The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/Reflections of Time Past: Pattern, Time, and Memory in Norman Mailer: Difference between revisions

Developing this approach, we could argue that the novel and the story—like any other works of art—also create such patterns: we can regard story as a complex pattern of narrative, grammar, metaphor, metonymy, and other rhetorical devices. We may well be homo faber, but we are also Mankind the Storyteller. Peter Brooks has argued, “We live immersed in narrative, recounting and reassessing the meaning of past actions, anticipating the outcome of future projects, situating ourselves at the intersections of several stories not yet completed. The narrative impulse is as old as our oldest literature." Certainly the modern novel—unlike previous literary genres—does not offer simplistic explanations of the world or unchanging religious dogmas. Today, Grand Narratives are not much in fashion. But the novel does offer, I suggest, an implicit pattern, a bold attempt—indirectly and tacitly—to grasp the complexity of life. Actually, in contemporary religion, not all preachers and theologians would stress fixed dogmas rather than that kind of implicit pattern. Frederick Buechner, both novelist and preacher, has suggested that

What of the work of Norman Mailer? In his novels and in a work like The Armies of the Night, we can see the relevance of Brooks’ words: “immersed in narrative, recounting and reassessing the meaning of past actions ... situating ourselves at the intersections of several stories not yet completed." Certainly, Mailer seems more at ease with Buechner’s “mysteries and loose ends” than with “logical, abstract terms”—even, I think, in his final work, On God. In many ways, I would argue that his views on art and narrative are not too far from Whitehead, Brooks, and Buechner. He sees storytelling as an essential human characteristic, one of the ways we create patterns to make sense of the absurd. In The Spooky Art, Mailer says: “We tell ourselves stories in order to make sense of life. Narrative is reassuring. There are days when life is so absurd, it’s crippling—nothing makes sense, but stories bring order to the absurdity. Relief is provided by the narrative’s beginning, middle, and end." So, Mailer’s stories—in whatever genre they are written—try to “make sense of life,” creating some kind of pattern. A little later in The Spooky Art, in his critique of Gore Vidal, Mailer almost echoes Eliot’s words in “East Coker”: “What I would argue, however, is that his particular tradition has become inadequate to our needs. The world is growing so genuinely complex (and perplexed!) that it’s limiting to enclose it with aphorisms, no matter how brilliant. One has to qualify them."

Mailer’s abiding interest in boxing and pugilism is well known: in "The Mailer Review," along with allusions to boxing in the memorials and tributes, there were major articles on boxing by Barry Leeds and John Rodwan. Leeds says that,

Part of the attraction of boxing as such a metaphor is no doubt temperamental—that is simply part of who Norman Mailer the man was. But I wonder: how much does the readiness to use such martial metaphors arise from his experience as a soldier in World War II, an experience encapsulated in "The Naked and the Dead?"

What of memory? Memory is the human facility that enables us to reflect who we are and from whence we have come, to understand our identity as beings in time, and to create and tell our stories. Our reflection of time past–and our understanding of time present and our hopes and fears concerning time future–are all created and shaped by our memories. Memory cannot physically change the events of the past but memory shapes how the past is perceived. Memory may help to determine, for instance, whether the past will be for us oppressor or liberator. At times, memory may provide the chance, almost, of a do-over. Again, I quote from Buechner:

Apart from the obvious fact that memory is at the core of both narrative and our human identity, what is the particular place of memory in Mailer’s work? He once called form—something surely vital to any narrative–“‘the physical equivalent of memory.’ ” As we continue to study the form of his narratives and stories, in effect we are recalling Mailer’s memory, his perception of the “the web of history," so that we may better weave our own pattern. Through memory, each of us composes—and continually revises—our personal story, creating our own narrative, part fictional part factual. Throughout our lives, we are telling our stories, shaping a history of our times, drafting our own map of reality, weav- ing our own web of meaning. At the heart of that patterning process, we find human memory. Again, here is how Mailer expresses it in "The Time of Our Time:"

Memories may be lost, of course. We may simply forget, move on with other concerns, and/or get older. Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia may destroy memory. Sometimes, as Toni Morrison suggests in "Beloved," severe trauma can erase, as it were, our cultural history circuits. Under the impact of war and other traumas, what was once called “shell shock” and now PTSD continue to do so. Human memory seems to be both conscious and unconscious—both voluntary and involuntary. Memory needs sustaining, reshaping, reimagining. The Norman Mailer Society, its annual conferences, The Mailer Review, and their counterparts in other bailiwicks of the literary world, are reminders of the power and necessity of cultural and literary memory for all of us. In November 2007, we lost Norman Mailer. Each day we lose more of the “Greatest Generation.” We must not forget the memories, that “social and cultural history” and “collective remembrance” that is threaded through Mailer’s work—and the voices of his generation.