The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History

Written by Norman Mailer

Narrated by Scott Brick

The Armies of the Night chronicles the famed October 1967 March on the Pentagon, in which all of the old and new Left—hippies, yuppies, Weathermen, Quakers, Christians, feminists, and intellectuals—came together to protest the Vietnam War. Alongside his contemporaries, Mailer went, witnessed, participated, suffered, and then wrote one of the most stark and intelligent appraisals of the 1960s: its myths, heroes, and demons. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and a cornerstone of New Journalism, The Armies of the Night is not only a fascinating foray into that mysterious terrain between novel and history, fiction and nonfiction, but also a key chapter in the autobiography of Norman Mailer—who, in this nonfiction novel, becomes his own great character, letting history in all its complexity speak through him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Sep 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781522636878

Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer (1923-2007) ha sido uno de los mayores escritores norteamericanos contemporáneos, así como una figura central en el panorama cultural: novelista, periodista, director de cine, activista político, aspirante a alcalde de Nueva York y enfant terrible todoterreno. Su primera novela, Los desnudos y los muertos, sobre la Segunda Guerra Mundial, que lo catapultó a la fama, ha sido publicada por Anagrama, donde también han aparecido Los ejércitos de la noche (Premio Pulitzer y National Book Award), La Canción del Verdugo (Premio Pulitzer), Oswald. Un misterio americano, Los tipos duros no bailan, El parque de los ciervos, El Evangelio según el Hijo, El fantasma de Harlot, ¿Por qué estamos en guerra?, América y El castillo en el bosque.

[dbsovereign · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Gives one writer's perspective on the Vietnam War and how it tore our country apart. Provides details of several anti-war protests that Mailer attended.

[Lucasderac22 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The march on the Pentagon in 1967 was one of the most vocal civic resistances in the United States against the Vietnam War. This event, which Norman Mailer witnessed, serves as the raw material for this narrative (non-fiction novel) in which Mailer proclaims himself the protagonist.
Written in the third person but also offering perhaps his most honest thoughts, Mailer chronicles the events from the days leading up to the march in Washington DC to the days of detention.
Alongside the event, through his protagonist and the voices that help color the book, Mailer provides one of the most interesting strokes: the use of metanarrative and how he constructed this narrative related to history, journalism, and novel literature.
Towards the end, Mailer explores a response regarding the boundary between writing history and writing a novel ("History as Novel and Novel as History," the author writes), in which he proposes that when events become truly spiritual, psychological, or even metaphysical, the most natural tools of a fiction novelist serve the writer to give the absolute environment to real history.
In summary, a valid non-fiction novel to explore the U.S. anti-war movement during Vietnam and also another testament to American writers who position themselves as protagonists of history. (Translated from Spanish)

[steve_walker-348810 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed the book. Mailer? A walking, talking Ego that dominated the literary scene in America for far too long.

[amellia_fiske · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This book to me had a lot of potential, but I just could not get into it. It was very dry. History doesn't have to be dry and yet this book was like the Sahara Desert to me.

[heggiep · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

50 years later, knowing what we know now, it loses much of its currency. Still a good read.