Word: sergius
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...conquerors and who the conquered. When Rome celebrated the 1,000th anniversary of her founding in A.D. 248, the Roman Emperor was Syrian-born Philip the Arab. As the incubator of Christianity-Paul was converted on the road to Damascus-Syria gave Rome five Popes: John V, St. Sergius, Sisinnius, Constantine and St. Gregory...
...book itself deals principally with the sex lives of two couples--film director Charles Francis Eitel and his bed-mate Elena Esposito; and movie star Lulu Meyers and her lover Sergius O'Shaugnessy, the narrator of the book. But interwoven into the story are Marion Faye--a pimp at 21; a homosexual movie actor; and a number of other perverted characters. In Mailer's moral code, however, these latter characters are destroyed, for only those who can find companions of the opposite sex are favored by the author...
...idealism--only a desire to be free--and to be free, one must be able to choose whom he wants to sleep with. Thus Eitel in the end ultimately fails because he has married Elena out of pity and is forced to spend his nights with her. Sergius, on the other hand, escapes from Desert D'Or to find his freedom--and new mistresses--in Mexico...
Peering like a wrestling referee among the writhing limbs of this melee, the reader can detect one hero: a blond, blue-eyed orphan with a medical discharge from the Air Force, named Sergius O'Shaugnessy. Dropping napalm on Korean villages has upset him deeply (he has, in fact, become temporarily impotent), so naturally he Wants to Write. His methods are interesting. He takes a $14,000 stake to a desert gambling resort called Desert D'Or, 200 miles from Hollywood-a suburb in the literary country of tough-guy nihilism mapped by James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett...