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{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style=”font-size:22px;”>The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/</span>The Faith of Romanticism: Dialectical Synthesis and Norman Mailer’s English Romantic Vision}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style=”font-size:22px;”>The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/</span>The Faith of Romanticism: Dialectical Synthesis and Norman Mailer’s English Romantic Vision}}
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{{Byline|last=Fleming|first=James R.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr03fle |abstract=Norman Mailer had a unique ability to carry contrary notions simultaneously, without resorting to simple, practical resolution in order to resolve dilemmas. Mailer is part of the Romantic tradition in terms of his understanding of reality. He does not wholly resist resolution to incommensurable situations and concepts. Instead, he takes Keats’s notion of negative capability a step further than Keats and his contemporaries.}}
{{Byline|last=Fleming|first=James R.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr03fle |abstract=Norman Mailer had a unique ability to carry contrary notions simultaneously, without resorting to simple, practical resolution in order to resolve dilemmas. Mailer is part of the Romantic tradition in terms of his understanding of reality. He does not wholly resist resolution to incommensurable situations and concepts. Instead, he takes Keats’s notion of negative capability a step further than Keats and his contemporaries.}}
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Jameson defends the hypermasculinity, blatant eroticism, and apparent obscenity that Mailer’s novel had been attacked for by critics by arguing that
Jameson defends the hypermasculinity, blatant eroticism, and apparent obscenity that Mailer’s novel had been attacked for by critics by arguing that


<blockquote>I’m not referring, by this, to the Free Speech Movement quality of the narrator’s language, which may momentarily prevent us from noticing the perfectly chaste character of the novel’s plot, in which a teenager becomes disillusioned with his Texas corporation executive father during an expensive hunting trip in Northern Alaska. The disparity between the language and events ought therefore to be enough to make us realize that sex here always stands for something else, for power relationships, or imposing your own ego; and it is the vital locus of the things that can happen to your ego when you lose, so that in this world ego damage is translated into sexual malfunction.{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=186}}</blockquote>
{{quote|I’m not referring, by this, to the Free Speech Movement quality of the narrator’s language, which may momentarily prevent us from noticing the perfectly chaste character of the novel’s plot, in which a teenager becomes disillusioned with his Texas corporation executive father during an expensive hunting trip in Northern Alaska. The disparity between the language and events ought therefore to be enough to make us realize that sex here always stands for something else, for power relationships, or imposing your own ego; and it is the vital locus of the things that can happen to your ego when you lose, so that in this world ego damage is translated into sexual malfunction.{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=186}} }}


Jameson, then, understands Mailer’s text, unlike Dickey’s, to self-consciously represent a number of particular power dynamics at once, particularly those which exists between father and sons, or, more broadly, between the figures of the oppressor and oppressed, a theme which Mailer has pursued at length in not only ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'', but, also in such novels as ''Barbary Shore'', ''The Armies of the Night'', and ''The Executioner’s Song''. Jameson, very much in line with Mailer’s own thoughts on the subject, keenly recognizes that the power dynamics at play in the novel become manifest through the performance of machismo, which he refers to, in terms of its practice, as “that strident cult of . . . maleness and courage, which Mailer inherited from Hemingway, not without giving it a few twists of his own.”{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=187}}
Jameson, then, understands Mailer’s text, unlike Dickey’s, to self-consciously represent a number of particular power dynamics at once, particularly those which exists between father and sons, or, more broadly, between the figures of the oppressor and oppressed, a theme which Mailer has pursued at length in not only ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'', but, also in such novels as ''Barbary Shore'', ''The Armies of the Night'', and ''The Executioner’s Song''. Jameson, very much in line with Mailer’s own thoughts on the subject, keenly recognizes that the power dynamics at play in the novel become manifest through the performance of machismo, which he refers to, in terms of its practice, as “that strident cult of . . . maleness and courage, which Mailer inherited from Hemingway, not without giving it a few twists of his own.”{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=187}}


While countless critics have taken an interest in Mailer’s brand of professed machismo, aside from Jameson, few critics have attempted to actually navigate and trace its ideological roots and its connections, both explicit and implicit, to Mailer’s general sense of the always lurking power struggle between the figures of the oppressed and oppressor in modern Western society. Jameson writes, “like all such psychological ideologies . . . machismo takes its toll of oppressor as well as oppressed and imprisons men in their superiority just as surely as it maintains women in their inferiority.”{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=187}}, reminding us that Mailer’s novel indeed does not offer a celebration of this particular power dynamic, but rather a critique and, to some measure, outright indictment of it. Jameson, however, recognizes where Mailer’s interest in the machismo, at least in terms of ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' departs quite drastically from that of Hemingway, particularly in terms of Mailer’s interest, in both his characters’ and his own experiences, of machismo and the fraught masculine category of what Jameson terms “the intellectual”:{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=187}}
While countless critics have taken an interest in Mailer’s brand of professed machismo, aside from Jameson, few critics have attempted to actually navigate and trace its ideological roots and its connections, both explicit and implicit, to Mailer’s general sense of the always lurking power struggle between the figures of the oppressed and oppressor in modern Western society. Jameson writes, “like all such psychological ideologies . . . machismo takes its toll of oppressor as well as oppressed and imprisons men in their superiority just as surely as it maintains women in their inferiority,”{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=187}} reminding us that Mailer’s novel indeed does not offer a celebration of this particular power dynamic, but rather a critique and, to some measure, outright indictment of it. Jameson, however, recognizes where Mailer’s interest in the machismo, at least in terms of ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' departs quite drastically from that of Hemingway, particularly in terms of Mailer’s interest, in both his characters’ and his own experiences, of machismo and the fraught masculine category of what Jameson terms “the intellectual”:{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=187}}


<blockquote>The American intellectual, indeed, suffers under a double burden of social guilt: first, in that as a bourgeois and as an American, he finds himself deeply and inextricably implicated in the values which he cannot but abhor on a purely intellectual level; and then, inasmuch as he is an intellectual, he finds himself rejected and spewed forth by the very business society which is his milieu and his public and the predestined arena of his life’s work. Hence the strategy of machismo: he pitches his appeal to be received back as an equal into the collectivity on the more fundamental physical basis on sex itself. For being a male is something he shares with the businessmen (and with the workers), sex (and its accompanying symbolic expressions in the realm of personal courage, sports, hunting, warfare, and the like) is the one object with which he can talk to them without a feeling of his own difference and his own exclusion. It thus becomes the privileged place of his self-dramatization and of his attempt—through the fantasy-work of his own creation—to overcome the tensions to his unhappy consciousness and to be reunited with the social order itself.{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=187}}</blockquote>
{{quote|The American intellectual, indeed, suffers under a double burden of social guilt: first, in that as a bourgeois and as an American, he finds himself deeply and inextricably implicated in the values which he cannot but abhor on a purely intellectual level; and then, inasmuch as he is an intellectual, he finds himself rejected and spewed forth by the very business society which is his milieu and his public and the predestined arena of his life’s work. Hence the strategy of machismo: he pitches his appeal to be received back as an equal into the collectivity on the more fundamental physical basis on sex itself. For being a male is something he shares with the businessmen (and with the workers), sex (and its accompanying symbolic expressions in the realm of personal courage, sports, hunting, warfare, and the like) is the one object with which he can talk to them without a feeling of his own difference and his own exclusion. It thus becomes the privileged place of his self-dramatization and of his attempt—through the fantasy-work of his own creation—to overcome the tensions to his unhappy consciousness and to be reunited with the social order itself.{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=187}} }}


For Jameson, Mailer’s primary interest in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is in exploring the functions and dynamics of machismo in terms of the manner in which such becomes manifest within the power structures of bourgeois masculine power relations. Mailer, he contends, structures a particular ideological and psychological system in the text, one which is dedicated to exposing the very roots of masculine power struggle. Mailer, as Jameson insists, presents this struggle within the confines of a particular brand of quest narrative, though which he is able to explore “the various ways you can go about achieving manhood.”{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=188}} Mailer’s text, as he contends, offers an ostensive object quest where the object is apparent on the immediate level (unlike the object in ''Deliverance''), “and because in this work the precise object is given, its characters and Mailer himself are far more lucid about the deeper purposes of the expedition, which is nothing more nor less than . . . to learn fear” in order to be able to measure oneself against “the most frightening experience man can know.”{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=188}} which, in the case of this novel, is manifest in the potent symbolic allegory of the masculine wilderness hunt for a grizzly bear. Jameson argues that, for both Mailer and his various protagonists in the novel, “fear is the privileged moment in which the psyche can purify itself of its accumulated positions.”{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=188}} The moment of fear, then, represents the very moment at which thought is purified and, indeed, synthesized, a dialectical moment, that is, when divergent ideas and emotions are formulated into some cohesive whole.
For Jameson, Mailer’s primary interest in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' is in exploring the functions and dynamics of machismo in terms of the manner in which such becomes manifest within the power structures of bourgeois masculine power relations. Mailer, he contends, structures a particular ideological and psychological system in the text, one which is dedicated to exposing the very roots of masculine power struggle. Mailer, as Jameson insists, presents this struggle within the confines of a particular brand of quest narrative, though which he is able to explore “the various ways you can go about achieving manhood.”{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=188}} Mailer’s text, as he contends, offers an ostensive object quest where the object is apparent on the immediate level (unlike the object in ''Deliverance''), “and because in this work the precise object is given, its characters and Mailer himself are far more lucid about the deeper purposes of the expedition, which is nothing more nor less than . . . to learn fear” in order to be able to measure oneself against “the most frightening experience man can know.”{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=188}} which, in the case of this novel, is manifest in the potent symbolic allegory of the masculine wilderness hunt for a grizzly bear. Jameson argues that, for both Mailer and his various protagonists in the novel, “fear is the privileged moment in which the psyche can purify itself of its accumulated positions.”{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=188}} The moment of fear, then, represents the very moment at which thought is purified and, indeed, synthesized, a dialectical moment, that is, when divergent ideas and emotions are formulated into some cohesive whole.
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Unlike a number of Mailer’s critics of the 1960s and 1970s, Jameson avoids, here, the critical mistake of aligning Mailer, totally, with his own ideological and philosophical systems; he does not resort to equating Mailer’s personal actions to his own professed philosophies and systems; rather he is aware of Mailer’s particular ability to separate himself in his narrative from his own proposed systems and structures. In his consideration of the system Mailer proposes in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'', Jameson contends that Mailer does not necessarily believe in the systems he propagates, at least “not in the way in which Zola ‘believed’ in his analogous notions of the bodily heredity and determinism: not scientifically or positively, but perhaps aesthetically.”{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=186}} Jameson ultimately concludes that
Unlike a number of Mailer’s critics of the 1960s and 1970s, Jameson avoids, here, the critical mistake of aligning Mailer, totally, with his own ideological and philosophical systems; he does not resort to equating Mailer’s personal actions to his own professed philosophies and systems; rather he is aware of Mailer’s particular ability to separate himself in his narrative from his own proposed systems and structures. In his consideration of the system Mailer proposes in ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'', Jameson contends that Mailer does not necessarily believe in the systems he propagates, at least “not in the way in which Zola ‘believed’ in his analogous notions of the bodily heredity and determinism: not scientifically or positively, but perhaps aesthetically.”{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=186}} Jameson ultimately concludes that


<blockquote>[I]t does not ultimately matter whether Balzac was a reactionary, or whether Mailer is a sexist, a dupe of the myths of American business, and so forth. For his essential task as a writer, faced with such ideological values both within and without himself, is, through his own prereflexive lucidity about himself and through the articulations of his fantasy life and the evocative ingenuity of his language, to bring such materials to artistic thematization and thus to make them an object of aesthetic consciousness.{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=196}}</blockquote>
{{quote|[I]t does not ultimately matter whether Balzac was a reactionary, or whether Mailer is a sexist, a dupe of the myths of American business, and so forth. For his essential task as a writer, faced with such ideological values both within and without himself, is, through his own prereflexive lucidity about himself and through the articulations of his fantasy life and the evocative ingenuity of his language, to bring such materials to artistic thematization and thus to make them an object of aesthetic consciousness.{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=196}} }}


Jameson’s ultimate failure in his reading of the novel is his failure to recognize the operations of dialectical thinking throughout the novel, particularly in terms of the manner in which Mailer is able to present and synthesize together entirely contrary modes of thought and ideology throughout the text, evident, particularly, in the sense of fear that his protagonists are able to reconcile themselves to and confront, but also in the “Intro Beeps” sections of the novel, in which Mailer steps somewhere outside of the narrative position (into yet another fictional character) of the protagonists and offers a form of metacritical commentary upon the narrative events at hand, in turn violating the ontological divisions set within the novel itself.
Jameson’s ultimate failure in his reading of the novel is his failure to recognize the operations of dialectical thinking throughout the novel, particularly in terms of the manner in which Mailer is able to present and synthesize together entirely contrary modes of thought and ideology throughout the text, evident, particularly, in the sense of fear that his protagonists are able to reconcile themselves to and confront, but also in the “Intro Beeps” sections of the novel, in which Mailer steps somewhere outside of the narrative position (into yet another fictional character) of the protagonists and offers a form of metacritical commentary upon the narrative events at hand, in turn violating the ontological divisions set within the novel itself.


Mailer, much like Jameson, has proven himself to be very much a dialectical thinker throughout his career. As Richard Poirier argues, “Mailer’s commitment to dialectics means that he includes materials which threaten the symmetry of any possible forms . . . throughout his work, dialectics is equivalent to imagination.”{{sfn|Poirier|1972|p=153}}{{efn|Gutman provides a brief review of the Marxist, Hegelian and Freudian roots of Mailer’s dialectical ideology:
Mailer, much like Jameson, has proven himself to be very much a dialectical thinker throughout his career. As Richard Poirier argues, “Mailer’s commitment to dialectics means that he includes materials which threaten the symmetry of any possible forms . . . throughout his work, dialectics is equivalent to imagination.”{{sfn|Poirier|1972|p=153}}{{efn|Gutman provides a brief review of the Marxist, Hegelian and Freudian roots of Mailer’s dialectical ideology: “Mailer shows himself directly in the tradition of two of his most important mentors, Marx and Freud. The Hegelian dialect was based on the concept that the unity of reality is always the product of divided and opposed elements. Marx applied this to history, which he saw as class struggle; the dialectical process of history will ultimately lead to the triumph of the proletariat. Freud’s emphasis on the ambivalence of the human condition . . . is likewise similar to Mailer’s view of the essential duality of existence. Indeed, Freud’s final formulation of the ambivalence, the competing drives of Eros and Thanatos, life instinct and death instinct, comes close to Mailer’s belief that life is continually forced to choose either new life or death.{{sfn|Gutman|1975|p=76}} }} As with Jameson, Mailer’s systems are often dialectical in structure. Jameson conceives of dialectics as a metacritical mode of thought, a manner of thinking and performing criticism that is always in some manner or another rather self-conscious of itself. Jameson writes, “dialectical thinking is a thought to the second power, a thought about thinking itself, in which the mind must deal with its own thought process just as much as with the material it works on.”{{sfn|Jameson|1971|p=45}} Drawing from the dialectical methodology of Adorno, Jameson contends that
<blockquote>Mailer shows himself directly in the tradition of two of his most important mentors, Marx and Freud. The Hegelian dialect was based on the concept that the unity of reality is always the product of divided and opposed elements. Marx applied this to history, which he saw as class struggle; the dialectical process of history will ultimately lead to the triumph of the proletariat. Freud’s emphasis on the ambivalence of the human condition . . . is likewise similar to Mailer’s view of the essential duality of existence. Indeed, Freud’s final formulation of the ambivalence, the competing drives of Eros and Thanatos, life instinct and death instinct, comes close to Mailer’s belief that life is continually forced to choose either new life or death.{{sfn|Gutman|1975|p=76}}</blockquote>}} As with Jameson, Mailer’s systems are often dialectical in structure. Jameson conceives of dialectics as a metacritical mode of thought, a manner of thinking and performing criticism that is always in some manner or another rather self-conscious of itself. Jameson writes, “dialectical thinking is a thought to the second power, a thought about thinking itself, in which the mind must deal with its own thought process just as much as with the material it works on.”{{sfn|Jameson|1971|p=45}} Drawing from the dialectical methodology of Adorno, Jameson contends that


<blockquote>’Society precedes the subject’: thought’s categories are collective and social; identity is not option but a doom; reason and its categories are at one with the rise of civilization or capitalism, and can scarcely be transformed until he latter is transformed. But . . . Habermass is wrong to conclude that Adorno’s implacable critique of reason . . . paints him into the corner of irrationalism and leaves him no implicit recourse but the now familiar poststructual one of acephale. He thinks so only because he cannot himself allow for the possibility or reality of some new, genuinely dialectical thinking.{{sfn|Jameson|1990|p=24}}</blockquote>
{{quote|‘Society precedes the subject’: thought’s categories are collective and social; identity is not option but a doom; reason and its categories are at one with the rise of civilization or capitalism, and can scarcely be transformed until he latter is transformed. But . . . Habermass is wrong to conclude that Adorno’s implacable critique of reason . . . paints him into the corner of irrationalism and leaves him no implicit recourse but the now familiar poststructual one of ''acephale''. He thinks so only because he cannot himself allow for the possibility or reality of some new, genuinely dialectical thinking.{{sfn|Jameson|1990|p=24}} }}


In this respect, the dialect can be understood as working against systems and allowing us to think in manners which the various forces of social oppression do not readily allow us to think or imagine another side or possibility to any question, what Jameson considers to be “an external face of the concept which, like that of the moon, can never be directly visible or accessible to us”{{sfn|Jameson|1990|p=25}} and which serves to link the dialectic closely to the realm of self-consciousness.
In this respect, the dialect can be understood as working against systems and allowing us to think in manners which the various forces of social oppression do not readily allow us to think or imagine another side or possibility to any question, what Jameson considers to be “an external face of the concept which, like that of the moon, can never be directly visible or accessible to us”{{sfn|Jameson|1990|p=25}} and which serves to link the dialectic closely to the realm of self-consciousness.
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Dialectical thinking, for Jameson, allows for a way of giving account to the pronounced differences within a particular system of thought. He quotes Adorno on this matter: “Thought need not rest content in its logical regularity: it is capable of thinking against itself without absolving itself altogether; indeed, were definitions of the dialectical possible, that one might be worth proposing.”{{sfn|Jameson|1990|p=17}} In ''A Singular Modernity'', Jameson contends that
Dialectical thinking, for Jameson, allows for a way of giving account to the pronounced differences within a particular system of thought. He quotes Adorno on this matter: “Thought need not rest content in its logical regularity: it is capable of thinking against itself without absolving itself altogether; indeed, were definitions of the dialectical possible, that one might be worth proposing.”{{sfn|Jameson|1990|p=17}} In ''A Singular Modernity'', Jameson contends that


<blockquote>the dialectic is thus proposed as a kind of new language strategy, in which both identity and difference are given their due in advance and systematically played off against each other . . . but the dialectic comes into being as an attempt to hold . . . contradictory features structural analogy and the radical internal differences in dynamic and in historical causality together within the framework of a single thought or language.{{sfn|Jameson|2002|p=65}}</blockquote>
{{quote|the dialectic is thus proposed as a kind of new language strategy, in which both identity and difference are given their due in advance and systematically played off against each other . . . but the dialectic comes into being as an attempt to hold . . . contradictory features structural analogy and the radical internal differences in dynamic and in historical causality together within the framework of a single thought or language.{{sfn|Jameson|2002|p=65}} }}


In terms of the decided difference that he locates between Dickey and Mailer’s respective narratives, Jameson seems to suggest that Mailer’s superiority as an artist and intellectual is owed, in large part, to his particular ability to offer a, in Jameson’s terms, “a new language strategy . . . within the framework of a single thought or language,” and bring forth a dialectical consciousness in his narrative (though Jameson does not, at least overtly, suggest that Mailer’s narrative is, in fact, dialectical).
In terms of the decided difference that he locates between Dickey and Mailer’s respective narratives, Jameson seems to suggest that Mailer’s superiority as an artist and intellectual is owed, in large part, to his particular ability to offer a, in Jameson’s terms, “a new language strategy . . . within the framework of a single thought or language,” and bring forth a dialectical consciousness in his narrative (though Jameson does not, at least overtly, suggest that Mailer’s narrative is, in fact, dialectical).


<blockquote>[T]he essential difference between Dickey’s social attitudes and those of Mailer turned out to be that the first were unconscious and unarticulated, informing the work after the fashion of blind and deeply held prejudices; whereas the ideology of Mailer proved to be a supremely self-conscious construction, constantly dramatized and reexamined by the author himself. It is then enough for a writer to systematize his attitudes and to transform his implicit feelings into some coherent and personalized world view? {{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=195}}</blockquote>
{{quote|[T]he essential difference between Dickey’s social attitudes and those of Mailer turned out to be that the first were unconscious and unarticulated, informing the work after the fashion of blind and deeply held prejudices; whereas the ideology of Mailer proved to be a supremely self-conscious construction, constantly dramatized and reexamined by the author himself. It is then enough for a writer to systematize his attitudes and to transform his implicit feelings into some coherent and personalized world view?{{sfn|Jameson|1972|p=195}} }}


For Jameson, the particular force of Mailer’s work results from his “genius,” something which he identifies as being entirely lacking in Deliverance: “Much of the force of Mailer’s work springs from the coincidence in it of the personal obsession and the historical contradiction, from the way in which he has been able to experience an objective historical institution (the competitive nature of life under capitalism),”{{sfn|Jameson|2002|p=189}} hence the genius of the novel can be conceived in terms of Mailer’s intrinsic, personal, conscious connection of it, his awareness of its divergent facets and his resulting ability to think beyond such while existing firmly within and being subjected to the very forces of it.
For Jameson, the particular force of Mailer’s work results from his “genius,” something which he identifies as being entirely lacking in ''Deliverance'': “Much of the force of Mailer’s work springs from the coincidence in it of the personal obsession and the historical contradiction, from the way in which he has been able to experience an objective historical institution (the competitive nature of life under capitalism),”{{sfn|Jameson|2002|p=189}} hence the genius of the novel can be conceived in terms of Mailer’s intrinsic, personal, conscious connection of it, his awareness of its divergent facets and his resulting ability to think beyond such while existing firmly within and being subjected to the very forces of it.


Mailer has retained a dialectical vision, if not a dialectical cosmology, throughout nearly the entirety of his career. In his first novel, ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948), Mailer recognizes, quite keenly, the class divide between soldiers and officers within a military brigade during the later stages of World War II. Mailer conceives of the social divide between these groups as being ultimately irresolvable in the social sphere, at least within the contemporary construct of such in Western society. While he is unable, at this stage in his career, to suggest a manner in which one might be able to surmount such an oppressive system (that is, the dialectical), he is nonetheless able to move beyond it in a relatively dialectical manner by positioning himself as an objective narrator who synthesizes both positions into the form of a narrative that gives credence to each. Mailer is even more capable of representing the fundamental social divide between the bourgeois and proletariat (as well as the company man and the artist, the white and the black, the conservative and the liberal, the capitalism and the communist) in ''Barbary Shore'' (1953) the novel that follows ''The Naked and the Dead''.
Mailer has retained a dialectical vision, if not a dialectical cosmology, throughout nearly the entirety of his career. In his first novel, ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948), Mailer recognizes, quite keenly, the class divide between soldiers and officers within a military brigade during the later stages of World War II. Mailer conceives of the social divide between these groups as being ultimately irresolvable in the social sphere, at least within the contemporary construct of such in Western society. While he is unable, at this stage in his career, to suggest a manner in which one might be able to surmount such an oppressive system (that is, the dialectical), he is nonetheless able to move beyond it in a relatively dialectical manner by positioning himself as an objective narrator who synthesizes both positions into the form of a narrative that gives credence to each. Mailer is even more capable of representing the fundamental social divide between the bourgeois and proletariat (as well as the company man and the artist, the white and the black, the conservative and the liberal, the capitalism and the communist) in ''Barbary Shore'' (1953) the novel that follows ''The Naked and the Dead''.
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For Mailer, who by the midpoint of his career can be seen as operating very much in line with Jameson’s notion of the dialectic, the only manner in which one can begin to free himself or herself from the confines of oppression is through a method of dialectical thinking. Joseph Wenke has contended that
For Mailer, who by the midpoint of his career can be seen as operating very much in line with Jameson’s notion of the dialectic, the only manner in which one can begin to free himself or herself from the confines of oppression is through a method of dialectical thinking. Joseph Wenke has contended that


<blockquote>In Mailer’s work it is characteristically the protagonist’s responsibility to discover authentic forms of expression that represent significant opposition to the prevailing tendencies of society. Ironically, it was Mailer’s assumption of the protagonist’s representativeness through his embodiment of the nation’s ills that undoubtedly made it so difficult for him in his first three books to create strong protagonists who would be capable of expressing significant opposition. For the protagonist would have to embody both the plague and possible solution. He would have to be capable of engaging in a dialectic between apparent contradictions in value, an engagement that would be possible only if he were able to represent all that the society expresses though its institutions and all of the possibilities for expression that those institutions outlaw or deny.{{sfn|Wenke|1987|p=17}}</blockquote>
{{quote|In Mailer’s work it is characteristically the protagonist’s responsibility to discover authentic forms of expression that represent significant opposition to the prevailing tendencies of society. Ironically, it was Mailer’s assumption of the protagonist’s representativeness through his embodiment of the nation’s ills that undoubtedly made it so difficult for him in his first three books to create strong protagonists who would be capable of expressing significant opposition. For the protagonist would have to embody both the plague and possible solution. He would have to be capable of engaging in a dialectic between apparent contradictions in value, an engagement that would be possible only if he were able to represent all that the society expresses though its institutions and all of the possibilities for expression that those institutions outlaw or deny.{{sfn|Wenke|1987|p=17}} }}


The supposed ideological weaknesses of Mailer’s first three novels, for Wenke, is owed to Mailer’s inability to sustain the dialectic “and thereby represent the plague and the possible solutions.”{{sfn|Wenke|1987|p=18}} to modern Western life. It is not until Mailer’s ''An American Dream'', according to Wenke, that Mailer is able to begin to successfully sustain the dialectic, although Wenke argues that the dialectic does not come to full fruition until ''Why Are We In Vietnam?'' in which Mailer’s protagonist, D.J. “balances opposing values . . . for his unrelenting disc jockey rant is both a critique and an embodiment of the electric insanity of corporate America.”{{sfn|Wenke|1987|p=19}}
The supposed ideological weaknesses of Mailer’s first three novels, for Wenke, is owed to Mailer’s inability to sustain the dialectic “and thereby represent the plague and the possible solutions.”{{sfn|Wenke|1987|p=18}} to modern Western life. It is not until Mailer’s ''An American Dream'', according to Wenke, that Mailer is able to begin to successfully sustain the dialectic, although Wenke argues that the dialectic does not come to full fruition until ''Why Are We In Vietnam?'' in which Mailer’s protagonist, D.J. “balances opposing values . . . for his unrelenting disc jockey rant is both a critique and an embodiment of the electric insanity of corporate America.”{{sfn|Wenke|1987|p=19}}
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For Mailer, dialectical unification takes place within the psyche of the protagonist at hand, provided he or she is able to weigh issues from two opposite ontological realms at once: “The insights into a society and his own experience become, in the crucible of Mailer’s psyche, acts of affirmation of the self. His order becomes the order of the universe.”{{sfn|Gutman|1975|p=191}} Jameson shows a similar tendency to connect the proper end of dialectical thinking to the ream of the self-conscious and metacritical. Jameson contends that
For Mailer, dialectical unification takes place within the psyche of the protagonist at hand, provided he or she is able to weigh issues from two opposite ontological realms at once: “The insights into a society and his own experience become, in the crucible of Mailer’s psyche, acts of affirmation of the self. His order becomes the order of the universe.”{{sfn|Gutman|1975|p=191}} Jameson shows a similar tendency to connect the proper end of dialectical thinking to the ream of the self-conscious and metacritical. Jameson contends that


<blockquote>Dialectical thinking is therefore not only thought to the second power, thought about preexisting thought, but also the latter’s fulfillment, its realization and abolition in a sense yet to be described. For to the degree to which it places the older mental operation of problem-solving in a new and larger context, it converts the problem itself into a solution, no longer attempting to solve the dilemma head on, according to its own terms, but rather coming to understand the dilemma itself as the mark of profound contradictions latent in the very mode of posing the problem.{{sfn|Jameson|1971|p=341}}</blockquote>
{{quote|Dialectical thinking is therefore not only thought to the second power, thought about preexisting thought, but also the latter’s fulfillment, its realization and abolition in a sense yet to be described. For to the degree to which it places the older mental operation of problem-solving in a new and larger context, it converts the problem itself into a solution, no longer attempting to solve the dilemma head on, according to its own terms, but rather coming to understand the dilemma itself as the mark of profound contradictions latent in the very mode of posing the problem.{{sfn|Jameson|1971|p=341}} }}


For Jameson, then, any attempt to think dialectically represents the very solution to the problem being encountered, for it allows one to step beyond the problem at hand, however fundamentally unsolvable it might in fact be. In Marxism and Form, Jameson contends that
For Jameson, then, any attempt to think dialectically represents the very solution to the problem being encountered, for it allows one to step beyond the problem at hand, however fundamentally unsolvable it might in fact be. In Marxism and Form, Jameson contends that


<blockquote>Dialectical thought is in its very structure self-consciousness and may be described as the attempt to think about a given object on one level, and at the same time to observe our own thought process as we do so: or to use a more scientific figure, to reckon the position of the observer into the experiment itself. In this light, the difference between the Hegelian and Marxist dialectics can be defined in terms of the type of self-consciousness involved.{{sfn|Jameson|1971|p=340}}</blockquote>
{{quote|Dialectical thought is in its very structure self-consciousness and may be described as the attempt to think about a given object on one level, and at the same time to observe our own thought process as we do so: or to use a more scientific figure, to reckon the position of the observer into the experiment itself. In this light, the difference between the Hegelian and Marxist dialectics can be defined in terms of the type of self-consciousness involved.{{sfn|Jameson|1971|p=340}} }}


Self-consciousness, that is, awareness of the very process of thinking is crucial to the dialectical method for both Jameson and Mailer. It requires one to be able to stand in two spheres at once, to exist within and without the issue at hand for, as Jameson argues, “Dialectical thinking can be characterized as historical reflexivity, that is, the study of an object . . . which also involves the study of the concepts and categories (themselves historical) that we necessarily bring to the object.”{{sfn|Jameson|1981|p=109}}
Self-consciousness, that is, awareness of the very process of thinking is crucial to the dialectical method for both Jameson and Mailer. It requires one to be able to stand in two spheres at once, to exist within and without the issue at hand for, as Jameson argues, “Dialectical thinking can be characterized as historical reflexivity, that is, the study of an object . . . which also involves the study of the concepts and categories (themselves historical) that we necessarily bring to the object.”{{sfn|Jameson|1981|p=109}}
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Mailer’s ultimate representation of dialectical synthesis occurs at the very conclusion of ''The Castle in the Forest''. At the end of the novel, Mailer’s satanic protagonist, Dieter, gives a name to the enterprise he has helped spawn. Dieter concludes his narrative by offering, ostensibly, something of an explication for the mysterious and unexplained title of his text:
Mailer’s ultimate representation of dialectical synthesis occurs at the very conclusion of ''The Castle in the Forest''. At the end of the novel, Mailer’s satanic protagonist, Dieter, gives a name to the enterprise he has helped spawn. Dieter concludes his narrative by offering, ostensibly, something of an explication for the mysterious and unexplained title of his text:


<blockquote>All that remains to discuss is why I have chosen this title, ''The Castle in the Forest''. If the reader, having come with me through Adolph Hitler’s birth, childhood, and a good part of his adolescence, would now ask, “Dieter, where is the link to your text? There is a lot of forest in your story, but where is the castle?”
{{quote|All that remains to discuss is why I have chosen this title, ''The Castle in the Forest''. If the reader, having come with me through Adolph Hitler’s birth, childhood, and a good part of his adolescence, would now ask, “Dieter, where is the link to your text? There is a lot of forest in your story, but where is the castle?”


I would reply that ''The Castle in the Forest'' translates into ''Das Waldschloss''. This happens to be the name given by the inmates some years ago to the camp just liberated . . . not many trees are in sight, no any hint of a castle. Nothing of interest is on the horizon. Waldschloss became, therefore, the appellation given by the brightest of the prisoners to their compound. One pride maintained to the end was that they must not surrender their sense of irony. That had become their fortitude. It should come as no surprise that the prisoners who came up with this piece of nomenclature were from Berlin. If you are German and possessed of lively intelligence, irony is, of course, vital to one’s pride.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=465}}</blockquote>
I would reply that ''The Castle in the Forest'' translates into ''Das Waldschloss''. This happens to be the name given by the inmates some years ago to the camp just liberated . . . not many trees are in sight, no any hint of a castle. Nothing of interest is on the horizon. Waldschloss became, therefore, the appellation given by the brightest of the prisoners to their compound. One pride maintained to the end was that they must not surrender their sense of irony. That had become their fortitude. It should come as no surprise that the prisoners who came up with this piece of nomenclature were from Berlin. If you are German and possessed of lively intelligence, irony is, of course, vital to one’s pride.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=465}} }}


It appears that Dieter offers no direct insight into how the title he has provided links to his text and suggests that “nothing of interest is on the horizon.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=465}} Still, if we consider this matter closely, the answer to the question is precisely in the very questions that are raised for, as Mailer writes in the final lines of the novel, “There maybe no answer to this, but good questions still vibrate within.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=467}} For Mailer, operating in terms of both negative capability and dialectical synthesis, resolutions to incommensurablities are never readily apparent, nor does he suggest otherwise. Instead, Mailer—much in the spirit of Keats and Jameson—contains and manages the contradictions he encounters by residing somewhere above or between them, and reaches individuation through the portrayal of pronounced consciousness that provides a heightened perspective of the matters at hand, as exemplified in ''The Executioner’s Song'' and ''The Castle in the Forest'', which itself serves as Mailer’s greatest Romantic gesture. Mailer does not offer simple resolutions to the problems, incommensurabilities and contradiction he exposes, but instead presents us with a variety of possibilities, all the while admitting that that there may be no answer to them but leaving us, instead, with good, vibrating questions.
It appears that Dieter offers no direct insight into how the title he has provided links to his text and suggests that “nothing of interest is on the horizon.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=465}} Still, if we consider this matter closely, the answer to the question is precisely in the very questions that are raised for, as Mailer writes in the final lines of the novel, “There maybe no answer to this, but good questions still vibrate within.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=467}} For Mailer, operating in terms of both negative capability and dialectical synthesis, resolutions to incommensurablities are never readily apparent, nor does he suggest otherwise. Instead, Mailer—much in the spirit of Keats and Jameson—contains and manages the contradictions he encounters by residing somewhere above or between them, and reaches individuation through the portrayal of pronounced consciousness that provides a heightened perspective of the matters at hand, as exemplified in ''The Executioner’s Song'' and ''The Castle in the Forest'', which itself serves as Mailer’s greatest Romantic gesture. Mailer does not offer simple resolutions to the problems, incommensurabilities and contradiction he exposes, but instead presents us with a variety of possibilities, all the while admitting that that there may be no answer to them but leaving us, instead, with good, vibrating questions.
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