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Miami and Siege of Chicago, Norman Mailer, New York Review of Books, July 2008
Reviewed by Mike Peters

As the US political convention season for 2008 approaches, it is not surprising if minds return to another season exactly thirty years ago – to Miami for the Republicans and to Chicago for the Democrats. With the re-publication in July of recently deceased Norman Mailer`s distinctive brand of fictionalised journalism, we are taken into the dark heart of American politics. Anyone who came into youthful political awareness during the mid and late 60s will recall the unique blend of despair and optimism that was a feature of the times. Scarred by deep divisions over the Vietnam War and over race, haunted by the recent assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, who seemed to offer an alternative to the dominant militaristic and materialistic ethos of the period, there was, nevertheless, a conviction that protest could bring change – a conviction that remains alive amongst certain groups and people today.

The America of 2008 is certainly a very different country to the America of 1968 – different in spite of some uncanny parallels between two unpopular conflicts – one in the Far, and the other, in the Middle East. Yet Mailer`s highly personal and powerfully graphic re-creation and dissection of political ambition, rivalry and rhetoric still resonates, reviving distant memories for the baby-boom generation of times long ago. Within the `leaden sweat` of Florida`s humid air, which `entered the lungs like a hand slipping into a rubber glove`, Mailer gives us a sickly-sweet taste of American power - presenting with visceral sharpness an ungainly parade of politicians, party professionals and delegates.

Rockefeller, for example, has an `honest voice... a near-perfect voice for a campaigner; it was just a question of whether it was entirely his own`. First then there is Mailer`s wise-eyed observation and then the punch-line. Nixon, whose reputation has never recovered from Watergate, is also a major character in the book. Yet in 1968 he seems a reformed character, possessing a new modesty and trying to do justice to the complexity of the political issues that he address. We wonder for a moment if we`ve got it wrong about tricky Dicky or that Mailer is going soft. However, then the Reporter`s eye homes in on the smile as he `flashed his teeth in a painful kind of joyous grimace which spoke of some shrinkage in the liver, or the gut, which he would have to repair afterward by other medicine than good fellowship. (By winning the Presidency, perhaps)`. So we move from the political to the physical in one short sentence - from the face of power to its rotting entrails.

American Party conventions are also, of course, about the delegates and supporters, who crowd the hotels and convention floor. Whilst Reagan attracts the `corporate and social power of America` to his reception, those who attend Nixon`s equivalent event are less wealthy – more small-town than big city. Composed of shop-owners, lawyers and minor executives, they form an orderly line so that each one can shake their `adored` leader`s hand personally – so that `they can feel the moves of his hands upon them`. Bewildered by the events of the previous four years, these `Wasps were now a chastened crew`, with a more `modest` - a favourite Mailer word - sense of their own and of America`s power. This is politics as a form of religion and Nixon wins because he is able to recognise and manage middle America`s need for a saviour to `cleanse the gangrenous wounds` of a great country. Possibly, there are anticipations here of what Obama represents in the USA of 2008, for what Mailer grasps, in a way that few political analysts do, is the mythic and spiritual dimension of politics, particularly at key moments of transition and democratic choice.

In Chicago, however, characterised by the bloody carnage of its slaughterhouses, there is little evidence of the spiritual. Power is here represented by the police-force and National Guard, seeking to confront and control the demonstrations and marches on the city`s streets and the hysteria provoked by the assassinations and riots of previous weeks. What goes on in the Convention hall seems peripheral. Only Lyndon Johnson and Mayor Daley, `his arm`, possess real force. The former may have remained in Washington but his presence at the Convention is `felt more as a brain the size of a dirigible floating above the delegates in the smoke-filled air`- an image that is both sinister and strangely comforting at the same time. And the notorious latter figure, `has the very face of Chicago... with nostrils open wide to the stench and power`. It is they who direct the real battle for America and give the Democratic Party the bad name, from which it hasn`t entirely escaped.

Mailer certainly records some of the vicious details of this battle but his main interest is arguably less in what`s happening on the streets than in what is happening in his own head. We move from highly personal reportage to what seems a highly personal form of psychoanalytic confession - a self-reflective examination of what it means for the observing writer to be caught up in a world that demands commitment and involvement. Against his will, filled with `shame`, Mailer starts to suffer the `anguish of the European intellectual in the Thirties`. Or, in other words, liberal guilt. Leaving the terrifying evocation of the sounds and tear-gas smells of the police-charges to other journalists, who he quotes at length, Mailer focuses on his own uncertainties about whether he should stay with the radicals and Yippies or retreat. This is the New Journalism at its most self-absorbed and most extreme. He feels the `bird of fear beginning to nest in his throat` and understands `how Mussolini`s son-in-law had once been able to find the bombs he dropped from his airplane, beautiful as they burst`. Retreating he wonders if he is ready to give up the relatively comfortable and safe lifestyle he enjoys. First, the answer is no. And then, things begin to change. Mailer, the Reporter, becomes Mailer, the participant. Not only does he make a rousing speech to the demonstrators but he twice aggressively `inspects` a line of National Guard soldiers, taking notes of a threatening-looking Jeep, with a `rectangle of barbed wire on its front`. His subsequent arrest, which he seems almost to demand to compensate for his previous detachment, becomes symbolic of his final choice – to join the revolution rather than remain a spectator. When someone close by calls the demonstrators `cocksuckers`, his reply, `Don`t call them cocksuckers...They`re my troops and they`re great`, says it all.

A strong element of self-dramatisation is undeniable - Mailer ends his narrative as hero. But his initial willingness to record his own cowardice and selfishness and to turn his own vulnerabilities into narrative, are nevertheless, redeeming qualities. To set against the hypocrisies and different forms of brutality that marked the politics and conventions of 1968, there is a kind of integrity. The book may not have the obvious topicality it did forty years ago but it continues to be relevant for artists, intellectuals and politicians, who remain undecided between the guilty pleasures of detachment and the messy and dangerous life of action.

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mikepeters1@ntlworld 		Latest page update: made by mikepeters1@ntlworld , Jul 3 2008, 3:04 PM EDT (about this update About This Update mikepeters1@ntlworld 1968 US political scene - mikepeters1@ntlworld


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