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AMERICA IN THE VIETNAM WAR ERA (HI346)

syllabus

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WEEK 14 The Election of 1968 and the Legacy of the Sixties

TUES NOV 29 Norman Mailer, Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968

Set 20: Answer any three of the following questions:

1. In a review of Norman Mailer’s book in a 1968 issue of the New York Times, Wilfred Sheed remarked that although Mailer “pays his compliments to the young people and the New Politics, his imagination is really grabbed by the vestiges of the old America: The God-bless-our-land world of small-town Republicans and jaunty turn-of-the-century corruption of unreformed Democrats.”  Give several examples of Mailer’s focus on old America.  Why would Mailer pay attention to a by-gone era?
2. In December, 1968, Peter Shaw reviewed Mailer’s book for Commentary Magazine.  Shaw proclaimed that “Norman Mailer is above all a novelist in this book of reportage because in it he writes, as always when at his best, about things that he has not yet made up his mind about.”  Is Shaw’s observation accurate?  Why or why not?

3. Acclaimed English professor James Shapiro has argued that “Mailer's America in the late 1960's was not so much hypocritical as ‘schizophrenic’: ‘a land of equal opportunity where a white culture sits upon a black,’ a nation filled with ‘patriots with a detestation of obscenity who pollute their rivers’ and with ‘citizens with a detestation of government control who cannot bear any situation not controlled.’''*  How does the theme of “schizophrenia” appear in Miami and the Siege of Chicago?  Considering the volatile state of American in 1968, is that a fitting theme?

4. Throughout Miami and the Siege of Chicago, Norman Mailer harbors many doubts about the activists and protestors.  Why would he finally choose to side, albeit with apprehension, with the demonstrators? 

5. Does Norman Mailer’s writing style in Miami and the Siege of Chicago provide a clear or murky, accurate or inaccurate picture of the events of 1968?  Why or why not?