Armies of the Night
by Norman Mailer, 1968, The New American Library
I picked this book up and decided to try it again as I had tried to read it back in 1968 in college when I belonged to a book club. I found a bookmark at page 42 so I assume that was as far as I got.
I think now that I understand why I didn’t get any further. Although Mailer seems to have a pretty good grasp on the issues and emotions of the time, his writing is pretty disjointed. The premise of the book is that he is writing a novel about what a character (Mailer, himself) went through during the march on the Pentagon in 1967 while a portion of the book is devoted to the history of the march and, as such, is detached from any specific character. Mailer is in the unusual position of being a conservative radical when it came to his views on the war which gives him the enviable position of being able to observe both the crucial elements of the times as well as its absurdities.
The main problem with the book is Mailer’s writing. He can spin a pretty good narrative for a while and then he gets all tied up in a sentence that goes on and on without any specific direction. He definitely has a mind of an intellectual and it’s almost as if he wants to prove it every so often. He is at times profound and at other times his message gets all mushed up in the verbiage.
At any rate, I found it interesting to go back and revisit the times which were some of the most trying this nation has ever endured. Unfortunately, having observed the recent Iraq war and its results, it appears that a lot of the lessons we should have learned from the Vietnam War were lost.
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