Barbary Shore

Rating:
Summary: The Most Talked About Novel of 1949
Review: Hard to believe, but when this book first appeared (it was Mailer's second novel), it was the most talked about novel of the year. What Mailer attempts here is a spooky, Kafkaesque atmosphere centered around a gloomy Brooklyn boarding house full of mysterious tenents - one of whom the young narrator fixates upon, and who turns out to be the instigator (following Stalin's orders) of the murder of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. This theme attaches the novel more to the earlier half of the century rather than the later, because its concerns - a sense of loss and bewilderment at how the radical dreams of the century's start had completely failed to find any positive fruition - were rapidly losing their hold on American intellectuals of the post-war world. Barbary Shore does impart convincingly a sense of loss - of ideals disabused - and in that sense the book is a kind of clumsy version of The God That Failed.

The problem with the book is in its execution. The Kafka atmosphere seems half-baked, even provincial - Mailer seems to have "dipped in" to Kafka rather than having actually enjoyed reading him. The whole episode of the mysterious tenent and the secret he carries - the best part of the book - seemed (to me) constantly hampered by Mailer's poor telling. As a reader I'm not surprised that Mailer more or less gave up fiction and turned to historical novels or journalism for the bulk of his career.

1949 was a bad year for some writers. The other "most talked about" book was John Horne Burns' Lucifer With a Book. Burns had written the first-rate war novel The Gallery, a lyrical piece of prose set in end-of-the-war Naples. But Lucifer With a Book was about the naughty goings-on at a boys' prep school - not something America could handle in 1949. Burns was dunned out of the States, by outraged critics who thought they had been praising a "war novelist," and soon drank himself to death in Europe. At least Mailer found a niche in journalism. Try Mailer's writings on the moon shot, were he's fascinating.

Rating:
Summary: A good idea gone awry
Review: McLeod is a man with a shady past. A former Communist Party official, he is now residing in a rooming house in Brooklyn just after the end of World War II. McLeod is being tailed by Hollingsworth, also a resident in the same establishment. Hollingsworth suspects McLeod of too many things and desires to interrogate and entrap him. The novel's narrator, Mike Lovett, is a disabled war veteran suffering from a severe case of amnesia. He just wants to be left alone to write his novel. He instead becomes entangled with these two gentlemen as well as with the lonely, slatternly landlady and her annoying little daughter. A down-and-out alcoholic woman also rents a room here. She also knows of some horrible secrets in McLeod's past and aims to exact some measure of revenge on him.

So goes Norman Mailer's novel of cold war intrigue. The premise of a man's radical past catching up with him and his desparate attempts to come to terms with the choices he made in his life is a good one. However, Mailer deals with these issues and his characters in an overly shallow manner. The characters come across more like types, e.g. the earnest radical socialist, rather than like real people. Mike, whose personality is largely one-dimensional, is merely a plot device, a medium through whom the other characters interact. Mike's character could easily have been eliminated. The story could have been far more interesting and even devastating were it told from the point of view of McLeod. What I believe Mailer meant to be the centerpiece of the novel, McLeod's lengthy speech on the nature of revolutionary socialism vs. state capitalism, is merely boring and flat. Too bad Mailer could not follow through on an otherwise excellent germ of an idea.

Rating:
Summary: A Shore A Little Too Dry For Its Own Good
Review: Starting over with a clean slate is an idea that is looked upon and desired. The concept of Barbary SHore was a brilliant idea for Mailer to attempt writing about. Mike, being an amnesiac wanted to piece his life back together, but could not trust his thoughts and the images that came to his mind. Upon moving into a house with many tenants of diverse personalities, he had the perfect chance to recollect thoughts and concepts.

However, Mailer failed to use the concept effectively. He did use Mike at first to absorb the thoughts and ideas projected by the tenants, but they did not stay with him and did not have a lasting effect on his search for a stable mind. Mailer basically shrugged off a freat opportunity to cause a great conflict of mental confusion in Mike, to strongly contribute to the plot.

Mailer's writing did not help the novel's cause either. His narration became monotonous because of a lack of variation of sentence structure and writing style, along with dragged out descriptions that were not at all exciting to read. Also, the conversations that happened in the novel were boring because of the author's tendencies towards over describing. They were also horribly routine. Basically the writing in the novel was boring. The only interesting aspect of Mailer's writing was his analogies. It was interesting how he related things that were very alike, but not in an obvious manner. But that did not save the novel. Also adding to the monotony of the novel was that it serves more as a declaration of Mailer's political views instead of a statement of emotion. Because of Mailer's rambling no one looking for an inspirational book should seek such in this novel since all it has to offer is political insight. Unfortunately, I was no tseeking any such insight, and was bored by the novel.