24
RICHARD POIRIER
of the hunt in Alaska which
is
called a "purification ceremony" for
the
boys.
In a book so pointedly evasive about assigning responsibility for
its voices, its shifts and modulations, it is all the more curious that
the section in which
this
"rite" occurs gives evidence of a more
total engagement of Mailer's genius than can be found in any other
of his works except for
The Armies of the Night,
written in the next
year. The section, from Chap 8 to the end, making up nearly
half the book, covers some of the Alaskan safari organized by Rusty
Jethroe for the Medium Assholes, as D.J. calls them, of his corpora–
tion - Rusty himself being a High Asshole - D.J., Tex and the guide
Big Luke Fellinka, and it includes all the episodes in which the boys
separate themselves from the other hunters, leave their weapons
be–
hind and head north into the icy peaks of the Brooks Range. Their
quite conscious ambition is to "get the fear, shit, disgust and mixed
shit tapeworm out of fucked up guts and overcharged nerves" and
to cleanse themselves of the "specific mix of mixed old shit" repre–
sented by the talk and the tactics of their companions. These latter,
though overarmed and assisted by a helicopter in their search for
bear, still have to lie about their credit for the kill, as does D.J.'s
father at the expense of his son. They are, as Tony Tanner points
out in
The House of Words,
which includes one of the best essays
written about Mailer, going "as far into the northern snow as they
can, not to kill but to open themselves up to the mystery and dread
of this geographical extreme." Tanner connects this not only to
Rojack's position on the parapet but to Mailer's position as a writer
who tries "to keep an equilibrium on the 'dangerous edge of things'
through the resources of his own style."
This
is of course a position not unfamiliar to American writers,
and especially to Melville. There are Melvillian touches from the
beginning of his work, as in the notation that Lt. Heam in
The
Naked and the Dead
wrote his college honors thesis on Melville;
he is an appropriately felt presence throughout Mailer's accounts
of the voyage to the moon; and the character of Rojack has interest–
ing similarities to Ahab. Both men are convinced of the presence of
what Ahab calls "malicious agencies," both have been mutilated by
them, both are demonic and opposed to demons, both make use of
the mechanisms of capitalistic culture in an effort to reach a reality
