false 12474 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg 12474 13 1642785 book 1968 The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History total:535|5:118|4:198|3:140|2:65|1:14| 535 1946 851 60 7927 3.68 8222 1075 8793597 130698 12474 0452272793 9780452272798 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12474.The_Armies_of_the_Night_History_as_a_Novel_the_Novel_as_History 3.63 521 1968 3 2 false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Wed Nov 07 10:02:35 -0800 2007 Wed Jan 09 11:36:43 -0800 2008 http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/05/17...), and make some honest yet unflattering remarks about Mailer...more...]]> 22102162 1133370 12474 0452272793 9780452272798 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12474.The_Armies_of_the_Night_History_as_a_Novel_the_Novel_as_History 3.64 535 1968 4 1 false Fri Jul 04 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon May 12 16:32:51 -0700 2008 Fri Jul 04 10:02:56 -0700 2008
By Mailer's own admission, his attend...more...]]> 20299793 1017488 12474 0452272793 9780452272798 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12474.The_Armies_of_the_Night_History_as_a_Novel_the_Novel_as_History 3.64 535 1968 1 1 false Wed Apr 16 10:11:01 -0700 2008 Wed Apr 16 10:15:42 -0700 2008 more...]]> 53051500 2057848 12474 0452272793 9780452272798 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12474.The_Armies_of_the_Night_History_as_a_Novel_the_Novel_as_History 3.64 535 1968 4 0 false Mon May 04 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Apr 17 14:16:16 -0700 2009 Sun May 10 06:50:27 -0700 2009 more...]]> 42502703 1499326 12474 0452272793 9780452272798 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12474.The_Armies_of_the_Night_History_as_a_Novel_the_Novel_as_History 3.64 535 1968 2 0 false Wed Jan 28 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 09 15:13:51 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 29 16:41:08 -0800 2009 more...]]> 40247925 6668 12474 0452272793 9780452272798 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12474.The_Armies_of_the_Night_History_as_a_Novel_the_Novel_as_History 3.64 535 1968 3 0 false Mon Feb 02 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Dec 16 14:09:39 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 02 15:30:33 -0800 2009 more...]]> 40247322 88295 2402425 0451140702 9780451140708 1 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2402425.Armies_Of_The_Night 3.50 4 1968 5 0 false Fri Nov 01 00:00:00 -0800 1985 Tue Dec 16 13:59:09 -0800 2008 Tue Dec 16 14:07:00 -0800 2008 An American Dream and immediately ditch the idea of his genius, but when I read this book, at least, I thought he was on top of his game and writing like no one I'd ever seen before.

Of course, I was an ignora...more...]]> 17155620 929972 12474 0452272793 9780452272798 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12474.The_Armies_of_the_Night_History_as_a_Novel_the_Novel_as_History 3.64 535 1968 4 0 false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1983 Thu Mar 06 08:39:47 -0800 2008 Thu Jul 16 08:39:19 -0700 2009 4 more...]]> 74051205 974210 2671757 2 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1203366156m/2671757.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1203366156s/2671757.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2671757.The_Armies_of_the_Night 3.80 5 The book deals ostensibly with the March on the Pentagon anti-Vietnam War rally in Washington DC. While Mailer dips into familiar territory in his fiction--self-portrait--the outlandish, 3rd person account of himself along with self-descriptions such as a Novelist/Historian, anti-star/hero are made far more complex by the narrative's overall generic identification as a nonfiction novel. Two years before Armies was published In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, who had just been called by George Plimpton (among others) the "inventor" of the nonfiction novel, claimed that the genre should exclude any mention of its subjectivity & refrain from the 1st person. While to some extent satirizing Capote's model, Mailer's role in center stage is hardly self-glamorizing as the narrative recounts the events leading up to the March as well as his subsequent arrest & night in jail. The 1st section, "History as a Novel," begins "From the outset, let us bring you news of your protagonist," with an account made by Time about: "Washington's scruffy Ambassador Theater, normally a pad for psychedelic frolics, was the scene of an unscheduled scatological solo last week in support of the peace demonstrations. Its anti-star was author Norman Mailer, who proved even less prepared to explain Why Are We In Vietnam? than his current novel bearing that title." After citing the entire article, he then closes "1: Pen Pals" with "Now we may leave Time in order to find out what happened." What creates the difference between Mailer's example & Capote's isn't only the autobiography of Armies, but the irony which guides the narrator towards the same objective of empiricism as that of In Cold Blood. The nonconformity which Mailer exhibits to Capote's criterion was the beginning of a feud that never resolved between the authors, & was ended with Capote's death in 1984. Ultimately, Armies was a unique contribution to the newly founded genre, which was otherwise somewhat preoccupied by Tom Wolfe's theories of the new journalism. A departure from Capote's more journalistic example of the form, Armies suggests the historical value of a more contemporary mode of literature.
The year of its publication, 1968, Mailer would begin work on another project, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, after witnessing the Republican & Democratic National Conventions that year. His recounting, tho quite different in terms of his self-portrait, takes on a comparable rhetoric approach to evoking what he saw as historical underpinnings.]]> 1968 4 0 false Sun Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 1968 Sat Oct 10 00:47:21 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 10 00:50:39 -0700 2009 1 more...]]> 59633541 1995871 12474 0452272793 9780452272798 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12474.The_Armies_of_the_Night_History_as_a_Novel_the_Novel_as_History 3.64 535 1968 4 0 false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Jun 14 12:48:56 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 04 13:30:10 -0700 2009 The Executioner's Song.

I can't say I...more...]]> 42136245 1706080 12474 0452272793 9780452272798 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12474.The_Armies_of_the_Night_History_as_a_Novel_the_Novel_as_History 3.64 535 1968 3 0 false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1981 Tue Jan 06 14:41:41 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 06 14:47:29 -0800 2009 more...]]> 38533127 418065 12474 0452272793 9780452272798 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12474.The_Armies_of_the_Night_History_as_a_Novel_the_Novel_as_History 3.64 535 1968 4 0 false Mon Nov 24 09:35:28 -0800 2008 Mon Nov 24 09:38:46 -0800 2008 more...]]> 43849310 1537840 12474 0452272793 9780452272798 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12474.The_Armies_of_the_Night_History_as_a_Novel_the_Novel_as_History 3.64 535 1968 3 0 false Wed Jan 28 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Jan 21 14:25:12 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 31 12:37:19 -0800 2009 more...]]> 38704288 33898 12474 0452272793 9780452272798 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12474.The_Armies_of_the_Night_History_as_a_Novel_the_Novel_as_History 3.64 535 1968 3 0 false Wed Nov 26 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Nov 26 12:36:38 -0800 2008 Wed Nov 26 12:39:54 -0800 2008 50500813 1238124 12474 0452272793 9780452272798 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12474.The_Armies_of_the_Night_History_as_a_Novel_the_Novel_as_History 3.64 535 1968 4 0 false Thu Mar 26 07:07:32 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 26 07:12:14 -0700 2009 left and liberal. ]]> 4746980 289695 12474 0452272793 9780452272798 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12474.The_Armies_of_the_Night_History_as_a_Novel_the_Novel_as_History 3.64 535 1968 2 0 false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2000 Sat Aug 18 16:49:29 -0700 2007 Mon Aug 20 11:26:31 -0700 2007 more...]]> 26641143 634541 12474 0452272793 9780452272798 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12474.The_Armies_of_the_Night_History_as_a_Novel_the_Novel_as_History 3.64 535 1968 2 0 false Tue Jul 08 08:31:06 -0700 2008 Sat Jul 19 15:40:26 -0700 2008 Incredibly talented writer, beautiful prose, yada yada yada yes.
Inventive way of mixing fiction and memoir, yes.

politically I agree with Mailer almost 100%. I think he is witty, and I probably would have thought he was 'hip' if I was born 30 years...more...]]> 75915621 79258 12474 0452272793 9780452272798 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12474.The_Armies_of_the_Night_History_as_a_Novel_the_Novel_as_History 3.64 535 1968 3 0 false Tue Oct 27 12:42:17 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 27 12:43:14 -0700 2009 49628561 2138584 12474 0452272793 9780452272798 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12474.The_Armies_of_the_Night_History_as_a_Novel_the_Novel_as_History 3.64 535 1968 3 0 false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Mar 17 21:13:24 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 07 21:40:21 -0700 2009 The Mezzanine).

Despite the fact that there's really not enough story for a novel, there are some interesting parts. I particularly enjoyed when Mailer outlin...more...]]> 40755661 42476 12474 0452272793 9780452272798 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754m/12474.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503754s/12474.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12474.The_Armies_of_the_Night_History_as_a_Novel_the_Novel_as_History 3.64 535 1968 5 0 false Fri Jan 02 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Dec 23 08:45:53 -0800 2008 Fri Jan 02 11:07:37 -0800 2009 8 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=12474