tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6531553.post2020636574834613969..comments2023-06-27T01:34:35.359-07:00Comments on Ted Burke LIKE IT OR NOT: Mailer: self-made sociopathTED BURKEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16610296721891201100noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6531553.post-9056345386029993482013-06-08T07:07:57.968-07:002013-06-08T07:07:57.968-07:00As a writer, it's always been the odd combinat...As a writer, it's always been the odd combination plate with Mailer, genius, fool, asshole, usually in the confines of the same book. Mailer is a product of his times and his temperment as an artist has obvious origins--D.H.Lawrence, Henry Miller, Hemingway--but all artists are creations of their times. As much as I believe in the idea of Free Will and the ability of the individual to map out their own course and have a say in their destiny, the best and worst decisions they can make are molded by the best and worst thinking history provides up to their particular moments. Most writers become relics, no matter good the reviews, while a few produce books that survive an individual's bad choices, foul words and general stupidity and last decades beyond a writer's lifetime. Mailer, I believe, is one of these few, and it would be a safe wager that more than a few of his books will be read and parsed for some time to come. Great writers are great inspite for their most earnest efforts to be great. Mailer was a brilliant novelist, but that is an issue subject to further research among the academics; Mailer is lucky to have lived in such convulsive times, an era readymade for a bright young man with a facile mind to riff upon. TED BURKEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16610296721891201100noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6531553.post-3871807762615165992013-06-07T06:36:37.671-07:002013-06-07T06:36:37.671-07:00Many good points here, as well as a well-balanced ...Many good points here, as well as a well-balanced assessment of Mailer as a writer and a human being. I would additionally stress that Mailer was a product of his times, incited to engage in increasingly dangerous and self-destructive behavior by the cult of the primitive that seized some on the cultural Left after it became apparent that the Great God Communism had failed miserably to bring on the grand new utopia so many had been wishing for. Mailer’s overheated effusions of personal freedom and rampant machismo can be placed in the context of “Blackboard Jungle,” “The Wild One,” “Rebel Without a Cause” and other films that celebrated a false depiction of juvenile delinquency and leather-jacket cool. Stir in a misconception of the Negro’s place in American life and a selective reading of French existentialism, add pep pills, Bennie and Mary Jane and you have a recipe for intellectual derangement. In Mailer’s case, I would imagine there would be the alienation of a returning G.I. facing the cloying conformity of post-WWII America, a condition reflected more mildly in the studied irresponsibility of the Beat Generation. That Mailer didn’t simply succumb to insanity and irrelevance is a testimony to his solid gifts as a craftsman, occasional embarrassing spasms of ludicrous tough-guy dementia like Maidstone notwithstanding. As a political thinker, Mailer often crumbles upon serious analysis – he could be a good reporter but was a fitful visionary at best. Despite his feints, struts and lunges, he wasn't Edmund Wilson, much less Henry Adams. Re-reading Some Honorable Men (a collection of his political convention reporting), I was stuck by how reactive his writing was; there’s plenty of rich detail and deft character sketches, but a paucity of deep thought or sustained reflection. There’s always the sense of The Reporter/Aquarius trying to prove himself, to stand up to the Man, the equivalent of LBJ showing off how big his rascal was to the army brass You can blame it on the ‘60s or the Military-Industrial Complex or indulging in too many TV guest appearances, but Mailer continued to cling to his belief in the salvation of applied irrationality well into the ‘70s and probably didn’t lose it until his body clamped down on his libido, giving up the braak and bugga for the inner chambers of sagacious age.Vincente Scintillonoreply@blogger.com