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.