DDC/MDS
| 818/.5/403 |
Publication
New York : Signet; New American library, 1968.
Original publication date
1968
Description
This novel interprets and dramatizes the October 1967 anti-war demonstration in Washington and the issues and politics involved.
Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Media reviews
Esquire
Mailer was annoyed when Lowell said, "Norman, you are the best journalist in America"; he explains just why. But what neither of them could have realized, since the present work hadn't been written, was that Mailer was about to carry journalism into literature in the way that Agee had done in Let
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Us Now Praise Famous Men : by planting himself squarely in the foreground and relating the whole composition to his own sensibility. Just the opposite method Truman Capote used in his "nonfiction novel," In Cold Blood, which falls into fragments every paragraph because of the author's mistake in keeping himself antiseptically out of it—a gimmick that "worked" well enough commercially, of course."The Steps of the Pentagon" is an astonishing literary performance: the style is both free and dignified throughout, the tone is maintained with few of the lapses into journalese one might expect from such a subject. It reminds me of Henry James. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member JNagarya
So many don't "get" Mailer as deliberate provocatuer. Nor do they appear to "get" the self-deprecation, even when it is laid out directly in front of their eyes -- as it is at the very beginning of this book with an extended quote from "Time" magazine describing his abominable behavior, in which he
And he doesn't deny it; in fact, he goes on to verify it, and detail what he was thinking at the time. Reading him correctly in such moments is to discover an uproarious sense of humor -- and a near-constant pullings of others' legs.
And on p. 15 (paperback edition) he writes:
. . . . Like a later generation which was to burn holes in their brain on Speed, [Mailer] had
given his own head the texture of a fine Swiss cheese. Years ago he had made all sorts of
erosions in his intellectual firmament by consuming modestly promiscuous amounts of
whiskey, marijuana, seconal, and benzedrine. It had given him the illusion that he was a
genius . . . .
To be sure to lesser degree than Mark Twain, Mailer often pretends to a huge ego -- he, unlike, Twain, in order to provoke those who believe he has a big ego, and that it is out of control. In other words: he often says exactly the same negative things about himself, albeit in different words, as do his uncomprehending "critics".
To the book itself: though I enjoyed the experiment -- writing two accounts, one factual, the other in the form of a fiction, I would have been satisfied with only one of them. (The tighter of the two is the novelistic.) Otherwise, his reportage is accurate as concerns outward events, and I must assume -- in view of the self-deprecation -- that his reportage as concerns inward events is as least as accurate.
All in all, I much prefer "Miama and the Seige of Chicago" -- it sails from beginning to end -- his speech from the flatbed trailer being especially memorable, and a similar conceit: reporting the words of his speech, as he's giving it, and simultaneously reporting what is going on in his mind at the same time he is giving the speech -- such as his question of himself as to whether he'd done too much speed and marihuana in his life up to that point.
To use one of his favorite terms as provocatuer during the early 1970s: Some people are simply impenetrable, lifelong "Libbies" who will never get it because they interpose their ideological presumptions and expectations between themselves and the outer world, especially between themselves and the "horrorible chauvanist" Norman Mailer. As result, they need not actually read him, because they know in advance what they believe he is saying. The irony is that they take him more seriously than he takes himself. The irony is that he, unlike his "critics," can admit to being that at which humans most often succeed: an ass.
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is as quoted saying: "I'm here because I'm like LBJ . . . . He's as full of crap as I am."And he doesn't deny it; in fact, he goes on to verify it, and detail what he was thinking at the time. Reading him correctly in such moments is to discover an uproarious sense of humor -- and a near-constant pullings of others' legs.
And on p. 15 (paperback edition) he writes:
. . . . Like a later generation which was to burn holes in their brain on Speed, [Mailer] had
given his own head the texture of a fine Swiss cheese. Years ago he had made all sorts of
erosions in his intellectual firmament by consuming modestly promiscuous amounts of
whiskey, marijuana, seconal, and benzedrine. It had given him the illusion that he was a
genius . . . .
To be sure to lesser degree than Mark Twain, Mailer often pretends to a huge ego -- he, unlike, Twain, in order to provoke those who believe he has a big ego, and that it is out of control. In other words: he often says exactly the same negative things about himself, albeit in different words, as do his uncomprehending "critics".
To the book itself: though I enjoyed the experiment -- writing two accounts, one factual, the other in the form of a fiction, I would have been satisfied with only one of them. (The tighter of the two is the novelistic.) Otherwise, his reportage is accurate as concerns outward events, and I must assume -- in view of the self-deprecation -- that his reportage as concerns inward events is as least as accurate.
All in all, I much prefer "Miama and the Seige of Chicago" -- it sails from beginning to end -- his speech from the flatbed trailer being especially memorable, and a similar conceit: reporting the words of his speech, as he's giving it, and simultaneously reporting what is going on in his mind at the same time he is giving the speech -- such as his question of himself as to whether he'd done too much speed and marihuana in his life up to that point.
To use one of his favorite terms as provocatuer during the early 1970s: Some people are simply impenetrable, lifelong "Libbies" who will never get it because they interpose their ideological presumptions and expectations between themselves and the outer world, especially between themselves and the "horrorible chauvanist" Norman Mailer. As result, they need not actually read him, because they know in advance what they believe he is saying. The irony is that they take him more seriously than he takes himself. The irony is that he, unlike his "critics," can admit to being that at which humans most often succeed: an ass.
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LibraryThing member break
The story of a weekend. Not your average kind. But the one October 1967, when tens of thousands demonstrated at the Pentagon. It is both an insider and outsider’s view, because Mailer rights about himself in third person. But he was very much part of the action. This is reportage, analysis,
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investigative reporting, history, poetry, portrait series at the same time. And as a combination a zeitgeist speedometer. If you are interested in how people lived through the event this is one you won’t be able to put down. I couldn’t. Show Less
LibraryThing member dbsovereign
Gives one writer's perspective on the Vietnam War and how it tore our country apart. Provides details of several anti-war protests that Mailer attended.
LibraryThing member heggiep
50 years later, knowing what we know now, it loses much of its currency. Still a good read.
LibraryThing member Amellia_Fiske
This book to me had a lot of potential, but I just could not get into it. It was very dry. History doesn't have to be dry and yet this book was like the Sahara Desert to me.
LibraryThing member Steve_Walker
I enjoyed the book. Mailer? A walking, talking Ego that dominated the literary scene in America for far too long.
Awards
National Book Award (Finalist — Arts and Letters — 1969)
Notable Books List (1968)
Physical description
320 p.; 18 cm
ISBN
0451140702 / 9780451140708