Norman Mailer Armies of the Night Read Online

1968 nonfiction novel by Norman Mailer

The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel/The Novel as History

Kickoff edition comprehend
Writer	Norman Mailer
Country	United states
Language	English language
Publisher	New American Library
Publication date	1968

The Armies of the Night: History equally a Novel/The Novel as History is a nonfiction novel recounting the Oct 1967 March on the Pentagon written by Norman Mailer and published past New American Library in 1968. Information technology won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction^[one] and the National Book Award in category Arts and Letters.^[ii] Mailer'southward unique rendition of the non-fiction novel was perhaps his most successful example of new journalism, and received the nearly critical attention. In Common cold Blood (1965) by Truman Capote and Hell's Angels (1966) past Hunter S. Thompson had already been published, and three months later Tom Wolfe would contribute The Electric Kool-Assist Acid Test (1968).

Background [edit]

Armies of the Dark deals with the March on the Pentagon (the October 1967 anti-Vietnam War rally in Washington, D.C.) The book emerged on the heels of 2 works—An American Dream" and "Why Are We in Vietnam?—whose mixed receptions had disappointed Mailer. In fact, he was partly motivated to nourish and chronicle the march for businesslike reasons: the coin.^[3] While Mailer dips into familiar territory, his fiction—self-portrait—the outlandish, third person account of himself along with cocky-descriptions such as a novelist/historian, anti-star/hero are fabricated far more than complex by the narrative's overall generic identification as a nonfiction novel.

Two years before Armies was published, In Cold Claret past Truman Capote, who had merely been called by George Plimpton (among others) the "inventor" of the nonfiction novel, argued that the genre should exclude any mention of its subjectivity and refrain from the first person. While to some extent satirizing Capote'south model, Mailer's role in heart stage is hardly self-glamorizing, as the narrative recounts the events leading upwardly to the March also as his subsequent arrest and night in jail. The outset section, "History equally a Novel", begins: "From the outset, permit us bring you news of your protagonist", with an account made by Time: "Washington's scruffy Administrator Theater, normally a pad for psychedelic frolics, was the scene of an unscheduled scatological solo last week in support of the peace demonstrations. Its anti-star was author Norman Mailer, who proved even less prepared to explain Why Are We In Vietnam? than his current novel bearing that championship." Later citing the entire article, Mailer and so closes, "one: Pen Pals" with "Now we may leave Time in order to find out what happened." What creates the divergence between Mailer's example and Capote'due south is not only the autobiography of Armies, but the irony which guides the narrator towards the aforementioned objective of empiricism as that of In Cold Claret. The non-conformity which Mailer exhibits to Capote'south criterion was the kickoff of a feud that never resolved between the authors, and was concluded with Capote's decease in 1984.^{[ citation needed ]}

Summary [edit]

History as a Novel: The Steps of the Pentagon [edit]

Written in third person with Norman Mailer every bit the protagonist, this section is purported to be a first-hand business relationship of Mailer's activities during the March. Later on opening with an excerpt from Time, the novel begins with Norman Mailer at home answering a call from Mitch Goodman, a friend from college, asking him to join the March on the Pentagon and specifically bring together a sit-in "at the Department of Justice to honor students who are turning in their draft cards". Convinced, Mailer promises to join him, but "I can't pretend I'thou happy about it".^[4] In Washington, Mailer begins to meet up with the other literary minds of the motility, including Robert Lowell and Dwight Macdonald, and it is decided that Mailer volition be the MC for an event at the Ambassador theater. At this event Mailer drinks too much, embarrasses himself and has Time write that "mumbling and spewing obscenities as he staggered almost the stage—which he had commandeered by threatening to beat upward the previous M.C. later being late to the start of the ceremony—Mailer described in detail his search for a usable privy on the premises".^[5] Mailer alluded to himself as multiple egos such every bit; The Prince of Bourbon and The Animal and took being Chiliad.C as a form of contest with the other speakers. The next day, he watches many speeches at the event where 996 draft cards are handed in.

On the day of the March, a Sat, Mailer is ane of the starting time to arrive at the Pentagon and sets out to get himself arrested. He does and so without resisting, and the remainder of the office is him in custody. He at first interacts with a neo-nazi at the site, earlier existence moved to holding cell in a courthouse. While there, he debates whether he should requite his fellow cellmates some of the coin he brought to bail himself out, before giving much of information technology away. Rumors about how they will be released and what is going on at the Pentagon are the topics of conversation. They are then all moved to the Occoquan, Virginia workhouse, and Mailer settles himself in. During the time where he sleeps, the section "Why Are We in Vietnam" is presented. From his abort onward, Mailer is periodically interviewed past a British journalist Dick Fountain with a cameraman for a documentary. Mailer is frequently very happy to see them and gladly gives interviews at their behest. In the prison, a deal is made where the protestors would plead "Nolo Contendere" and receive a five-twenty-four hours suspended sentence.^[6] Mailer initially refuses, wishing to plead guilty. Despite irresolute his mind, Mailer is yet judged more harshly for his actions and, initially, is sentenced to 30 days in jail also as a $50 fine. Subsequently much legalistic challenges, Mailer is released and gives a rambling oral communication about Jesus Christ to the printing.

The Novel equally History: The Boxing of the Pentagon [edit]

The second part begins with an image of "the Novelist in passing his baton to the Historian has a happy smile."^[7] This office of the book is much shorter and deals with the March on the Pentagon at large, beyond when Mailer was arrested and taken abroad. It begins with a give-and-take of the organization of both sides of the March. Groups are shown to organize which exact routes and which locations are to exist used. The protestors and the authorities negotiate the minutia of the protests, with each side reluctant to give up the smallest basis. Finally, on the solar day of the March, Mailer goes into the tactics and tools used past each side. He details the violent acts washed past the military, using first hand accounts to illustrate the gravity of the deportment. At the end of the day, the final hour of the protestation is recorded in particular. As the loudspeakers tell the protestors to disperse before midnight, the final stragglers reject to board the buses. Mailer again ends this section with religious imagery, and the last section, "The Metaphor Delivered", attempts to illustrate how Mailer feels most the war and the protests.

Why Are We in Vietnam? [edit]

"Why are we in Vietnam" is at the center of Mailer's The Armies of the Night. The affiliate, located roughly at the end of the showtime half of the novel, is a clinical exploration of the involvement of the U.s. in Vietnam. The format differs from the previous sections the reader has followed the character of Norman Mailer forth through preparations for the protest at the Pentagon, the protest itself, and finally Mailer's imprisonment. Following the imprisonment of Mailer, said grapheme goes to slumber and this section occurs. This section, described by some every bit the writer's dream, tin be described as an internal monologue regarding the bug surrounding the Vietnam State of war. It appears strikingly out of touch with the surrounding portions of the novel, and could hands be transplanted into the editorial section of a paper. This section bridges the gap between the view of Norman Mailer the graphic symbol and Norman Mailer, the author and presents his most direct forward discussion of the war in the novel.

Mailer divides American opinion on the Vietnam War into ii camps, the Hawks and the Doves, the former in favor of the war and the latter opposed to information technology. Mailer argues that he disagrees with both camps and places himself in his own category of the Leftist-Conservative, a label he had employed in several of his other works. Mailer summarized the arguments each side had for and confronting the state of war, as well as his disagreements with both parties. He noted that the Hawks held five main arguments in favor of standing or expanding the Vietnam War:

1. it demonstrated that China would not expand guerrilla activities in Asia without neat expense;
2. rallied small Asian nations to America's side;
3. information technology underlined America'due south commitment to defending said modest nations;
4. it was an inexpensive mode to fight a cracking power, far less expensive than actually fighting a great power directly;
5. and was superior to starting a nuclear war with Red china.^[viii]

The Doves countered that the Vietnam State of war failed to defend America, and simply united Vietnam with China, nations previously at odds. Additionally, the war was not an cheap means of containing China, simply rather a phenomenally expensive 1. Mailer took care to annotation that the Vietnam War had already consumed itself. Finally, that the war'southward real damage took place in the Usa, in which it contributed to the deterioration of civil rights and led to the exposure of students to drugs and nihilism.^[9]

Mailer argued that the Doves appeared to have more powerful arguments; however, they failed to answer to the Hawks' near pivotal merits, "The most powerful statement remained: what if nosotros leave Vietnam, and all Asia somewhen goes Communist? all of Southeast Asia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, Nippon, and India?"^[10] While the Doves in Mailer's heed failed to answer to this claim, Mailer himself proves willing to do so. Mailer noted, "While he idea it was likely most of Asia would plough to Communism in the decade later any American withdrawal from the continent, he did not know that it actually mattered."^[11] Mailer embraced the possibility that an American withdrawal could lead to a Communist Asia; however, he did not think information technology was the cataclysm that most individuals thought it was. He instead argued that Communism wasn't monolithic. The struggle of America to consign its technology and culture to Vietnam, regardless of the tremendous amount of coin spent, highlighted that the Soviet Union would also exist unable to unite all of Asia. To Mailer it was far more likely that these nations, even if they all succumb to Communism, would remain pitted against each other, one might even seek the aid of the United States against another. As such, Mailer argued that the only solution was to leave Asia to the Asians.^[12]

Finally Mailer turns to what he holds is the "saddest decision" of the Vietnam War, namely it highlighted the country'due south deep state of schizophrenia. The nation'due south state of schizophrenia had been a theme of Mailer's work, appearing in such pieces as The White Negro. In Why are We in Vietnam? Mailer noted, "The average American, striving to practise his duty, drove further every twenty-four hour period into working for Christ, and drove equally further each day in the opposite direction—into working for the accented reckoner of the corporation ... So the average good Christian American secretly loved the war in Vietnam. It opened his emotions. He felt compassion for the hardships and the sufferings of the American boys in Vietnam, even the Vietnamese orphans."^[thirteen] Mailer sets Christian ethics in opposition to America's corporate mentality. He argues that these ethics, the Christian and the corporate, are diametrically opposed. However, despite their incompatibility, the average American has managed to live with both in a remarkable feat of cognitive dissonance. The mental gymnastics required by this resulted in the nation's state of schizophrenia. Vietnam, and conflict at large, presented a blazon of catharsis which satisfied the moral and material ethics of the nation. The state of war presented the corporate ethic with the opportunity to expand its influence and applied science, while information technology gave the American Christian outlets for their emotional urges such as pity. Mailer ultimately views these systems of ethics as logically incompatible, yet intertwined in the American psyche. He notes, "America needed the war. It would need a war and so long as technology expanded on every road of advice, and the cities and corporations spread similar cancer; the good Christian American needed the war or they would lose their Christ."^[fourteen]

The yr Armies was published, 1968, Mailer would begin work on another project, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, after witnessing the Republican and Democratic National Conventions that yr. Mailer's recounting, though quite unlike in terms of his self-portrait, takes on a comparable rhetorical approach to evoking what he saw as historical underpinnings.^{[ citation needed ]}

Analysis [edit]

Jason Mosser notes a question The Armies of the Nighttime poses, request whether Mailer views history and journalism traditionally, or whether he views them equally fiction.^[fifteen] This question derives itself from the subtitle of AON: "History as a Novel/The Novel every bit History", which creates an dubiety about the objectivity of journalism. Mosser says that "Mailer's focus on his own perceptions and impressions does at times intensify the reader's consciousness" though information technology "embodies many of the qualities Mailer assembly with fiction".^[15] With Mailer's "New Journalism" explored, the readers get the greater perspective that a novel offers, the informative account that history offers, but at the expense of the objectivity that journalism traditionally holds.^[16] Dwight MacDonald pinpoints the creation of this "New Journalism" at the explanation of irritation when Lowell credits Mailer equally "the best announcer in America", causing Mailer to react to the state of affairs and illustrate his ain sensibility.^[17]

Neil Gordon takes a different approach to his analysis of The Armies of the Night as he searches for an insight into his own political consciousness. Being a 10-year-old kid in 1968 when the book was published, Gordon analyzes the historical aspects for a further understanding of the sixties, the politics, and the novelistic side of Mailer.^[18] He questions the pregnant of the novel given that Mailer did not feel some of what he perfectly described. For case, the March on the Pentagon. Gordon referenced Westward.M. Sebald, The Natural History of Destruction every bit it suggests that "the truth or falsehood of a clarification of a historical upshot is non to be judged past the number of facts or witnesses merely by the integrity of poetry of the language of description." He notes that The Armies of the Night is a representation of the novelist using his imagination rather than the recitation of facts.^[19]

Carl Rollyson recounts how many witnesses to the march noted the accuracy, specificity and level of granular detail in Mailer's retelling. The author praises Mailer for a remarkable achievement in substantially marrying poetry to prose- the scrupulous fact-checking and reporting of a historian with the cogent, penetrating analysis of human nature and overarching context that only a novelist then gifted could provide.^[xx] In his "Armies of the Night, or Bad Man Makes Good", Dwight MacDonald's credits Mailer'south self-awareness and specific details in "The Steps of the Pentagon" as evidence to Mailer's most superior work over his coverage of other not-personally experience events.^[21] Macdonald points to Mailer's "Jamesian control" over the tone and the "density of style" of wording and expression equally links betwixt Norman Mailer and Henry Adams.^[22] Gordon O. Taylor details the link between these "writer-protagonists" in more depth in his article Of Adams and Aquarius. ^[23]

Adam Gopnik states that the existent subject in The Armies of the Dark is the generational clash between men in the 1950s who were brought up with unlike ideologies. Mailer's generation was brought upward "in a kind of sober radicalism that valued intellect, exemplified by literature, above all; they found themselves protesting the Vietnam War with a new generation that valued emotional bear on, exemplified by music, in a higher place all." Mailer also mentions how "the younger protestors" were dressed as a fashion to highlight the difference between the generations. Gopnik also analyzes the similarity between Mailer's era and how things are today. In the climax of the novel when protestors confronts a group of war machine policemen outside of the Pentagon, Gopnik notes that it showcases the two Americas, divided in "class and the rural and urban lines that is all the same relevant today."^[24]

New York Times critic Paul Berman has hailed The Armies of the Night as a "masterpiece," the beginning part of a two-volume participant-observer-journalistic portrait of the antiwar motility of the late 1960s—bookended past Miami and the Siege of Chicago (on the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in the summer of 1968.^[25]

Warner Berthoff states that the plot Armies of the Nighttime is strictly about the "world of totalitarian civil power that in our lifetime has clamped downwardly on every natural life bureau, every man usage, and custom of beingness". This power is what not just sheds calorie-free on the present merely also "consumes the past" and gives hope of doing away with hereafter territories. Though the plot of this novel seems quite serious, Berthoff mentions that the novel has some moments of comic exaggerations and "a broad yet dead serious social mockery" due to Mailer's self projection image which some critics call an egotistical bluster.^[26] This egotism is an essential element because information technology becomes a theme of discourse which is the field of forcefulness that is fabricated up of the totalitarianism's grip on the technocratic capitalist order.^[27]

Reception [edit]

The Armies of the Night won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, the National Book Laurels in the arts and letters category, and a George Polk Award for magazine reporting.^{[28] [29]} AON did not get a all-time-seller, merely has been in-impress since its publication and oftentimes makes lists of the best nonfiction books of the twentieth century.^[28] The major reviews were resoundingly positive,^[30] with but John Simon (1968) and Mario Puzo (1968) dissenting.^[28]

Receiving praise from Alfred Kazin in The New York Times, Armies of the Night was idea to exist an "appropriate and timely contribution" to "the great phase that is American democracy" because it was "so intelligent, mischievous, penetrating and alive".^[31] Information technology became the historical piece to reveal America'southward deepest personal and political concerns at the heart of a "developing crisis".^[32] Kazin went and then far as to declare that the award-winning work cemented Mailer's place as the preeminent American novelist of his generation, representing a watershed accomplishment non only for Mailer, merely besides for Jews.^[33]

In his article "Confessions of the Final American", Conor Cruise O'Brien claimed AON as an important resource for historians "concerned with the moral and emotional climate of America in the belatedly Sixties".^[34] O'Brien narrows historical data to the white middle-class and intellectual participation in the protests, along with race relations. Praised for his scholarly analysis in AON, O'Brien credits Mailer for lending an important breathe of life into the history surrounding the march on the Pentagon through his "honest" re-telling of events.

In September 2021, famous actor and idiot box host LeVar Burton (best known for hosting Reading Rainbow) was interviewed by The Daily Show's Trevor Noah and asked what he does when he is not enjoying a book. Burton said, "I've only ever quit reading 1 book in my life: Norman Mailer's 'Armies of the Night'. Bored me to tears. Bored the shit out of me." Pressed past Noah on this revelation, Burton elaborated (through broken laughter) that the volume was forced upon him in school as a reading assignment and he just had to "false my way through it, because I couldn't do it."^[35]

Notable people in the volume [edit]

• H. Rap Chocolate-brown
• William Sloane Coffin
• Ella Collins
• Noam Chomsky
• David Dellinger
• Paul Goodman (writer)
• The Fugs
• Abbie Hoffman
• Lyndon B. Johnson
• Tuli Kupferberg
• Nelson Algren
• Robert Lowell
• Sidney Lens
• Dwight Macdonald
• A. J. Muste
• Robert Nichols
• Jerry Rubin
• Dr. Benjamin Spock
• Dagmar Wilson
• MC5
• Cassius Clay (named Muhammad Ali in 1964)
• Mitchell Goodman
• Donald Kalish
• Malcolm 10

See as well [edit]

• Cadre
• SNCC
• War in Vietnam
• The Fugs

References [edit]

Citations [edit]

1. ^ "Pulitzer Prize Winners: General Not-Fiction". pulitzer.org. Retrieved 2008-02-28 .
2. ^ "National Volume Awards – 1969". National Book Foundation . Retrieved 2012-03-10 .
3. ^ Rollyson 1991, p. 234.
4. ^ Mailer 1968, p. 9.
5. ^ Mailer 1968, p. 1.
6. ^ Mailer 1968, p. 204.
7. ^ Mailer 1968, p. 219.
8. ^ Mailer 1968, p. 182.
9. ^ Mailer 1968, p. 183.
10. ^ Mailer 1968, p. 184.
11. ^ Mailer 1968, p. 186.
12. ^ Mailer 1968, p. 187.
13. ^ Mailer 1968, pp. 188–189.
14. ^ Mailer 1968, p. 189.
15. ^ ^{a b} Mosser 2009, p. 308.
16. ^ Mosser 2009, p. 310.
17. ^ Macdonald 1974, p. 213.
18. ^ Gordon 2008, pp. 474–475.
19. ^ Gordon 2008, pp. 475–476.
20. ^ Rollyson 1991, p. 229-233.
21. ^ Macdonald 1974, p. 213-213.
22. ^ Macdonald 1974, p. 214-215.
23. ^ Taylor 1974, p. 69.
24. ^ Gopnik 2018.
25. ^ Berman 2008.
26. ^ Berthoff 1971, p. 303.
27. ^ Berthoff 1971, p. 304.
28. ^ ^{a b c} Lennon 2013, p. 397.
29. ^ Dearborn 1999, p. 248.
30. ^ Dearborn 1999, p. 247.
31. ^ Kazin 1968, p. 2.
32. ^ Kazin 1968, p. 26.
33. ^ Lennon 2014, p. 132.
34. ^ O'Brien 1968, p. 17.
35. ^ LeVar Burton - Growing Upward Reading & His Dreams of Hosting "Jeopardy!" | The Daily Show , retrieved 2021-09-xviii

Bibliography [edit]

• Alvarez, A. (September 20, 1968). "Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye". New Statesman. pp. 351–352.
• Begiebing, Robert (1980). "Armies of the Dark". Acts of Regeneration: Allegory and Archetype in the Works of Norman Mailer . Columbia: U of Missouri P. pp. 141–165. OCLC 466533555.
• Berman, Paul (August 24, 2008). "Mailer's Cracking American Breakdown". The New York Times. Books. Retrieved 2018-12-07 .
• Berthoff, Warner (1971). "Witness and Testament: Two Gimmicky Classics". Fictions and Events . New York: Dutton. pp. 288–308. ISBN978-0525104704.
• Dearborn, Mary V. (1999). Mailer: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN978-0395736555.
• Gaitskill, Mary (1983). "This Doughty Olfactory organ: On Norman Mailer's An American Dream and The Armies of the Night". Somebody with a Piffling Hammer: Essays. New York: Pantheon. pp. 120–130. ISBN9780307378224.
• Gilman, Richard (June 8, 1968). "What Mailer Has Done". New Republic. pp. 27–31.
• Gopnik, Adam (July 11, 2018). "The Strange Prophecies in Norman Mailer's 'The Armies of the Night'". The New Yorker. New York: Little, Brown. Retrieved 2018-07-twenty .
• Gordon, Neil (Autumn 2008). "On The Armies of the Night". The Mailer Review. 2: 474–475.
• Karl, Frederick R. (1983). American Fictions, 1940–1980. New York: Harper & Row. pp. 178–182. ISBN978-0060149390.
• Kazin, Alfred (May 5, 1968). "The Trouble He's Seen". The New York Times. Books. pp. 1–2, 26. Retrieved 2017-08-27 .
• Lennon, J. Michael (2013). Norman Mailer: A Double Life. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN978-1439150214. OCLC 873006264.
• —, ed. (2014). The Selected Letters of Norman Mailer. New York: Random Firm. ISBN978-0812986099.
• Lipton, Lawrence (May 31, 1968). "Norman Mailer: Genius, Novelist, Critic, Playwright, Politico, Journalist, and General All-Around Shit". Los Angeles Gratis Press. pp. 27–28.
• Gild, David (1971). "The Novelist at the Crossroads". The Novelist at the Crossroads and Other Essays on Fiction and Criticism . Ithaca: Cornell Upwards. pp. 3–34. ISBN978-0801406744.
• Lowell, Robert (September–Oct 1978). "A Conversation with Ian Hamilton". American Poetry Review: 23–27.
• Maddocks, Melvin (May ten, 1968). "Norm's Ego is Working Overtime for YOU". Life. p. ten.
• Mailer, Norman (1968). The Armies of the Nighttime: History as a Novel, the Novel equally History. New York: Signet. ISBN978-0451140708.
• Macdonald, Dwight (1974). "Armies of the Dark, or Bad Man Makes Good". Discriminations: Essays and Afterthoughts. New York: Grossman. p. 210–216. OCLC 72900083.
• Meredith, Robert (Fall 1971). "The 45-2d Piss: A Left Critique of Norman Mailer and The Armies of the Night". Mod Fiction Studies. 17: 433–438.
• Middlebrook, Jonathan (Wintertime 1970). "Can a Middle-aged Man with Four Wives and Six Children Be a Revolutionary?". Journal of Popular Culture. 3: 565–574.
• Morris, Willie (July 1968). "Norman Mailer'due south The Armies of the Night". Literary Society Magazine. p. 15.
• Mosser, Jason (2009). "Genre-Bending in The Armies of the Night". Mailer Review. three: 307–321.
• O'Brien, Connor Cruise (June 20, 1968). "Confessions of the Last American". The New York Review of Books. pp. sixteen–18. Retrieved 2018-11-07 .
• Piazza, Tom (2011). "Citizen Mailer". Devil Sent the Rain: Music and Writing in Desperate America . New York: Harper Perennial. pp. 213–221. ISBN9780062008220.
• Puzo, Mario (April 28, 1968). "Generalissimo Mailer: Hero of His Own Dispatches". Chicago Tribune. Book Globe. pp. 1, iii.
• Rollyson, Carl (1991). The Lives of Norman Mailer . New York: Paragon House. ISBN978-1557781932.
• Seib, Kenneth A. (Spring 1974). "Mailer's March: The Epic Construction of The Armies of the Dark". Essays in Literature. ane: 89–95.
• Simon, John (1968). "Mailer on the March". Hudson Review. Vol. 21. pp. 541–545.
• Taylor, Gordon O. (March 1974). "Of Adams and Aquarius". American Literature. 46 (1): 68–82. doi:10.2307/2924124. JSTOR 2924124.

External links [edit]

• The Armies of the Nighttime at Open Library

parkerinsing.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Armies_of_the_Night

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