September 15, 2019

From Gerald R. Lucas
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Mailer’s Political Resonance

Themes

  • Fascism is humanity’s natural state[1]
    • against political correctness[2]
      • “we’ve got to find a way to say human nature is both ugly and beautiful, and we have to deal with both.”[3]
    • “Americans are angrier now than at any time I’ve ever seen them.” — “rage”[4]
    • flag conservatism and moral reform[5]
    • See the end of Hitchens (1997) for a likely scenario of a fascist takeover. In some ways, it seems similar to Trump’s America, though instead of solely against black Americans, it also demonizes Mexicans and Muslims.
      • Baumann (2016) compares Mailer’s analysis of Barry Goldwater and his supporters to Trump and his with some striking similarities.
  • Personal Responsibility (The Necessity of Criticism)
    • “When you have a great country, it’s your duty to be critical of it so it can become even greater.”[6]
    • “The politics of Norman Mailer have conventionally been evaluated more as a personal register of the American zeitgeist, and less as owing any debt or duty to ideology.”[7]
    • Left Conservative — “a challenge to those who remain fixed in orthodoxy or correctness”[8]
    • Cancer is an outgrowth of inaction or conformity.[9]
    • “Culture’s worth huge, huge risks. Without culture we’re all totalitarian beasts.”[10]
  • Democracy is a state of grace[1]
    • “Democracy is existential”[11]
      • We cannot take democracy for granted because it is always in peril and always changing.[12]
  • Corporate Capitalism
    • against corporations[2]
    • contradiction; leads to greed in a “Christian nation”[13]
  • Technology inspires totalitarianism[10]

Citations

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Mailer 2003, p. 70.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Hitchens 1997, p. 117.
  3. ↑ Hitchens 1997, p. 127.
  4. ↑ Hitchens 1997, p. 121.
  5. ↑ Mailer 2003, pp. 50, 52.
  6. ↑ Mailer 2003, p. 15.
  7. ↑ Hitchens 1997, p. 115.
  8. ↑ Hitchens 1997, p. 116.
  9. ↑ Mailer 2003, p. 19.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Hitchens 1997, p. 126.
  11. ↑ Mailer 2003, p. 16.
  12. ↑ Mailer 2003, pp. 16–17.
  13. ↑ Hitchens 1997, p. 120.

Working Bibliography

  • Baumann, Paul (March 23, 2016). "Mailer on Trump". Commonweal. Retrieved 2016-10-01.
  • Begiebing, Robert (2020). "Norman Mailer and Joseph Ellis: Unsettling Dialogues on Democracy". The Mailer Review. 12 (1).
  • Binelli, Mark (May 2007). "Norman Mailer". Rolling Stone. pp. 69, 72.
  • Busa, Christopher (1999). "Interview with Norman Mailer". Provincetown Arts. pp. 24–32. Retrieved 2019-09-15.
  • Hitchens, Christopher (1997). "Norman Mailer: A Minority of One". New Left Review. 22 (March/April): 115–128.
  • Mailer, Norman (2013). "Immodest Proposals". Mind of an Outlaw. New York: Random House.
  • — (2003). Why Are We at War?. New York: Random House.
  • Mailer, Norman; Mailer, John Buffalo (2006). The Big Empty. New York: Nation Books.
  • McAfee, Andrew (October 23, 2019). "Technology Will Keep Us From Running Out of Stuff". Wired. Retrieved 2019-10-24.
  • Pritchard, William (November 24, 2016). "Stormin' Norman". Washington Examiner. Retrieved 2019-10-01.
  • Sheed, Wilfred (1971). "Norman Mailer: Genius or Nothing". The Morning After: Selected Essays and Reviews. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. pp. 9–17.
  • Wade, Francis (August 12, 2019). "Reading 'The Armies of the Night' in an Age of Youth Protest". LA Review of Books. Retrieved 2019-09-15.
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