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A review by odin45mp
The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History by Norman Mailer
2.0
This book easily doubled my knowledge about Vietnam War protests here in the United States. My education even through college had at best a couple of pages on Vietnam, focused on the larger US-USSR conflict and the ideologies.
I knew about the Kent State shootings.
I know plenty about the war itself as viewed through Hollywood's eyes: Rambo II, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now.
Now I know about the march on the Pentagon.
Norman Mailer paints a good picture of the events through his somewhat fictionalized retelling in the first half of the book. The copy I read is shelved under Biography & Autobiography, but without knowing how many liberties he took in the first person recollection it is hard to say how "true" the telling of the event is. I struggled with parts of this as he would go down rabbit trails or jump through parts of the day.
Then we have a more documentary or history book straight journalism look at the events, all dry facts. I liked this better as it gave me a more clinical, less emotional view of the facts. I learned a lot about the negotiations behind the scenes leading up to large public demonstrations, and the politics of the disparate factions that were coming together to protest the war. In particular how the African-American group splintered off because they didn't want to be seen as too "violent" or "revolutionary" and wanted their revolutionary energies and arrests to count towards their own civil rights movement. I was chilled as I read the cold calculus on whether the protestors would be too violent and incite action or garner government sympathy, or if the police tasked with patrolling the event would respond in an unwarranted, violent fashion that would be impossible to predict or control - much how we saw police violence erupt again and again in 2020. It saddened me to see how little things have changed in a half century.
I'm glad I read it, but I am not sure I will read it again.
I knew about the Kent State shootings.
I know plenty about the war itself as viewed through Hollywood's eyes: Rambo II, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now.
Now I know about the march on the Pentagon.
Norman Mailer paints a good picture of the events through his somewhat fictionalized retelling in the first half of the book. The copy I read is shelved under Biography & Autobiography, but without knowing how many liberties he took in the first person recollection it is hard to say how "true" the telling of the event is. I struggled with parts of this as he would go down rabbit trails or jump through parts of the day.
Then we have a more documentary or history book straight journalism look at the events, all dry facts. I liked this better as it gave me a more clinical, less emotional view of the facts. I learned a lot about the negotiations behind the scenes leading up to large public demonstrations, and the politics of the disparate factions that were coming together to protest the war. In particular how the African-American group splintered off because they didn't want to be seen as too "violent" or "revolutionary" and wanted their revolutionary energies and arrests to count towards their own civil rights movement. I was chilled as I read the cold calculus on whether the protestors would be too violent and incite action or garner government sympathy, or if the police tasked with patrolling the event would respond in an unwarranted, violent fashion that would be impossible to predict or control - much how we saw police violence erupt again and again in 2020. It saddened me to see how little things have changed in a half century.
I'm glad I read it, but I am not sure I will read it again.