Sound and fury
Francis King
Beware of any politician or clergyman who uses the word 'Nay'. Even more, beware of any writer who does so. In his In- troduction to this collection of short stories, miscellaneous journalism, inter- views and letters, Norman Mailer uses it twice. There is something hortatory, nay, declamatory about its appearance which at once warns the reader: 'This man will try to get at you.'
Mailer, not usually a modest man, at once confides in this Introduction that his short fiction is 'neither splendid, unforget- table nor distinguished'; but then he quick- ly rises from his cringing posture and declares, with all the self-assurance of a Saint-Saens convinced that his symphonies are superior to Schubert's Lieder or Beethoven's Quartets, that he does not think much of the genre anyway. Chekhov, Hemingway, Isaac Bashevis Singer, James T. Farrell: in their own, narrow way, they are fine. But he himself is something larger and, by implication, therefore better — 'a
big, brawny, 19th-century version of Renaissance man.' Fortunately, this vision of himself as a Leonardo in a sweat-shirt has not yet impelled him to try his hand at painting or scientific invention; but at one time or another he has produced plays and poems (some inept examples are included), has dabbled in films, and has stood for the office of mayor of New York. Whereas most people, if they wish to boast, boast of their successes, Mailer has an endearing habit of boasting about his failures. So it is that this collection includes not merely lengthy retrospects of his play The Deer Park and his film Wild 90, of little interest to English readers, but also two of his mayoralty speeches, of even less interest.
In fact, although Mailer describes his short stories as 'imperfect artefacts', those of them which deal with men confronting physical challenges are remarkably good. 'A Calculus at Heaven' (1942) is chillingly vivid in its account of how, in the last war, a group of American soldiers are gradually picked off by their Japanese adversaries un- til not one of them is left. In 'The Greatest Thing in the World', a penniless hobo out- wits three other men and manages to get away not merely with his life but with a five-dollar bill belonging to them. Like Hemingway, Mailer has an instinctive understanding of simple men involved in simple, all-or-nothing situations; but when, as in the story 'Advertisements for Myself on the Way Out', he attempts a Jamesian subtlety of analysis and a Jamesian elabora- tion of style, the effect is the comic one of a heavy-weight fighter got up in drag.
It is no surprise that Mailer should have included in the collection a piece on boxing and another on bull-fighting. If he were 30 years younger, no doubt he would also have included one on karate. In the piece on box- ing, the remembrance of Joe Frazier and Muhammed Ali slugging it out together turns his style into the literary equivalent of a strawberry milk-shake whirling round and round in an uncovered rotary blender. `So, two great fighters in a great fight travel down subterranean rivers of exhaustion ... stare at the light of their own death in the eye of the man that they are fighting, travel into the crossroads of the most ex- cruciating choice of karma as they get up from the floor against all the appeal of the sweet swooning catacombs of oblivion Once upon a time, the press used to have its sob-sisters; this is the writing of a sob- brother.
For all his toughness, Mailer is oddly sen- sitive to criticism. Does he make an ass of himself by stating that black Americans have become 'on the average physically superior' to white ones? So far from accept- ing the correction of an expert, he blushes on — statistics are unimportant, what about 'the extraordinary number of Negroes who make superb athletes'? He then reproduces the whole correspondence in this volume, as though he had won the argument. Again, Brigid Brophy accuses him, in a review, of a malapropism when he writes 'politics rendered every pride'. His letter of defence is also reproduced. If I now accuse him of another malapropism when he writes of New York being `edemic [sic], pandemic', no doubt a letter of defence will in due course arrive at the Spectator office, to be reprinted in The Essential Mailer Vol. II.
At a time when so many writers of fiction are daintily straining at gnats, it is impossi- ble not to admire a writer who voraciously swallows camel after camel — even if the side-effect of such voracity is chronic flatulence. So various in its subjects and styles, this collection demonstrates that Mailer — who, at one moment, announces his intention of running 'for President of the literary world' — is prepared to take on anything and anyone. Whether Mailer is a great writer is something about which the public may be less sure than Mailer himself; but that he is a big one, is beyond all dispute. Kenneth Tynan once said of him: `Nobody in America cares so deeply about so many things.' But it is not enough for a writer merely to spray his care around him. The things about which he cares, the way in which he expresses his caring and the effects which that caring has, are all also impor- tant. Too often in this collection Mailer resembles some eruption of nature. A volcano vomits lava, a tidal-wave sweeps in, an earthquake rumbles underfoot. The energy is huge, by tragically it cannot be harnessed.
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