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"New journalism" is old hat now

If you've heard that the highlight of 1967 was the Summer of Love, check out The Armies
of the Night to discover that summer was followed by the Autumn of Confrontation. At least in the United States. The growing protest against the Vietnam War was joining with the "Make Love Not War" counterculture and swelling into a movement that would soon engulf all America and much the rest of the western world. In October 1967 a massive demonstration marched on the Pentagon in Washington. Norman Mailer was there and was arrested, and wrote this very subjective account of his experience.

The book is subtitled somewhat pretentiously History as a Novel, The Novel as History, signalling this is a new art form. Or just another example of the "New Journalism" of the day giving itself airs. 

When you read this work today, it seems quite dated. To wit, Mailer's observation of how the New Left (everything was "new" then, it seems) took its esthetic from revolutionary Cuba. His descriptions of forgotten literary and political figures involved in the protests. Even Mailer's kaleidoscopic collision of insights into the war machine, the tactics of protest and the psyche of America seem somewhat overheated and naive now. But others were impressed at the time, as the book won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in 1968.

Armies of the Night really is two accounts of the same event — one subjective as narrated by a participant and one more objective, based on third-party reports.

But if this is a "novel" it does have one intriguing central character, namely Mailer. As usual, the author places himself front and centre. We keep reading, especially the subjective first half, because we enjoy seeing everything from his eyes. We even enjoy the side trips into Mailer's own peccadilloes that have little to do with the protest movement he is supposedly reporting on. Critics may complain the writer is verbose and self-obsessed, but it is this main character with his avalanche of observations who makes it work at all.

Many other books were published during that period, written by members of the "flower power" generation, but they are virtually unreadable today. As part of an older generation, who nevertheless sympathized with the cause, Mailer had both the objectivity and the passion to create one of the more interesting portraits of that time.

Whether Armies of the Night will endure as a work of art though is doubtful. Read it for a glimpse of the thinking of that time.

— Eric