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Esme Esoterica's Reviews > The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History
The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History
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This book made me hate Norman Mailer. Really. I wished him dead after reading this book. And this after I had read and fallen in love with his book "Executioner's Song." This book is narcissism pure and simple, the fact that it won the National Book Award makes me question the validity of that award. After I read this book, I picked up the memoir written by Mailer's second wife Adele, the one he stabbed.(Yeah, did you know Mailer actually stabbed one of his wives? One gets the impression he wanted to emulate Gary Gilmore, but while Gary was willing to accept death for his crimes, old Norman was getting weepy at the thought of spending a week in jail.)
This book is full of references to people of the late 60s that the current generation is not going to relate to. It's a book of its time that doesn't hold up today.
This book is full of references to people of the late 60s that the current generation is not going to relate to. It's a book of its time that doesn't hold up today.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
January 1, 2006
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Finished Reading
December 30, 2009
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Larry
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rated it 4 stars
Aug 16, 2014 09:19AM
All these years later your review still rides on the top of my pile of Friend Reviews. I am now about a third of the way through the book (just up to the March) and see what you mean. Mailer was not a radical; "conservative Left" I think he might have called himself. But wishing him dead seems a bit much. Maybe you were just drawn into his own overuse of verbiage? But I think you might be right about it not holding up.
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