The Armies of the Night

Az egész egy újságcikkből indult. A Time 1967. október 27-én megírta, hogy ez a csibész, ez a semmirekellő, ez a ripacs Norman Mailer tajtrészegen bohóckodott a washingtoni pacifista tüntetésen. Erre válaszul Norman Mailer kénytelen papírra vetni saját verzióját: hogy ezzel szemben ő a washingtoni pacifista tüntetésen bizony igenis tajtrészegen bohóckodott A különbség pedig: ég és föld!

Ez a könyv mindenekelőtt az önirónia sziporkázó áradása. Az író megtalálja azt az elbeszélői pozíciót, ahonnan ez az egész történet egyszerre komikus és hiteles: kilép önmagából, és E/3-ban szemléli önmagát, a Regényírót, a Békeharcost, a pocakos, jobb napokat is látott figurát, aki mintha egy show more személyben testesítené meg a konzervatívok és a liberálisok legidegesítőbb tulajdonságait. Ez a fickó őszintén hisz saját zseniális írói kvalitásaiban, de annyira azért nem, hogy el tudja rejteni a sasszemű mesélő (önmaga) elől kétségeit, frusztrációit és sértődöttségét a bámész és értetlen külvilág iránt. Ez a fickó egyfelől a vietnami háborút a gonosz mesterkedésének tartja, ám csaknem ugyanennyire gyanakodva figyeli azt a tiltakozó tömeget (a konzum békeharcosokat: radikális feketéket és túlfinomodott liberális WASP-fehéreket), akikhez csatlakozni kénytelen. Ezek a kettősségek azok, amelyek megtöltik a dokumentumregényt üzemanyaggal: egy autonóm egyéniség önvizsgálata, aki megpróbálja több-kevesebb sikerrel összeforrasztani saját, tüskés világnézetét egy közösség világnézetével – bár úgy kell neki ez a közösség, mint púp a hátára.

Ez a könyv megkerülhetetlen dokumentum a vietnami háborúról – illetőleg a washingtoni erőszakmentes mozgalmakról, amelyeknek alighanem elévülhetetlen szerepe volt abban, hogy az USA végül kivonta erőit Vietnamból*. Ezt Hitler bizonyára úgy fogalmazta volna meg, hogy a Pentagonnál tüntetők „hátbadöfték” a kommunizmus ellen küzdő Amerikát – a kérdés természetesen túl bonyolult ahhoz, hogy én csak úgy ukkmukkfukk megoldjam, de azt hiszem, inkább csak nyilvánvalóvá tették, hogy ez a katonailag megnyerhetetlen háború egyben belpolitikailag is megnyerhetetlen. Persze ezt Mailer akkor még nem látta világosan – a könyv végkicsengése is inkább pesszimistának mondható –, de mi már innen, a jövőből megkockáztathatjuk ezt a kijelentést.

Nagyszerű könyv, gyönyörűen érzékelteti a forrongó amerikai ’60-as évek hangulatát és a békemozgalmak hátterét. Szükségeltetik hozzá mindazonáltal egy masszív történelmi érdeklődés, hogy értékeljük a különböző jobb- és baloldali irányzatokról szóló fejtegetéseket, valamint a sok moralizálást a korszak Nagy Amerikai Sorskérdéseiről. Ha ez megvan, akkor nincs is más dolgunk, mint élvezni ezt a helyenként pynchon-i (bukowski-i?) szövegáradást: Mailer unikális szóképeit és leírásait, és néha bad tripbe hajló kalandjait.

* Különösen a könyv második fele, ami – az első rész abszolút szubjektivitása után – megkísérli „történészi” alapossággal rekonstruálni az ominózus tüntetést. show less

Self- important posturing by a wealthy, middle-aged white guy from Brooklyn playing at radical chic. As Mailer describes herein, at an anti-war rally he gets himself arrested without incident and spends the night in a minimum security jail, where he's given a bed, food, coffee, and reading material (all of which he complains about). Likewise, there's the speech he gave to the anti-war protestors in which he announces how he had been so drunk that he'd urinated on the floor in the public hotel bathroom. ha, ha, how daring.

Although some reviewers claim that the occasional self- deprecation herein belies Mailer's pretense to an enormous ego, I consider the self- deprecation to be the real pretense; the man's narcissism and inflated self- show more opinion is no pose. "Armies of the Night" is considered by some as a signature work of "the new journalism" that boasts of mixing fact and fiction. As someone who values the distinction between fact and fiction, this work left me cold when I read it many years ago. What's more, I'm too aware of the actual political activists who risked life, limb, and livelihood to bring to an end the US involvement in the civil war in Vietnam, while a fake like Mailer enriched himself in the self- appointed roles of cultural commentator and parlor provocateur. How the man won a Pulitzer prize for this forgettable book is as inexplicable as his having escaped a prison term for the attempted murder of the second of his five wives, whom he violently stabbed multiple times and left to die. No doubt the author's actions and character have affected my reaction to his semi- autobiographical work, since I am unable to join in the adulation of his fans. show less

So many don't "get" Mailer as deliberate provocatuer. Nor do they appear to "get" the self-deprecation, even when it is laid out directly in front of their eyes -- as it is at the very beginning of this book with an extended quote from "Time" magazine describing his abominable behavior, in which he is quoted as saying: "I'm here because I'm like LBJ . . . . He's as full of crap as I am."

And he doesn't deny it; in fact, he goes on to verify it, and detail what he was thinking at the time. Reading him correctly in such moments is to discover an uproarious sense of humor -- and near-constant pullings of others' legs.

And on p. 15 (paperback edition) he writes:

. . . . Like a later generation which was to burn holes in their brain on Speed, show more [Mailer] had
given his own head the texture of a fine Swiss cheese. Years ago he had made all sorts of
erosions in his intellectual firmament by consuming modestly promiscuous amounts of
whiskey, marijuana, seconal, and benzedrine. It had given him the illusion that he was a
genius . . . .

To be sure to lesser degree than Mark Twain, Mailer often pretends to a huge ego -- he, unlike Twain, in order to provoke those who believe he has a big ego, and that it is out of control. In other words: he often says exactly the same negative things about himself, albeit in different words, as do his uncomprehending "critics".

To the book itself: though I enjoyed the experiment -- writing two accounts, one factual, the other in the form of a fiction, I would have been satisfied with only one of them. (The tighter of the two is the novelistic.) Otherwise, his reportage is accurate as concerns outward events, and I must assume -- in view of the self-deprecation -- that his reportage as concerns inward events is as least as accurate.

All in all, I much prefer Miami and the Seige of Chicago -- it sails from beginning to end -- his speech from the flatbed trailer being especially memorable, and a similar conceit: reporting the words of his speech, as he's giving it, and simultaneously reporting what is going on in his mind while he is giving the speech -- such as his question of himself as to whether he'd done too much speed and marihuana in his life up to that point.

To use one of his favorite terms as provocatuer during the early 1970s: Some people are simply impenetrable, lifelong "Libbies" who will never "get it" because they interpose their ideological presumptions and expectations between themselves and the outer world, especially between themselves and the "horrible chauvanist" Norman Mailer. As result, they need not actually read him, because they know in advance what they believe he is saying. The irony is that they take him more seriously than he takes himself. The irony is that he, unlike his "critics," can admit to being that at which humans most often succeed: an ass. show less

The story of a weekend. Not your average kind. But the one October 1967, when tens of thousands demonstrated at the Pentagon. It is both an insider and outsider’s view, because Mailer rights about himself in third person. But he was very much part of the action. This is reportage, analysis, investigative reporting, history, poetry, portrait series at the same time. And as a combination a zeitgeist speedometer. If you are interested in how people lived through the event this is one you won’t be able to put down. I couldn’t.

50 years later, knowing what we know now, it loses much of its currency. Still a good read.

3810. The Armies of the Night History as a Novel The Novel as History, by Norman Mailer (read 6 Oct 2003) This book of nonfiction tells of Mailer's participation in a "march" on the Pentagon on Oct 21, 1967. The book won the National Book Award for nonfiction for 1969 and also the Pulitzer prize--which kind of explains why I read it, since I am sort of trying to read all such winners. He tells in great detail of all he did and of being arrested and spending a brief time in jail. The excesses of the marchers were annoying and Mailer's account of his urinating on the floor in a dark hotel restroom and then announcing such in his subsequent speech was simply repulsive. This was not a worthwhile book: maybe I should have read it in 1969 show more when it had some topicality but I doubt I would have felt it was worth reading even then. show less

This book to me had a lot of potential, but I just could not get into it. It was very dry. History doesn't have to be dry and yet this book was like the Sahara Desert to me.