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The Naked and the Dead
Escrito por Norman Mailer
Narrado por John Buffalo Mailer
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Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War, The Naked and the Dead received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its publication and has since become part of the American canon. This fiftieth anniversary edition features a new introduction created especially for the occasion by Norman Mailer.
Written in gritty, journalistic detail, the story follows an army platoon of foot soldiers who are fighting for the possession of the Japanese-held island of Anopopei. Composed in 1948, The Naked and the Dead is representative of the best in twentieth-century American writing.
Acciones del libro
Comenzar a escucharInformación sobre el libro
The Naked and the Dead
Escrito por Norman Mailer
Narrado por John Buffalo Mailer
Descripción
Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War, The Naked and the Dead received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its publication and has since become part of the American canon. This fiftieth anniversary edition features a new introduction created especially for the occasion by Norman Mailer.
Written in gritty, journalistic detail, the story follows an army platoon of foot soldiers who are fighting for the possession of the Japanese-held island of Anopopei. Composed in 1948, The Naked and the Dead is representative of the best in twentieth-century American writing.
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This is a very good book in my opinion detailing the life of soldiers during the fictional capture of the Japanese island Anopopei.At ~700 pages it is a long read by today's standards but its worth it. If you like WW2 novels this is a must-have.Norman Mailer was a WW2 soldier and thus this account of the feelings, and thoughts of the soldiers, the portrayal of the general's selfish revenge against a subordinate come as close to the real thing as possible.
Perhaps the most lasting and powerful novel to have arisen from WWII, [The Naked and the Dead] is worth reading. Its innovative structure makes for a striking impact that will jar any reader; I'm not sure anyone could read this book and feel unaffected. While the numerous characters all introduced in the beginning make for a slow start, the book is always engaging and readable; and, once one grows accustomed to the structure and the many characters, the book is also impossible to put down (however your wrists might ache from holding it up!) As a war novel, it does have scenes involving heavily graphic material, but Mailer never overdoes it, and what's there is necessary. If you can take a realistic war novel, that does its best to combine various voices into a canvas of material as true to the war as it is to itself, you'd do well to pick this one up. Highly highly recommended.
I love this novel. It is like no other war novel I've read. But if you're looking for an action-packed, blood-and-guts war novel, this isn't it. It's a psychological novel about war's impact on the human mind. Mailer creates a group of memorable American soldiers fighting the Japanese on the mythical Pacific Island of Anopopei. He does an excellent job of bringing the reader inside these soldiers' heads as they land on the beach of this distant island and face combat, many of them for the first time. You hear one soldier's thoughts as he panics and leaves his fox hole only to be dead the next minute. You live through another soldier's agony of learning his wife had died a world away. Mailer's grasp of human emotion and how human minds (at least mine) work is amazing.
Near the end of this book Sgt. Brown says that part of war is "finding out things about yourself that, by God, it don't pay to know."
The key to this book is viewing it as an examination of man's warring impulses. The General, Lt. Hearn and each man in the platoon fight an internal war, between what he believes he is and what he really is.
The plot concerns a campaign to control the South Pacific island of Anopopei, but the plot, like Mount Anaka, is the tip of the psychological iceberg.
The island itself can be seen as the mind of one man, and the soldiers as the ideas, and ideals, that inhabit it. Goldstein and Ridges embody the superego, or the Judeo-Christian values that we give lip service to. Croft embodies the bloodthirsty id, the male urge to explore and conquer. Wilson is the libido. The General and Hearn are the intellect, carrying on a philosophical war between ideas of liberalism and fascism.
In the end, no one facet predominates. The Army, like the mind itself, behaves as it does as a result of these warring impulses, urges, and ideas. The conclusion is that man is very much an animal, despite his ability to analyze and scheme.
The key to this book is viewing it as an examination of man's warring impulses. The General, Lt. Hearn and each man in the platoon fight an internal war, between what he believes he is and what he really is.
The plot concerns a campaign to control the South Pacific island of Anopopei, but the plot, like Mount Anaka, is the tip of the psychological iceberg.
The island itself can be seen as the mind of one man, and the soldiers as the ideas, and ideals, that inhabit it. Goldstein and Ridges embody the superego, or the Judeo-Christian values that we give lip service to. Croft embodies the bloodthirsty id, the male urge to explore and conquer. Wilson is the libido. The General and Hearn are the intellect, carrying on a philosophical war between ideas of liberalism and fascism.
In the end, no one facet predominates. The Army, like the mind itself, behaves as it does as a result of these warring impulses, urges, and ideas. The conclusion is that man is very much an animal, despite his ability to analyze and scheme.
Slow read until the first battle. Extremely intelligent writing (word choice, arrangement, plot). The back stories for the soldiers were very well crafted, defining each and aiding the understanding of individual motivations.
I've read this book for 'The Banned Books' week. I'm glad that I've chosen this one. I'm very impressed and it crept beneath the skin. The characters are thoroughly described and I got quickly familiar with each of them. It's written so lively that I've got the feeling sitting directly among them. All the protagonists are representatives for the population in their personality, thinking, belief, fear, bitchiness and hope. As a reader I've got strongly positives as well as negatives feelings for them. I started to support efforts for the weak ones and hated the unjustness of the evil ones.I've no idea, why this book was once banned. Perhaps it's the language. In my opinion the language fits perfectly. In war time there can't be a milk and honey language, but a rough and brutal language seems to be more appropriate.I can strongly recommend it. a German literary critic (Marcel Reich-Ranicki) said:I'm not sure if many books about WWII will stay, but for 'The Naked And The Dead' it will be for sure.
The Naked and the Dead slowly grew on me. At first, I was a little confused by the myriad of characters, failed to get into the plot, and continued to put it down. Once I gave it a long, continuous reading time, and, admittedly, as more of the flashback sections were developed, I was hooked. For me, The Naked and the Dead was more about character than about war. It was the story of ordinary men being put in an extraordinary and physically demanding situations. Some rose to the occasion specatularly and unexpectedly, learning of their inner strength and talents stunted by societal expectations. Others, understandably, dreamt only of returning to the normalacy of home. Mailer also tells the story of stangers from hugely varying backgrounds (a mix only a country like America could provide) coming together to find some equilibrium of forced tolerance. Fuggin' long an' fuggin good.
Classic WW II novel. A must read and, IMHO, the best Mailer ever wrote.
Talk about the futility of war! This is a classic war novel, published just 3 years post the end of WW II. We learn the individual strengths and flaws of each man in the platoon and how battle affects him. Mailer was required to tone down the language when it was first published so he uses "creative" spelling ... but we know what he meant to write.
If you read my reviews you know I focus on how the book made me feel; how entertained I was. Well, there was certainly nothing entertaining about this, therefore I must review this book based on the writing (outstanding and before he was 25) and the importance of the work. I have read a lot of WWII fiction, and this truly stands out among them all, first for its focus on the Pacific theater, which I have read the least about, and as well for its focus on the inner lives of the soldiers and what seems to me to be very realistic accounts of the day to day life during a campaign. At times it reminded me of All Quiet on the Western Front. I know, different war, wrong side, but still...something about it....The "Time Machine" sections where Mailer went back and shared a vignette from each of the main characters lives supported who they were as soldiers, but man, they were depressing too. My impressions as I read it were, "Wow this is so negative," then, "Geez these guys are such misogynists," then finally, "Nope, they are full on misanthropes." Another reviewer commented that the book was as much about class and the Army as it was about the war, and that was quite true. Ultimately though, there was very little likeable about any of these characters, and there were certainly enough of them. Was this really what Mailer himself experienced? I could try to tell myself that this is what war makes a man, but the back stories were too on point with how they presented on the island. And then I had the worst thought. These soldiers were the fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers of my family, my friends, and half the country walking around today. And well, they were just nasty. It won't be immediately, but I have decided I have to read something else to balance out this feeling. I think it will be The Greatest Generation. Hopefully it will restore my faith in our heroes....
I read this a long time ago. I think I was just a bit too young to understand how much guts it took for Mailer to criticize the army in the way that he did. The use of "fug" to avoid controversy gives you a sense of how uptight the culture was back then. I think as hip as Mailer wanted to be (and he was hip to a lot) he still wanted to be high-brow back when there was a culture war between the high, low and middle brows. If you haven't noticed, the low-brows have won the popularity contest, the high brows have their elite niches, and the middle brows are dispossessed.
The best novel about the War in the Pacific ever written.
I don't know. I always heard that this was the best war novel ever written, and while it's certainly not the worst, I'm really not impressed and feel that are quite a few more that are simply better (Cornelius Ryan comes to mind, among others). So while I'm not saying Don't bother, if you're into this genre, sure, do it, but don't buy into the hype that this is the best because it absolutely is not. Cautiously recommended.
It seemed to him now that he was very near a fundamental understanding of himself, and he felt a sense of mystery and discovery as if he had found unseen gulfs and bridges in all the familiar drab terrain of his life. “You know,” he said, “life is funny.”
I often loved this account of anxiety and failure, though I remain certain that Mailer robbed Hemingway -- particularly -- For Whom The Bell Tolls. The jungle affords reflection on sexual incongruity and soured ambition. The Japanese don't appear for most of the book, obviously absorbed in their own angst and ennui.
I often loved this account of anxiety and failure, though I remain certain that Mailer robbed Hemingway -- particularly -- For Whom The Bell Tolls. The jungle affords reflection on sexual incongruity and soured ambition. The Japanese don't appear for most of the book, obviously absorbed in their own angst and ennui.
A great read! This was thoroughly exciting and meaningful throughout the entire work. I recommend it to people who are interested in Mailer's oeuvre and for those interested in war fiction, literary fiction and debut novels.Very well done!
A great book by a great ass. It tells the story of an invasion of an island in the South Pacific during WWII, and is full of the mud, sweat and anxiety experienced by the troops. The island is described expertly, and there is even a map. The main character is a subordinate to the general, and their relationship is one of the highlights of this book. Reading it, I couldn't help thinking of the main character as Tony Soprano, the Sopranos being all the rage at the time of my reading. The invasion and battle scenes are laid out in great detail, and the whole thing is truly a work of art. By an ass, true, but what are you gonna do? It's a great book not to be missed by any male of the species.
Don’t ask me what I was thinking, but I could have sworn “The Naked and the Dead” was a noir detective novel. Whoops. Wrong. I open up the pages and find myself on a Pacific Island in the middle of the war with Japan. So, I think to myself, here comes the war novel – hang on for the battle. Nope, wrong again.Instead, what I found was a story about tedium and boredom interspersed with rare moments of panic. Real war. Eventually, the story turns and becomes one of men sent on a senseless recon. In other words, an anti-war novel. It does its job well.A few battles stories are told, and there is the story of men responding to unquestioned authority. But this is not a story that focuses on those aspects. Rather, it focuses on the stories that are the men that populate this tale; men – most of them not particularly nice – thrown together by a cataclysmic event. And, as such, the book is a reminder that heroic war stories are much more fiction than we want to admit. The story of a band of brothers who bond is turned on its ear in this book. Instead, the men pull together, but only when they really have to. And there is no love lost, only the false camaraderie that comes from experiencing hell and stupidity together. They work together, they survive together, they buddy together, but they still do not like each otherAt times, the tedium of the book becomes wearying and, while the characters are vividly drawn (the flashbacks to their previous lives are quite effective), it was still possible to occasionally mix up some of the bigger dolts. The anti-war aspects are well drawn and the message is delivered in the proper amounts, but there is something (maybe it is just too real) that makes me unsure whether I really like this book or not.
This was a mesmerizing look at Army life in WWII. Mailer tells the story of an Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon on a fictional Pacific Island. There are fewer battle scenes than I expected. Most of the story is about the men on daily patrols, guard duty, and a week long patrol behind enemy lines. It was the descriptions of what it was like to hike for days and days in the jungle carrying 60 pounds of equipment that got to me. What those men went through!Mailer personalizes the characters by interposing flashbacks highlighting the pre-war lives of several of the man. He also switches the point of view among the various characters. Still, the characters are never fully developed, which, to me, made the story more realistic. The reader gets impressionistic views of each man in the troop, just as they had of each other. These men were all thrown together to serve under horrible conditions, but they had nothing in common to start with and really did not know each other. All in all, a great book. It is long, but it is a fast read. In Mailer’s introduction to the 50th Anniversary edition he self-deprecatingly explains that the book (his first) was a best seller and was written in the flashy language of all best sellers. But it is not the language that makes the book so good, it is the story.
I don’t know what took me so long, but I finally got around to reading Norman Mailer’s highly acclaimed World War II novel, the Naked and the Dead. Having read a number of World War II novels and seen quite a few movies and mini-series (most recently HBO’s The Pacific), this story can come across as old and clichéd, but it must be remembered that this is the original.Every World War II story that focuses on the front line foot soldier has its crusty, battle hardened sergeant, its southern redneck, its cerebral Jewish private who must endure the blatant and constant anti-Semitism. Most include a callow Lieutenant who must be nurse maided by his experienced NCOs and clueless upper brass who mindlessly feed front line troops into the meat grinder. At least this novel is somewhat different in that regard.However, clichés and stereotypes develop for a reason. World War II platoons DID feature a broad cross section of American soldiers; southern, Jewish, racist, intellectual, stupid, brave, cowardly. Most units probably included a battle hardened First Sergeant (if they were lucky). And again, this was the first. At the time it was published, it was almost certainly ground breaking in its portrayal of the Pacific theater of the war. If I had one complaint, it was that virtually every single character in the entire book was unlikeable. It’s hard to believe that Mailer couldn’t find a single character to imbue with positive personality traits that weren’t overwhelmingly swamped with negatives.The writing is very descriptive, sometimes excessively so. I never thought an author could write 100 pages of prose describing how tired soldiers could be. Long periods pass with little or no action and there is really no “payoff” in the end. Nevertheless, as a historically significant work, the importance of the novel cannot be over stressed. As a current day reading experience, however, it suffers from having been done over and over and over again.