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The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/The Wise Blood of Norman Mailer: An Interpretation and Defense of Why Are We in Vietnam?: Difference between revisions
The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/The Wise Blood of Norman Mailer: An Interpretation and Defense of Why Are We in Vietnam? (view source)
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This was Mailer’s maturing perception of a “good” God and an “evil” Devil in the late sixties. Perhaps the root of this belief can be found in this statement in ''Advertisements for Myself'', from an essay written a few years earlier: <blockquote>God’s destiny is flesh and blood with ours, and so, far from conceiving of a God who sits in judgment and allows souls, lost souls, to leave purgatory and be reborn again, there is the greater agony of God at the mercy of man’s fate, God determined by man’s efforts, man who has a free will....{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=91}}</blockquote> {{efn|Norman Mailer, “A Public Notice on ''Waiting for Godot'',” essay in {{harvtxt|Mailer|1959}}.}} This conception is precisely the one presented in Mailer’s 1968 bear hunt and his 2007 portrait of Adolf Hitler as a boy. God, Man, and Nature are not one, not made up of the same substance. Man is neither the consciousness nor the conscience of God. Mankind is a third determining force in the Universe. | This was Mailer’s maturing perception of a “good” God and an “evil” Devil in the late sixties. Perhaps the root of this belief can be found in this statement in ''Advertisements for Myself'', from an essay written a few years earlier: <blockquote>God’s destiny is flesh and blood with ours, and so, far from conceiving of a God who sits in judgment and allows souls, lost souls, to leave purgatory and be reborn again, there is the greater agony of God at the mercy of man’s fate, God determined by man’s efforts, man who has a free will....{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=91}}</blockquote> {{efn|Norman Mailer, “A Public Notice on ''Waiting for Godot'',” essay in {{harvtxt|Mailer|1959|p=289}}.}} This conception is precisely the one presented in Mailer’s 1968 bear hunt and his 2007 portrait of Adolf Hitler as a boy. God, Man, and Nature are not one, not made up of the same substance. Man is neither the consciousness nor the conscience of God. Mankind is a third determining force in the Universe. | ||
Mankind can and must realize itself as a determining factor in the development of life. Curiously, all of Mailer’s literary work, except ''The Naked and the Dead'' and ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'', emphasizes the moral responsibility of the individual to fight the suffocating restrictions of society, especially when society is dominated by the laws of Nature, not man. This more than anything illustrates Mailer’s abhorrence of American interference in Vietnam. “We did it to prove we are the meanest, biggest, baddest dog on the block,” he seems to be saying. We were allowing our natural instincts to rule our actions. Thus, Mailer is not concerned with the destruction of another country so much as he is concerned with our self-destruction. {{efn|This quotation from {{harvtxt|Mailer|1966}} may help clarify Mailer’s position: “[T]he only explanation I can find for the war in Vietnam is that we are sinking into the swamps of a plague and the massacre of strange people seems to relieve this plague. If one were to take the patients in a hospital, give them guns and let them shoot on pedestrians down from hospital windows you may be sure you would find a few miraculous cures.”{{sfn|Mailer|1966|p=91}}}} | Mankind can and must realize itself as a determining factor in the development of life. Curiously, all of Mailer’s literary work, except ''The Naked and the Dead'' and ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'', emphasizes the moral responsibility of the individual to fight the suffocating restrictions of society, especially when society is dominated by the laws of Nature, not man. This more than anything illustrates Mailer’s abhorrence of American interference in Vietnam. “We did it to prove we are the meanest, biggest, baddest dog on the block,” he seems to be saying. We were allowing our natural instincts to rule our actions. Thus, Mailer is not concerned with the destruction of another country so much as he is concerned with our self-destruction. {{efn|This quotation from {{harvtxt|Mailer|1966}} may help clarify Mailer’s position: “[T]he only explanation I can find for the war in Vietnam is that we are sinking into the swamps of a plague and the massacre of strange people seems to relieve this plague. If one were to take the patients in a hospital, give them guns and let them shoot on pedestrians down from hospital windows you may be sure you would find a few miraculous cures.”{{sfn|Mailer|1966|p=91}}}} | ||