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The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/Secret Agency: American Individualism in Oswald's Tale and Libra: Difference between revisions
The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/Secret Agency: American Individualism in Oswald's Tale and Libra (view source)
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reason, while Oswald’s harassment is intended to impugn his masculinity. Although Oswald and Dupard are allied through their shared marginal status and desire to disrupt power relations, their political common cause never breaches the racial divide. Dupard’s solidarity with Oswald is real, but uneasy; his conversations with Oswald are marked by a good-natured but satiric wit. Instead of the mentor that Oswald is searching for, the “artful old con who would advise the younger man ... a grizzled figure with kind and tired eyes,” Oswald “wasn’t sure what he had here in Bobby R. Dupard” {{Sfn|Mailer|1995|p=99}}. DeLillo underscores the divisiveness of race contained in the two men’s differing perceptions of the military. While both men joke about their mothers’ misguided faith in the armed services, it appeals to Oswald in ways in cannot to Dupard. Dupard comments: “I definitely get the idea they want to send me home in a box. The first minute I put on the green service coat, I look like I’m dead. It’s a coffin suit for a fool. I seen it on the spot.” Poor and disenfranchised though he is, Oswald is white. In his army uniform, where Dupard sees a dead man, Oswald sees an idealized self: “I liked the uniform ... It was great how it looked. I was surprised how great I felt ... I looked in the mirror and said it’s me.”{{Sfn|Mailer|1995|p=106}}}} | reason, while Oswald’s harassment is intended to impugn his masculinity. Although Oswald and Dupard are allied through their shared marginal status and desire to disrupt power relations, their political common cause never breaches the racial divide. Dupard’s solidarity with Oswald is real, but uneasy; his conversations with Oswald are marked by a good-natured but satiric wit. Instead of the mentor that Oswald is searching for, the “artful old con who would advise the younger man ... a grizzled figure with kind and tired eyes,” Oswald “wasn’t sure what he had here in Bobby R. Dupard” {{Sfn|Mailer|1995|p=99}}. DeLillo underscores the divisiveness of race contained in the two men’s differing perceptions of the military. While both men joke about their mothers’ misguided faith in the armed services, it appeals to Oswald in ways in cannot to Dupard. Dupard comments: “I definitely get the idea they want to send me home in a box. The first minute I put on the green service coat, I look like I’m dead. It’s a coffin suit for a fool. I seen it on the spot.” Poor and disenfranchised though he is, Oswald is white. In his army uniform, where Dupard sees a dead man, Oswald sees an idealized self: “I liked the uniform ... It was great how it looked. I was surprised how great I felt ... I looked in the mirror and said it’s me.”{{Sfn|Mailer|1995|p=106}}}} | ||
Similarly, while Oswald emphasizes his and Dupard’s oppression by a common and faceless enemy ~“it” vs. “we”! Dupard underscores the | Similarly, while Oswald emphasizes his and Dupard’s oppression by a common and faceless enemy ~“it” vs. “we”! Dupard underscores the isolating effects of racism ~“they” vs. “me”!. Oswald tells Dupard, “''it’s'' the whole huge system; ''we’re'' a zero in the system.” Dupard responds, “''[t]hey'' give ''me'' their special attention. Better believe” {{Sfn|Mailer|1995|p=106}}, emphasis added!. Unbeknownst to Oswald, the two men are also divided in their cosmologies. Dupard’s ideology is religious; Oswald’s political. In response to Oswald’s comment about ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' as a book about “us here and now,” Dupard responds, “I used to read the Bible.” In turn, Oswald’s version of a faith from which he’s fallen away is the Marine Corps manual: “... I read the Marine Corps manual ... Then I found out what it’s really all about. How to be a tool of the system. It’s the perfect capitalist handbook” {{Sfn|Mailer|1995|p=106}}. | ||
Ideology, and later the brig, provide for Oswald the sense of destiny and meaning for which Dupard once turned to the Bible. As DeLillo points out, his atheism is intolerable for mainstream Americans. In the service he had once told Reitmeyer [that] communism was the one true religion: | Ideology, and later the brig, provide for Oswald the sense of destiny and meaning for which Dupard once turned to the Bible. As DeLillo points out, his atheism is intolerable for mainstream Americans. In the service he had once told Reitmeyer [that] communism was the one true religion: | ||
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experience. Soon, Oswald “counted on these discussions with Konno, who was able to argue Lee’s own positions from a historic rather than personal viewpoint” {{Sfn|DeLillio|1988|p=88}}. Through his association with Konno, Oswald also has his first sexual experience, which underscores his new sense of destiny and belonging. In the woman’s room, | experience. Soon, Oswald “counted on these discussions with Konno, who was able to argue Lee’s own positions from a historic rather than personal viewpoint” {{Sfn|DeLillio|1988|p=88}}. Through his association with Konno, Oswald also has his first sexual experience, which underscores his new sense of destiny and belonging. In the woman’s room, | ||
{{quote| [h]e felt different, serious, still. He was part of something streaming through the world ... The moment had been waiting to happen. The room had been here since the day he was born, waiting for him, just like this, to walk through the door. It was just a question of walking in the door, entering the stream of things. {{Sfn|DeLillio|1988|p=84}} | {{quote| [h]e felt different, serious, still. He was part of something streaming through the world ... The moment had been waiting to happen. The room had been here since the day he was born, waiting for him, just like this, to walk through the door. It was just a question of walking in the door, entering the stream of things. {{Sfn|DeLillio|1988|p=84}}}} | ||
Although Oswald craves connection, DeLillo and Mailer return repeatedly to his bid for singularity. In different ways, both authors see Oswald’s | Although Oswald craves connection, DeLillo and Mailer return repeatedly to his bid for singularity. In different ways, both authors see Oswald’s | ||
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inextricably links belonging with consumption: | inextricably links belonging with consumption: | ||
{{quote| He got Marina settled in bed, then sat next to her ... he felt the power of her stillness ... and of the child she carried. He would start saving right away for a washing machine and a car. They’d get an apartment ... their own furniture for a change, modern pieces ... these are standard ways to stop being lonely. {{Sfn|DeLillio|1988|p=371}}. | {{quote| He got Marina settled in bed, then sat next to her ... he felt the power of her stillness ... and of the child she carried. He would start saving right away for a washing machine and a car. They’d get an apartment ... their own furniture for a change, modern pieces ... these are standard ways to stop being lonely. {{Sfn|DeLillio|1988|p=371}}}}. | ||
But DeLillo also suggests a certain ideological ''naïveté'' on Oswald’s part. Oswald is surprised to find that his Soviet friends place the most value on their private lives: | But DeLillo also suggests a certain ideological ''naïveté'' on Oswald’s part. Oswald is surprised to find that his Soviet friends place the most value on their private lives: | ||
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{{qoute| I’m a great believer that if you advance an idea as far as you can and it’s overtaken by someone who argues the opposite of you, in effect you’ve improved your enemy’s mind. Then someone will come along on your side and convert your enemy’s improvement of your idea and convert it back again. I’m nothing if I’m not a believer in the ''dialectic''... The thought of everyone thinking the way I do is as bad as any other form of totalitarianism. {{Sfn|Begiebing|1988|p=329}} | {{qoute| I’m a great believer that if you advance an idea as far as you can and it’s overtaken by someone who argues the opposite of you, in effect you’ve improved your enemy’s mind. Then someone will come along on your side and convert your enemy’s improvement of your idea and convert it back again. I’m nothing if I’m not a believer in the ''dialectic''... The thought of everyone thinking the way I do is as bad as any other form of totalitarianism. {{Sfn|Begiebing|1988|p=329}} | ||
Neither Oswald’s politics nor his personality was easily amenable to its environment. To a large extent this was the inevitable effect of his oppositional nature, but this trait itself was at least partially the result of socioeconomic factors. Like Gilmore, Oswald was somewhat of a fish out of water in his own time. Morris Dickstein’s depiction of postwar American society as a time of “peace, prosperity and galloping consumerism” | Neither Oswald’s politics nor his personality was easily amenable to its environment. To a large extent this was the inevitable effect of his oppositional nature, but this trait itself was at least partially the result of socioeconomic factors. Like Gilmore, Oswald was somewhat of a fish out of water in his own time. Morris Dickstein’s depiction of postwar American society as a time of “peace, prosperity and galloping consumerism” {{Sfn|Dickstein|1999|p=17}}, and when the advent of “the new therapeutic culture of psychoanalysis” was “gradually replacing [the] social consciousness” of the Depression {{Sfn|Dickstein|1999|p=53}} suggests that Oswald’s ostensibly left-wing politics were, in the affluent and contented atmosphere of the postwar, a throwback to the oppositional stance of the Old Left progressives of the 1930s. Given Oswald’s social and economic marginality, such identification on his part is not surprising. As the son of a single mother who barely earned enough to pay the rent on their series of “small rooms,” Oswald hardly felt the benefits of postwar prosperity. The “supermarkets, air-conditioning ... and dishwashers” that could be “taken for granted by middle class Americans by the 1960s ...” {{Sfn|Dickstein|1999|p=17}}were not part of his experience. Generationally, Oswald should have been a part of the New Left, but his social conservatism and defensive enforcement of gender roles would most likely have alienated him from his peers. Temperamentally, Oswald was suited to neither affiliation, a conflict played out in the “double life” engendered by his simultaneous attraction to “Karl Marx and the U.S. Marine Corps manual” {{Sfn|Mailer|1988|p=372}}}} | ||
have been a part of the New Left, but his social conservatism and defensive enforcement of gender roles | |||
peers. Temperamentally, Oswald was suited to neither affiliation, a conflict played out in the “double life” engendered by his simultaneous attraction to “Karl Marx and the U.S. Marine Corps manual” {{Sfn|Mailer|1988|p=372}} | |||