Blogagaard is Reading The Naked and the Dead

Norman Mailer, who passed away this November, published his first novel The Naked and the Dead in 1948, when he was twenty-five. The novel was quite successful and is considered one of the best novels to come out of WWII. Mailer was a famous, published writer for 59 years of his life. Now that's a long haul.

From The Naked and the Dead:

Their first fear of being observed by enemy troops had ebbed in the physical demands, but a new and subtler terror began to obsess them. The land extended so far, was so completely silent, that they became acutely conscious of its unexplored weight, its somnolent brooding resistance. They remembered a rumor that natives had once lived in this portion of the island, and had died decades ago in a plague of scrub typhus, the survivors moving to another island. Until now they had never thought about the natives except to miss their labor, but in the vast buzzing silence of the sun and the hills the men forced themselves onward in a nervous spasms, halting and starting, their limbs quivering with exertion. Martinez led them at a cruel pace as if pursued. Even more than the others, he was awed by the thought of the men who had lived on this island and died. It seemed sacrilegious to him to move through this empty land disturbing the long untrampled earth.

3 comments:

Missy said...

Norman Mailer was on a couple episodes of The Gilmore Girls. What a great man.

David Oppegaard said...

I don't know about great, but he sure was horny. Six wives, tons of mistresses, nine kids (one adopted). He must have set some sort of child support record!

Missy said...

everyone on the Gilmore Girls was great!

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