Mailer saw little combat in the war and finished his military career as a cook in occupied Japan. But his wartime experience, and in particular a single patrol he made on the island of Leyte, became the raw material for "The Naked and the Dead," the book that put him on the map.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/10/ ... 2#end_main
I never had much interest in Mailer, too macho for me.
I just can't read anymore war novels. I got no interest in war movies either. I am so tired of hearing about good wars, and necessary wars. For all his faults I respect him for challengeg standard assuptions about war. I thought The Naked and The Dead was just another dirty war novel. I remember Vonnegut told a friend that he was writing an anti-war novel (Slaughter House Five) ANd his friend said you might as well write an anti glacier novel. Well it looks like his friend was wrong about that, we are elimnating glaciers. Maybe wars will go the way of glaciers in this brave new world.Also missing from many mainstream tributes to Mailer was any acknowledgment of his disturbing streak of sexism. Mailer cultivated a “macho” image and declared himself an enemy of the women’s liberation movement. In his rants against feminism, he attempted to justify opposition to birth control, and he blamed the struggle for equality for destroying the “mystery” of sex.
EACH OBITUARY did at least mention The Naked and the Dead, Mailer’s first and most important novel. It is one of the great antiwar classics in literature and a book that speaks to all activists committed to ending the brutality of wars for empire
Yet The Naked and the Dead is barely known today outside of academic circles--because it challenges the standard assumptions about the Second World War as “the good war,” and unmasks the hidden motives of U.S. involvement.
http://www.ivaw.org/node/2081
I have never read anything by Bukowski except for bits and pieces.
I find it strange that Mailer won two Pulitzer prizes and Vonnegut did not.
Shows you how little I appreciate great literature.
Just curious Bohonato
Have you read The Naked and The Dead?
If you did what did you think of it?