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The Mailer Review/Volume 12, 2018/Lipton’s Journal: Mailer’s Quest for Wholeness and Renewal: Difference between revisions
The Mailer Review/Volume 12, 2018/Lipton’s Journal: Mailer’s Quest for Wholeness and Renewal (view source)
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==Part 1: Mailer and Jung== | ==Part 1: Mailer and Jung== | ||
In the mid-1950s Mailer employed creative methods and goals that are significantly like those Carl Jung employed through his own journal of self-analysis earlier in the century. Both Mailer and Jung seek to discover neglected and undeveloped elements of their personalities; both are in search of wholeness and renewal; both are in search of their deepest selves. Both, by their own testimony, are in search of their souls. In short, Mailer initiated a Jungian analysis on himself, though it is unlikely he was fully aware he was doing so in 1955. | In the mid-1950s Mailer employed creative methods and goals that are significantly like those Carl Jung employed through his own journal of self-analysis earlier in the century. Both Mailer and Jung seek to discover neglected and undeveloped elements of their personalities; both are in search of wholeness and renewal; both are in search of their deepest selves. Both, by their own testimony, are in search of their souls. In short, Mailer initiated a Jungian analysis on himself, though it is unlikely he was fully aware he was doing so in 1955. | ||
Mailer’s self-analysis through ''Lipton’s Journal'' was transformational and foundational; it would become the key to all his future work, beginning in the 1960s. Reading it, we witness both the how and the why of Mailer’s personal transformation. Mailer began ''Lipton’s Journal'' during a turbulent and disappointing time in his life—after the collapse of his first marriage and the bleak reception of ''[[Barbary Shore]]'', and in the midst of his anguished attempt to find a publisher for his third novel, ''The Deer Park''. “For the first time in my life,” Mailer writes in [[Lipton’s Journal/December 31, 1954/157|journal entry #157]], “I have come to realize that I, too, could go mad or commit suicide.” He recognizes that ''Barbary Shore'' and ''The Deer Park'' had expressed his few ideas, “only through great pain, and the most stubborn depression . . . .” That ''The Deer Park'' “is an enormous lie,”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/January 24, 1955/250|#250]]}} and that he must break free of such dishonesty and such worrying over “bad receptions for my books” because such worries tend to make him “go on and try to be more dishonest at an even higher level,” rather than becoming a rebel artist connected to an independent, whole self.{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/February 7, 1955/460|#460]]}} “I am analyzing myself in order to become a real rebel, not just an adjusted rebel.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/January 26, 1955/276|#276]]}} | |||
Mailer found his journal to be “a refuge. . . giving him a clean feeling.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/January 24, 1955/218|#218]]}} He began to see that, “Only through understanding myself can I come to create . . . . As I understand myself . . . so I can waste less time.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/February 14, 1955/582|#582]]}} He was on a quest through self-analysis for potential sources of rebellion against the claustrophobia he was feeling about his life as a rejected, perhaps even failed, artist. “''The Deer Park'' is a failure, but I have discovered myself,” he writes, and adds that he will no longer need “to protect myself against quitting the values of the world.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/December 31, 1954/145|#145]]}} His self-analytical journey in ''Lipton’s'' would be his turning point, the source of his personal transformation.{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/December 31, 1954/155|#155]]}} He sees himself as “shoving off into a total re-evaluation of everything . . . . I must trust what my instincts tell me is good rather than what the world says is good.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/December 31, 1954/159|#159]]}} In the same entry, Mailer notes that he considers ''The Naked and the Dead'' to be an “imposture” he tried to hide behind, but he now is committed to going forward. He wants his work now to become less derivative, more rebellious and outrageous, more instinctual and deeper, foretelling not only ''Advertisements for Myself'', but ''An American Dream'', ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' and ''The Armies of the Night'' in the coming decade. Mailer also believes such “self-analysis will make me a happier more effective rebel . . .because I will be less afraid.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/February 21, 1955/623|#623]]}} “I believe I’m going to come out of this bigger than I went in.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/January 25, 1955/262|#262]]}} | |||
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===Citations=== | ===Citations=== | ||