JOLLY DAYS

Mailer and the Spirit of the Times

Norman Mailer was something of a neurotic life force, pulled apart by opposing impulses — the brilliant, talented, nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn and the demands of achieving societal status via macho posturing — the latter was very much a part of his time.

In this piece one of the Times' better writers remembers Mailer's torn self as a prism with which to view current disputes.

There were two Mailers, Irving Howe observed — a “reflective private Norman” and a “noisy public Norman.”

Berman suggests that the meltdown in America caused by the Vietnam war is reminiscent of the spirit of this age.

…here we are, 40 years down the road, and hawks, some of them, are still “smug and self-righteous,” and doves, a good many, are still “evasive of the real problem.”

Berman goes on to point out how the younger Mailer was subtle in his analysis. The “evasive of the real problem” to which Berman refers is the blindness to the real dangers of Communism that were ignored by the Left then and the dangers of defeat in Iraq now. Many on the Left have adopted a crude understanding, implicating America in all that is wrong and the absence of America as all that is necessary to counter evil, which to them is not evil at all, but rather something gone wrong with some folks who just need to be schmoozed and unity will be ours.

The actual outcome of taking rogue regimes such as Iran at their word can be what happened after America pulled out of Vietnam and the alleged “philosophy” of those we were fighting gave way to what they were by nature, non-ideological thugs,

What would happen to Indochina and the rest of the world if Communism were to carry the day in Vietnam? The dove majority, in Mailer’s judgment, “simply refused to face the possibility.” The mass peace movement, its grown-ups, anyway, had compressed a hostility to the war into what he called a “hopeless mélange, somehow firmed, of Pacifism and closet Communism.”…[ the actual outcome of our leaving Vietnam was ] the interim experiences of policy-driven famine and poverty in Vietnam, extreme oppression, “boat people” fleeing for their lives and Cambodian horrors: the Indochinese catastrophes that have still not registered in the consciences of Americans when they are feeling dovish…

Mailer's spirit is worth remembering: he was generous, brilliant, a true if troubled force of nature. Berman's insight about the need for nuance not ideology is a worthy cautionary reminder.