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by Norman Mailer, Νόρμαν Μέιλερ, Τάκης Θεοδωρόπουλος (Translator)

Αμερική - Πολιτική - Τρομοκρατία - Πόλεμος
"Το επαναλαμβάνω, η Δημοκρατία είναι η ευγενέστερη μορφή διακυβέρνησης που έχουμε καταφέρει να καλλιεργήσουμε ως σήμερα, και θα πρέπει να αρχίσουμε να αναρωτιόμαστε αν είμαστε έτοιμοι να υποφέρουμε, ακόμη και να σκοτωθούμε για να τη σώσουμε, ή αν θα πρέπει να αρχίσουμε τις προετοιμασίες για να ζήσουμε ως υποδεέστερες μορφές ζωής σε μια γιγαντιαία Μπανανία, με μια κυβέρνηση που θα στρώνει το τραπέζι στις υπερ-επιχειρήσεις για να μπορούν να οικειοποιούνται τα μάταια όνειρά μας με την ξιπασιά τους που πάσχει από ελεφαντίαση."

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History, War, Essays, American, Philosophy

135 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.

Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, but which covers the essay to the nonfiction novel. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award once. In 1955, Mailer, together with Ed Fancher and Dan Wolf, first published The Village Voice, which began as an arts- and politics-oriented weekly newspaper initially distributed in Greenwich Village. In 2005, he won the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from The National Book Foundation.

Reviews

[Moshtagh hosein · Rating 4 out of 5]

شاید بتوان گفت که:نورمان میلر در همه چیز،مثل آمریکا افراط میکرد.
کتاب حاضر از چهار بخش با عنوان‌های: "11 سپتامبر"، "چرا می‌جنگیم؟"، "ملاحظاتی درباره‌ی یک شرارت بزرگ" و "پی گفتار ویلی ویتکلر" تشکیل شده و موضوع آن، درباره‌ی مشاهدات قبل و بعد از ظهر 11 سپتامبر است. نویسنده که به نظامی‌گری افسار گسیخته‌ی آمریکا می‌تازد، در بخشی از کتاب می‌گوید: "اگر بتوانید به من بگویید چرا خدا خواهان انفجار 11 سپتامبر بود، تسلیم می‌شوم اما تا دریافت جواب بر این باور هستم که آن روز، شیطان، بزرگ‌ترین روز خود را سپری کرد".

[Joanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Democracy is built upon a notion that is exquisite and dangerous. It virtually states that if the will of the populace is freely expressed, more good than bad will result...Democracy is existential. It changes all the time. That is one reason I detest promiscuous patriotism. You don't take democracy for granted. It is always in peril...The fact that we've been a great democracy doesn't mean we will automatically keep being one if we keep waving the flag. It's ugly. You take a monarchy for granted, or a fascist state. You have to. that's a given. But a democracy changes all the time." writes Norman Mailer in this fantastic reflection on the concept of democracy and it's sorry state in this country at the moment. While the book was written before the start of the Iraq war, Mailer's assessment of the Bush regime's lust for war and it's probable outcome is right on the money.

[A100junky · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the many ignored voices of reason. Everyone should read this book.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Catching up on my Bush-ear War on Terror reading, here. I didn't expect much from this brief monograph, feeling it would be too outdated and irrelevant. However, I found these searching, considered essays in the wake of the post-9/11 invasion of Iraq to contain much relevant to the current "Donroe Doctrine" Trump regime and the need for Europe to step up as the US steps back.

From page 43:

As John le Carré had put it to The Times of Lon-don: "America has entered one of its periods of historic madness, but this is the worst I can remember."

Harold Pinter no longer chose to be subtle in language:

... The American administration is now a bloodthirsty wild animal. Bombs are its only vocabulary. Many Americans, we know, are horrified by the posture of their government, but seem to be helpless.

Unless Europe finds the solidarity, intelligence, courage and will to challenge and resist American power, Europe itself will deserve Alexander Herzen's declaration "We are not the doctors. We are the disease."

The talk of the W. "experts" makes me consider how the GOP has devolved from mere Neocons and who whispers in Trump's ear? Not "experts", but maybe neo-imperialist attention whores.

Bush, on a given morning, decides that Expert A’s voice sounds the best. Three days later, Expert D comes in better. The result is that he’s always tweaking his policies just a little. If that is his one intellectual strength, he still has the persona of a fraternity president, sententious, full of cant, pleased with his assertions and always indifferent to their lack of verisimilitude and/or specificity. Mottos and platitudes are steak tartare to him. He knows exactly what he’s doing. So, that one good half of America, composed of religious people who are not particularly political, is with him all the way. Give us more of your mottos and platitudes, they ask. Spice them, please, with your incomparably holy touch of mendacity.

Much of the most generally applicable and not outdated content comes from the published interview “I Am Not For World Empire”. "A conversation with Norman Mailer about Iraq, Israel, the perils of technology and why he is a Left-Conservative."

AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE: Go back to the integrity of races. I know it is a politically incorrect thought, but it doesn’t have to be expressed with rancor. It might be interesting.

NORMAN MAILER: Let me put it this way: I don’t see immigration as a pressing problem other than that it gets some white people so furious that they can’t think about more important things. They feel America is being lost. All right, America is being lost, but in ways that have nothing to do with races or excessive immigration. America, for one example, is being lost through television. Because in advertising, mendacity and manipulation are raised to the level of internal values for the advertisers. Interruption is seen as a necessary concomitant to marketing. It used to be that a seven- or eight-year-old could read consecutively for an hour or two. But they don’t do that much anymore. The habit has been lost. Every seven to ten minutes, a child is interrupted by a commercial on TV. Kids get used to the idea that their interest is there to be broken into. In consequence, they are no longer able to study as well. Their powers of concentration have been reduced by systematic interruption.

I find Mailer's thoughts Israel relevant today when our backing and support seems to have amplified the worst aspects of that nation's character:

It is in the interest of the Arab nations to have Israel as the great villain. Although I’m Jewish, bone and blood, I’m not a patriotic Jew in the sense of Israel right or wrong, my Israel. I don’t have those feelings. But I do think that the end of the Holocaust gave us one grand example of how inhuman the sheiks and leaders at the top of many an Arab nation were then. They could’ve said, “Let these Jews have that land. It’s not going to hurt us. We might even be able to use each other to good purpose.” They didn’t. They chose to see these Holocaust survivors as the enemy. They used Israel to divert hatred away from their own regimes.

...

...it could prove a dangerous support. For a good many powerful Americans, the future question in Empire might become: How much is our support of Israel still to our advantage and how much to our disadvantage? The realpolitikers in the American establishment have to have mixed feelings even now about Israel. The neocons may feel this is their best shot, this is the moment when they have to take a chance because if they don’t now, Israel is likely to be doomed ten, twenty, thirty years down the road.

Also prescient is the warning of our corporate overlords and the totalitarianism their rule can engender:

...We do not really know what works in a modern society, but the odds against flourishing in a society of the center (given its potentiality to narrow the exits and promote a single, central, secure point of view) may prove to be the least good answer of all. Until the Left and that part of the Right that is still loyal to its old values can come to recognize that no matter their essential differences, they also share one profound value they might look to protect in common—the vulnerable dignity of the human creation. At present, we are all obliged to travel willy-nilly into the vain land of corporate hegemony, with its self-serving notion that democracy is a nutrient to be injected into any country anywhere, a totally oppressive misconception of the delicate promise of democracy, which relies on the organic need to grow out of itself and learn from its own human errors.

By now, our nation has become a democracy that is bereft of a few of the essential elements. Nobody ever said, so far as I know, that a democracy should be a place where the richest people in the country earn a thousand times more than the poorest. Should the richest man in a town amass ten times more, even fifty times more, it is not hard to conceive of a reasonably decent society. When you get to the point where you’re speaking of thousands to one, something outrageous is taking place. The people who feel this lack of balance probably make up two thirds of the country, but they don’t want to think about it. They can’t, after all, do a damn thing about it. We don’t control our country. Corporate power is running this country now. The notion that we have an active democracy that controls our fate is not true. Was I ever able to vote on how high buildings could or should be? No. Was I ever able to say I don’t want food frozen? No. Was I ever able to say I want tax money to pay for political campaigns, not interest groups? Nobody’s ever been able to vote on many an item that truly matters in terms of how our lives are led. And, of course, we see the political process become more and more money-mechanized. We’re on a power trip in which only one small fraction of America manages to participate.

They speak of pre-cancerous conditions in bodies, and I think we have a pre-totalitarian situation here now. I hope we’ll muddle through, provided there are no more large disasters. There are pro-democratic forces in America that assert themselves when you don’t expect them to.

But the situation is serious. If we have a depression or fall into desperate economic times, I don’t know what’s going to hold the country together. There’s just too much anger here, too much ruptured vanity, too much shock, too much identity crisis. And, worst of all, too much patriotism. ...

[Kym Robinson · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is basically a hodge podge of some essays or rantings put together by Mailer in response to the attacks on the US in late 2001. The book meanders, which is saying a lot as it is quite short.

Nothing that interesting unless you enjoy an accomplished writer waft over red wine talking over his audience. Nothing found inside of these pages are really that engaging or on point. While I do for much of Mailer's point agree with him. That being that the, then, inevitable US invasion of Iraq was an imperial action I just find his means by which to articulate it to be some what flat, though it did take a lot of pretty prose.

While Mailer strikes me as a man who is anti war and against aggression abroad, men like him who adore some big government policies seem to lose the principle of anti imperial and anti aggression when it comes to certain actions on the domestic front.

Read it if you like Mailer and indulge in it if you want to read a short piece related to New York and the attacks of 2001.

20%

[Will W · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written prior to our invasion of the Soveriegn nation of Iraq., Mailer details many of the motivating factors influencing the Neo-Con henchmen currently ruling America. Using much of the same rhetoric as offered on more readable channels of liberal chatter, Mailor explains bluntly that it is not simply war that the Bush cartel is after, but global domination. The verbage is dry, however, useful. Nice addition to the anti-Bush library, but I recommend looking elsewhere to find a better assembled and more literary approach to the message Mailor tries to deliver.

[Public Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

From the "why do they hate us?" file shortly after 9-11. Compared to the similar volume that Gore Vidal wrote around the same time I found this one less incisive and with fewer interesting things to say. This book is basically two long essays and some bits and bobs from other unpublished material that Norman Mailer had sitting around at the time. If this were written by anyone else I doubt that it would have been published. Can be finished in a few hours.

[Giancarlo · Rating 4 out of 5]

In one sitting a pre-war document, worth every minute.

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

So Norman Mailer is one of my absolute favourites of all the authors trying to write the Great American Novel and I am trying to work my way through all his books. I just like the way that he has has the self-confidence to try anything, almost every book of his is so different and he is just always looking to start a philosophical argument about something or other (even if he is often massively, massively wrong).

Where he is very often on the mark is in his analysis of US war and politics. So this Why are We at War? should be a good topic for him - 911, the Iraq War, and Bush administration's motivations behind all of that. There are some good insights in here, some nice aphorisms, and some decent writing. Even the strange Mailer theories about plastic and cancer are kept to a minimum. The main problem though is there is really so little to get your teeth into, certainly very little new. What you get is a well spaced out hundred-ish pages involving a write-up of an interview, lots of quotes from other people about these topics, and then a relatively brief essay on the question by the man himself. With a good wind you can get through it all in a couple of hours.

As a result this just feels like a cobbled together missed opportunity to do much more here, not least given there are other Mailer books which run to well over 1,000 pages. Maybe a two rating is a bit harsh. I did still enjoy it, it was just all a bit disappointing for what it could have been.

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

“What is obvious, what stands out in most Israelis, is that they are patriots. My God, they are. After Hitler, how could they not be? In that sense, I am sure they think what they are doing is the only thing they can do, that they are doing the right thing. Just as I was going on earlier about Christians having this great unspoken guilt that they are not compassionate but greedy, so I think there is a similar inner crisis in Israel. I think they are ready to say: We are no longer humanists. We’ve become the opposite of ourselves. Still we protect the country. We dare the unknown.”

“Quantity changes quality. As the Israelis became tougher, so they lost any hard-earned and elevated objectivity, any high and disinterested search for social value. The logo became Israel, my Israel. That was inevitable. It is also tragic, I think. Israel is now one more powerhouse in the world. But what they've lost is special. Now they treat the Palestinians as if they, the Israelis, are the Cossacks and the Palestinians are ghetto Jews.
You know, the older you get, the more you begin to depend upon irony as the last human element you can rely on. Whatever exists will, sooner or later, turn itself inside out.”

“We truly must question the judgment of any President who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50 percent children is in the highest moral traditions of a country.”

“Unless Europe finds the solidarity, intelligence, courage and will to challenge and resist American power, Europe itself will deserve Alexander Herzen’s declaration “We are not the doctors. We are the disease.”

“We are truly sleepwalking through history.”

[Adelaide Renk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think it's interesting to observe how the ability of mainstream journalists / commentators has fallen so far. Compared to modern commentariat, Mailer's observations are astoundingly incisive despite having been written just 2 years after 9/11. He is able to clearly see America's trajectory, to see the consequences of the security state and the mechanisms we created to fabricate and sustain our middle eastern interventions.

It still suffers from certain limitations -- namely, viewing the conflict as a clash of cultures and viewing the rot in America's core as a product of consumerist culture rather than looking at the forces that created the conflict and the cultures -- but I do not think any mainstream figure today would be able to make such analysis. Few non-mainstream figures would be able to reach this level of accuracy either.

[Emma Farrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I do not agree with all of Mailer’s perspectives, this set of essays provides interesting analysis on the roots of the Iraq War and related topics pertaining to the early 2000s war on terrorism. I think in the context of modern geopolitical turmoil and the current state of US politics, his warnings on patriotism breeding fascism and the general American arrogance prove true. However, a good bit of the analysis of Middle Eastern politics and the roots of anti-Western sentiment was off in my opinion. Additionally, the ending ode to the blessing of American freedom undercuts the rest of his argument. Regardless, his words are still relevant over 20 years later.

[Katja M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately this is a book I did not enjoy. Perhaps, as a politics graduate, I already had my mind made up about a lot of the themes touched upon in this book, or perhaps as a dated piece with some antiquated opinion, I was unable to agree with the author. I found him very biased, and in many instances rather inappropriate.

Whilst some of his arguments, analysis and predictions were on point, I also believe a lot of what he said, particularly given the time period it was written in, is clouded by his preconceived ideas.

[Brian Kovesci · Rating 5 out of 5]

This should be read more in 2025.

He wrote this collection after September 11 and hits on why blind patriotism is dangerous, his thoughts on how America could slip into fascism, how the Israeli and Palestinian conflict will continue to be an issue, and how our reliance on the Middle East for oil should be of greater national concern.

It reads like a reading of the tea leaves for what America would be dealing with in 2024+.

The biggest of yikes.

[Rhianon Reads · Rating 2 out of 5]

Norman Mailer really tows the line of self-awareness, but stops just shy of actual critical reflection. It's a surface level criticism of the administration's attempted justification of war, whilst simultaneously being a circle jerk of "American greatness" and a head in the sand discussion about why on earth the Middle East would be so damn angry at the United States.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting blast from the past. I'm not sure why they bothered printing something so short. Norman seems out of his element compared to his writings from the 60s/70s, the times were changing fast, and for the worse as much as for the better.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Organizing and cleaning a bookshelf. I found this. In another life, it was on a bookshelf in my downstairs powder room in another house and it is short so one could sit and shit and read!

[Chad · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Promiscuous Patriotism"

[ه · Rating 1 out of 5]

Complete bullshit.

[beetlebutt · Rating 5 out of 5]

READ THIS BOOK!! It's a fast read, super informative, and really nuanced. Like a 2-hour crash course on American imperialism.

[Andrea Cobos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Im a fan

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some people think Mailer's just an old blowhard. I think he's a literary genius. This book is clear, concise and compelling. It's in big print so even the morons would be able to get through it quickly although they wouldn't be able to understand the arguments therein. Insightful and well-researched. Some of the stuff happening now goes back to a defense department draft that got leaked written by Paul Wolofwitz (then undersecretary for policy - now deputy defense secretary under that MFing joke Rumsfeld) under Dick Cheney (then defense secretary, now moronic VP) under Papa Bush, back in the day. Mailer's interpretation of Bush's motives is speculative, but compelling. Read it. Here's a great quote: If I were George W. Bush's karmic defense attorney, I would argue that his best chance to avoid conviction as a purveyor of false morality would be to pray for a hung jury in the afterworld. Indeed.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This, in large part, is Mailer's address to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco almost immediately before the US invaded Iraq.

The new argument the book presents is that the US went to Iraq seeking to build Empire: that US motivation for war is more subtle than countering terrorism, than finding nuclear weapons, than securing oil even; that the motivation of Bush et al. was really to facilitate moral reform.

"Without a commitment to Empire, the country will go down the drain. This, I would opine, is the unstated, ever-denied subtext beneath the Iraqi project..."

Also emboldening to see him challenge 'democracy' in America and go after corporate America for wresting 'America' from 'America.'

These are the most interesting ideas in this book. It is too short and too uninspired to be great.

[Nadine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Der Autor hat das Buch nach den Anschägen am 11. September, aber vor dem Beginn der militärischen Aktionen im März des darauf folgenden Jahres verfasst. Er rückt den Irak-Krieg in einen weiteren Kontext und beleuchtet die Motivation der amerikanischen Regierung unter Bush Jr..
Ich war positiv überrascht, wie erfrischend selbstkritisch die amerikanische Haltung und das Bild Amerikas im Ausland dargestellt wurde. Inzwischen hat sich viel getan, aber gerade ein Jahrzehnt später kann man die Aussagen Millers oft besser betrachten, als man es als Beobachter damals konnte.

[Celeste · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled with reading Mailer's other narrative biographies, so this book was a fairly easy read. While it was interesting getting an insight into the American psyche, this book -- perhaps because of its outdatedness -- did not shed any eye opening insights into terrorism or culture. Having said that, Mailer is a bona fide journalist, with notable quips people will quote for the decades to come.

[Chhun · Rating 3 out of 5]

Norman Mailer will tell you about the reason behind the Iraq war. We were publicly told that war in Iraq was because Iraq secretly produced atomic weapons, but actually it was the Bush ambition to present his military in the Middle East. He thought this presence could take over the rest of the world.
I believe he made the wrong decision this time.

[Ted Burke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Worth the read to gain access to Mailer's always trenchant remarks on the psyches of men with power who are seduced by the promise of war as a positive agent of change. Sadly, though, the prose is stiff and at times awkward. Mailer, a master in creating sentences that ring and resound, is not on his game here.

[Matthew Matheson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable analysis of the situation prior to the Iraqi invasion. I think that the real reason we went to war was cemented and captured by Noman Mailer. After all the lies/reason that have been told to us, I think that Mailers is the only logical reason that we find ourselves in Iraq.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

p.110 "Freedom is a delicate as democracy. it has to be kept alive every day of our existence. So, yes, I do love this country. If our democracy is the noblest experiment in the history of civilization, it may also be the most singularly vunerable one."

[Gregory · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a fast read. Although I agree with many of Mailer's assertions, I would like to have more facts to back up some of his statements. There are good quotes aplenty and many of the situations he mentions are still being pushed today as part of an agenda in Washington circles.