The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History
by Norman Mailer

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Book Reviews of The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History

Book Review: A Lousy Novel and Bad History
Summary: 1 Stars

The title suggests a gonzo account of a pitched battle at the height of the war movement. But the book has very little description of the actual events of the 1967 anti-war march on Washington as it stays almost entirely in Mailer's head where his thoughts are often on more important topics such as whether he will make it home in time for a party, whether the reporters will quote him accurately (his biggest outrage of the weekend comes when a small newspaper describes him as "smiling wanly" at his arrest) and whether Robert Lowell respects him as a writer.

The novel is good for laughs, however. Mailer is arrested without incident when he crosses a police line and spends a night in a minimum security jail cell with Noam Chomsky and a bunch of "college instructors," as Mailer disdainfully refers to his fellow protestors. Then for about a hundred and twenty pages Mailer attempts to write a Koestler-esque prison novel. Given his circumstances, a single night in a minimum security prison, it was about as ridiculous as wiriting "Crime and Punishment" about a traffic ticket. I recall laughing out loud as Mailer gruffly concludes the way to survive in prison is never to hope for anything. He spends five pages ruminating on the paltry reading selection and how prison is dulling is thoughts. (Imagine the hell had he been in for two nights.)

The utter absence of anything resembling drama in the novel would not be as fatal a flaw in the hands of a writer with more competent powers of description. But Mailer is simply too impatient and philosophical and lazy a writer to pull off a Tom Wolfe-style account of the march. He remembers little of the details and seldom deigns to talk to any of the participants. His paranoia drives him away from his comrades as he fears that one of the spaced out college kids, despite all being big fans, will start a fight with him if he talks to them. (He does see fit, however, to record each time one of the kids accosts him to praise his work.) Mailer is even too standoffish to chat up Chomsky, though they are bunkmates. Instead we get three pages on the creases in his suit and necktie caused by the lack of hangers. The horror!

Mailer's delusions provide additional fun. One of many such gems: He predicts the art film he has just finished directing, the collossal turkey "Bust 80" will be the "greatest police drama ever made." He also to a man sees all the "squares" that he comes in contact with, the prison guards, cops and marshals, as seething pots of insanity and hatred. That is the one thing that everyone on both sides of the march has in common: they all are harboring thoughts of bringing harm to the novelist/historian.

Mailer is right to oppose the war in Vietnam, but his hodge podge of a rationale shows that he did so for the wrong reasons. Again, his paranoia gets the better of him as he proclaims America well on the road to becoming a totalitarian state, with Vietnam being only the first step. He also proclaims communism better than capitalism for the developing economies of Asia because he sees violence as the only tool for "ripping them away" from their peasant superstitions and into the 20th century. Higher paying jobs, I guess, wouldn't do the trick.

While thoroughly ridiculous, "Armies of the Night" does give a somewhat fascinating and often humorous glimpse in the mind of America's most celebrated literary Falstaff of the 20th century.

United States Books

• Books > Subjects > History > Americas
• Asia > Vietnam
• Europe > England
• Military > Vietnam War
• Literature & Fiction > Books & Reading
• Genre Fiction > Historical
• History & Criticism > Criticism & Theory
• United States > History & Criticism