Norman Mailer's Aesthetics of Growth

262 Pages·2014·8.47 MB·English

by  Laura Gail Adams

NORMAN MAILER'S AESTHETICS OF GROWTH
lJOHMJ\i'J MAILER'S AESrl'I-IE'I'I CS OF GHOW't'H
By
LAURA GAIL ADAMS, M.A.
A Thesis
Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies
in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements
for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
McMaster University
(May) 1972
DOC'l'OFl OP PHI LOS OP HY (El ·7 2) McMJ\0'J'l.:H UN 1 v1rn:~ I 'l'Y.
( Englh;n) llamlltor1, (J11Larlo
TI'l'LE: llorman Mail0r'0 J\esthetic~> of nrowtl1
AUTHOR: Laura Gail Adams, B.A. (Purdue Univernity)
M.A. (Montclair Slate
Colle~e)
SUPERVISOR: Dr. F. '.J. Shrive
1WMBEH OF PAGES: x, 251
iii
NORMAN MAILER'S AESTHETICS OF GROWTH
ABSTRACT
Norman Mailer announced in Advertisements For Myself
(1959) that he wished to revolutionize the consciousness of
our time. With this as his goal he developed an aesthetics
which views both life and art as a process of growth toward
a full humanity and away from post-World War II American
(and universal) tendencies to stifle human r,rowth through a
technological totalitarianism.
Mailer envisions the creation of life as a function
of a divine power and the destruction of life as that of a
satanic power who war with each other for possession of the
universe. We do not know for whom we do battle, but our
intuitions of good and evil are to be trusted.
Growth for Mailer takes the form of a line of move
ment made by confronting and defeating opponents of a full
humanity; he terms such engagements whose outcome is unknown
and therefore dangerous to the self "existential". His life
and his art make up a dramatic and progressive dialectic.
There are three books which I believe contain Mailer's most
effective expressions of his aesthetics and which have the
greatest potential for revolutionizing the consciousness of
our time. Each is the culmination of a phase in Mailer's
iv
erowth which contains in itself the unified strands of that
growth.
The first phase includes the early success of The
Naked and the Dead, the subsequent popular and critical fail
ures of Barbary Shore and The Deer Park, the slou~hln[. off
of old models, political and artistic, the creation of a
radical creed in "The \'lhi te Negro" and a radical form in
Advertisements For Myself. The latter is the culmination of
this phase and is analyzed in detail. By the time of Adver
tisements Mailer has made himself the chief metaphor for his
concept of erowth, thus synthesizin~ theme and method.
The second phase enlarges the meaning of Mailer's
existentialism, most particularly by his venturing deeply
into the current political and social realm, and culminates
in a new synthesis of ~rowth in fictional theme and form in
An American Dream (1965). The novel's protagonist, Stephen
Rojack, defeated by a powerful satanic agent and by his own
weakness, proves unequal to the task Mailer sets for the
American hero: to unite the real- and the dream-life of the
nation in himself and to lead a united nation to human whole
ness which embraces all contradictions.
The central occupation of the third phase of Mailer's
work, therefore, is to develop himself--in the absence of
other suitable candidates--into a representative American
hero. His experimentation with various media for communica-
v
tion--drama, film, television, and others--ls a search for
effective vehicles for his vision and is preparation for his
assumption of the heroic role. Mailer's involvement with
the central issues confronting the United States is rendered
in a considerable experimeDt in novelistic form, Why Are We
in Vietnam? The culmination of his efforts in this phase is
the culmination of his work to date as well: The Armies of
the Night (1968). Relating the experiences of a character
called t1Mailer", Mailer as narrator and novelist-historian
not only creates himself as a representative comic American
hero but invents a form which carries a total vision of the
events of the 1967 March on the Pentagon, uniting traditional
methods and aims of history, the novel, and journalism.
With this boolc Mailer assumes the role of interpretor for
our time, himself in important contemnorary events
immersin~
in order to present us with his views of their meaning and
significance.
Mailer's three books following The Armies of the
Night are discussed in a final chapter as similar to but
lesser efforts than Armies.
In this thesis Mailer's work is placed in two spe
cific contexts which provide a basis for suggesting his sig
nificance: that of American literature, with emphasis upon
his contribution to the literature of the American Dream and
upon his indebtedness to Hemingway in particular and
vi
twentieth-century novelists in f,eneral; and that of contem
porary thou~ht which also seeks to influence the direction
of future human life.
Because his aesthetics of growth se~s human pro~ress
as its art, Mailer's nonlitrerary roles are considered a
vital part of his total work and consequently the critical
standards applied in this thesis are Mailer's own: how well
does each work register growth on Mailer's part and how
potentially effective is the work in revolutionizing the
consciousness of our time?
Mailer scholarship is still in infancy. The contri
bution of this thesis to that scholarship lies in its ap
proact1 to Mailer's work as a progressive whole and its
delineation of that progress; its critical approach whlch
confronts Mailer on his own terms; its extensive treatment
of works other than novels; the broad contexts which suggest
the significance of Mnjler's work; and the comprehensive
bibliography, the most complete yet assembled on Mailer.
vii
TO ROBERT E. AND THOMAS CLARK ADAMS
viii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Dr. Edward
Mitchell of Ohio University and Dr. F. N. Shrive of McMaster
University for their assistance in the preparation of this
thesis.
ix
Tl\ill.E OF CONTEIJ'rS
Chapter Pur~c
iv
INTRODUCTION: THE AESTHETICS AND THE CONTEXT
1. '11HE AESTHETICS 1
2. 'rI-IE CONTEXT 11
I. ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF' 29
II. AN AMERICAN DR2AM 37
III. THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT
1. 'l'HE PROCESS 131
2. rl'IIE PRODUCT: THE ARMIES OF' THE NIGHT 160
IV. ON Tl!E Wf'..Y OU'l' 1B2
V. COJJCLlJSIOtJ 221
13IDLIOGR/\PHY 233
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