Armies of the Night- History as a Novel/The Novel as History
 |
| Penguin |
Norman Mailer
1968
"There is no greater importance in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you."
My book-buying approach is very scattershot; though I do have a system; the vast majority of them are randomly bought from usually the same bookshop (Oxfam Bookshop Hereford, I salute you) and chosen through a combination of randomness and snobbery. When I find an author I really like, I hold off on running through their bibliography until I've completely finished the works of other authors (which almost never happens). I usually only use Amazon when there's something new (*cough* Murakami *cough*) that I really want or when I'm down to the nitty gritty of the last few pieces of a particular author and hoping they'll turn up second hand is a bit naive (though it does happen more often than you'd expect). The real big downside of picking books via author 99% of the time, particularly second-hand, is that I end up with a selection of books of which I know very little about.
This is really a long-winded way of explaining how I came across Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night, why I bought it, and how its subject matter and style caught me unprepared, yet somehow managed to fit a pretty interesting style of important 20th century world literature that I didn't even know I was interested in; the non-fiction novel. The first Norman Mailer novel I read was An American Dream, and it was right up my alley, as, like Bukowski and Hubert Selby Jr. for example, it took elements of classic hard-boiled pulp fiction and set them in a very cynical low-life modern almost-dystopian America. In contrast, the non-fiction novel, a genre of which Armies helps define, loses the advantages of true fiction but still presents the real world experiences of the author as an almost-unbelievable fantasy. The recognised originator of the genre as we know it was Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, and, like Capote, it's very easy to see the influence of Mailer's previous fiction directing the style of his prose.
Covering the 1967 anti-Vietnam War March upon the Pentagon, Mailer dramatises the events, his own personal experiences, by first writing as an omniscient narrator and making himself a separate but central character in part one of the book, entitled History as a Novel. Here Mailer details the planning and then procession of the march, using lavish, fiction-like prose to introduce his fellow conspirators, media observers, and opposing political figures. The intended effect seemed to me to intentionally portray the proceedings as somewhat fantastical, in the sense of its reliance on eccentric characters as much as pure luck and disorganisation. Mailer portrays himself as particularly ridiculous, self-important and comfortably at home as a ring leader of a circus of hippies and beatniks. To be honest, I found his personification to be rather annoying, as I did the narration, as I struggled to care enough about his sardonic over analysis of almost every mundane detail. As a result, I found large portions of the book a chore to get through.
This might just be my inability to find much (or any) interest in American politics; something that I'd previously found with another landmark non-fiction novel, Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Thompson's take on his experiences held a more directly cynical tone, but the overall effect of overall ridicule left the same impression- and, despite my familiar enjoyment of Thompson's acidic observations, I found that book to be boring as well. In the much-shorter part two of the book, subtitled The Novel as History, Mailer drops the act and switches to more direct, analytical prose taking a mostly-serious look at the experiences he fictionalised. I found this to be far more readable, immediately comparable in style and clarity to the work of George Orwell, particularly The Road to Wigan Pier.
In a sense it would be rigbt to admit that I was disappointed by this book, having enjoyed An American Dream so much, but my failed expectations shouldn't be made into criticism. In truth, despite somehow just hammering out a moderate-length review, I'm really not the person to be reviewing Armies of the Night because I think my mind actively rebels against notions of politics. Nevertheless, I'm not going to let this put me off any more Norman Mailer in the future, particularly in the hope that understanding the ideologies of the man more will probably give me a greater enlightenment of what Armies of the Night was really saying. Might not be the near-future, though.
My book-buying approach is very scattershot; though I do have a system; the vast majority of them are randomly bought from usually the same bookshop (Oxfam Bookshop Hereford, I salute you) and chosen through a combination of randomness and snobbery. When I find an author I really like, I hold off on running through their bibliography until I've completely finished the works of other authors (which almost never happens). I usually only use Amazon when there's something new (*cough* Murakami *cough*) that I really want or when I'm down to the nitty gritty of the last few pieces of a particular author and hoping they'll turn up second hand is a bit naive (though it does happen more often than you'd expect). The real big downside of picking books via author 99% of the time, particularly second-hand, is that I end up with a selection of books of which I know very little about.
This is really a long-winded way of explaining how I came across Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night, why I bought it, and how its subject matter and style caught me unprepared, yet somehow managed to fit a pretty interesting style of important 20th century world literature that I didn't even know I was interested in; the non-fiction novel. The first Norman Mailer novel I read was An American Dream, and it was right up my alley, as, like Bukowski and Hubert Selby Jr. for example, it took elements of classic hard-boiled pulp fiction and set them in a very cynical low-life modern almost-dystopian America. In contrast, the non-fiction novel, a genre of which Armies helps define, loses the advantages of true fiction but still presents the real world experiences of the author as an almost-unbelievable fantasy. The recognised originator of the genre as we know it was Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, and, like Capote, it's very easy to see the influence of Mailer's previous fiction directing the style of his prose.
.jpg) |
| Angry young Norman |
This might just be my inability to find much (or any) interest in American politics; something that I'd previously found with another landmark non-fiction novel, Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Thompson's take on his experiences held a more directly cynical tone, but the overall effect of overall ridicule left the same impression- and, despite my familiar enjoyment of Thompson's acidic observations, I found that book to be boring as well. In the much-shorter part two of the book, subtitled The Novel as History, Mailer drops the act and switches to more direct, analytical prose taking a mostly-serious look at the experiences he fictionalised. I found this to be far more readable, immediately comparable in style and clarity to the work of George Orwell, particularly The Road to Wigan Pier.
In a sense it would be rigbt to admit that I was disappointed by this book, having enjoyed An American Dream so much, but my failed expectations shouldn't be made into criticism. In truth, despite somehow just hammering out a moderate-length review, I'm really not the person to be reviewing Armies of the Night because I think my mind actively rebels against notions of politics. Nevertheless, I'm not going to let this put me off any more Norman Mailer in the future, particularly in the hope that understanding the ideologies of the man more will probably give me a greater enlightenment of what Armies of the Night was really saying. Might not be the near-future, though.
No comments:
Post a Comment