CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW The works of Norman Mailer have come out with much expectation of the readers and critics. Legions of literary scholars have studied the nuances of his themes from different perspectives. It is acknowledged that analysis of such novels is quite a valid and intellectual act, because they are written by one of the most visible of contemporary novelists (Harold Bloom [34]) and a controversial writer of a contemporary American literature. Mailer has started his writing career as a kind of writer and has evolved as a stylistic realist, allegorist and journalist. Jean Radford says that Mailer crosses the generic border-line in writing essays, short-stories, criticism and the novel. And he has also taken a number of philosophical and theoretical stances like Marxist, Existentialist, Left conservative and Zen. Mailer s works have received a variety of criticism for changing narrative forms and styles and for the compilation of different form of arts in writing novels. Turku [35] says, Norman Mailer s work represents a third mode between the conventional categories of fiction and nonfiction, which I might call mailerism. Mailer s blender of genres, literary forms, and conventions constitutes a complex literary fiction, which blurs and merges the distinctions between fact and fiction, between fiction and non-fiction. As a new journalist, Norman Mailer has closely observed the men and matters which are evident in his writings. Though the style of Mailer and other journalist is not the same, they are common in approach that shortens the space between the fictional and factual writing style. Mailer has succeeded in the
33 function that the gap between fictional and factual writing is swallowed by the new style. He has used the different writing style that is the use of AN to spare style ES in the verb. It makes the readers understand and also associate themselves with the content of the writing. After being entertained with the reading, the readers are taken to space where their heart and mind are stirred. Gurpreet Kaur [36] also agrees to Turku by saying, Drawing on the techniques of the realistic novel, these writers [Norman Mailer, Thompson Herr, Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe] developed a new narrative style of reporting aimed at lessening the distance between observer and observed, subject and object. Stanley Kunitz [37] has quoted the words of Mailer in Twentieth Century Authors that Mailer s aim as a writer is to revolutionize the consciousness of our time. But, many critics have criticised in different ways that Mailer simply copies the ideas of others and his works have many flaws. For instance, Patrick Joseph Burns [38], one of the scholars, comments that: Mailer s best ideas most often prove to be someone else s, and he is usually quick to point it out. His faults are many: oversimplification, his famous egotism, an excessive rationalism, a tendency to longwindedness, unbridled romanticism, at times even a sour hint of political accommodation. Mailer may have a few faults as most people, and his ideas may be similar to others or taken from others. But, his best idea is to generate the realisation of his time. Jeffrey Gillenkirk [39] rightly says, The late 1940 s blessed America with two new forceful presences television and Norman Mailer. The advent of television has helped the rural people to know the factual information and current trends across the globe. It is the significant medium which makes every individual, even the people live in the remote area of the U.S
34 know the events happening in America. As the television has played a prominent role in reporting the public in 1940s, Mailer really helps the people of America to make them aware of worst things happen in his time. Mailer furiously attacks all those who have misunderstood his work or slighted his talent or offended him in any way (Charles I. Glicksberg [40]). Factually, Mailer objects the interpretations of his works or himself, when they appear to be irrelevant to his subject. Even in one of the interviews, Mailer has spoken about it. Keith Saliba [41] says in Hayes, Herr and Sack: Esquire Goes to Vietnam, that New Journalists, Mailer and Hunter S. Thompson, are known for making themselves in their stories as important persons. The: Brash young practitioners of New Journalism were to play an integral role in defining what that most turbulent of decades was all about. As Keith says, Mailer is one of the writers who keeps himself at the center of the events and also makes the reader to feel and believe that the incidents and events mentioned in his stories are factual. He also describes the incidents and events without any prejudice and as first-hand information. It is vividly evidenced in the description of anti-war movement in The Armies of the Night. All the incidents and happening during the March, the preparation of March, the protest, the arrest of the protestors as well as the sacrifices of the protesters are unfiltered in the novel in a form of histological document. Keith s statement also reflects in The Naked and the Dead and The Executioner s Song. The war and its effect, the bad intension of the governing authorities, and the expectation of the people to live in peaceful society are vividly picturised in the novel without any reserve and bias in The Naked and the Dead. And, The
35 Executioner s Song is a story of an American prisoner who is viciously executed for two murders; the story uncovers the naked truth of character, Gary who becomes a victim to the poor treatment of his father and imprisonment at the very young age result in Gary becoming a criminal. Even though, the media and other reportages cover the sensational issues related to the execution of Gary, Mailer s dossier, The Executioner s Song, gives a complete and clear story of Gary from his childhood till his execution. Gurpreet Kaur [42] remarks that writing style of Mailer makes the readers to have trust in the things written in the text. It is the success of a writer. Leonora Flis, [43] through a comparative study of Capote s In Cold Blood and Mailer s works, records that Capote s work is a seminaldocumentary, whereas, Norman Mailer, with The Executioner s Song (1979) as well as his earlier narrative The Armies of the Night (1968), is much more in line with the definition of the documentary novel. The Armies of the Night and The Executioner s Song are not only the documentary novel but also they have the essence of making the people think for the betterment of the society. A lesson, which is to be taught during the existence of war and totalitarianism, destruction and demoralization, is inbuilt in these documentaries. In a study of Norman Mailer, Chris Anderson writes about a failure of the writer and his language. When the writer focuses on meta-discourse, presentation and inter-textual converge, the narrative nonfiction converts and rejects the indescribable element of all experience which resists the powers of the language of a writer. Anderson [44] emphasises that: Unable to word the wordless, Mailer more often tells the story of his effort to word the wordless; unable to describe the event itself, he describes himself in the act of description.
36 Mailer has extraordinarily utilised the features of New Journalism in most of his works to capture the emotional decisions and intelligent action of the people. Through The Naked and the Dead, Mailer presents the traits of the tyrant ruler, his attitudes and approaches towards his people, and also the sufferings of the people and their response to the totalitarianism, destructions caused by wars. Stanley Gutman [45] has written about: The aspects of human history which are not verifiable, the emotions, moods and symbolic overtones that provide color, intensity, and depth to experience. The techniques of the New Journalism are effectively handled by Mailer in The Armies of the Night to document a factual report about the Marchers, their struggles and the hidden truth about the life of the Marchers in the jail, whereas in The Executioner s Song, the same technique is used in one part to depict the pathetic life of an individual, the rigidity of law and the psychological war in man and the professional journalism is rightly handled in other part to get the factual information adjoining with Gary s execution. It is proved that Mailer has presented his war experiences during World War II in his maiden novel, The Naked and the Dead (1948). The New York Times is also extended a critical acclamation that The Naked and the Dead is the best novel on World War II and the writer has used his war experiences to picturise the destructions of war. All the criticisms on the novel mark Mailer s achievement and compare the relevance of the novel to that of Tolstoy s War and Peace (1869). The excess and variety of critical opinion on The Naked and the Dead is a sign of its success. While Robert C. Healey [46] regards Mailer as a literary
37 sociologist, Maxwell Geismar [47] argues that the novel s treatment of its thesis, which he does not specify, is its major weakness. Robert Merrill declares that, The Armies of the Night is the first novel which exerted attacks on the political gimmicks of Mailer s time. In his argument, Kenneth A. Seib states that all the features of the epic are employed in one way or other in The Armies of the Night. Chris Vincent assertively comments that Mailer s support to the anti-war movement is clearly expressed in The Armies of the Night. Through his argument, Mark Edmundson vividly discloses that The Executioner s Song is an endeavour to enter into the restricted area of prison to show the hidden facts about the prisoners. And Joan Didion [48] also asserts that the novel does not restrict only to describe the restricted area of prison but also has expanded its view to talk about the whole society representing the man and woman in two books. Western Voices, Book One, refers to the voices of women and Eastern Voices, Book Two, really stands for the voices of men. A notable critic of Mailer, Merrill [49], expresses his view on The Executioner s Song that it is Mailer s most ambitious attempt to explain America. It is a fundamental purpose in all his works. Nathan A. Scott, Jr. [50], has rightly observed, Mailer, irrespective of the fluctuations of the literary stock market, is one of the few to be at the absolute center of what is most deeply animating in American literature of the present and the recent past. As Scott says whatever the subject of his inquiry, Mailer s fundamental purpose is always to delve deep into the center of the American psyche and report
38 the events happened in America in the recent past and present with utmost sincerity to the readers. Most critics of Norman Mailer have made their arguments focusing on the themes, genres, choice of words and usage of language, whereas this study makes an argument that Mailer visualises the destructions caused by wars, his support for the protesters of anti-war movement and the demoralisation of modern America not only to provide great psychological depth to the portrayal of social reality (Gurpreet Kaur [51]) but also to make his novels withstand as teaching dossiers which could help to stimulate the people of America to think of the betterment of their society.