIT UP |pages=141–145 |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Žižek |first=Slavoj |date=1991 |chapter=The Obscene Object of Postmodernity |title=Looking Awry |url= |location=Cambridge |publisher=MIT UP |pages=141–145 |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Žižek |first=Slavoj |author-mask=1 |date=1989 |title=The Sublime Object of Ideology |url= |location=London |publisher=Verso |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Žižek |first=Slavoj |author-mask=1 |date=1989 |title=The Sublime Object of Ideology |url= |location=London |publisher=Verso |ref=harv }} | ||
{{Refend}} | {{Refend}} | ||
{{Review}} | |||
{{DEFAULTSORT:Secret Agency: American Individualism in Oswald's Tale and Libra}} | |||
[[Category:Articles (MR)]] | |||