I’m reading The Naked and the Dead and I’m totally in love.
Mailer wrote when he was 23, which is kind of seismic when you start realize the psychological depth of the people, the situations you’re eavesdropping on. You start to feel like this ghost hovering around these bored, rundown soldiers kicking around sand on some hot, damp island off of Japan. And each character is made full in a couple of paragraphs of description or the brief memory of some seemingly dull and insignificant incident back home. Total grace, I swear.
Mailer wrote in the author intro that he drew on a lot of Tolstoy as he was writing it. The influence is pretty apparent as you read it.
Posted under Books
This post was written by Jackie Corley on July 20, 2007
