https://grlucas.net/index.php?title=February_24,_2013&feed=atom&action=historyFebruary 24, 2013 - Revision history2024-03-28T10:03:41ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.39.0https://grlucas.net/index.php?title=February_24,_2013&diff=14788&oldid=prevGrlucas: Tweaked format.2021-02-09T15:25:27Z<p>Tweaked format.</p>
<table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface">
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<tr class="diff-title" lang="en">
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 11:25, 9 February 2021</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l1">Line 1:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 1:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">{{short description|Mailer’s multiple personae attempt to get at some sort of truth.}}</del></div></td><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-added"></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Large|Norman’s “Mailer”}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Large|Norman’s “Mailer”}}</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{<del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Big</del>|<del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">In </del>reading ''The Armies of the Night'', I have the distinct impression of reading something ''genuine''. Something true in the way that truth can only be told by the novelist in a style that fits the time and event. This is not a Truth for all time, though within this situated truth is an echo of eternity. {{NM}}’s truth is reflected through “the Novelist,” “the Participant,” “the Beast,” “the General,” “the Ruminant,” “the Prince of Bourbon”—all the facets of “Norman Mailer” who marched on the Pentagon in September 1967. Perhaps what makes Mailer’s narrative approach so genuine is the inconsistency of his narrator. It might be more accurate to say the ''consistently inconsistent'' narrator.<del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">}}</del></div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">dc</ins>|<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">I}}{{start|n </ins>reading ''The Armies of the Night'', I have the distinct impression<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">}} </ins>of reading something ''genuine''. Something true in the way that truth can only be told by the novelist in a style that fits the time and event. This is not a Truth for all time, though within this situated truth is an echo of eternity. {{NM}}’s truth is reflected through “the Novelist,” “the Participant,” “the Beast,” “the General,” “the Ruminant,” “the Prince of Bourbon”—all the facets of “Norman Mailer” who marched on the Pentagon in September 1967. Perhaps what makes Mailer’s narrative approach so genuine is the inconsistency of his narrator. It might be more accurate to say the ''consistently inconsistent'' narrator.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><div class="res-img">[[File:Mailer-1980s.jpeg]]</div></div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><div class="res-img">[[File:Mailer-1980s.jpeg]]</div></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>I’ve written before about Mailer’s Novelist, the novel, and ''The Armies of the Night'', so I don’t have to rehash that here. What struck me about Mailer’s text this time was within the context of his earlier work, his particular emphasis on progress and growth, and how truth is relative and contingent.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>I’ve written before about Mailer’s Novelist, the novel, and ''The Armies of the Night'', so I don’t have to rehash that here. What struck me about Mailer’s text this time was within the context of his earlier work, his particular emphasis on progress and growth, and how truth is relative and contingent.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l20">Line 20:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 19:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Ideas become ideologies after a while, conforming people’s nervous systems into something ersatz — plastic in flesh. The writer (I always thought Mailer’s Hipster was just a metaphor for the writer), then is not ruled by the idea, but renews his language and approach to fit the spirit of the time in the best way possible. Mailer’s ''Armies'' does just that: it is not a novel, nor is it journalism. It is a chronicle of a country seeking a new expression to free itself from the totalizing powers of Corporation Land. It’s message rings true for that particular time and place in America.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Ideas become ideologies after a while, conforming people’s nervous systems into something ersatz — plastic in flesh. The writer (I always thought Mailer’s Hipster was just a metaphor for the writer), then is not ruled by the idea, but renews his language and approach to fit the spirit of the time in the best way possible. Mailer’s ''Armies'' does just that: it is not a novel, nor is it journalism. It is a chronicle of a country seeking a new expression to free itself from the totalizing powers of Corporation Land. It’s message rings true for that particular time and place in America.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">=====References=====</del></div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Notes</ins>|<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">width=</ins>20em}}</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{<del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Reflist</del>|20em}}</div></td><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-added"></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div> </div></td><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-added"></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{2013|state=auto}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{2013|state=auto}}</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"></del></div></td><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-added"></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[Category:02/2013]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[Category:02/2013]]</div></td></tr>
</table>Grlucashttps://grlucas.net/index.php?title=February_24,_2013&diff=11471&oldid=prevGrlucas: Updated cat.2020-07-24T12:09:02Z<p>Updated cat.</p>
<table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface">
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<tr class="diff-title" lang="en">
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 08:09, 24 July 2020</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l2">Line 2:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 2:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Large|Norman’s “Mailer”}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Large|Norman’s “Mailer”}}</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{<del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">font|font=Alegreya Sans|size=24px</del>|In reading ''The Armies of the Night'', I have the distinct impression of reading something ''genuine''. Something true in the way that truth can only be told by the novelist in a style that fits the time and event. This is not a Truth for all time, though within this situated truth is an echo of eternity. <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Mailer’s </del>truth is reflected through “the Novelist,” “the Participant,” “the Beast,” “the General,” “the Ruminant,” “the Prince of Bourbon”—all the facets of “Norman Mailer” who marched on the Pentagon in September 1967. Perhaps what makes Mailer’s narrative approach so genuine is the inconsistency of his narrator. It might be more accurate to say the ''consistently inconsistent'' narrator.}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Big</ins>|In reading ''The Armies of the Night'', I have the distinct impression of reading something ''genuine''. Something true in the way that truth can only be told by the novelist in a style that fits the time and event. This is not a Truth for all time, though within this situated truth is an echo of eternity. <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">{{NM}}’s </ins>truth is reflected through “the Novelist,” “the Participant,” “the Beast,” “the General,” “the Ruminant,” “the Prince of Bourbon”—all the facets of “Norman Mailer” who marched on the Pentagon in September 1967. Perhaps what makes Mailer’s narrative approach so genuine is the inconsistency of his narrator. It might be more accurate to say the ''consistently inconsistent'' narrator.}}</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><div class="res-img">[[File:Mailer-1980s.jpeg]]</div></div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><div class="res-img">[[File:Mailer-1980s.jpeg]]</div></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>I’ve written before about Mailer’s Novelist, the novel, and ''The Armies of the Night'', so I don’t have to rehash that here. What struck me about Mailer’s text this time was within the context of his earlier work, his particular emphasis on progress and growth, and how truth is relative and contingent.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>I’ve written before about Mailer’s Novelist, the novel, and ''The Armies of the Night'', so I don’t have to rehash that here. What struck me about Mailer’s text this time was within the context of his earlier work, his particular emphasis on progress and growth, and how truth is relative and contingent.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l20">Line 20:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 20:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Ideas become ideologies after a while, conforming people’s nervous systems into something ersatz — plastic in flesh. The writer (I always thought Mailer’s Hipster was just a metaphor for the writer), then is not ruled by the idea, but renews his language and approach to fit the spirit of the time in the best way possible. Mailer’s ''Armies'' does just that: it is not a novel, nor is it journalism. It is a chronicle of a country seeking a new expression to free itself from the totalizing powers of Corporation Land. It’s message rings true for that particular time and place in America.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Ideas become ideologies after a while, conforming people’s nervous systems into something ersatz — plastic in flesh. The writer (I always thought Mailer’s Hipster was just a metaphor for the writer), then is not ruled by the idea, but renews his language and approach to fit the spirit of the time in the best way possible. Mailer’s ''Armies'' does just that: it is not a novel, nor is it journalism. It is a chronicle of a country seeking a new expression to free itself from the totalizing powers of Corporation Land. It’s message rings true for that particular time and place in America.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>===<del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Notes</del>===</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>===<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">==References==</ins>===</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Reflist|20em}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Reflist|20em}}</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l26">Line 26:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 26:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[Category:02/2013]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[Category:02/2013]]</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">[[Category:On Norman Mailer]]</del></div></td><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-added"></td></tr>
</table>Grlucashttps://grlucas.net/index.php?title=February_24,_2013&diff=5496&oldid=prevGrlucas: Created page.2019-12-28T23:10:58Z<p>Created page.</p>
<p><b>New page</b></p><div>{{short description|Mailer’s multiple personae attempt to get at some sort of truth.}}<br />
{{Large|Norman’s “Mailer”}}<br />
<br />
{{font|font=Alegreya Sans|size=24px|In reading ''The Armies of the Night'', I have the distinct impression of reading something ''genuine''. Something true in the way that truth can only be told by the novelist in a style that fits the time and event. This is not a Truth for all time, though within this situated truth is an echo of eternity. Mailer’s truth is reflected through “the Novelist,” “the Participant,” “the Beast,” “the General,” “the Ruminant,” “the Prince of Bourbon”—all the facets of “Norman Mailer” who marched on the Pentagon in September 1967. Perhaps what makes Mailer’s narrative approach so genuine is the inconsistency of his narrator. It might be more accurate to say the ''consistently inconsistent'' narrator.}}<br />
<div class="res-img">[[File:Mailer-1980s.jpeg]]</div><br />
I’ve written before about Mailer’s Novelist, the novel, and ''The Armies of the Night'', so I don’t have to rehash that here. What struck me about Mailer’s text this time was within the context of his earlier work, his particular emphasis on progress and growth, and how truth is relative and contingent.<br />
<br />
If anything, ''Armies'' is about Mailer’s love affair with America. It’s tempestuous, unpredictable, and passionate. At one point he states: “What a mysterious country it was. The older he became, the more mysterious he found her.”<ref>{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1968 |title=The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History |location=New York |publisher=The New American library |page=114 |author-link=w:Norman Mailer |ref=harv }}</ref> The “he” of course is Mailer’s persona in Armies, and “her,” America. As we see many times in Mailer’s work, America is schizophrenic: it is both Corporation Land and a place for revolution. The former represents the totalizing tendencies of those who want to control the hearts and minds of its citizens—those who have taken America from the “existential sanction of the frontier to the abstract ubiquitous sanction of the dollar bill.”{{sfn|Mailer|1968|p=158}} The latter are the disenfranchised, the disorderly—those who did not fit in neatly with the tenants of Technology Land and its war in Vietnam. Mailer becomes a reluctant participant in the revolution of the “hippies” who march on the symbol of corruption in the US: the Pentagon, “its pale yellow walls reminiscent of some plastic plug coming out of the hole made in flesh by an unmentionable operation.”{{sfn|Mailer|1968|p=116}}<br />
<br />
The Pentagon stands for the corruption that must be rooted out. Mailer writes:<br />
<br />
{{cquote|width=70%|For years he had been writing about the nature of totalitarianism, its need to render population apathetic, its instrument — the destruction of mood. Mood was forever being sliced, cut, stamped, ground, excised, or obliterated; mood was a scent which rose from the acts and calms of nature, and totalitarianism was a deodorant to nature. Yes, and by the logic of this metaphor, the Pentagon looked like a five-sided tip on the spout of a spray can to be used under the arm, yes, the Pentagon was spraying the deodorant of its presence all over the fields of Virginia.{{sfn|Mailer|1968|p=117}} }}<br />
<br />
The armies of the night were, then, the stinky and disorderly mobs from the pits of hell that Mailer found himself swept up in (see 3.5 “The Witches and the Fugs”{{sfn|Mailer|1968|pp=116-129}} for the pagan bacchanal). Yet, despite Mailer’s reluctance—he did, after all, have Lowell’s party to attend that night in New York—the Observer becomes the Participant in a revolution that seems fit for the age. Mailer, like the hero of an epic, is tied to the fate of his country, and America, while partially defined by the increasing technology of the twentieth century, was also fickle. The Left was rallying their revolution to speak a different truth at the end of the sixties, and Mailer becomes its voice.<br />
<br />
In “The White Negro,” [[January 22, 2013|Mailer argues]] that the tenuous state of history must be met by a new breed of American existentialist. The Hipster cannot remain the same, but continuously seeks new experiences and a new way to express himself. This hip morality is not only good for the individual, but also provides an example for his community: “One must grow or pay more for remaining the same.”<ref>{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1992 |orig-year=1959 |title=Advertisements for Myself |location=Cambridge |publisher=Harvard UP |pages=349–50 |author-link=w:Norman Mailer |ref=harv }}</ref> The Hipster practices a philosophical psychopathy that posits “new kinds of victories increase one’s power for new kinds of perception.”{{sfn|Mailer|1992|p=339}} Perhaps “Mailer” in ''Armies'' is a more mature hipster. He writes:<br />
<br />
{{cquote|width=70%|Just as the truth of his material was revealed to a good writer by the cutting edge of his style (he could thus hope his style was in each case the most appropriate tool for the material of the experience) so a revolutionary began to uncover the nature of his true situation by trying to ride the beast of his revolution. The idea behind these ideas was then obviously that the future of the revolution existed in the nerves and cells of the people who created it and lived with it, rather the the sanctity of the original idea.{{sfn|Mailer|1968|p=88}} }}<br />
<br />
Ideas become ideologies after a while, conforming people’s nervous systems into something ersatz — plastic in flesh. The writer (I always thought Mailer’s Hipster was just a metaphor for the writer), then is not ruled by the idea, but renews his language and approach to fit the spirit of the time in the best way possible. Mailer’s ''Armies'' does just that: it is not a novel, nor is it journalism. It is a chronicle of a country seeking a new expression to free itself from the totalizing powers of Corporation Land. It’s message rings true for that particular time and place in America.<br />
<br />
===Notes===<br />
{{Reflist|20em}}<br />
<br />
{{2013|state=auto}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:02/2013]]<br />
[[Category:On Norman Mailer]]</div>Grlucas