Some of Mailer’s writing would fit in the journal I co-edit, for example, Liberation Lit. Much would not. So much so that I can’t say I can look especially to Mailer for progressive leadership in writing either in fiction or nonfiction, a type of more full, more humane, more vital writing that has been badly needed these many years, a mode of writing that Geismar came to be greatly concerned with as well…and not because it was some hobbyhorse but because of concern of the state of writing and the state of society, the world in general.

So in part here, our concerns are differently focused, and in part we simply disagree. I see Geismar and Mailer both as important writers, though the one has been buried and the other celebrated, and (in part ironically) I find Geismar’s diverse and sometimes severe criticism of Mailer’s work to be of lasting value…

Did Geismar review much of anyone in his latter years? And did he devote much space to Mailer at all? He didn’t live to see The Executioner’s Song by several years. I think he would have greatly appreciated that book in which Mailer ditched the faults of the blowhard and the petty, etc. Executioner’s Song is arguably Mailer’s best book and it is also arguably not typical of Mailer’s more grandiose, however accomplished, books that Geismar disdained.

And if Geismar in his latter years did not pay much attention to Mailer, who is to say he was wrong to do so? Not least since Geismar had turned to critiquing what he saw as more progressive, more vital authors, and quite reasonably had little patience for grandstanders like Mailer.

Look, in my view, Mailer’s Armies of the Night is a brilliant book, a valuable one, but I’m also very sympathetic to Geismar’s disdain of it, because I think the book could have been greater if some of the comic ego had set itself aside for far greater stretches of time to analyze, inform, and explore more about the larger and more telling context of the March on Washington and related topics and situations. Other, greater books interrupt some of their flow to do exactly that, in my view, such as Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia or Hugo’s Les Miserables. These are books in which the authors don’t ride too much too few of their various strengths. These works attempt more and achieve more and don’t need to resort to the kind of cheap theatrics and the too superficial jumping, skimming, skipping shallows that partially undermine some of Mailer’s valuable contributions. Geismar had antennae for serious limits in Mailer’s work that in my view are worth paying attention to.

“P.C. movement” is a prejudicial term, meant to smear, belittle, and mock people and groups working for progressive change. In fact, the most “politically correct” forces in U.S. society have been those powerful ones preserving the unjust status quo. It has been variously known as the old boys’ club and any number of other common terms that denote or imply basic adherence to the ideology of the owners (and therefore the rulers in the U.S.) who remain today overwhelmingly white and male.

So Mailer was “cynical” of left efforts like those put forth by Geismar and other progressives working to end the war and working to raise awareness of oppressive realities and progressive possibilities? No wonder then that Geismar scorned Mailer’s example. Geismar wasn’t the only one. And one can see why.

A handful of Mailer’s nonfiction works are very impressive…but even here there is much to criticize, which Geismar became utterly impatient with, at the least, as he was forcibly shoved into the margins, while Mailer was leaping toward and in part being embraced by an establishment busily sifting the acceptable from the taboo, on ideological grounds primarily.

Mailer produced some notable books, none fiction in my view, while playing along with the establishment in his middle and latter career. Geismar in his latter career set himself more or less against the establishment and in doing so produced considerably more valuable books toward the end of his career than Mailer did toward the end of his.

1) What does Geismar argue?

2) Is what Geismar argues correct (valid and sound)? That is, does his evidence and logic support what he claims?

You falsify/mistake/mis-state what Geismar is arguing — while disagreeing so tremendously with particular claims he makes. Geismar doesn’t attempt to support the particular claims using the “evidence” or “logic” that you claim he does. Therefore, you aren’t evaluating his argument. You’re bashing Geismar for non sequiturs that he doesn’t use. Thus you “stray from the critical task” to put it mildly.

http://apragmaticpolicy.wordpress.com/2007/03/18/on-maxwell-geismar-and-norman-mailer/

“the submerged assumption that the fiction fails precisely because of the author’s admitted grandiosity and stated ambitions”

Yes, it’s so “submerged,” it’s not there. In falsifying Geismar’s views, you imply that no evidence can be given for your falsification of Geismar’s views. The evidence is “submerged” somewhere out of sight, but _you_ know it’s there.

“Because Mailer is famous, because he’s expressed a naked desire to change the way the world thinks, he is therefore a bad novelist. This is a consistent theme in anti-Mailer commentary over the last fifty years, and it is a chorus Geismar has joined.”

Because this is a falsification of Geismar’s view, the supposed evidence must be “submerged,” unknown to everyone but you, and, perhaps, to other defensive Mailer fans.

“I would echo what Michael Lennon has said that this is a stance that frees someone from having to deal with the substance, style and content….”

You are demonstrating that you know a lot about that tactic.

Any personal component of Geismar’s that I’ve quoted may well be due to the fact that I’m quoting his _memoir_. If you want a more clinical analysis, you’ll need to refer to Geismar’s studied reviews of Mailer’s work. But even in what I’ve quoted from his memoir, you’ll notice that Geismar is rather strictly critiquing what he has been able to discover in Mailer’s books.

“It’s a dodge, and it leaves much of what’s ripe for discussion dealt with lazily, if at all.”

It certainly is a dodge, and you’ve engaged in it, not Geismar. You’ve failed to engage my observations and conclusions. You’ve repeated yourself. And you’ve falsified Geismar’s views.
For merely one instance, you give no evidence for this at all:

“My remarks here concern what you’ve posted here, which indeed are ‘half step removed from recycled gossip’.”

Where and what is the “gossip” that anyway you claim Geismar is a “half-step removed from”? Geismar is critiquing the public self-exposure that, as you well know, and as Geismar points out here, Mailer proudly reveals in his books.

As to some of the best of Mailer’s work, as I’ve written before, “Armies of the Night and Executioner’s Song are highly accomplished non-fiction works…. However, Armies does have the political shortcomings that Geismar points out.” Etc…

My remarks here concern what you’ve posted here,which indeed are “half step removed from recycled gossip”. He’s a good enough writer to guise his ongoing dislike of Mailer the celebrity
as an insight over the percieved failure of the novels, but too much of his analysis lies in the
submerged assumption that the fiction fails precisely because of the author’s admitted grandiosity and stated ambitions. Because Mailer is famous, because he’s expressed a naked desire to change the way the world thinks, he is therefor a bad novelist.This is a consistent theme in anti-Mailer commentary over the last fifty years, and it is a chorus Geismar has joined.

I would echo what Michael Lennon has said that this a stance that frees someone from having to deal with the substance , style and content of Mailer’s fiction.It’s a dodge, and it leaves much of what’s ripe for discussion dealt with lazily, if at all. For his egotism,I think it works the otherway around and would argue that his ambitions has forced him to make some risky and finally succesful decisions to his projects, both in fiction and nonfiction. I agree with Joan Didion, in her fine review of “Exectioner’s Song”, that the Gilmore novel wasn’t “the big book” readers were waiting for , but instead only the latest in a string of homeruns. Didion is not alone in that opinion.

Geismar’s reviews of Mailer’s early fiction are in depth and thoughtful. Geismar did not care to much review Mailer’s nonfiction (or anyone else’s) at length but does give some impressions of the available work in his memoir. Mailer created a public persona ripe for critique, that deserves to be critiqued, and Geismar did not much care for it. (He hardly remains alone in that view.) Thus, to say that Geismar’s “appraisal is a half step removed from recycled gossip” is simply false. You haven’t read Geismar’s thoughtful, exceptional reviews of the novels. Furthermore, Geismar had personal contact with Mailer, and Mailer opened himself up personally to an extraordinary (and purposeful) degree in Advertisements for Myself. In other words, Geismar in no way needed to, and did not, rely on gossip for his appraisal of Mailer as public persona, in Mailer’s work and otherwise. And as evident in the reviews, Geismar evaluated Mailer’s fiction in detail in its own right.

Again, in my view, Mailer is brilliant in some of his nonfiction, far less so in his fiction. The brilliance has likely inspired artists; however Geismar’s criticisms of Mailer and his work are largely on target – the fiction is not all that special, much of it is limited, stunted, as Geismar explains in detail in his writings on Mailer, and some of these flaws can be readily traced back to the limitations of Mailer as person, whom Mailer so openly shared.

Remember, Geismar was primarily a critic of novels. That was his main interest by far, and his career in critiquing novels is long and distinguished. Geismar died in 1979, the year that Mailer’s great work of nonfiction Executioner’s Song was published and of course several years before his novel Ancient Evenings. There is much more to art than its form, and the fact is that Geismar heavily critiqued the content of Mailer’s work and found much of it to be problematic. He did have appreciative things to say about The Naked and the Dead, and noted limitations. He was more critical of The Deer Park and Barbary Shore, but far from dismissive.