The Naked and the Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition | Norman Mailer

The Naked and the Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition | Norman Mailer | Fabulously timeless!

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The Naked and the ...

	The Naked and the Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition Norman Mailer Picador, 2000 - 736 pages average customer review:based on 72 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

an amazing book

this is historical fiction of ww 2 , and an amazing read, Mailer
takes an immense interest in daily functions of troops , their emotional states and the general bureaucratic mundaneness of the assault on an isolated island in s pacific. He does in depth analysis of many features of us life in the 40s including the status of hispanic , jewish , southern and , bostonian soldiers.
He is an intense and insightful writer. Many excerpts are not politically correct , including frequent sexual references, the n word but it reflects the times that were. Of interest are the
long term perspectives of the General to the geopolitical status of the world, quite correctly that the focus would be on anticommunism and of a future war with russia. YOu will not put this down, so be prepared for some very emotional portions such as wilsons death in the jungle and rather gruesome details of the true cost of war,,,,,,,, from korea to midway to normandy and now in iraq.

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Fabulously timeless!

I'm not usually a big fan of war stories that are mostly based in combat, but this was definitely the exception. I guess it's partly because of Mailer's incredible descriptive style, and partly because the combat is woven in with the characters' thoughts and flashbacks. I'm seriously at a loss as how to fully describe this book. If you haven't read it, I totally recommend you at least look into this.

Norman's Land

While the title of this book may be The Naked And The Dead, there's very little nudity yet a substantial amount of death. This is to be expected, however, as the book takes place in a war zone during World War II. The story, by Norman Mailer, tells of a group of American soldiers invading the Japanese island of Anopopei. Rather than single out a certain character as a protagonist, the story shifts perspectives between a vast array of characters to give the reader a view from many aspects of the war. Tellingly, with so many characters to remember, this is not a book you want to spend long intervals away from between readings.
Mailer's is a simple and direct, yet powerful writing style. His precise attention to detail gives The Naked And The Dead the feel of a sort of literary documentary. Such is the reason Mailer is often heralded as one of the pioneers of "journalistic fiction", a highly realistic account of fictional happenings, almost as if reported by a journalist who was present. It's doubtful you can remember the last time you were substantially involved emotionally with a documentary, but there's no need to fear in this instance as Mailer imbues his characters with a very empathetic human quality. However, in order to come across these traits in the characters, one must venture deeply into the novel. You can define "deeply" however you'd like, as the novel weighs in at a sizable 721 pages.
One device Mailer uses to help readers get to understand his characters better is to intersperse "time machines" throughout the story. The time machines show things that happened to the men before they were sent to war and gives insight as to what shaped the characters into who they are now. If not for the flashbacks, the book would come dangerously close to lapsing into the sort of soulless informative prose that a novelization of a documentary would suggest. Whether showing the intense rush a soldier feels while in the midst of gunfire, the guilt of capturing an enemy only to find out he's a human being much like everyone else, to the alienation a lower-class troop feels amongst his peers when the general shows favoritism towards him, Mailer never loses sight of what's most important to a reader: feeling what the characters feel and having a sense of being right there with them, bullets whirring past your head or hungering for battle in the still tension of the night. I would actually give this book 4.5 stars, if Amazon would let me do such a thing.

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