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Narcissus Revisited: Norman Mailer and the twentieth century avant-garde Scott Duguid PhD in English Literature University of Edinburgh 2017 2 3 Table of Contents Abstract 5 Signed Declaration 7 Acknowledgements 9 List of illustrations 11 Introduction 13 Chapter 1. From realism to black humour: totalitarianism and mass culture in The Naked and the Dead 31 Chapter 2. The road to “The White Negro”: a politics as part of everything else in life 47 Introduction to “The White Negro” 47 “Our Country and Our Culture”/ Barbary Shore 52 “The catastrophe – success” 60 “Politics as a part of everything else in life”: “The White Negro” 67 “The re-emergence of the mass-cultural sphere”: navigating the postmodern sublime 77 Chapter 3. Mailer and the psychic nation: the sixties miscellanies 91 Introduction: the Kennedy miscellanies and the psychic nation 91 “The aesthetics of bombing” 100 The encounter with the real: an art of facing 105 Chapter 4. An American Dream and the politics of the expulsive self 119 Introduction 119 An American Dream as a social fiction 122 The traumatic subject and maternity 126 From the novel of manners to supernaturalism 133 Woman and the psychic nation 137 An American Dream and “The Trouble” 142 Chapter 5. The politics of performance: from Vietnam to the moon landings 151 The Armies of the Night: politics as a happening 151 The death of the modernist subject: movies, fiction, journalism 167 The end of the decade: Of A Fire on the Moon 172 4 Chapter 6. Mailer and sexuality: The Prisoner of Sex and beyond 183 Chapter 7. Later non-fictions:The Fight and The Executioners Song 211 Mailer in Africa: The Fight and Henderson the Rain King 211 The Executioner’s Song and the art of the found object 238 Chapter 8: Modernism and mass culture in the age of Reagan: Ancient Evenings and Tough Guys Don’t Dance 251 Conclusion 275 Bibliography 285 Appendix 300 5 Abstract This thesis examines the American novelist Norman Mailer’s relationship to the 20th century avant-garde. Mailer is often remembered as a pioneer in the new documentary modes of subjective non-fiction of the sixties. Looking beyond the decade’s themes of fact and fiction, this thesis opens up Mailer’s aesthetics in general to other areas of historical and theoretical enquiry, primarily art history and psychoanalysis. In doing so, it argues that Mailer’s work represents a thoroughgoing aesthetic and political response to modernism in the arts, a response that in turn fuels a critical opposition to postmodern aesthetics. Two key ideas are explored here. The first is narcissism. In the sixties, Mailer was an avatar of what Christopher Lasch called the “culture of narcissism”. The self- advertising non-fiction was related to an emerging postmodern self-consciousness in the novel. Yet the myth of Narcissus has a longer history in the story of modernist aesthetics. Starting with the concept’s early articulation by Freudian psychoanalysis, this thesis argues that narcissism was for Mailer central to human subjectivity in the 20th century. It was also a defining trait of technological modernity in the wake of the atom bomb and the Holocaust. Mailer, then, wasn’t just concerned with the aesthetics of narcissism: he was also deeply concerned with its ethics. Its logic is key to almost every major theme of his work: technology, war, fascist charisma, sexuality, masculinity, criminality, politics, art, media and fame. This thesis will also examine how narcissism was related for Mailer to themes of trauma, violence, facing and recognition. The second idea that informs this thesis is the theoretical question of “the real”. A later generation of postmodernists thought that Mailer’s initially radical work was excessively grounded in documentary and traditional literary realism. Yet while the question of realism was central for Mailer, he approached this question from a modernist standpoint. He identified with the modernist perspectivism of Picasso and his eclectic “attacks on reality”, and brought this modernist humanism to a critical analysis of postmodernism. The postwar (and ongoing) debates about postmodern and realism in the novel connect in Mailer, I argue, to what Hal Foster calls the “return of the real” in the 20th century avant-garde. This thesis also links Mailer to psychoanalytical views on trauma and violence; anti-idealist philosophy in Bataille and Adorno; and later postmodern art historical engagements with realism and simulation. Mailer’s view was that a hunger for the real was an effect of a desensitising (post)modernity. While the key decade is the sixties, the study begins in 1948 with Mailer’s first novel The Naked and the Dead, and ends at the height of the postmodern eighties. Drawing on a range of postmodern theory, this thesis argues that Mailer’s fiction sought to confront postmodern reality without ceding to the absurdity of the postmodern novel. The thesis also traces Mailer’s relationship to a range of contemporary art and visual culture, including Pop Art (and Warhol in particular), and avant-garde and postmodern cinema. This study also draws on a broad range of psychoanalytical, feminist and cultural theory to explore Mailer’s often troubled relationship to narcissism, masculinity and sexuality. The thesis engages a complex history of feminist perspectives on Mailer, and argues that while feminist critique remains necessary for a reading of his work, it is not sufficient to account for his restless exploration of masculinity as a subject. In chapter 7, the thesis also discusses Mailer’s much-criticised romantic fascination with black culture in the context of postcolonial politics. 6 7 Signed Declaration This thesis has been written by me, and is my own. The thesis has not been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. Versions of chapter 1 and chapter 8 have been published elsewhere. Copies of these publications are included as an appendix to this thesis. Where I do not own the full copyright, I have obtained permission from the relevant publisher/copyright holder. Signature:___________________________ 8 9 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Kenneth Millard for his academic guidance. I would also like to thank Timothy S. Murphy of the University of Oklahoma for his support and supervision. For their financial assistance, I would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council. I offer special thanks to Jamie Kirk. As well as supplying much needed encouragement and friendship throughout, his professional perspective on clinical matters informs aspects of chapters 2 and 7 of this study. On matters relating to Mailer, I would like to thank John Whalen-Bridge for his editorial support in bringing versions of chapter 8 to publication. I would also like to thank Justin Bozung for generously sharing information about Mailer and cinema which informs the final version of chapter 8 which is included here. I would particularly like to thank the great number of friends in Scotland, the United States and elsewhere who have supported me throughout this project. I would also like to thank my family for their love and support. 10 11 List of illustrations I do not own the copyright for these images. They are used solely illustratively under fair use, for the purposes of examination. Where possible, I acknowledge the copyright holders below. Fig 1. From Modest Gifts (2003). Copyright The Norman Mailer Estate. Fig. 2. Still from Wild 90 (1967). Copyright The Norman Mailer Estate. Fig 3. Lego city of the future. Photo Fred W. Macdarrah. Copyright Getty Images, 1966 and the Norman Mailer Estate. Fig 4. Andy Warhol, Bonwit Teller window display (1961). Copyright The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Fig 5. Betty Grable. Photo Frank Powolny. Public domain. Fig. 6. Richard Hamilton, Hers is a Lush Situation (1957). Copyright Estate of Richard Hamilton. Fig 7. “Our Country and Our Culture”. Copyright Partisan Review 1952. Fig 8. Warhol’s Superman (1961). Copyright The Andy Warhol Foundation. Fig 9. Andy Warhol, Suicide (Silver Jumping Man) (1963). Copyright The Andy Warhol Foundation. Fig 10. Still from Maidstone (1970). Copyright The Norman Mailer Estate and Criterion. Fig 11. Still from Andy Warhol’s Kitchen (1966). Copyright The Andy Warhol Foundation. Fig 12. Martha Rosler, Red Stripe Kitchen. Copyright Martha Rosler 2002. Fig 13. Photograph of Mailer by Diane Arbus (1963). Copyright the Arbus estate. Fig 14. Harry Houdini portrait, 1899. McManus-Young Collection, Library of Congress. Public domain. Fig 15. Still from Blazing Saddles (1974). Copyright Warner Bros. Fig 16. Mailer and Ali. Copyright Associated Press 1965. Fig 17. Ed Ruscha from Twentysix Gasoline Stations. Copyright Edward Ruscha. Fig 18. Still from Cremaster 2. Photo: Peter Strietmann. Copyright Matthew Barney. Figs 19 and 20. Stills from Tough Guys Don’t Dance. Copyright Cannon Films, 1987. Fig 21. Production still River of Fundament (2014). Photo David Regen. Copyright Matthew Barney. Fig 22.. Production still River of Fundament (2014).