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A review by coffeecrusader
The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History by Norman Mailer
4.0
"Once History inhabits a crazy house, egotism may be the last tool left to History."
Mailer is an egotist and not ruled by shame. He revels in the negative portrayal of himself, constantly debases himself. The egotist's self knows no bounds. The narcissist is empty and is ruled by shame. Mailer, in all his issues, saw ego everywhere and hated those who operated behind suppressed ego. Here, as evidenced by the book's subtitle (History as a Novel, the Novel as History) Mailer looks for the contradictions which synthesize into human personality. Armies of the Night is a book of human error. He does this all with astounding language that occasionally bumps up against the border of poetry--a language which nearly means nothing.
This is Mailer as prophet, as a self-professed "Left Conservative," as he understand the US in Vietnam as the product of the Left (but not the New Left). This is a book about the promise of America through one's lived experience; Mailer challenges the reader to mine that for themselves.
Mailer is an egotist and not ruled by shame. He revels in the negative portrayal of himself, constantly debases himself. The egotist's self knows no bounds. The narcissist is empty and is ruled by shame. Mailer, in all his issues, saw ego everywhere and hated those who operated behind suppressed ego. Here, as evidenced by the book's subtitle (History as a Novel, the Novel as History) Mailer looks for the contradictions which synthesize into human personality. Armies of the Night is a book of human error. He does this all with astounding language that occasionally bumps up against the border of poetry--a language which nearly means nothing.
This is Mailer as prophet, as a self-professed "Left Conservative," as he understand the US in Vietnam as the product of the Left (but not the New Left). This is a book about the promise of America through one's lived experience; Mailer challenges the reader to mine that for themselves.