The Naked and the Dead

This book was published in 1948. However, the audible edition that I listen to was not recorded until 2016.

This might suggest the lasting nature of this novel, yet also implies a lack of an immediate need to transfer it into the audible realm.

I would assert that this is not an ordinary war novel. It lacks the typical battles and gore. That's not to say there is no death and significant distress.

The book devotes a considerable amount of time to exploring the backgrounds and inner minds of the main dozen characters. It offers a rather unique perspective on the thought processes of a general considering how to proceed in a war situation. I regard this as a quite distinctive aspect of this book.

A substantial portion of the book details a six-day mission by a small patrol of men in the jungle of a Pacific island. But it is quite different from the jungle warfare we are accustomed to reading about in Vietnam.

The issues of dealing with the topography and the climate are similar in some respects, but in this book, we are constantly presented with the internal workings of the various characters from diverse backgrounds.

This is yet another book that I added to my reading list because I felt that in my seventies, I should not leave this world without having experienced it.

I have to admit that I think it required a bit more mental effort than I could fully manage to completely understand the message it conveys.

Nevertheless, one thing was clear: we had a group of people fulfilling their social and mental roles in life who happened to find themselves as soldiers in the Pacific during World War II.

The war served as a backdrop that the author utilized to showcase the struggles these particular men endured in life.

The story has an impressive level of complexity, and I would be intrigued to know how much of it was based on the real experiences of Norman Mailer during his time stationed in the South Pacific and the Philippines during WWII.

He wrote this when he was quite young, and the amount of perceptive detail is remarkable for a young person.

Alfa
Zagreb, 2003.
S engleskoga preveo Marko Maras
U sklopu edicije "Vrhovi svjetske književnosti"
Pogovor napisala Sonja Bašić

This extensive novel, consisting of over 700 pages, is divided into four parts. It was first published in 1948. It thematizes the Pacific battlefield during World War II, which is so dear to the Croats. It is the best (anti)war novel that I have ever read.

In fact, the genre of the (anti)war novel is just the surface of the essence of the novel. From a deeper perspective, this novel is an excellent psychological novel. The novel is a brilliant modernist work. Sonja Bašić describes the novel as "realistic-naturalistic" in the interview. Well, I'm not so sure. The framework of the story is chronological, but it is interspersed with flashbacks that serve to bring out the biographies of the characters in the novel. The disruption of the chronological narrative is a modernist feature. The realistic feature is the coherent objective narrator, but the language in which the coherent narrator weaves the text is so modernist that it is like Split 3. After all, the novel was first published in 1948. Naturalism in this novel should be understood semantically in the sense of naturalism as a poetics (writing technology), not as a literary-historical period. I think Sonja meant the same in the interview. At least I hope so, for her cognitive-academic good. The totality in the sense of a large number of characters is a realistic feature, while the in-depth and detailed psychological characterization of a large number of characters is a modernist feature. The realistic totality and the modernist language are two strong links with the works of Dos Passos and James Thomas Farrell.

The language is excellent, vivid, atmospheric, naturalistic, dynamic; the language can be described as a machine gun that just fires bullets, so fast that the blood turns everything red in the field of vision. Among all these epithets, I would emphasize "atmospheric". The only linguistic realization of atmosphere that I have experienced in my reading experience similar to this novel I found in Blackwood's "The Yews"; https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... When reading this book, you will also bow your head thinking that the Japanese are shooting at you.

I'll throw in a quote as support for my claims:
"In the great distance, the peak of Anaka could be seen, rising above the island. It dominated the jungle in a cold and indifferent bay, massively rising into the low clouds in the sky. In the early and fearless dawn, it looked like a huge, old, gray elephant that maliciously raised its front legs, and its tusks disappeared in the green expanse. The mountain was imagined as wise and powerful, terrifyingly large. Gallagher stared at it as if enchanted, seized by the impression of indescribable beauty. He always had an idea, a vision of something purer, nobler and more beautiful than the mud in which he lived, and that idea now trembled, almost crystallized into real words. For a moment, he could have said something of what he felt, but that moment passed, and in him remained a confused joy, a feeling of clothing being sewn. He closed his lips and again began to yearn for the woman."

Regarding the content, it is worth noting that the story takes place on one Pacific island, which is not an atoll, where the American and Japanese forces meet, more precisely, where the American forces land with the aim of driving the Japanese off that island. Only the war situation as a sociological peculiarity and the insularity of the story contribute to the fact that the island itself is, in fact, a heterotopia within the story. I don't know why Sonja Bašić doesn't draw that conclusion in her interview, but I do, because not everyone is like me.

The heterotopia of the island and the story itself is reflected in the emphasized hierarchy of social forms within the war situation, the killing of prisoners as a negation and absence of social norms, the complete restriction of the personal freedom of the soldiers themselves within the Babylon of war, the fact that only men are on the island (the island is uninhabited in the sense that it does not have indigenous fauna), which is an important feature of the deviation from the ordinary social life. The novel actually shows that in a war situation, every geographical area affected by the war situation is a heterotopia. The insularity of this novel is an additional heterotopic determinant. Of course, heterotopia is not just a geographical area, I emphasize this so as not to be misunderstood, but it must be determined by some specific physical or geographical area.

Regarding the content, I would like to point out one mistake of the author himself. The author states in the novel that monkeys live on the Pacific islands. Since this novel is mimetic prose, the above is a mistake.

The ideological basis of the work is pacifist, and it is of high-quality pacifist. What do I mean by "high-quality pacifist"? It is not the liberal astonishment at killing, the virtue-signaling moralizing in line with Remarque. When I remember the pathos and naivety in the railing against violence in Remarque's novel "All Quiet on the Western Front", this novel is really a breath of fresh air.

The end of the novel is brilliant, it is neither a culmination nor a positive one. In this way, it emphasizes the absurdity and injustice of war and life itself. Fuck happy endings.

The character of the general is interesting, who is a Spenglerian (Spengler is directly and unambiguously mentioned in the text when the general's thoughts are presented). When the general thinks about the nature of technology in war, he draws a parallel with the theoretical postulates of the happy duo; Deleuze and Guattari - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... I'll throw in an example quote:
"Aren't the tank and the truck like heavy and slow animals from the jungle, like rhinoceroses, and the machine gun like a chattering snake that destroys a lot of life at once? Or the rifle, the quiet personal weapon, the extension of man's power. Can't we connect them all?
And conversely, in battle, people are more strongly connected to machines than to other people. The battle consists of a thousand man-machines that rush across the fields according to certain rules, sweating like a cold fish in the sun, shivering and shrinking like a piece of metal in the rain. We are no longer so different from the machine, I see that in my way of thinking. We no longer count apples and horses. The machine is worth as much as a certain number of people; the navy understood that even better than us. When the leader is in search of divinity, the nation glorifies the machine. I wonder if the same is true for me."

Well, that's it for my review, dear readers. And if you want to know more, hurry up and write to me and I'll go. To end, I'll throw in a song that I often listened to when I was young:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynewd...
There will be a new war!
Hasta luego!

I had extremely high expectations for this novel. However, unfortunately, those expectations were not met.

The writing in this novel is indeed well done, and the story is enjoyable to a certain extent. But it should be noted that the novel mainly focuses on the characters, with the war in the Pacific simply serving as a backdrop. Seriously, the underlying story could have been substituted with almost any other war story, and essentially the same tale could still have been told.

Therefore, I give three stars for the character story. But in my personal opinion, this novel does not reach the level of Battle Cry by Leon Uris or Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. In those two masterpieces, the events are intricately woven with the characters to tell truly amazing and captivating stories.

Overall, while this novel has its merits, it falls short when compared to the great works of Uris and Marlantes.

Mailer's first novel, The Naked and the Dead, was written before his masculine psychosexual obsessions took over.

Of all the American literary giants in the second half of the 20th century such as Bellow, Mailer, Roth, and Updike, Mailer has disappointed me the most over the years. This was the first of his novels that I read and I liked it initially, which is why I decided to give it another try.

As for the rest of his works, I enjoyed Ancient Evenings the most as I have a passion for Ancient Egypt and Rameses the Great was a truly mythic Alpha Male. However, Harlot's Ghost was too long for the little reward it offered, The Deer Park was boring, and Tough Guy's Don't Dance was one of the most ridiculous books I've ever read.

During this reread, the first thing that struck me was the same as the first time: the frank language for a book published in 1949. I can't remember reading an American novel from before that date where the characters talked so openly about "what a pussy feels like" and "screwing" prostitutes, as this one does in the first few pages. There must be an interesting story behind how this content managed to pass the censor's office, even though it may seem tame by contemporary standards.

Yet, the f-bomb is replaced throughout with the made-up word 'fug,' a silly compromise that constantly undermines the gritty realism of the book. My copy, published in 1981, still included this euphemism. I hope contemporary editions correct this mistake as who really cares about remaining true to the first printing in this regard?

My overall impression of this novel the second time around is how much of a slog it is. I can't believe anyone has ever accused Mailer of being light on his feet. His tendency to trudge about in heavy boots was there from the beginning.

Given the subject matter of The Naked and the Dead, this dolorous approach is entirely appropriate. The enervating sun, the fetid jungle, the mud, the headhigh kunai grass, the heavy equipment, and the plodding, monotonous nature of army reconnaissance all lend themselves to such a style. The description of the soldiers' march uphill, their various discomforts, and their state of exhaustion is vivid and makes you feel as if you are there with them.

The characters in the novel, especially the Recon platoon, are a motley crew. They play cards, squabble, think about home, and gripe about the army and everything else. While they are entirely believable, they are not particularly likable for the most part.

The time spent with the two officers, General Cummings and Lieutenant Hearn, engaged in a petty psychological tug-of-war is less effective. They are pale progenitors of those anal-retentive duos that Mailer would focus on so much throughout his career, fixated on the masculine pecking order.

Despite being a war story, The Naked and the Dead is short on action. It's a grind, as I've said. If war is hell, Mailer's version of war is purgatory.

Is it Mailer's second-hand re-telling of the horrors of war that makes him give a detachment to his characters? Or is it his own inexperience that makes it a better war novel as a whole? Most novels based on war have a tendency to evoke sympathy, glamorize apathy or expect empathy. However, Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead does none of that.

Its representation of a bunch of people stuck in a war they don't understand, afraid of death hovering in every shadow, is truly chilling. The brutal prose Mailer executes removes all possible elements of softening the day's experience. The characters are generally unlikable, but that's how many people are in such circumstances. The soldiers feel trapped in an endless cycle of these manufactured wars, seeing themselves as cogs in a very large machine moving towards an unknown goal. They go where they are ordered, walk towards conflict and defend what the propaganda says.

The book is a tragedy of several sorts. While one might see these men as heroes, their acts towards women are far from heroic. It is, in fact, excruciating to read lines where some of these men talk about women, some of whom are their wives. There is internalized homophobia, sexuality conflicts and violence addiction. It is difficult to diagnose if it was Mailer's intention or if he was simply recounting what he was hearing. Be that as it may, these flaws ground these men and evoke both sympathy and annoyance at the same time.

Is it a good book? The answer is yes and no. It is obvious that the book isn't for everyone. It isn't simple literature that one can pick up and enjoy easily. There is no enjoyment in this book. There are just broken men with tragic endings and even more tragic lives. There are anecdotes of soldiers who toiled through the jungles, the terrains in worse weathers, took fire and some lived to tell the tale. Their victories weren't filled with revels; there were only eulogies, mourning and accepting their next order.

Did these soldiers deserve a better life? They surely did. War didn't change only those who lost their loved ones. The war changed those who experienced, lived and came out of it with layers of scars and scabs. Mailer doesn't shy away from subtly implying who got the worst end of the deal. It wasn't the dead.

Read for the 2017 PopSugar reading challenge. With this book, I'm checking off "A novel set during wartime."

Nowadays, World War II is often viewed through a somewhat idealized lens. A quote from The Simpsons that I always remember is: "There are no good wars, with the following exceptions: The American Revolution, World War II, and the Star Wars trilogy." The people who fought in it are part of the so-called Greatest Generation. Those of my age have grown up knowing that they would likely never achieve as much as their grandfathers, either individually or collectively. They defeated the Nazis, freed Europe from fascism, and so on. There was a clear and unquestionably bad enemy, and almost the entire country was unified in that great struggle. In film, literature, and television, the dignity or even nobility of the individual soldier, if not always the fight itself, often shines through.

The Naked and the Dead might well be the granddaddy of the modern war novel. Much of what has come since has borrowed from it, at least in part. But it has no patience for sentimentality. What's interesting is that it was written so close to the end of the war, so there's no revisionism. The feelings were still fresh for the author, who was drafted into the Army in 1943. The story revolves around the campaign for a fictional invasion of a fictional Pacific Island that must be secured. It follows a particular platoon, the intelligence and recon platoon of the headquarters company of an infantry regiment.

There is no glory here. These men are tired, dissatisfied, and unlikable. It's true that the Pacific theater was more brutal than the European one, and that comes through in this book. However, other war fiction (and adaptations from reality, like The Pacific) doesn't emphasize it as strongly. They are openly racist, not just against their enemies, the Japanese (which might be somewhat understandable given the circumstances), but also against black people and Jews. Their attitudes towards women are mostly disgusting. There's no one to root for here. Even the division general, who occasionally appears, is repulsive to read about. He seems like a fascist sympathizer. It seems he wasn't the only one - in a flashback, it's suggested that elements of the Army were quietly preparing for a possible struggle against the people or the government during the Depression.

You don't often get flashbacks like this in war novels. Mailer even directly labels each section as "The Time Machine" and makes no attempt to hide the connection when presenting certain characters' histories. It's just there to provide some context. These are the kind of guys they are. They're cheaters and crooks. They grew up during the Depression. Many are uneducated. One particular throwaway line involves a guy from Mississippi who, when it rains on the island where he is fighting, thinks that it must naturally be raining back home in Mississippi too.

War, even the so-called "good war," is hell. They are cut off from everything. They know some will never make it back. The veterans of other campaigns have shattered nerves. They worry that 4-Fs are seducing their women. They don't like replacements. It's all arbitrary. It's all cruel. And it's often boring. I once talked to a guy who was in the Army in the late 1980s, back when they still did maneuvers assuming a Russian invasion of Europe, and he described it as 90% boredom, 8% excitement, and 2% pants-shitting terror. The Naked and the Dead captures that ratio almost perfectly. The boring times are so boring that the soldiers almost wish they were fighting just to have a sense of purpose. Going on a patrol is preferable to them than building a road, even though they know that on the patrol they may encounter the enemy and someone may get hurt or die.

A slow-paced book can be fine to read sometimes, but I think the lengthy flashbacks create additional pacing problems here. It's interesting to read as a historical artifact - a clear influence on much of what has come since. It's a book where no one ever says "fuck" - it's always written "fug" - but they can use the n-word freely, and every other curse word is also allowed.

There is a lot of incisive insight within its pages, including a Major who basically thinks of himself in terms that would later be articulated in the Peter Principle more than 20 years later. He has been promoted to his level of incompetence and he knows it. And yet it's Major Dalleson in the end who gives the crucial orders that break open the campaign, not that he gets full credit for doing so because General Cummings is determined to have his glorious stratagem of the flanking invasion with destroyer support recognized as the breakthrough, even though it was ultimately irrelevant.

Thinking about it, I wonder how much of the difference between, say, the soldiers in The Band of Brothers and these guys is that all of the Easy Company people not only volunteered for the army but also volunteered for a prestigious unit, the paratroopers, which required extra standards to gain acceptance. In The Pacific, the Marines are much the same. The Naked and the Dead consists of a number of draftees, and even the veteran men who enlisted before the war were doing it more as an escape and not with the aim of later fighting a war. One claim made in one of the officers' portions is that the average American soldier was the least effective soldier of any of the countries involved in the war. I wonder whether that's true, but it's interesting that one of the officers believed it. The American continent was never really threatened by invasion. Men might have believed in the cause, or not, but there wasn't the desperation to give everyone the same focus.

**Una sporca dozzina**

Una vasta opera prima
At just 24 years old, fresh from his war experience in the Pacific, Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" is a colossal debut work. It represents the last or one of the last attempts to reproduce the war on the page in all its physical, psychological, moral, and existential connotations and implications.

Certainly, after this, there will still be the Vietnam War, the Middle East conflicts, and many local conflicts scattered around the globe, each time updated by the intervention of technology and the progressive sophistication of weapons and "intelligence." But as for the physical man-to-man combat, the trench, the assault, the total confusion of not knowing how many and what enemies are being faced, all of this finds its unrepeatable culmination in this novel.

The structure of the over 800 pages of "The Naked and the Dead" can be ideally divided into three parts. In the first half of the novel, the operation of landing and occupying an imaginary Pacific island reproduces the archetype of all the islands on whose lush territory the Japanese and Americans fought continuously for years and which we know at least through the Hollywood representation with its ample dose of Yankee rhetoric. In the second part, the gaze focuses on the action of a reconnaissance patrol thrown beyond enemy lines in a Mission Impossible. Here, the struggle against the elements of nature expresses an intensity perhaps superior to the combat with the enemy, often invisible but always oppressive without respite.

There is then a third narrative line, the most original one, scattered throughout the narration when the plot of the war events is interrupted to give way to long flashbacks on the previous "civilian" life of each member of the patrol. Since most of them are young sons of immigrants (Italians, Poles, Jews, Irish) or otherwise poor "sons of bitches," their adolescence coincides with the 1930s, that is, in the midst of the Depression. These are stories of unemployment, work in mines, expedients and dead-end jobs, experiences in the petty crime of the desperate who welcome (or sometimes choose) enlistment if not as a hypothesis of emancipation, at least as an appearance of security and stability. This peculiar aspect gives the novel humanity, justification for the hardened and pitiless characters of some protagonists, a digression from the monolithic progress in the jungle of the island of Anopopei, and intense emotion for mothers, young wives, sometimes even newborns, left at home and who knows if and when they will be found again.

Postscript: Rereading, I realized that I have only scratched the surface of this powerful novel, reducing its impact. But within it, there stirs a pulsating, painful, and terrible soul, a huge clot of hatred and fear, of exhaustion and martyred flesh, of insects, pus, mud, and blood to which it is impossible to remain indifferent.