Them's Fightin' Words

Look at that crusty bastard. I'm not sure I have much a chance of liking Norman Mailer - The Person.
1) He's dead, so we couldn't have much of a productive conversation.
2) By all accounts he was a miserable asshole anyway.
3) He was a bit too stabby and punchy.

I've read The Armies of the Night and thought it was ok. I was a little annoyed by the third person, "The Author does this..., The author does that..., The author stumbles around drunk and pissing on things." The book also now falls in the "THE 1960s WERE THE MOST IMPORTANT DECADE EVER!!!" genre, which, as Hunter Thompson (and time) have pointed out isn't really true.

Mailer does pop up in some of my favorite places so I thought I'd take another shot at him (he's dead and can't fight back) with The Naked and the Dead, hoping that, when he wrote it in 1948, he wasn't seasoned enough to have an ego. I started it Thursday and so far it's taken me a little while to 'get into.' I like the cut away character sketches and maybe as I read more of them I'll be able to distinguish the soldiers in conversations on a deeper level than "Mexican Guy," "Noo Yoork guy," and "Jewish Guy." But maybe there isn't a deeper level, Mailer was just an asshole and Zombie Mailer will come back and punch me for saying so.

Bonus Video: (Extremely Shirtless) Mailer fighting Larry Sanders' Boss (starts at 1:33)

I guess all of these book previews will have to feature a fight video. I hope James Joyce and Flann O'Brien had an old fashioned Irish brawl at some point.