"Cradled in the larger history of one's time": Epistemological pattern in the work of Norman Mailer
Description
My dissertation studies a pattern in Mailer's fiction and nonfiction in which he begins with a physically and philosophically challenging experience (fictional or actual) and proceeds through a crucial stage of intellectualization to a conclusion. Mailer, the writer, answers questions and solves problems by having the characters, including himself, hypothesize and experiment in different ways and then think about the results of their experiments; in this way, the characters come to conclusions and plan their future behavior. This pattern shows a marked resemblance to the epistemological pattern called the scientific method which progressive educators, authorized by John Dewey, implemented in the New York public school system from the 1890's to the 1920's. Mailer's education in PS 161 and Boys' High School in Brooklyn indirectly yet powerfully supplied this pattern as a structuring form for his own thinking, his own learning, and his thinking about learning. My study of this pattern in Mailer's work differs from other critical perspectives because I see the pattern as a relatively constant structure and as a theme played out more and more graphically as his work progresses and because I tie it to its historical roots in the progressive educational reforms of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century In my introduction, I show how Dewey's ideas influenced Mailer's education and include some basic and telling similarities between these assumptions and Mailer's work which prefigure a more specific and aggressive argument in later chapters. I explain, in chapter one, some of Dewey's most basic assumptions and demonstrate their implementation relevant to Mailer's experience. I trace, in chapter two, this progressive educational pattern in Mailer's work by exhibiting the many relevant examples of teacher/student relationships. In chapter three, my analyses of both 'The White Negro' and of Mailer's didactic metaphors show the primacy of intellectualized experience in Mailer's fiction and nonfiction. Then I emphasize two works in chapters four and five, Of a Fire on the Moon (1970) and Ancient Evenings (1983), and analyze in detail how these works highlight the weaknesses and strengths of this pattern In this study, I hope to establish Mailer in his time, not only as a recognized innovator and rebel within accepted forms of behavior and written expression, but also as one who received culture conventionally from his parents, his teachers, and his literary predecessors in a time when the institutionalized processes of promulgating culture and knowledge were themselves being rejected