Keep your mouth shut around little people with a little power. This simple piece of advice holds great wisdom. You see, those who have obtained a modicum of power often feel overly self-important. They may be quick to take offense or use their small authority to assert themselves in unnecessary ways. If you engage with them too freely, you might accidentally say something that rubs them the wrong way. This could lead to all sorts of problems. They might hold a grudge against you, make life difficult for you in some small way, or simply spread negative rumors about you. It's not worth the risk. Instead, it's better to be cautious and keep your thoughts and opinions to yourself when in their presence. By doing so, you can avoid unnecessary conflicts and maintain a more peaceful and harmonious environment.

Less a war novel and more a profound rumination on class and military structure, Norman Mailer's World War II book is a hard-edged "Catch 22" that eschews satire and revels in cynicism. In contrast to Joseph Heller's masterwork, which vies with Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" as the definitive WWII book, "The Naked and the Dead" lacks a completely sympathetic character and perhaps the only war novel without a strict protagonist. Here, the main character is the Army itself and its impact on the psyche of the Greatest Generation.

Mailer creates the fictional island of Anopopei as a backdrop for his multi-character study. There is a war plot sufficient to engage the casual reader, but it's evident from the start that this isn't Mailer's primary intention. His sharp criticism of the military's structure and its effect on the minds of those engaged in mortal combat becomes quickly clear. His characters are less fully developed individuals (although he provides a backstory for each, conveniently around the time the reader begins to loathe them or they meet their demise) and more stand-ins for ideas. The hard-nosed, straight-laced General Cummings is more concerned with his personal standing than the men he must send into battle. His foil, Lieutenant Hearn, is an irresponsible Ivy League boy whose idealism leads him into danger. The men of the recon platoon harbor their own prejudices and a grating chauvinism that can make some passages of the book challenging for modern audiences to read.

Nevertheless, Mailer gets his hard-headed point across in a gripping manner, making the reader care just enough about the cannon fodder who are capable of both pathos and unspeakably violent and terrible acts. Mailer writes with the breathless, straightforward prose one would expect from a journalist, yet he also paints a convincing picture of his characters and their surroundings. Casual readers may be deterred by the attention to military detail, a convention that neither Heller nor Vonnegut deemed necessary to make their points and one that can sometimes bloat Mailer's tale. Still, this work merits being read in the same post-military-industrial-complex vein and is a worthwhile read for sociologists and anthropologists as well.

Us readers are like nomads without a fixed abode. We perch anywhere, unnoticed like birds. We rummage through anyone's underwear drawer, behaving like the most disturbing stalkers. We audit everyone, especially the writers and their characters. And there is the book, sitting there in its cover, hanging between all three of us. We ticket, note, and award with our eyes, brains, and stars. We scribble in the margins, much to the outrage of future readers. I, for one, do this, and I don't mind if someone has done it before me.

I have looked out through Humbert Humbert's paedophiliac eyes, overheard the good man Jesus and the scoundrel Christ, declined and fallen with Paul Pennyfeather, and closely observed Molly Bloom in her bed for at least three hours, all without her noticing a thing. It was as if I wasn't there. With Jeanette Winterson, I too grew up in a crazy Christian cult, and like others before me, I couldn't stop Merricat Blackwood from her pyromania no matter what I did. We can all say similar things. Our acceptance of the thousand varieties of human beingness is almost limitless. We are promiscuity itself.

The Naked and the Dead is not really about World War Two or war in general. It's about seeing through the eyes of men, a whole bunch of them, sharing their lives, sleeping, eating, drinking, pissing, and fighting with them. In this novel, having a penis seems to be the thing. The testosterone flows through it like the Ganges through India. But I just couldn't do it. I didn't want to go through all this painful stuff with a bunch of assorted blokes constantly doing their thing. There are a thousand characters, and Mailer provides each with a description when they are introduced. But after several such descriptions, everything blurs together, and you realize why Catch-22 works so well. In that war novel, everyone is a cartoon, with no painful attempt at ultra-realistic detail.

But really, my attempt to read N&D was doomed to failure. It could have been a good one, I guess, but the signs were not good. I am ferociously biased against novels written by 24-year-olds and anyone under 30. I hate war stories and thought I should read this because of Mailer's biography. However, I always wanted to know what happened to Norman next, not the boys in the jungles of Anopopei. I can tell this is a great accomplishment, but for me, it was a 2-star experience from a 4-star novel. I abandoned it a little shamefacedly but with relief.

This is a good book, yet it unfortunately suffers from being horribly overrated.

It's not just that it perhaps doesn't deserve to be on certain lists or that it's adored by pretentious sophomores. I wouldn't subtract stars from it just for those reasons.

Nor am I merely referring to the quote from the San Francisco Chronicle on the cover that absurdly proclaims it "Perhaps the best book to come out of any war." Every time I look at that cover, I have this urge to track down the author of this 70-year-old review and shout at them, "What's wrong with you? Tone it down!" Maybe I could even engrave that on their tombstone.

However, these are external concerns. My main issue with the book lies within. This book has a tendency to overrate itself at every opportunity. It overrates the significance of each character within its own story. It overrates the story itself. It overrates the descriptions, the dialogue, the settings, and well, everything. In a way, this is kind of charming as it reflects the passionate exuberance of a young author.

And to be fair, none of the writing is bad. On the contrary, it's actually very good. The characters are well-developed, the plot is engaging, and the descriptions are vivid. But in the end, I feel like I've paid too high a price for all of this. These elements demanded more attention than they truly deserved based on their own merits. If I were being paid to read the book, like a reviewer or a creative writing instructor, perhaps I would be more inclined to rate it higher. If the rest of the quote from the Chronicle was "...that I've been paid to read," I'd have a much more favorable view of that reviewer's perspective.

“Nobody could sleep. When morning came, assault craft would be lowered and a first wave of troops would ride through the surf and charge ashore on the beach at Anopopei. All over the ship, all through the convoy, there was a knowledge that in a few hours some of them were going to be dead…”

-\\tNorman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead

Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead is often compared to War and Peace, yet it has its own unique characteristics. It features a plethora of main characters, an ever-changing third-person point of view, and long, cumbersome digressions on History and Philosophy. However, the ending feels somewhat lackluster. The novel takes place on the fictional island of Anopopei and follows the men of an Intelligence and Reconnaissance (I&R) platoon. At first, the depth of the characters is impressive, but as the story progresses, they start to blend together, and all seem rather unlikable. Only a few characters stand out, such as General Cummings, Lt. Hearn, and Sgt. Croft. The reality of military service, with its moments of boredom and waiting, is tough to convey in a novel, and Mailer struggles with this at times. The first 400 pages or so meander, with the men sitting around and being insufferable. There is a brief skirmish at the river, but it is marred by Mailer's overuse of onomatopoeia. Finally, the I&R platoon is given a scouting mission, which leads to conflict and forward progress, but then the farce begins. The ending is an irritant, especially after the promise of bigger things earlier in the book. The novel also abounds in literary affectations, such as "The Time Machine" and the "Chorus" sections. Despite its flaws, there are some beautiful passages and memorable scenes in The Naked and the Dead. It is a complex and often frustrating work that, like all of Mailer's writing, is ultimately about him.

I liked it, I guess.

This was a tough slog. It was incredibly long. The point, I suppose, is to give you a taste of what life in the theatre of the Pacific was truly like. While I don't think reading a book can really provide that, it did give me a sense of how long these soldiers would wait for something, anything, to occur.

I had read several other reviews on this site before I finished, and I can definitely understand some of the points that were made. One comment that stood out for me was that none of the characters really had any redeeming qualities. I don't agree with that. I believe what Mailer was attempting to portray was how the living conditions, the atmosphere of fear, the forced familiarity among men, and only men, from such diverse walks of life, would impact these soldiers. Basically, decent people can do things that are very out of character under trying circumstances, and a man who could lead a perfectly decent life at home in the USA would have all of his weaknesses exposed in battle.

The senselessness of it all was indeed demonstrated. The tragic loss of life, especially the ones that should never have happened, was gut-wrenching. I was definitely moved during the last 200 or so pages.

However, it did take an extremely long time to reach that point. There was so much preamble and philosophical postulating, so much delving into the minds of each and every one of the men and what motivated them. Knowing the ones who died a little better made the tragedy more personal, but for the other men, it was mostly time in my life that I would like to reclaim.

I don't really feel that all of the characters were misogynistic, as one reviewer wrote. There were men who loved their wives and who loved women. A few of them were rather awful, and a few of them weren't awful but weren't particularly decent. There were a couple who seemed like nice men. I think being away from the women they love and hearing the other men plant doubts in their minds affected all of them.

I'm glad I read it, but I don't feel like it was a must-read. I have read many more captivating books than this one. I suppose that reading this and "Three Day Road" (another war book) in such close succession has made me a bit tired of the genre. No more war books for a while!

Norman Mailer, who was a soldier during World War II, confessed that he derived a great deal from that experience while penning this book. We accompany a platoon as they invade Anopopei, a fictional island. The story unfolds in real time as the platoon undertakes patrols, defends their lines, and conducts recon work in the tropical jungle. Interwoven within are the backstories of each of the men, highlighting the diverse backgrounds they bring.

There are two Jewish men who are constantly stereotyped by everyone, along with the highbrow college dropout, the white trash, and drifters. I truly relished the backstories and the portrayal of each man and his origin. It enhanced the real-time scenes such as "mail call".

However, I did encounter difficulties with the real-time aspect, which constituted the majority of the book. The men seemed overly similar. They all swore and were alternately kind and cruel to one another. I'm uncertain whether Mailer intended this to illustrate that men are alike in combat or if he simply failed to endow each of them with sufficient individual traits. And overall, I didn't really like any of the characters. I felt that the only reason I was rooting for them to win the island was because the book was told from their perspective. Moreover, they were extremely sexist. Yes, I understand that might have been the attitude of the time, but that doesn't make it any more palatable to me and it didn't endear any character to me.

And the ending was left wide open. I comprehend that the army had conquered the island and was preparing to move on to the next one. The ambiguous ending signified that their war wasn't over. But numerous events occurred near the end of the book. Some of the soldiers had perished and all of them had witnessed certain things and endured a harsh, physical ordeal. There was no emotional resolution. Once again, it made the characters seem very hollow.

In any way it is told, war is terribly effective as a literary theme. Indeed, it never stops being described in terms of its horror, its futility, and the human drama it entails. But Mailer does something more. He describes it from within, with small insignificant episodes from a military point of view but very effective ones. There are no satirical intentions, because the facts themselves are pathetic, without the need for anything else. There are no epic intentions, because the events are small, without too much action, but with a lot of humanity, that little bit that is found in every environment or workplace. There are no political intentions, because power and military hierarchy are absurd even without any need for comment. And yet it is complete, intriguing, engaging, and true.

The Naked and the Dead was Norman Mailer's first and most successful novel. It was widely admired, yet it also had its critics.

Some critics disliked that Mailer separated his characters' flashbacks into chapters called "the time machine", which were contrived to tell their backstories. He also included chapters called "the chorus", which were brief dialogues among certain characters, meant to underscore important themes but were a distraction.

The story is gripping. The American Army is conducting a major operation against the Japanese on the fictional island of Anopopei in the South Pacific. Mailer focuses on a single platoon led by an unlikeable sergeant, Croft. The platoon consists of veterans and new recruits. The details of Army life, both in combat and otherwise, feel genuine. The campaign is a success, with serendipity and poor intelligence playing important roles in the American victory, which also seems authentic.

There are two notable sub-plots. The first involves the relationship between the general commanding the operation and a young lieutenant, Hearn. The second involves Hearn and Croft after the general gives Hearn command of Croft's platoon for a dangerous mission behind enemy lines.

The general's relationship with Hearn feels like it comes from Dreiser or dos Passos. At times, Mailer seems to convey a Marxist message. The general is sympathetic to fascism and treats his enlisted men like Mussolini or Lord Cardigan might have. Hearn, on the other hand, is the scion of a wealthy Chicago family but has reservations about his father's expectations. The general attempts to mentor Hearn, but Hearn rebels, leading to him being sent on a risky mission.

After Hearn takes command of the platoon, he and Croft butt heads. Without spoiling the story, Croft ultimately undercuts Hearn's authority with disastrous consequences.

The Naked and the Dead is best known for its depictions of the enlisted men. However, Mailer's sense of realism is misguided. He seems to think that for his characters to be authentic, they must be unlikable and he succumbs too often to stereotype. In the end, there isn't anyone to root for in this novel. Mailer's characters are predictable, and their stories are pessimistic and joyless.

Overall, while The Naked and the Dead has its strengths, such as a gripping story and interesting sub-plots, its flaws, particularly in the characterization, prevent it from being a truly great novel.

I don't know. It seems dated and derivative.

However, on the other hand, it gave birth to The Fugs.

The work in question might have certain elements that appear to be from an earlier era or lack originality.

But despite these drawbacks, its influence led to the emergence of The Fugs, which is a significant development.

The Fugs, in turn, may have brought something new and unique to the table, perhaps building on the foundation laid by the seemingly dated or derivative work.

This shows that even something that initially seems unremarkable can have a profound impact and give rise to something much more interesting and influential.

It's a reminder that we should not always judge a work solely based on its surface appearance but also consider its potential to inspire and create something new.

This is a brilliant book that not only punctures the sentimentalities of both the Left and the Right but also provides an unforgettable picture of combat in the Pacific. It makes one wonder if Larry McMurtry, one of the favorite authors, read this book as a kid in Texas. Sergeant Croft has an uncanny resemblance to Captain Woodrow Call. The two men are almost identical, being cold, efficient, and deadly. However, Call is represented as a man of principle, while Croft is dismissed as a cruel bully. At the same time, Wilson resembles Gus McCrae. Both are good-natured and have a positive attitude towards life in general, but they have a fatal weakness for the bottle. These two great American classics, Lonesome Dove and The Naked and the Dead, offer unique perspectives on different aspects of life and human nature. They are both captivating reads that leave a lasting impression on the reader.

M A S T E R P I E C E

A masterpiece is not just a work of art or literature. It is a creation that stands the test of time, captivating audiences and inspiring generations. A masterpiece has the power to move us, to make us think, and to change our perspective. It is a work that is crafted with skill, passion, and dedication. The artist or writer pours their heart and soul into every detail, striving for perfection. A masterpiece can be a painting, a sculpture, a novel, a poem, or a piece of music. It can be a work that is grand and epic, or one that is simple and profound. Whatever its form, a masterpiece is a work that leaves a lasting impression on our hearts and minds. It is a testament to the human spirit and our ability to create beauty and meaning in the world.