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IRVING HOWE
a therapeutic vision of desire and an ethic of what might
be
called
a permanent revolution of the senses-it is a conflict between the
Mailer who thinks of sexuality as a mode of health or reconciliation
to the self and the Mailer who thinks of it as a strategy for social
renewal.
Still more recently, Mailer seems to have turned toward a gen–
eralized quest for new sources of energy, new sources of motion and
rebellion, in which sexuality
is
in danger of becoming a mere meta–
phor. At one point he suggests that for man to restore
his
self and
reaffirm his potency would mean to recreate the vital image of
God, since God cannot be God until man becomes man. God be–
comes the name of his desperation.
This mixture of Lawrence, Emerson, Reich and some Marx
carries the further implication that the achievement of sexual well–
being or even a proximate version of it would have revolutionary
social consequences, though I think that here Mailer's argument
staggers a little. For he never succeeds in showing why the transfer
of energy need take place from sexuality to sociality, other than
remarking, almost as if he had lapsed into ethical culture, that
"in
widening the area of the possible, one widens it reciprocally for
others as well." Mailer seems to be falling back upon a curious
analogue to Adam Smith's invisible hand, by means of which
in–
numerable units in conflict with each other achieve a resultant of
harmony and cooperation.
In any case, one can see here again Mailer's hunger for new
possibilities and modes of transcendence, even if they break forth
in claustrophobic sexual images- a kind of transcendence from be–
low, with the orgasm replacing union with the godhead, and man
finding the kingdom of heaven in the darkness of night, borne
aloft on the thrust of a resurrected phallus.
"The White Negro" is a remarkable display of dialectical
prowess and phenomenological searchings into a new style of life;
yet one may be forgiven for wondering whether the phenomenon
itself is really there. The hipster, does he exist? Do living specimens,
bearing the psychopathic grandeur with which Mailer invests them,
actually walk the streets of our cities? Beatniks, beards, other sorry
little chaps; but Mailer's brand of hipsters?
