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A review by jamesvw
The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History by Norman Mailer
4.0
This book is a fascinating picture of a seminal moment in the early anti-war movement of the 1960s. But I actually would recommend it more to explore the structural problems of the New Left and as a way of understanding the slow turning radius that many of these radicals, including Norman Mailer, had to include broader understanding of race and class impact on mid-century war capitalism.
To begin with a comment on the writing style, the reader is forced to go through the struggle of take-off with the writer. The book is written with Norman Mailer as the main character - but written in 3rd person - and it seems (to use a term that fits with his scatological proclivities) thematically constipated to start. While Mailer's writing style is filigreed, each sentence wrought with intentional wit, odd analogies and intentional digressions, it takes him a long time to get going. He is self-aware of his narrow scope of understanding by writing a book about himself, but that doesn't mean that at times his long winded inner dialogue didn't cause me to space out and have to reread passages. His digressions at the beginning often are absurd - well written to be sure, but going nowhere. For example, a particularly lengthy overwrought sentence, smart if you keep focused, though hardly relevant to the surrounding paragraphs ...
On the political merits of the book, the largest problem that emerges is in the way the New Left, through the lens of Mailer, treats race and the Black radical activists involved in the anti-war and anti-racism movements at the time. The language Mailer uses to talk about African-Americans is dated, somewhat surprisingly so for a writer theoretically steeped in the radical civil rights movement of the late 1960s. But this lends credence to the reluctance of Stokley Carmichael, the Black Panther party and other Black activists to fully trust their white counterparts – if even Norman Mailer could not be trusted not to make sweeping generalized statements such as “Was a mad genius buried in ever Negro? How fantastic they were at their best – how dim at their worst.” (115), surely it was correct to draw some delineation from complete integration with white anti-war activists. Their causes seem clearly distinct from what Mailer, who proclaims himself a "Left Conservative" in the book, is preaching. To read this today added an insight to the weaknesses of the left-wing white protest movement, failing to cleave away the linguistic racism of the time.
These seem like large criticisms - perhaps I overstate based on my level of surprise at finding such problems in the book - but overall it is a smart, agile book that gets better as it moves along. The ending section, "a novel written as history", is also particularly well crafted and fills in gaps in a style that I can imagine was revolutionary for journalistic writing at the time. I do recommend it but be ready to fight with Mailer. Though frankly he comes across as the kind of writer who would take great pleasure in any intellectual battle he could enter, much more so perhaps than the physical battles he endured getting arrested at the Pentagon.
To begin with a comment on the writing style, the reader is forced to go through the struggle of take-off with the writer. The book is written with Norman Mailer as the main character - but written in 3rd person - and it seems (to use a term that fits with his scatological proclivities) thematically constipated to start. While Mailer's writing style is filigreed, each sentence wrought with intentional wit, odd analogies and intentional digressions, it takes him a long time to get going. He is self-aware of his narrow scope of understanding by writing a book about himself, but that doesn't mean that at times his long winded inner dialogue didn't cause me to space out and have to reread passages. His digressions at the beginning often are absurd - well written to be sure, but going nowhere. For example, a particularly lengthy overwrought sentence, smart if you keep focused, though hardly relevant to the surrounding paragraphs ...
“If the novelist had never heard of Hell’s Angels or motorcycle gangs, he still would have predicted, no, rather invented motorcycle orgies, because the orgy and technology seemed to come together in the sound of 1200 cc’s on two wheels, that exacerbation of flesh, torsion of lust, rhythm in the pistons, stink of gasoline, yeah, oil as the last excrement of putrefactions buried a million years in Mother Earth, yes indeed, that funky redolence of gasoline was not derived from nothing, no, doubtless it was the stench of the river Styx (a punning metaphor appropriate to John Updike no doubt) but Mailer, weak in Greek, had nonetheless some passing cloudy unresolved image no of man as Charon on that river of gasoline Styx wandering between earth and the holy mills of the machine.”
On the political merits of the book, the largest problem that emerges is in the way the New Left, through the lens of Mailer, treats race and the Black radical activists involved in the anti-war and anti-racism movements at the time. The language Mailer uses to talk about African-Americans is dated, somewhat surprisingly so for a writer theoretically steeped in the radical civil rights movement of the late 1960s. But this lends credence to the reluctance of Stokley Carmichael, the Black Panther party and other Black activists to fully trust their white counterparts – if even Norman Mailer could not be trusted not to make sweeping generalized statements such as “Was a mad genius buried in ever Negro? How fantastic they were at their best – how dim at their worst.” (115), surely it was correct to draw some delineation from complete integration with white anti-war activists. Their causes seem clearly distinct from what Mailer, who proclaims himself a "Left Conservative" in the book, is preaching. To read this today added an insight to the weaknesses of the left-wing white protest movement, failing to cleave away the linguistic racism of the time.
These seem like large criticisms - perhaps I overstate based on my level of surprise at finding such problems in the book - but overall it is a smart, agile book that gets better as it moves along. The ending section, "a novel written as history", is also particularly well crafted and fills in gaps in a style that I can imagine was revolutionary for journalistic writing at the time. I do recommend it but be ready to fight with Mailer. Though frankly he comes across as the kind of writer who would take great pleasure in any intellectual battle he could enter, much more so perhaps than the physical battles he endured getting arrested at the Pentagon.