Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Growing up in the sixties, I guess I took Norman Mailer for granted.
Boy, I'll never do that, again.
After all, there was a time when people like Mailer, Joan Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, actually had a regular column, each month, in places like Esquire magazine. And, people such as myself could count on brilliant, independent minds, capable of executing a great novel, providing periodic commentary on the times we were living in (through?). And, the books they wrote were still events: much read, much discussed, and looking back, they were actually what kept us, sane- at least those of us for whom sanity was a virtue.
But, tragically, those days are officially gone.
We now have any number of empty, babbling, pundits; essentially employees of General Electric, Westinghouse, Disney, News Corp and/or TimeWarner, whom we allow to define the day's agenda. What's left of the "culture", is divided up among television, movies, the Internet, and radio... probably in that order.
We actually have nothing left that can be referred to, with any seriousness, as a "culture". We just have different corporate entities using different means of entertainment with which they focus our attention on anything other than what it mean to be "alive" or truly "human". It's a very extraordinary, and extraordinarly dangerous period of history to be living in.
I remember someone on some talk show way back in the early 70's saying that "we're the last ones [that generation, not this] who will remember what it was "like".
Well, here is someone who not only remembers what it was like, but can still, at the age of 83, compare "it" to how it is now, and leave one grateful, shell-shocked, aching for a change of guard, and thanking one's lucky stars for the privilege.
Plus, apart from the conversation bewteen Mailer and his son, there is also an essay inserted right in the middle of the book which alone is worth the price. It is called "Myth Versus Hypothesis", and despite the pretentious title, it is one of the best pieces of political writing I've ever seen in my life. It was apparently delivered as the Keynote Address during Harvard's Commencement Ceremony in 2004. I have not been able to find it anywhere on the Internet, so I do not believe it was ever published elsewhere. I challenge anyone to produce anything comparable, which has appeared in recent years in any magazine, newspaper, etc.
Mailer has lived and learned quite a bit in his time. And I can not exaggerate the value of this gem for those of us who can still appreciate the "Real McCoy", or for those who who would genuinely like to briefly step out of their "Orgasmatron" and actually visit what was once the late, great planet Earth.
I once read that the great French novelist and mystic Romain Rolland carried a copy of Goethe's "Faust" with him at all times ("my constant companion") for his entire adult life. I'm not comparing this book to "Faust", or Mailer to Goethe, or suggesting to anyone that they do the same with it. But, I did recall that statement of Rolland's while reading "The Big Empty". Because it reminded me of how there a just a few rare indivifuals in any epoch that can really help make their age TRULY intelligible to their fellow travellors.
Norman Mailer proves that here... in spades.
Click Here to see more reviews about: The Big Empty: Dialogues on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker and Bad Conscience in America
0 comments:
Post a Comment