Talk:Norman Mailer
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"An American Dream (1966) is Mailer's message to the American public reforming the popular idea of the American dream. In this novel Mailer proposed the idea of a personal dream per individual searching for the identity of the person."
- could you rephrase that? it's not clear what you're trying to say here.64.165.203.107 20:31, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
"This contradicted the current idea of wealth and power being the ultimate root of Americans. This novel, despite its sharp and cutting wit, has been vastly overlooked by many modern critics."
- what does "ultimate root of Americans" mean? 64.165.203.107 20:31, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] American Dream
He probably means that by the label "American Dream" Mailer meant to stress that does not exist a collective dream such that it can be defined as belonging to a collective category as an adjective like "American" may suggest, but that the nature of this dream is that of fighting for one's own individuation (Jungian meaning).
As such the dream is collective and individualistic at the same time: a whole population shares as a dream the personal effort to find a _personal_ place in the big painting. This "place" is not a career (this to account also for the question about the "ultimate root" being not wealth), but the ethical meanings that a man's story can leave behind as its legacy.
The american dream starts as individual struggle, and ends up as collective meaning.
This meaning is validly distilled out of these struggles and out of the success, tragedy, or escape they end with, as an ethical kernel that that man's or woman's life wittingly or unwittingly secreted. It is thus both personal and collective at once.
It is the "American Dream". UnitedScripters
[edit] Moved!
I didn't like how this paragraph affected the article's flow, so I decided to be bold and moved the whole American dream thing to its own page. -Wiccan Quagga 11:01, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
[edit] The Fight
Why is The Fight not included in the list of his works?
Added The Fight and was removed next day?
[edit] The Castle In the Forest
From all the pre-release reviews and excepts in the print and on radio, it appears that this new work which focuses on personal demonization of Adolf Hitler's childhood and family background is a disappointment coming from Mailer, who in the past has satirized smug self-serving middle class respectable opinion, which ironically in this instance he reflects. The crimes of Hitler, fascism and the horrors of twentieth century history generally it is hard to gainsay and surely merit not being trivialized. Those of us who grew up in middle class America, however, may be naive and know little about this. Mailer as a World War II veteran and former activist in the anti-war movement should know better and not insult us with this sort of cheap progaganda, albeit overwrought. A serious study of this individual and German fascism would focus critically on his experiences in the the Great War, in which 3 million Germans died, and the Versailles Conference, the Bolshevik Revolution etc. and the associated social upheaval which shaped him and a whole generation. Moreover, anti-semitism is an ancient medieval prejudice that goes back way before Hitler and not unique to Germany. Also, focusing all the blame on Hitler as an individual conveniently takes the onus off of the millions of ordinary "patriotic" people-to say nothing of the German military and business elites-who shared his outlook and psychology and who enthusiastically supported him and Germany's war machine. As it stands now, however, the author's frivolous story brings to mind what Lincoln Rockwell derided as "all that hooey about Hitler". (to Alex Haley for 1967 Playboy magazine interview). Seriously, 3 million Germans died in WW1, 50 times more than the Americans who perished in Vietnam. Is it really such an unreasonable supposition to think that those horrific experiences are what formed the foundation of his rage-the horrors of the Somme and Verdun-and that he may have just been, like his contemporaries, an unremarkeable person before that time? That the cause of his psychology was the obvious historical one? Tom Cod 05:12, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
