The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/A New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost: Difference between revisions

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 Harry, life has always treated me as a darling, and for much too long. If my mother merely adored me my father more than made up for it.... My brain was so fertile that I could have gone off to a desert island and been deliriously happy with myself. The only pains I knew were the ferocious congestions attendant on new ideas. (556–557)</blockquote>
+Mailer has described feeling as if he were the literary darling of critics after his early success with ''The Naked and The Dead'', which was extravagantly praised, but followed by harshly treated subsequent novels, ''The Deer Park'' and ''Barbary Shore''. Clearly, Mailer knew what it felt like to have incredibly “fertile” periods of creativity accompanied by frustration. Mailer has shown a repeated willingness to air publicly the frustrations of being a writer in his writing. Kittredge ends her despair, as Mailer so often has, by resolving to “find a way to renew oneself.”
+Despite her articulation of Mailer’s theories, she, like all the characters, is unable ultimately to account for her sense of failure, and the theory fails. What makes this reading important about ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is that the novel functions as a testing ground for Mailer’s ideology, yet reveals the possibility of deconstructing that ideology. Mailer has stressed, in his essays and fiction, his conviction that courage and will determine success and that we must be “existentially” responsible for the conditions of our life. Bravery and honesty must be summoned and maintained and then we will be successful, Mailer claims. Mailer’s conviction is represented in ''An American Dream'' when Stephen Rojack walks around an apartment building balcony ledge, staving off the attempt of a devil-like character to push him off. After this act, Rojack, achieves inner peace and the novel resolves (unpersuasively, in
+my view).
-Mailer has described feeling as if he were the literary darling of critics after
-his early success with The Naked and The Dead, which was extravagantly
-praised, but followed by harshly treated subsequent novels, The Deer Park
-and Barbary Shore. Clearly, Mailer knew what it felt like to have incredibly
-“fertile” periods of creativity accompanied by frustration. Mailer has shown
-a repeated willingness to air publicly the frustrations of being a writer in his
-writing. Kittredge ends her despair, as Mailer so often has, by resolving to
-“find a way to renew oneself.”
-Despite her articulation of Mailer’s theories, she, like all the characters, is
-unable ultimately to account for her sense of failure, and the theory fails.
-What makes this reading important about Harlot’s Ghost is that the novel
-functions as a testing ground for Mailer’s ideology, yet reveals the possibility of deconstructing that ideology. Mailer has stressed, in his essays and fiction, his conviction that courage and will determine success and that we
-must be “existentially” responsible for the conditions of our life. Bravery and
-honesty must be summoned and maintained and then we will be successful, Mailer claims. Mailer’s conviction is represented in An American Dream
-when Stephen Rojack walks around an apartment building balcony ledge, staving off the attempt of a devil-like character to push him off. After this
-act, Rojack, achieves inner peace and the novel resolves ~unpersuasively, in
-my view!.
 The problem of failure, therefore, is a problem in Mailer’s worldview. This