| Author |
Message |
    
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 5784
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, November 26, 2007 - 11:14 am: | 
|
So What did you think of him?
I thought he was overrated--he decided to play the man's man in writing--taking over from Papa Hemingway. I do respect him for stepping away from it when he realized it wouldn't work and just being Norman Mailer.
I mean the man had to compete with Sarte, Baldwin, Ellison, Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck--all these guys and more alive and writing
I think he was one of our greatest journalists.
He always gave great interviews, too. He had that presence. That big craggy head. That head was half his mojo.
Somebody said that he survived being anointed a genius. Yeah, he did.
When his writing stank ("Harlot's Ghost"?) he did not let it get him down.
For it to stink like that it would have had to have been his-- |
Emanuel
Veteran Poster
Username: Emanuel
Post Number: 425
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, November 26, 2007 - 02:07 pm: |
|
I've never read any of his work. Which book do you recommend? |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 5790
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 12:02 pm: |
|
I can't recommend a single one. The man did not distinguish himself, to me, in any single piece of writing.
If you can get a hold of one of his interviews from the 60's before his brain started going soft and he started repeating himself--I think one of his most notorious was in Playboy. Or Esquire. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 10728
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 03:50 pm: |
|
If you're interested in an authentic account of World War II, Emanuel, told from the point of view of a G.I. on the battlefield, you might want to check out "The Naked and the Dead", Mailer's debut novel which catapulted him to fame. I read it years ago, when I was a teen-age and can't remember too much about it except that at the that time I was shocked by it profanity and fascinated with its goriness.
|
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 5794
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 03:58 pm: |
|
If you're interested in an authentic account of World War II, Emanuel, told from the point of view of a G.I. on the battlefield, you might want to check out "The Naked and the Dead", Mailer's debut novel which catapulted him to fame
(The book stank. James Jones ate his lunch in "From Here to Eternity". The fact that he was 25 years old and wrote something so quickly after WWII worked in his favor.
Plus that he was Jewish--sorry folks. It didn't hurt him.
From what I know he had never been in combat so he didn't know what he was writing about. Just making it up, just like the writers of Sgt. Rock Comics.) |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 5796
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 04:04 pm: |
|
After graduating in 1943, he was drafted into the U.S. Army. In World War II, he served in the Philippines with 112th Cavalry. He was not involved in much combat and completed his service as a cook, [1]
From wikipedia |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 10731
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 04:10 pm: |
|
Since the "Naked and the Dead" was fiction, maybe Mailer researched it before he wrote it. Has anybody ever challenged its authenticity? This is what Leon Uris did with "Battle Cry", another outstanding book on this subject. |
Emanuel
Veteran Poster
Username: Emanuel
Post Number: 430
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 04:16 pm: |
|
Oh God, a 736-page novel on WWII? I'll pass on that one. Being a non-combat war vet myself, war books don't really interest me. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 5799
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 04:25 pm: |
|
This is what Leon Uris did with "Battle Cry", another outstanding book on this subject
(Isn't that the book about the Marines, where, near the end, the Marines go blood simple and start yelling "Blood! Blood!" And one of the main characters empties two .45's into the ranks of the yellow devils and, dying, throws them at them, yelling, "Blood! Blood!"
Ridiculous) |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 5801
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 04:32 pm: |
|
From Wikipedia re Uris
At the age of seventeen Uris joined the United States Marine Corps. He served in the South Pacific as a radioman at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and New Zealand from 1942 to 1945.
(Though the sequence was ridiculous, he at least had been shot at) |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 5802
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 04:35 pm: |
|
Good WW II novels
Among the most successful American war novels were Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny, James Jones's From Here to Eternity, and Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, the latter a novel set in the Spanish Civil War. An exception to American writers was Pierre Boulle's Le Pont de la rivière Kwaï (1952- The Bridge on the River Kwai) He served as a secret agent under the name Peter John Rule and helped the resistance movement in China, Burma and French Indochina. More experimental and unconventional works in the post-war period included Joseph Heller's satirical Catch-22 and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, an early example of postmodernism |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 10734
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 05:31 pm: |
|
Who asked for good World War 2 novels? I was talking about books written by Norman Mailer.
|
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 10738
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 06:07 pm: |
|
BTW, I read "Battle Cry" when it first came out in the 1950s, and thoroughly enjoyed it. A soldier I was corresponding with back then was seeing action in the Korean conflict, and said that he had also read "Battle Cry" and that it was dead on in its portrayal of military life. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 5804
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, November 29, 2007 - 03:44 pm: |
|
Will somebody who has read something THIS CENTURY please post? |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 10742
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, November 29, 2007 - 04:21 pm: |
|
None of the books you recommended were written in this century, chrishayden. And there are still some intelligent people around who have an appreciation for history.  |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 5810
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, November 29, 2007 - 04:56 pm: |
|
And there are still some intelligent people around who have an appreciation for history
(You ARE history!) |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 10749
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, November 29, 2007 - 06:56 pm: |
|
I'm proud to be a personification of history, as opposed to someone like you who are a sorry caricature of your era.  |
Theliterarythug
First Time Poster
Username: Theliterarythug
Post Number: 1
Registered: 11-2007
Rating: 
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 01, 2007 - 04:16 am: |
|
"The Naked and The Dead" seemed like warmed over Hemingway to me. The descriptions of soldiers on foot, in combat,and being shot harkened A "Farewell To Arms" so much that you could almost tell the exact sections of Papa's novel that Mailer was inspired by. "Barbary Shore" and "The Deer Park" were two examples of him forcing his Nerouses on the reader. "Why are we in Vietnam", is decent for it's first 2/3rds yet goes to hell in the end.
I read him for a Writers group, and it was hard not to notice how much of a sick bastard he was when it came to women. In later years Mailer passed himself off as just a jolly cad misunderstood by frigid women, but read the books. He didnt have problems with women in his fiction,he wanted them to DIE. His novel "American Dream", IMO the poster child for everything screwed up with the Western Canon, advocates a woman's murder as a metaphor for the American experience. I know a lot of men shrivel up at the sight of feminist criticism, but it's hard to read Kate Millett's "Sexual Politics", her response to his and Lawrence's thought on women, and not agree with Her. We arent talking about high school Locker room banter here. We are talking about constant references to rape and murder. Gruesome ish
And I have a question. Since Mailer:
1: Wrote in the White Negro that black people were vessels for whites to be used for their existential exploration
2: Wrote that he was "tired of negroes and their rights" in Armies of the night.
3: Gave a fawning profile to Pat Buchannan in Esquire
4: Flat out ABUSED James baldwin ( writing "reeks of perfume" " your gay, black, and ugly as the ace of spades")
Why do so many black writers give him a pass? I know he was down for Ali and I respect that, along with the fine writing that came from it. Forgive me, however, for caring more about people trying to help us obtain our basic human freedoms than people who like to see black people beat other black people up.
But that's just me.
(PS: Glad to be Aboard) |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 10765
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 01, 2007 - 03:39 pm: |
|
Mailer did attack one of his wives with a knife and almost killed her. He was a colorful larger than life character, the consummate mysogynist, and was such good copy that he fueled the literary world's fascination with the infamous.  I wasn't aware that black writers gave him a pass. |
Schakspir
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1201
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 07, 2007 - 03:00 pm: |
|
Baldwin and Mailer had a very complicated friendship. At one point Elia Kazan stated flatly that Baldwin "hated Mailer with a passion". It went both ways, apparently. Mailer seems like somebody who was constantly craving attention, always wanted celebritydom, etc. An interesting read is Adele Mailer's account of their relationship together, even though it isn't very well written...It was telling indeed to read about Norman Mailer pacing the floor every night in their Greenwich Village loft apartment, in the late fifties, chewing on ice cubes, and cursing imaginary enemies....That before he screwed a black transvestite, got beaten up in Village bars for kicks, beat up his sister, slapped his mother, and then stabbed Adele. Seems like his mommy spoiled him too much....
Henry Miller(who was also accused of misogyny)disliked his writing intensely. The warmed-over Hemingway remark is apt--he consciously set out to ape Hemingway and even wrote him a letter sending him a copy of his book, adding "•••• you" providing Hemingway never bothered to respond. Curiously enough Hemingway kept a copy of Mailer's "Naked and the Dead" on his bookshelf at his Cuban villa. |
Email This Page