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george_salis's review against another edition
4.0
"My story must be long like the length of a snake. If I present the head, You will know nothing of the body. Only the smile of the snake."
When I think of Norman Mailer I think of pub pugilism, uxorial impalement, and other egotesticle activititties. But with Ancient Evenings, Mailer seems to mostly shed this persona, which is the stuff of such works as Tough Guys Don't Dance and The Fight, and provides the reader with an immersive, imaginative experience.
Sure, there is war-waging, royal sex by "all three mouths," coprophagia, and males dominating each other through the act of buggery, but these obscene scenes are aspects of ancient Egyptian mythology.
While reading this 700-page tome, you will all but swim in the Nile, bow before the Pharaoh, visit the whisper-laden House of the Secluded (eg. His harem of "little queens"), fight in a sea of chariots during the infamous Battle of Kadesh, be embalmed and soaked in natron, and fly as the human-headed bird-soul known as the Ba.
The last couple hundred pages were not as magic-infused as the preceding portions. I think this might be due to a lack of climax, a monophonic tone, and the content itself. However, I have never made the pseudo-editorial claim that a book needs fewer pages (although I've said the opposite for DeLillo's magnum opus Underworld), and I wouldn't suggest a circumcision in this case either. Rather, Mailer needs more voices to enhance the alluring, somewhat soft-spoken charm of a humble Borges that desensitizes the eyes over time. The prose is never so floral as linguaphiles Rikki Ducornet or Angela Carter, which I think is a sorely missed opportunity.
Overall, this dark and brutal book is the decade-long product of obsession and research (1972-1982, to be exact). My mental depth instrument counted four-story fathoms. Such a measurement can also be indicative of a love for storytelling, especially the ancient kind.
Also, in addition to academic articles and other paraphernalia, I've found that when researching topics for my mega-novel, I'm lucky to come across certain books that almost instantly make me comfortable writing within a given world, and this is one of them.
(I think I'll gift my copy to Karl Sanders of the death metal band Nile next time I see him in concert. It could very well inspire another masterpiece album......Update 12/12/19: On my birthday, Nile played a show. I gifted my copy of the book to Karl and he, that god of death metal, accepted my offering. Praise Ra!)
When I think of Norman Mailer I think of pub pugilism, uxorial impalement, and other egotesticle activititties. But with Ancient Evenings, Mailer seems to mostly shed this persona, which is the stuff of such works as Tough Guys Don't Dance and The Fight, and provides the reader with an immersive, imaginative experience.
Sure, there is war-waging, royal sex by "all three mouths," coprophagia, and males dominating each other through the act of buggery, but these obscene scenes are aspects of ancient Egyptian mythology.
While reading this 700-page tome, you will all but swim in the Nile, bow before the Pharaoh, visit the whisper-laden House of the Secluded (eg. His harem of "little queens"), fight in a sea of chariots during the infamous Battle of Kadesh, be embalmed and soaked in natron, and fly as the human-headed bird-soul known as the Ba.
The last couple hundred pages were not as magic-infused as the preceding portions. I think this might be due to a lack of climax, a monophonic tone, and the content itself. However, I have never made the pseudo-editorial claim that a book needs fewer pages (although I've said the opposite for DeLillo's magnum opus Underworld), and I wouldn't suggest a circumcision in this case either. Rather, Mailer needs more voices to enhance the alluring, somewhat soft-spoken charm of a humble Borges that desensitizes the eyes over time. The prose is never so floral as linguaphiles Rikki Ducornet or Angela Carter, which I think is a sorely missed opportunity.
Overall, this dark and brutal book is the decade-long product of obsession and research (1972-1982, to be exact). My mental depth instrument counted four-story fathoms. Such a measurement can also be indicative of a love for storytelling, especially the ancient kind.
Also, in addition to academic articles and other paraphernalia, I've found that when researching topics for my mega-novel, I'm lucky to come across certain books that almost instantly make me comfortable writing within a given world, and this is one of them.
(I think I'll gift my copy to Karl Sanders of the death metal band Nile next time I see him in concert. It could very well inspire another masterpiece album......Update 12/12/19: On my birthday, Nile played a show. I gifted my copy of the book to Karl and he, that god of death metal, accepted my offering. Praise Ra!)
kirstyandherbooks's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
katie_king's review against another edition
4.0
The one Mailer book I've read and thoroughly liked. I think I am in the minority here, however.
nekokat's review against another edition
2.0
Had its moments, but far too long, not to mention generally meandering and pointless. Interesting only for its evocation of daily life in ancient Egypt.
brynhammond's review against another edition
3.0
I can only tell you my experience of the book.
It was knocking on the door of greatness. The beginning was staggering, and I was floored by the musicality of its sentences, its startling imagery, and the depth of thought that made these ancient Egyptians remind me, as others before me, of aliens in a science fiction novel – that is, the past is an alien world. I was having an encounter with this novel, like you have with extraterrestials or great beasts. This reached its pitch with the Battle of Kadesh, whose inspirations were the Old Testament and the Iliad, and where Mailer, in the whole chapter devoted to the battle, gives his sentences the rush and rhythm of chariot wheels. Awesome battle scene.
So far, with me, he hadn’t put a foot wrong. Thomas Mann went wrong in Egypt with the ornate style, for me: I loved his first Joseph books but in Egypt I sank into the sands of his Biblical loquacity. But Mailer, as Old Testamenty as he, hadn’t spent a word too much, he was music to my ears. Then I hit the Book of Queens. It was atrocious, and the novel never clawed up from that low – until perhaps the last five pages.
As for the sex content. In the parts I admired, I didn’t feel it was gratuitous or ill-done. I’ll thank him for his lessons in unhealthy psychology. Once I read a book – which I won’t even link to, because I hated the book and thought it bad history – that told me how common in the ancient world was war rape, man to man: as a further vanquishment of a defeated enemy. So, there’s much oneupmanship in here, where they use such methods to humiliate and see who’s ahead of who. It’s effing unhealthy, like I say; nevertheless, when I read that aforementioned nonfiction I was disturbed and disgusted, whereas Mailer doesn’t set out to disturb and disgust me and he didn’t. When he has a humiliate-the-captive scene entirely from the point of view of the unapologetic perpetrator, I felt I was given insight, in the way fiction can.
None of what I’ve just said goes for the latter part of the book, where sex is stupid, gratuitous and features women. I had already noticed that he never has women raped. Is that pushing it, even for him? I had to wonder. But in these stretches you soon notice every single woman is a sex addict, and... spare me. It’s worse than I can say. The music is lost too, since he’s thrown discipline to the winds; and the Egyptians aren’t aliens now, they live in your closest daytime soap.
He took ten years to write this, as he lets us know at the end. Maybe he had a brain explosion along the way.
It was knocking on the door of greatness. The beginning was staggering, and I was floored by the musicality of its sentences, its startling imagery, and the depth of thought that made these ancient Egyptians remind me, as others before me, of aliens in a science fiction novel – that is, the past is an alien world. I was having an encounter with this novel, like you have with extraterrestials or great beasts. This reached its pitch with the Battle of Kadesh, whose inspirations were the Old Testament and the Iliad, and where Mailer, in the whole chapter devoted to the battle, gives his sentences the rush and rhythm of chariot wheels. Awesome battle scene.
So far, with me, he hadn’t put a foot wrong. Thomas Mann went wrong in Egypt with the ornate style, for me: I loved his first Joseph books but in Egypt I sank into the sands of his Biblical loquacity. But Mailer, as Old Testamenty as he, hadn’t spent a word too much, he was music to my ears. Then I hit the Book of Queens. It was atrocious, and the novel never clawed up from that low – until perhaps the last five pages.
As for the sex content. In the parts I admired, I didn’t feel it was gratuitous or ill-done. I’ll thank him for his lessons in unhealthy psychology. Once I read a book – which I won’t even link to, because I hated the book and thought it bad history – that told me how common in the ancient world was war rape, man to man: as a further vanquishment of a defeated enemy. So, there’s much oneupmanship in here, where they use such methods to humiliate and see who’s ahead of who. It’s effing unhealthy, like I say; nevertheless, when I read that aforementioned nonfiction I was disturbed and disgusted, whereas Mailer doesn’t set out to disturb and disgust me and he didn’t. When he has a humiliate-the-captive scene entirely from the point of view of the unapologetic perpetrator, I felt I was given insight, in the way fiction can.
None of what I’ve just said goes for the latter part of the book, where sex is stupid, gratuitous and features women. I had already noticed that he never has women raped. Is that pushing it, even for him? I had to wonder. But in these stretches you soon notice every single woman is a sex addict, and... spare me. It’s worse than I can say. The music is lost too, since he’s thrown discipline to the winds; and the Egyptians aren’t aliens now, they live in your closest daytime soap.
He took ten years to write this, as he lets us know at the end. Maybe he had a brain explosion along the way.
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