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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 The cosmological vision has been reiterated in all of Mailer’s major works, including ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983), ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991), and ''The Gospel acccording to the Son'' (1997).<ref>
-Lennon, J. Michael. “Mailer’s Cosmology.” Modern Language Studies, 12:3 ~Summer 1982!: 18–29.</ref> In each of these novel’s (if we allow for ''The Executioner’s Song'' as a “nonfiction novel”), the struggle between divine forces explains the relation between apparently insignificant actors in ways that factor out what Mailer calls “the Absurd.” The divinity potential of quotidian existence is the binding material in Mailer’s cosmos, with “divinity” meaning extraordinary, magical, and foundational. The experience of the divine overlaps with the extraordinary in the manner of aesthetic wonder, and this commonality allows Mailer to find God in the aesthetic aspects of sexual experience, but the divine must be more than ''merely'' extraordinary.
+Lennon, J. Michael. “Mailer’s Cosmology.” Modern Language Studies, 12:3 ~Summer 1982!: 18–29.</ref> In each of these novel’s (if we allow for ''The Executioner’s Song'' as a “nonfiction novel”), the struggle between divine forces explains the relation between apparently insignificant actors in ways that factor out what Mailer calls “the Absurd.” The divinity potential of quotidian existence is the binding material in Mailer’s cosmos, with “divinity” meaning extraordinary, magical, and foundational. The experience of the divine overlaps with the extraordinary in the manner of aesthetic wonder, and this commonality allows Mailer to find God in the aesthetic aspects of sexual experience, but the divine must be more than ''merely'' extraordinary.The experience of divinity, which some people achieve and many do not, transcends ordinary experience, meaning that, in Mailer’s Romantic articulation, there is a hierarchy of knowing, and that only some (heroic) persons are able to glimpse the magical foundations of being. Such a vision requires huge risks, which explains why many would prefer not to see what Mailer’s heroic seers may encounter, and those who take such risks are not necessarily good people.
 ===Notes===