Sometimes, Mailer goes so far afield that you wonder if he will ever return to the topic. The older I get, the more I feel like Neil is practically from my hometown. Notes on reading Norman Mailer's , " Of a Fire on the Moon." It follows that in both works every ascertainable fact about the particular moonshot is significant. We’d love your help. It took me a while to get through it, but Mailer is a wonderful poetic guide through the feelings of the age of technology the space race and moon landing were harbingers of. A totally unncessary work by Mailer and the last one by him that I have read. And since the Program communicates its moonshot with jargon and banalities (“Let us try to comprehend how man can be so bold yet inhabit such insulations of cliché”), Aquarius’s own moonshot must be a triumph of language. But in Yeats' poem, he doesn't seem like a god. The monthly magazine of opinion. It's a weird image, kind of hard to visualize. Subscribe. Awful. Others left me thinking, ok, this guy tried to wrench something amazing from this string of words and didn't make it...but even so I was stunned and grateful to know that he had tried at all, instead of staying in the safe borders of the expected. [adapted from Wikipedia] Edit. But, let me be more specific. On topic, off topic, Mailer is a literary live wire. There is, for instance, the important but by now familiar strategy by means of which the first person assumes the disguise of the third person in order to back away from himself. Sunny is held captive in Burn's guest room and was intended to be an addition to Burn's collection of deformed creatures. We're still debating the fallout. Mailer was forced in "Of a Fire on the Moon," grudgingly to admit that NASA's approach to task accomplishment--which he sees as the embodiment of the Protestant Work Ethic--and its technological and scientific capability got results with Apollo. For many, the moon landing was the defining event of the twentieth century. That's perfect for this section, though, which is all about a world in chaos. An absolutely fascinating reflection on the human side of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, a perspective absent from the official NASA representation of these historic events. So it seems only fitting that Norman Mailer—the literary provocateur who altered the landscape of American nonfiction—wrote the most wide-ranging, far-seeing chronicle of the Apollo 11 mission. It is hard to know what finally to make of Aquarius on this subject (though one should remember that he admits to being something of a Manichee). I give the photos five stars, but Mailer only one or, perhaps, two. Emotionally and politically vacant after a fruitless mayoral campaign, his fourth marriage in decline, as he explains, he is obliged to write up the 1969 moon shot from its Houston NASA base, where he lacks opportunity for the ego interaction and participatory observation which has fueled him in the past. I got this on a whim as the blurb made it seem exactly the kind of book I'd like. See 1 question about Of a Fire on the Moon…, Michiko Kakutani's Gift Guide Book Recommendations. A mammoth task described in a mammoth tome written by a mammoth ego. The Song of Wandering Aengus Summary "The Song of Wandering Aengus" is spoken by Aengus, the Celtic god of love and beauty. If you're interested in what he has to say about Apollo 11, I recommend starting at page 160. Without this awareness the book would have failed, even as the moonshot itself would have failed without the coordination of crafts that so fascinates the author. But you do not rocket to the moon, even on Mailer’s terms, by dead reckoning; ultimately, as he recognizes in this more humble mood, the effort to get beyond craft is self-destructive. This is an underwhelming book. In Aquarius’s view, however, the moonshot must be understood in engineering detail before it can be understood in any context. 9), then Aquarius’s “cetology” may seem to be nothing more than self-indulgent virtuosity. by Norman Mailer. Of a Fire on the Moon, by Norman Mailer In a sense, this book was the inevitable next move for a writer who, having pitted himself against the likes… by John P. Sisk LIFE hired writer Norman Mailer to cover the Apollo 11 Moon shot; his three-part feature was the longest non-fiction piece ever published by the magazine. It ends with his unsettling realization that he is about to divorce his wife. The book was officially released in the United States on December 30, 2014. His power to observe and his ability to see significance in the smallest gesture or fact or event makes this an extraordinary book. Part One is a personal account of Norman Mailer's time at Cape Kennedy during the launch of Apollo 11, written as it happened: history seen from the vantage point of press enclosures, pool parties and hotel rooms. Yes,he had come to believe by the end of this long summer that probably we had to explore into outer space ,for technology had penetrated the modern mind to such depth that voyages in space might have become the last way to discover the metaphysical pits of that world of technique which choked the pores of modern consciousness--yes,we might have to go out into space until the mystery of new discovery would force us to regard the world once again as poets,behold it as savages who knew that if the universe was a lock,its key was metaphor rather than measurement. Pulitzer Prize–winning literary critic Michiko Kakutani, the former chief book critic of The New York Times, is the author of the newly... To see what your friends thought of this book. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. There's probably as much Mailer here as there is Apollo but what's the point in art if you can't recognise the artist? It's a roller coaster ride. Mailer is always trying to get past the obvious thought. He was out of his element, writing about technology. Perhaps it is because the charged-up consciousness has this time come close to meeting its match so that the imperial ego has been driven into humility. Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director. Aquarius’s WASP is clearly enough in the enemy camp, but here even more than in Miami and the Siege of Chicago he is aware that liberal pieties can be as crippling to a reporter as WASP banalities. ), science-studies types, young people nostalgic for the unremembered culture wars, new-journalism fans, "Culture was insulation against a single idea, and America was like a rawboned lover gangling into middle age, still looking for its mission.". Set in the Ice Age, a nomadic tribe of sun worshippers reach an area they decide to settle in.When Idar and Rhia, a young couple of the tribe come across a water monster, the monster is killed by Maciste with a spear. Tom heads out to the fire escape to smoke, and Amanda complains that he spends too much money on cigarettes; if he saved the money, he would be able to go to night school. Clay, Tsunami, and Starflight are kept as prisoners to fight in the arena, while Glory is chained to a marble tree and kept as a decoration. But craft helps too. Little, Brown. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. In a Paris Review interview some years ago Mailer had hard things to say about craft, referring to it as one of those “enormous evasions” that is “fatal for somebody who has a large ambition and a chance of becoming a great writer.” No doubt this is true enough from the point of view of the imperial ego, which sees craft as lusting against it, and it is why the imperial Ahab in Moby Dick throws away the quadrant so that he must sail by dead reckoning. A classic chronicle of America’s reach for greatness in the midst of the Cold War, Of a Fire on the Moon compiles the reportage Mailer published between 1969 and 1970 in Life magazine: gripping firsthand dispatches from inside NASA’s clandestine operations in Houston and Cape Kennedy; technical insights into the magnitude of their awe-inspiring feat; and prescient meditations that place the event in human … It is evident that he was not enjoying himself writing this. Norman Mailer's head is stuck so far up his own arse that the only way he could have watched the launch of Apollo 11 must have been through his own open mouth. "-Norman Mailer, The Taschen edition I read, with wonderful shots provided by NASA, was the saving grace for such a bloated, aggravating text. Then there is the excellent twice-over craft of the large design. Early in his voyage he observes with irony that “ideas were what Americans cared about, and the biggest ideas were doubtless the best.” But is there not a familiar element of American megalomania in the assumption that the consequences of the Space Program must be supremely good or supremely bad? An important factor in Aquarius’s reporting is that he is blood-brother to Melville’s Ishmael. …. At this point, history having plainly been made, we head home to Province-town, somewhat appalled to note that two thirds of a long book remains and to learn that we are about to return to the launching pad and do it all over again. We begin with the Manned Spacecraft Center at Houston, meet its executives, are introduced to astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins and speculate about their psychology; next move across country to Cape Kennedy to tour the installation and mingle with the midsummer festival of the launch; then return to Houston to follow the flight to and landing on the moon. The Eagle has landed.’ It was Armstrong’s voice, the quiet voice of the best boy in town, the one who pulls you drowning from the sea and walks off before you can offer a reward.”] (My mother knew the Armstrong boys when they lived in Upper Sandusky, Ohio. For at 8.9 seconds before lift-off, the motors of Apollo-Saturn leaped into ignition, and two horns of orange fire burst like genies from the base of the rocket. There are no discussion topics on this book yet. An important possibility for Aquarius is that there may be a psychology of machines—a thought no more acceptable to Wernher von Braun than to Theoodore Roszak. It is evident that he was not enjoying himself writing this. Though parts provided insight, the majority was Norman Mailer chewing too long on the flavorless 1960s bubblegum of his brain. Welcome back. What's really interesting with this book is that it is basically two different ideas mashed together; one, a gorgeous pictorial look at the journey of APOLLO 11 and all the amazing, brilliant technology that helped humanity reach the moon; and the second, a selection of text from Norman Mailer's OF A FIRE ON THE MOON, which is a reflective, searing, psychological study of why we went there and what it meant (for America in particular). You will receive a link to create a new password via email. Oh yeah, and there was that huge week in July 1969 when humanity witnessed the greatest spectacle since the birth of Christ and was therein launched into trajectories that changed everything forever. LIFE hired writer Norman Mailer to cover the Apollo 11 Moon shot; his three-part feature was the longest non-fiction piece ever published by the magazine. In between is an ambitious, scary, daring, edge-of-bombastic, utterly unexpected and urgent blast of prose that taught me more about the moon launch and that year and those times than any book I've read before. One may imagine that part of the challenge was the fact that the landing of the first men on the moon might appear on the one hand to be too easy a subject—too well established in the public mind as a history-making event and therefore likely to be quickly relegated to history—and on the other hand too protected against searching examination by public rhetoric. Clay befriends Peril, the queen's champion. Of a Fire on the Moon. About Of a Fire on the Moon. An incredible philosophical, technological, prescient, autobiographical romp. I sometimes wonder if my generation will ever have anything to equal the universal heights of the Moon landings. This much, however, is clear: machines often do act as if they had a psychology; to represent them as so acting is not only to rebuke the Pelagian hubris of technologists but to use a poet’s tactic to underline the irreducible mystery of reality; to suspect them of a psychology (Aquarius’s cunning pathetic fallacy?) There were some genuinely incredible passages here, that kind of impassioned logorrhea that I associate with guys like Philip Roth or John Updike when they wax grandiose about American life. Can We Remain Calm About Cops, Iran, and Variants. "Of a Fire on the Moon" is book by a flamboyant author about NASA. His account was published as a book called Of a Fire on the Moon in 1970. And now their most threatening enemy yet - the chaos snake Apophis- is risi… To put it this way may be to suggest that here again we have what Alfred Kazin has called “the charged-up consciousness of self that has become an insistent fact in our writing.” Certainly the standard autobiographical credentials of this consciousness are in Of a Fire on the Moon: for the author it has, been a bad decade, bracketed between the stabbing of his second wife and the failure to get decently off the launching pad in his effort to become mayor of New York City; he is in debt from his excursions into movie-making; he is not happy to be overpraised as a journalist at the expense of being undervalued as a novelist; his fourth marriage is collapsing; he is forty-six and gaining weight. What's really interesting with this book is that it is basically two different ideas mashed together; one, a gorgeous pictorial look at the journey of APOLLO 11 and all the amazing, brilliant technology that helped humanity reach the moon; and the second, a selection of text from Norman Mailer's OF A FIRE ON THE MOON, which is a reflective, searing, psychological study of why we went there and what it me. It took reading this book for me to realize, to truly *grok* what an incredible achievement getting to, landing on, walking on, and returning from the moon really was. A classic chronicle of America’s reach for greatness in the midst of the Cold War, Of a Fire on the Moon compiles the reportage Mailer published between 1969 and 1970 in Life magazine: gripping firsthand dispatches from inside NASA’s clandestine operations in Houston and Cape Kennedy; technical insights into the magnitude of their awe-inspiring feat; and prescient meditations that place the event in human … Like many other reviewers here, I'd never read Mailer before, though knew of his reputation. Hot red fire and the cold "pale-faced moon" are never supposed to mix, so … 1 Synopsis 2 Full Recap 3 Soundtrack 4 Gallery 5 Video 6 Episodes List Scott McCall is bitten by a werewolf during a search for a missing body and gains special powers. Part historical account, part survey of the zeitgeist, part early Apollo myth-making, Mailer's "Of a Fire on the Moon" is presented here in a glossy, chunky edition full of crisp historical photographs that pair well with Mailer's contemplative, wide-ranging prose. I only went through with it because I am prone to self-loathing and morbid curiosity. At any rate, there is little in the book to support this unspectacular though not especially happy alternative; indeed, to have entertained it seriously might have been harmful to the book, the temper of which could hardly endure such a banal possibility. Beacon County Sheriffs’ patrol cars pull in to the Beacon Hills’ Preserve. $7.95. Both assume that the true gestalt of an event is available only to the charged-up romantic imagination acting as co-creator of reality in a universe adapted more to the metaphor than the computer. I’m really glad I picked up this book. Some thoughts upon rereading Norman Mailer’s, Of a Fire on the Moon. In Night of Fire, the passions and obsessions in a dying house loom and shift, from those of the hallucinating drug addict in the basement to the landlord training his rooftop telescope on the night skies. … Lost your password? Only when a nation means something to itself can it mean something to others…”], [ [Mailer: “In NASA-land, the only thing open was the technology—the participants were so overcome by the magnitude of their venture they seemed to consider personal motivation as somewhat obscene.”], [ [“’Houston, Tranquility Base here. Like wading through sticky mud.Overegged in nearly every paragraph.Rarely engaged me even though the subject matter is one of my interests. I'm really upended by it. The result in Moby Dick is that cetology (zoology of whales) so likely to bore readers who are unable to be at home in Ishmael’s world. Never have I ever sighed with relief that the book is finally over before this. Yes,he had come to believe by the end of this long summer that probably we had to explore into outer space ,for technology had penetrated the modern mind to such depth that voyages in space might have become the last way to discover the metaphysical pits of that world of technique which choked the pores of modern consciousness--yes,we might have to go out into space until the mystery of new discovery would force us to regard the world, Notes on reading Norman Mailer's , " Of a Fire on the Moon." That piece, enhanced and extended, became “Of a Fire on the Moon,” in which Mailer examined both the science of space travel and the psychology of those involved. Wolf Moon (listed as Pilot in some sources) is the first episode and series premiere of Teen Wolf. Written within a year or so of the mission, the book reads like an extended Atlantic article. Unless we insist on such giant-size formulations, as if no other kind were worthy of us, why may not the Space Program be imagined as producing the usual mixed bag, failing no less to satisfy the hopes of Pelagian technologists than the fears of Manichean novelists? The recurring and structural question is “whether the Space Program was the noblest expression of the Twentieth Century or the quintessential statement of our fundamental insanity.” At the end he is no closer to an answer than he was at the beginning; he has simply dramatized the question in all its urgency and in the richest context he could manage. Part Two goes back to the beginning again for an exhaustive, 272 page long, almost moment-by-moment summary of the mission itself: a mixture of reportage, engineering and philosophy. Therefore “jokes at the expense of Nixon usually bored him” as did those liberals “who thought politics was equal to loathing Nixon.” Perhaps one should see a combination of honesty and craft here: the moonshot viewed from the perspective of any piety, liberal or anti-technological, may not only be predictably dull but so partial as to result in dishonest reporting. Mailer's account of Apollo 11 begins with the death of Ernest Hemingway. I couldn't make heads or tails of it, nor could I see why I belonged in a book about the Apollo 11 mission. Invoking the 80 page rule. This is much more than sheer reportage, it's rumination, philosophy, history, egomania, and stylistic pyrotechnics. Clearly he was self-aware enough, so he decided to go meta, and make the book just about that - the alienness of NASA and spaceflight. At the same time, he has accepted the implied challenge of the Space Program, and by bringing off a superior moonshot has demonstrated a way to survive in the presence of apparently irresistible power.
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