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The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in The Castle in the Forest: Difference between revisions
The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/"Their Humor Annoyed Him": Cavalier Wit and Sympathy for the Devil in The Castle in the Forest (view source)
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Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. By “epistemological realism,” I mean that we can only experience our own minds directly, unless we have supernormal pow- ers, and furthermore we can only draw inferences about other minds.{{efn|I am not using “epistemological realism” in the standard way, which refers specifically to the form of objectivism in which objects exist independently of one’s own mind in support of a correspondence theory of truth. Such objects would then, presumably, be available for apprehension by subjects from various perspectives, ameliorating the ways in which contemporary, post-Nietzschean perspectivism subverts assertions about an objective world. Mailer’s attraction to what I’m calling “epistemological realism,” on the other hand, finds ways of conflating first- and third-person perspectives—such as by resorting to the epistolary novel in the omega manuscript of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' to ensure that all perceptions are grounded in the first-person-singular perspective—precisely because Mailer’s fictions do not construct worlds out of a comfortable, objectivist epistemological realism.}} So first-person-singular narration is as close as fiction can get to what an individual person without telepathic skills can really know. Yet our success in the world depends entirely on having confidence in inferences drawn about other minds, and to develop this confidence we need to develop exactly the sort of imagination found in a convincing social novel. But in ''The Castle in the Forest'', Mailer’s narrator is a demon from hell who takes pride in his work; the associative connection Mailer develops at length does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that all human knowing is damned, but we are privy, as it were, to the intrusions of devils much, much more than we are, in Mailer’s fictional rendition, to the mind-intrusions of angels. | Mailer’s innovative device of having a mind-entering demon narrate backgrounds denied to us by the enclosures of history allows Mailer to conflate the epistemological realism of first person narration with the omniscience of third person. By “epistemological realism,” I mean that we can only experience our own minds directly, unless we have supernormal pow- ers, and furthermore we can only draw inferences about other minds.{{efn|I am not using “epistemological realism” in the standard way, which refers specifically to the form of objectivism in which objects exist independently of one’s own mind in support of a correspondence theory of truth. Such objects would then, presumably, be available for apprehension by subjects from various perspectives, ameliorating the ways in which contemporary, post-Nietzschean perspectivism subverts assertions about an objective world. Mailer’s attraction to what I’m calling “epistemological realism,” on the other hand, finds ways of conflating first- and third-person perspectives—such as by resorting to the epistolary novel in the omega manuscript of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' to ensure that all perceptions are grounded in the first-person-singular perspective—precisely because Mailer’s fictions do not construct worlds out of a comfortable, objectivist epistemological realism.}} So first-person-singular narration is as close as fiction can get to what an individual person without telepathic skills can really know. Yet our success in the world depends entirely on having confidence in inferences drawn about other minds, and to develop this confidence we need to develop exactly the sort of imagination found in a convincing social novel. But in ''The Castle in the Forest'', Mailer’s narrator is a demon from hell who takes pride in his work; the associative connection Mailer develops at length does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that all human knowing is damned, but we are privy, as it were, to the intrusions of devils much, much more than we are, in Mailer’s fictional rendition, to the mind-intrusions of angels. | ||
What are we to make of a carefully wrought fictional scene in which the Hitlers, before young Adi even comes into the world, adventure past ordinary naughty sex into pedal-to-the-metal analingus? In foregrounding sex acts of this sort in a book purportedly about radical evil, Mailer risks being discussed in terms of radical eccentricity. | What are we to make of a carefully wrought fictional scene in which the Hitlers, before young Adi even comes into the world, adventure past ordinary naughty sex into pedal-to-the-metal analingus? In foregrounding sex acts of this sort in a book purportedly about radical evil, Mailer risks being discussed in terms of radical eccentricity.<ref>The Castle in the Forest. New York: Random House, 2007.</ref> Or, one could say that approaching radical evil through sexual obscenity is artistically obscene. However we put it, the novel intentionally jars the reader just as much as ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983)!, and the central narrative device of ''that'' novel was an act of fellatio between two ghosts in a tomb. Here is the sex act between Alois and Klara that Mailer’s young Hitler witnesses: | ||
===Notes=== | ===Notes=== | ||