![]() ![]() ![]() He reflects on the hatred of authority among the young generation (he was then 45). He exposes America's ignorance and fear brutality and evil, decency and foolhardy heroism. On the march he is reporter, analyst, impressionist. One's own literary work was the only answer to the war in Vietnam." He not only joined the movement but went to the front lines and was the second person, of thousands, arrested by Pentagon marshalls. "When," he at first blusters, "was everyone going to cut out this nonsense and do their own real work. He was lured into the march by "a good friend and a lugubrious conscience", the poet Mitchell Goodman. He went on to examine the underbelly of politics in The Presidential Papers (1953) and Hollywood mores in The Deer Park (1955). He had achieved world fame at one stride with his first novel, The Naked and the Dead (1948), written at 25 and based on his experience as a rifleman in the Philippines during the second world war. Page after page you have the impression that he is commenting not on Lyndon Johnson's shameful war, but George Bush's corporate-powered skulking towards another self-serving war.īy 1967 Mailer was a commanding presence in American literature. It was mesmerising, and to re-read it today is to experience an additional punch: the one that verifies that history repeats itself as (malignant) farce. It was visceral stuff, which conveyed not only the facts but the fear, brutality - the taste of the affair. His is reporting with a swagger, but unlike the tabloid variety, swaggering its way past conventions to identify and illuminate truths. But Mailer (co-founder of The Village Voice) got into the ring like the pugilist he is, with a reckless confidence that intuition was the equal of any "facts". Time magazine had attempted to bring distinction to journalism with a mannered style. ![]()
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