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An American Dream Expanded/There’s Hope in Mailer: Difference between revisions
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{{byline|last=Buckely Jr. |first=William F.}} | |||
{{notice|From {{cite newspaper |last=|first= |date=September 26, 1965 |title=There's Hope inMailer |url= |newspaper=The Miami Herald |location= |page=3-F |access-date= }} Though they are in-process, copyright permissions have not yet been secured for this review. If you are the copyright holder, please contact the [[Gerald R. Lucas|editor]].}} | |||
== There's Hope in Mailer == | == There's Hope in Mailer == | ||
The life and art of Norman Mailer are discussed all over the pages of ''Life Magazine'' this week by an intelligent and gifted writer. Brock Brewer. who had the sense to acknowledge even before setting out on his 12-page journey that he doesn't know (and neither does | The life and art of [[Norman Mailer]] are discussed all over the pages of ''Life Magazine'' this week by an intelligent and gifted writer. Brock Brewer. who had the sense to acknowledge even before setting out on his 12-page journey that he doesn't know (and neither does [[Norman Mailer|Mailer]] what in fact is the goal of Mailer's "reckless quest." The heavy recognition of Mailer by the editors of ''Life'' is final confirmation that he is big on the literary scene--and more: that he is big on the American scene, for two reasons that most critics do not know how to explain but, by their friendly activity in trying, go so far as to acknowledge that the Quest to Explain [[Norman Mailer]] is itself worthwhile. | ||
And indeed it is. He is probably the single best known living American writer, only second to John Dos Passos. It doesn't mean his books have sold as well as Erskine Caldwell's or John Steinbeck's, merely that far more of the people who read Mailer's books wonder about who he is, and what he trying to get at, than ever have on reading Caldwell or Steinbeck. | And indeed it is. He is probably the single best known living American writer, only second to John Dos Passos. It doesn't mean his books have sold as well as Erskine Caldwell's or John Steinbeck's, merely that far more of the people who read Mailer's books wonder about who he is, and what he trying to get at, than ever have on reading Caldwell or Steinbeck. | ||
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It was Mailer who developed the cult of the Hipster--the truly modern American who lets the bleary world go by doing whatever it bloody well likes, because nothing it does can upset the Hipsters' inexhaustible Cool. It isn't that Mailer's characters are without passion: on the contrary they tend to be so highly strung that no matter how gently you stroke them, they emit twangy sharp tones. It is that the workaday pressures of civilization don't affect them. They aren't influenced very much by tradition; or by the venerable arguments for continence and moderation; or by the recognition that other people's existences, and hopes, abut against our own ambitions and self-concern. | It was Mailer who developed the cult of the Hipster--the truly modern American who lets the bleary world go by doing whatever it bloody well likes, because nothing it does can upset the Hipsters' inexhaustible Cool. It isn't that Mailer's characters are without passion: on the contrary they tend to be so highly strung that no matter how gently you stroke them, they emit twangy sharp tones. It is that the workaday pressures of civilization don't affect them. They aren't influenced very much by tradition; or by the venerable arguments for continence and moderation; or by the recognition that other people's existences, and hopes, abut against our own ambitions and self-concern. | ||
In every categorical sense, Norman Mailer is an utter and hopeless mess. If their is an intellectual in the United States who talks more predictable nonsense on the subject of foreign policy, I will pay a week's wages not to have to hear him. | In every categorical sense, [[Norman Mailer]] is an utter and hopeless mess. If their is an intellectual in the United States who talks more predictable nonsense on the subject of foreign policy, I will pay a week's wages not to have to hear him. | ||
On the domestic scene, he is a so-so socialist. So-so because even though he finds he can float only in cool waters of the left, he is transparently unhappy, really, as a socialist: although he is more docile toward that barren religion than toward any other. | On the domestic scene, he is a so-so socialist. So-so because even though he finds he can float only in cool waters of the left, he is transparently unhappy, really, as a socialist: although he is more docile toward that barren religion than toward any other. | ||
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Mailer is properly denounced by philosophical taxonomists as a soilpsist__a man for whom reality is confined to himself and his own experience. Still it is a relief__sort of a half way house to the proper blend of the individual and tradition __ to read a novel in which the protagonist doesn't depend for his salvation on life rafts coast out into the sea of Hope by Marx. Freud, or U Thant. | Mailer is properly denounced by philosophical taxonomists as a soilpsist__a man for whom reality is confined to himself and his own experience. Still it is a relief__sort of a half way house to the proper blend of the individual and tradition __ to read a novel in which the protagonist doesn't depend for his salvation on life rafts coast out into the sea of Hope by Marx. Freud, or U Thant. | ||
I confess that Mailer's tours through the nightspots of hell are not my idea of recreation, even with pad and pencil in hand to jot down what one has Learned about. Things, I do not enjoy spelunking in human depravity, nor do I wish my machine around to tape-record the emunctory noise of psychic or physical human excesses. Even so, there is hop in Norman Mailer's turbulent motions. | I confess that Mailer's tours through the nightspots of hell are not my idea of recreation, even with pad and pencil in hand to jot down what one has Learned about. Things, I do not enjoy spelunking in human depravity, nor do I wish my machine around to tape-record the emunctory noise of psychic or physical human excesses. Even so, there is hop in [[Norman Mailer|Norman Mailer's]] turbulent motions. | ||
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