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]
    • strive for world empire to begin moral reform at home[6]
    • becomes a moral imperative[7]
  • 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.
    • could happen quickly because of our lack of tradition[8]
  • “Compulsive adoration of our leaders is poison, after all.”[9]

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.”[10]
  • “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.”[11]
    • “I react better to criticism than to compliments.”[12]
  • Left Conservative — “a challenge to those who remain fixed in orthodoxy or correctness”[13]
  • Cancer is an outgrowth of inaction or conformity.[14]
  • “Culture’s worth huge, huge risks. Without culture we’re all totalitarian beasts.”[15]
  • Mike Lennon: “Truth comes out of opposition.”[16]

Democracy

  • “Democracy is existential”[17]
    • is noble and always threatened[1]
    • We cannot take democracy for granted because it is always in peril and always changing.[18]
    • Is hard-won and maintained: “The only defenses of democracy, finally, are the traditions of democracy.”[1]
    • “Democracy is a state of grace attained only by those countries that have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it.”[19] [bold mine]
    • “If our democracy is the noblest experiment in the history of civilization, it may also be the most singularly vulnerable one.”[20]
  • “inimical to security”[21] — Mailer hopes there’s not another national crisis to push us toward fascism (Was Obama’s presidency that thing for those who are now in power?)
  • depends on critical distinctions[22]
  • links freedom to democracy, and asserts it’s just as delicate — also the thing he likes most about America[20]

Corporate Capitalism

  • “Corporate power is running this country now.”[23] (See the discussion that follows.)
  • against corporations,[2] as they expanded into American life since WWII,[24] and abroad (leading to 9/11)[25]
  • contradiction; leads to greed in a “Christian nation”[26]
    • live as an oxymoron: be altruistic / “beat everyone”
    • “money-grab” of the nineties led to a “pervasive American guilt”;[22] “Christian bad conscience”[27]
    • “money leaches out all other values”[22]
    • “Jesus and Evel Knievel don’t consort too well in one psyche.[28]
  • “Marketing was a beast and a force that succeeded in taking America away from most of us.”
    • created a culture of interruption that led to a deterioration of concentration. Mailer was talking about commercials on television, so arguably this problem has gotten worse with our devices and notifications.[29]
  • likens corporatism to “the pall of plastic”[28]
    • the aim of technological society is to work everything over to plastic[30]
    • “We live in a cheaper environment now than we used to.”[27]

Technology

  • inspires totalitarianism[15]
  • “more information, more connection, is not going to make us more learned—we could lose our connection to existence itself.”[31] [my bold] This links to the ideas about plastic above: plastic as a cheap material that manages to isolate us from something essential.
    • Like the astronauts on the moonshot: “In order not to feel fear, you’ve got to explore every realm of the unknown technologically, which they did.”[32] In order not to get get distracted by the awe of it, the astronauts isolated themselves through technology.
  • “Technology has become the dominant culture in existence and may soon be the only real culture.”[33]
  • contributes to “the deterioration of the powers of concentration, like florescent lights, bad architecture, invasive marketing and ubiquitous plastic[34]
  • frays the soul;[34] “slightly deadening”[35]
  • substitutes power for pleasure, making us narcissistic and power-driven[30]
  • “Everything I detest has gotten stronger in the last 30 or 40 years; plastic, airplane interiors, modern architecture, and suburban sprawl.”[36]

Citations

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 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, pp. 51–52, 57.
  7. ↑ Mailer 2003, p. 53.
  8. ↑ Mailer 2003, pp. 108–109.
  9. ↑ Mailer 2003, p. 85.
  10. ↑ Mailer 2003, p. 15.
  11. ↑ Hitchens 1997, p. 115.
  12. ↑ Busa 1999, p. 25.
  13. ↑ Hitchens 1997, p. 116.
  14. ↑ Mailer 2003, p. 19.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Hitchens 1997, p. 126.
  16. ↑ Brady 2018.
  17. ↑ Mailer 2003, p. 16.
  18. ↑ Mailer 2003, pp. 16–17.
  19. ↑ Mailer 2003, p. 71.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Mailer 2003, p. 110.
  21. ↑ Mailer 2003, p. 106.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 Mailer 2003, p. 108.
  23. ↑ Mailer 2003, p. 104.
  24. ↑ Mailer 2003, p. 48.
  25. ↑ Treneman 2001.
  26. ↑ Hitchens 1997, p. 120.
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Binelli 2007, p. 69.
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 Mailer 2003, p. 46.
  29. ↑ Mailer 2003, pp. 89–91.
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 Mailer 2003, p. 92.
  31. ↑ Rolling Stone, December 30, 1999, p. 110.
  32. ↑ Busa 1999, p. 29.
  33. ↑ Mailer 2003, pp. 88–89.
  34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 Mailer 2003, p. 91.
  35. ↑ Binelli 2007, p. 70.
  36. ↑ Busa 1999, p. 31.

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.
  • Brady, Amy (March 22, 2018). "Why Norman Mailer Still Matters in 2018". Village Voice. Retrieved 2018-04-23.
  • 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". In Sipiora, Phillip. 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.
  • "The Party". Rolling Stone. December 30, 1999. p. 110.
  • 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.
  • Treneman, Ann (September 13, 2001). "'Ruin more beautiful than the building'". Times. London. Retrieved 2019-10-26.
  • 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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