Word: mailer
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...PERHAPS the greatest of the novel's many ironies that every character, not just Tim, experiences the world as a hateful siege of contrary elements. And though Tim can see this in the other characters, the perception does not help him. Mailer conveys this best when Madden describes a sleazy friend and would-be rival of his in Provincetown...
...characters in the novel agree that it's okay to be poor or to be a pervert so as long as one is genuinely a reverse snob and can believe that being at the bottom of "the ladder" is just as good as being at the top. Of course, Mailer's characters cannot accept any such proposition for long: the inevitable resurgence of desire--for status, normalcy, wealth, or what-not-cancels the values of the day before...
...Mailer has produced a gripping and fully-realized depiction of the social tensions created by murder and larger conflicts. But the author has not ended anything; he has simply let his characters drop from exhaustion. Though the crimes are clarified, the real mystery of why his characters are unhappy--as opposed to how--is sketched and explored but never solved. Initially, one thinks this is because Mailer suffers from his own macho image: he does not want to wallow in moralizing. Perhaps this is the correct interpretation. But, following the theory of polarities. Mailer avoids the problem not only because...
TOUGH GUYS DON'T DANCE by Norman Mailer Random House; 229 pages...
...title seems to invite snappy responses. Oh yeah? Real Men Don't Eat Quiche, either, and Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid. But it takes Author Norman Mailer only a few pages to dispel any notion that he is dealing in parody, self-or otherwise. Tough Guys Don't Dance is, for openers, an engaging murder mystery, vividly set in a locale (Provincetown, Mass.) that Mailer, a sometime homeowner there, knows as well as the back of his fist. The book also raises questions besides whodunit. Among them: What, if anything, does being male or female mean...