When we look back to the 1960s there are many things that perplex us. Sure, we can trace much of the present back to those times. We are its outcome, in so many ways. But it perplexes us none the less.

Often, also, the Sixties get romanticized, simplified, unfairly pilloried or heralded. It's a big thing to try and understand. You could even say that there is no such thing as the Sixties. But we all know that there is.

For the moment, I ask only one relatively simple question. What impelled Norman Mailer to write Why Are We in Vietnam? And secondarily, why was it a nominee for the National Book Award in 1967?

Let it be said, as an aside, that Norman Mailer is a brilliant man and a great writer. He's written a handful of extraordinary novels and a bagful of wonderful essays. And he's a uniquely American voice whatever that means (but it does mean something). When people like Whitman and Melville and Twain and Hawthorne were forging in the smithies of our souls the uncreated conscience of our Americanness they were unknowingly cooking up a stew that would later spew forth dudes like Mailer.

And Mailer has lasted. He's really of the generation of our grandfathers. He fought in WWII, you see. That was where he started off. But the Sixties didn't leave him behind as they did so many others of that generation. He still has things to say, important things to say. He could still write to the present. Really.

Maybe that was part of the problem. Mailer let himself get into the Sixties Big Time. Admirable. Perhaps he succeeded. If so, 1967 was even more fucked up than any of us suspected. Why Are We in Vietnam begins thusly (with an intro entitled "INTRO BEEP 1":

Hip hole and hupmobile, braunschweiger, you didn't invite Geiger and his counter for nothing, here is D.J. the freindLee voice at your service--hold tight young America--introductions come. Let go of my dong, Shakespeare, I have gone too long, it is too late to tell my tale, may Batman tell it, let him declare there's blood on my dick and D.J. Dicktor Dick and Jek has got the bloods, and has done animal murder, out out damn fart, and murder of the soldierest sort, cold was my hand and hot.

The literary references are thick here, what with the Shakespeare latched onto his penis and the 'out out damn fart'. Still, I have no idea what he is writing about. The incoherence races forward for another 224 pages. It is fucking amazing. It may be one of the single most unreadable pieces of prose in a generation. For most of the novel a group of Texans try to kill a grisslybear, I think. But Eliot Fremont-Smith called it "The most original, courageous and provocative NOVEL so far this year" in the New York Times. I suppose he put NOVEL in all caps to distinguish it from the the other things called 'novels'.

The novel ends, mercifully if maliciously, with the following lines:

Rusty and Luke and the guides and boys and packers and medium assholes all got into the planes to go on back to Fairbanks and led the way into the new life right smack up here two later in my consciousness, D.J. here at this grope dinner in the Dallas ass manse, given in my honor, D.J., I thank you, because tomorrow Tex and me, we're off to see the wizard in Vietnam. Unless, that is, I'm a black cripple-ass Spade and sending from Harlem. You never know. You never know what vision has been humping you through the night. So, ass-head America contemplate your butt. Which D.J. white or black could possibly be worse of a genius if Harlem or Dallas is guiding the other, and who knows which? This is D.J., Disc Jockey to America turning off. Vietnam, hot dam.

So that's why we went to Vietnam. If nothing else it confirms something I've suspected for some time. In figuring out what the Sixties were all about we're on our own, those who lived through them are not much help.

- posted by morgan @ 9:37 AM