GEORGE STADE
621
and which advertized itself as "non-political, non-educational, non–
progressive, non-cooperative, non-ethical, non-literary, non–
consistent, non-contemporary."
Norman is nervously attentive to everything around him. His
alertness is that of a predator's compounded by its prey's, both
ferocious and fearful. Every person or event he encounters offers the
possibility of stiffening or softening him, of shrinking or enlarging
him, of being bettered or worsened by him. His world is full of
promises and threats, of challenges, of cautionary tales, of inspiriting
models, of reflections of taints in himself ripe for purging, of hearts of
health or strength he must screw up his nerve to ingest. Norman is
changed by history; the late sixties chastened him. But Henry is infra–
and supra-historical. He embraces himself where energy becomes
transcendent, where Blake's resurrected Adam plays with himself in the
Edenic Land of Fuck. Norman's ego is brawny and resilient; he leads
with it as with a chin, maybe ("that equivalent of a phallus, that ghost–
phallus of the mentality, firm strong-tongued ego"). It has been tried
by combat, knocked into shape by encounters with what it is not.
"There is no psychological reality like a man 's idea of himself," says
Norman, not entirely with regret. As for Henry-once again, Norman
says it well: "What is in his mind is more real to him than himself, and
vastly more real than any of the people who come and go in his life."
But the reality of people who come into Norman's life is complemen–
tary to his own. Neither exists without the other. The relation is one of
symbiosis. Even his God is dependent upon Norman for His health.
Henry 's God, however, is the Imperial Self (the phrase is Quentin
Anderson 's) of Emerson and Whitman brought up
to
date. The
relation is one of identity, which is the negation of relation. Between
two things that are identical there are no dialectics. Therefore although
Henry 's prose is serial, it does not progress.
It
encounters nothing that
might bounce it off the path of its return. Norman, on the other hand,
has been struggling toward a style that might state thesis, antithesis,
synthesis, and its negation all at once. "Mailer's style changed for
every project," says Norman in
Armies of the Night,
but since that
book all the styles have worked toward bringing Mailer, Norman, and
his roles closer together. Norman's uniforms are all his own. But Miller
and Henry remain the same distance apart, like two men at opposite
ends of a rope in a tug of war. Henry's style never trips on itself; his
balance is perfect because beyond the reach of gravity; he is as light on
his feet as an acrobat in outer space. Norman falters; it is the style of his
style
to
take giant false steps under the weight of his self-consciousness.
A man with an Imperial Self is one who wants to generalize his
