Best fuggin' war story from the US

This was hailed by Time as the best novel about the Second World War. And for once, Time might have it right. If we add the qualifier "American" between "best" and "novel". 

I was surprised in reading it lately to find how well it holds up. In fact, I like it more now than I did when I first read it many years earlier. The first reading may have unfairly compared The Naked and the Dead to war stories by Hemingway, Remarque and others after the First World War. The title even sounds Hemingwayesque. But then one finds the prose is less sculpted than Hemingway's, scenes could be edited out (it's a very long book), and the tone is very different. The "lost generation" of the 1920s was cynical about their war experience but, particularly in the writing of Hemingway, they held to a personal code of honour. Mailer's soldiers however learn that no code is worth anything in the face of war. They end up hopeless individuals, trusting nothing.

The story takes place on a Pacific island during battles between the Americans and the Japanese. Death comes in split seconds and indiscriminately to both gentle and vicious characters. Under the horrific pressure the soldiers reminisce about their past lives and interact with each other brutally. They become woman-haters and Jew-baiters. There is little to affirm, nothing to uplift. It's all ugly and dirty — and compelling fiction. 

Written when Mailer was only 25, The Naked and the Dead remains his masterpiece. This is before he adopts his later strategy of throwing every odd thought about a thing on the page in hopes that something will sound profound or the sheer volume will overwhelm the reader. Yes, this novel could use some more editing. But it is one of his most disciplined, realistic and psychologically credible works as it is. 

By the way, don't blame Mailer for unrealistic dialogue when his characters complain about fuggin' this or fuggin' that. He was forced by the mores of the times to use that made-up term in place of the more expressive F-word.

— Eric

© Copyright 2002-2003 Eric McMillan. All rights reserved.