Customer Reviews

The Castle in the Forest (Thorndike Basic)

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

The Castle in the Forest

Astonishing Insight on the Nature Good and Evil

This is a wonderful book to treasure and reflect upon. The precision of the writing makes it easy to read while the intensity of the psychological analysis gives the reader a lot to ponder.

This book is a story of the development, creation and cultivation of pure evil. It is written from the perspective of a progenitor of evil. The narrator created evil on earth in a very amoral tone as if explaining directions to get to the grocery store. Norman Mailer shows banality of evil doers with the sharp style of a craftsman. The book is introspective and reflective without bogging down into sentimental fog and without ever becoming tedious.

Mailer elevates the reader outside of the comfort zone and suspends them, as if he were in mid-air, to the very end of the book. Since the perspective is introspective and reflective it would have been very easy for it to have become tedious. Yet, not one page of the book seemed redundant, unnecessary or excessive in detail.

Very little of the book is devoted to dialog. Mostly the reader is given the inner thoughts, rationalizations and motives of the characters. Yet the characters are very believable and all the more pitiful.

The central theme of the book is the question of how any human being could become pure evil. This question is answered by presenting a very gradual cultivation of otherwise normal men by an outside force. Obviously the outside force is not necessary for evil to triumph. Mailer shows that the only prerequisites that are essential are excessive pride and a dose of ignorance.

This book is provocative rather than comfortable; it opens more questions than it answers; and it can be offensive and demanding. Read it for all these reasons.

Read this book.

It has always been hard for people to find a balance when talking about Norman Mailer and his work. But it doesn't take a lot of intelligence to call a writer names, as a previous reviewer has, or to call all of the author's output garbage. (The review in question has, apparently, been removed or withdrawn as of 1/24) To address Norman Mailer realistically, readers have always had to accept that they would find extraordinary strengths and liabilities in the same work.

Mailer's work and his persona, deeply intertwined for the past six decades, irritate the hell out of some people. Fine. But nobody's personal irritation wipes out an author's 60-year output. The Naked And The Dead, The Armies of The Night, The Executioner's Song, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, Advertisements For Myself, to name only five, are major books of our time. Plainly the previous reviewer, in handing down such sweeping and unsupported dismissal of Mailer's work, is superior to the pinheads on the committees that awarded Mailer two Pulitzer Prizes, a National Book Award, and countless other honors.

Mailer's work is always a mixture of brilliance, clumsiness, audacity, dullness, and excitement. That is a big part of why he is so interesting -- the tension among these qualities. Some of these qualities are more pronounced in some of his works than in others. Many contemporary readers will find the premise of The Castle In The Forest outlandish -- the existence of a God and a Devil, and legions of lesser devils and angels, at war with each other, and intimately involved in human affairs. This notion is nothing new in Mailer's work, and he is completely serious about it. If you don't want to go with the premise, don't read the book.

In this book about Hitler's early years, narrated, as readers probably know by now, by one of Satan's assistant devils, you will find many surprises, startling imagery, a deceptively subtle narrative strategy that yields more narrative torque than one might guess, long stretches that many readers will find tedious, many others that are striking and memorable and which could have come from no other writer, some laser-sharp flashes of action, some clunky missteps, and a lot of philosophizing. Many readers will find some of the philosophizing surprising and fresh and thrilling, and some of it obvious and self-congratulatory and irritating. Mailer is anything but predictable, and he takes this book's readers on a wild ride. What a great and rich show he puts on.

If Mailer's ego puts you on edge, if you don't want to deal with the irritation you may feel in encountering uncomfortable ideas, or even foolish ideas right next to interesting and provocative ones, don't read the book. Mailer insists on throwing himself up against large questions that are obviously important to him, and that have been important to human culture down through the ages. His successes and his failures are themselves an epic. This book is an astonishing act of imagination, gall, willpower, wit, failure, success, all of it mixed together.... Quintessential Mailer. Five stars not because it is an unqualified success, which it isn't, but because it is such a spectacular show, such an amazing performance by one of our most interesting and enduring writers.

The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer

Astonishing Insight on the Nature Good and Evil

This is a wonderful book to treasure and reflect upon. The precision of the writing makes it easy to read while the intensity of the psychological analysis gives the reader a lot to ponder.

This book is a story of the development, creation and cultivation of pure evil. It is written from the perspective of a progenitor of evil. The narrator created evil on earth in a very amoral tone as if explaining directions to get to the grocery store. Norman Mailer shows banality of evil doers with the sharp style of a craftsman. The book is introspective and reflective without bogging down into sentimental fog and without ever becoming tedious.

Mailer elevates the reader outside of the comfort zone and suspends them, as if he were in mid-air, to the very end of the book. Since the perspective is introspective and reflective it would have been very easy for it to have become tedious. Yet, not one page of the book seemed redundant, unnecessary or excessive in detail.

Very little of the book is devoted to dialog. Mostly the reader is given the inner thoughts, rationalizations and motives of the characters. Yet the characters are very believable and all the more pitiful.

The central theme of the book is the question of how any human being could become pure evil. This question is answered by presenting a very gradual cultivation of otherwise normal men by an outside force. Obviously the outside force is not necessary for evil to triumph. Mailer shows that the only prerequisites that are essential are excessive pride and a dose of ignorance.

This book is provocative rather than comfortable; it opens more questions than it answers; and it can be offensive and demanding. Read it for all these reasons.

Read this book.

I was intrigued enough by this book published by Mailer at 83 to go back to earlier works that I had missed, eg, his book on the young Picasso and The Gospel According to the Son, as well as lots of stuff on the web by and about him. Who would have thought that gruff old Norman Mailer would work faithfully through devils and a savior while exploring the process of character development? And gratifyingly, it works.

Mailer seduces the reader to identify with a demonic narrator. Perhaps a quaint notion for the 21st century, and one that he suspects he may not be forgiven for too quickly. Will the modern reader be able to identify with an Infernal saboteur?

In the course of this truncated narrative (the book offers no satisfying ending, no clear resolution), he manages to wedge in nearly every known cliche about Hitler, accepting all theories as to what might have instigated his subject's insatiable will to power. Freudian imprinting, inferior genetics, even the poisonous influence of German philosophy -- these familiar devils are given new consideration, treated as novel, even as they are trotted out and inserted into the story in an amusingly heavy-handed fashion. Mailer seems to accept any and all theories at face value, treating each almost equally, and then proceeds to explore precisely what that would mean, were they all to be equally true. In this book Hitler is not only the product of incest, the result of too much mother's love, consumed by madness and controlled by demonic forces beyond his comprehension -- he is emphatically all of the above!

Below the surface of the fantastic is an emotional truth even the readers who scoffed at the supernatural premise will identify with, and perhaps even embrace. The problem of evil is a question of life's ongoing choices and how those choices build upon one another. Not a decision one makes and then puts out of their mind forever. At any given moment, the pious or the damned may quite easily switch allegiances and throw in with the other side. Hitler is shown to have squandered a majority of these opportunities.

No, this is not a Hitl-- History Channel special.

As a work of fiction this is a fine book. Mailer is a great writer and as I don't think this was one of his finest works, it was still an enjoyable read. What I was a bit irked by was the lack of focus on what I thought was going to be the central plot of the novel - Adolf Hitler's childhood. This was a book about his father Alois mostly. It detailed Alois' childhood, relationships, work, children, retirement and death. As soon as he died there was 20 pages left in the book. Yes, you can say that we can gain some sort of insight into Adolf's life indirectly by seeing what a person his father was but this is not very complete. My expectation was that you would see sections of his father throughout his life, sections of his school friends, deep traumatic experiences and what inevitably started him down the road of politics. The ending of this book left me feeling very incomplete, almost as if there was a second volume somewhere that I forgot to purchase.

The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer

Astonishing Insight on the Nature Good and Evil

This is a wonderful book to treasure and reflect upon. The precision of the writing makes it easy to read while the intensity of the psychological analysis gives the reader a lot to ponder.

This book is a story of the development, creation and cultivation of pure evil. It is written from the perspective of a progenitor of evil. The narrator created evil on earth in a very amoral tone as if explaining directions to get to the grocery store. Norman Mailer shows banality of evil doers with the sharp style of a craftsman. The book is introspective and reflective without bogging down into sentimental fog and without ever becoming tedious.

Mailer elevates the reader outside of the comfort zone and suspends them, as if he were in mid-air, to the very end of the book. Since the perspective is introspective and reflective it would have been very easy for it to have become tedious. Yet, not one page of the book seemed redundant, unnecessary or excessive in detail.

Very little of the book is devoted to dialog. Mostly the reader is given the inner thoughts, rationalizations and motives of the characters. Yet the characters are very believable and all the more pitiful.

The central theme of the book is the question of how any human being could become pure evil. This question is answered by presenting a very gradual cultivation of otherwise normal men by an outside force. Obviously the outside force is not necessary for evil to triumph. Mailer shows that the only prerequisites that are essential are excessive pride and a dose of ignorance.

This book is provocative rather than comfortable; it opens more questions than it answers; and it can be offensive and demanding. Read it for all these reasons.

Read this book.

This is a strangely disappointing book. I guess I expected some clear connection with Adolf Hitler, some bit of evidence or conjecture that would make the man more of a creature like us. Instead, Mailer has seized on the old rumors about his family, his father, incest, and has drawn a picture that suggests the damage Hitler may (must) have suffered as a child. It is in short Mailer's imagination we are dealing with here, and his alone. There is nothing here for the historian, and perhaps that was my mistake. I was thinking historical fiction when I began reading it. There is virtually nothing of history present in the work. And worse, we learn nothing new about Hitler. A disappointment.

The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer

Astonishing Insight on the Nature Good and Evil

This is a wonderful book to treasure and reflect upon. The precision of the writing makes it easy to read while the intensity of the psychological analysis gives the reader a lot to ponder.

This book is a story of the development, creation and cultivation of pure evil. It is written from the perspective of a progenitor of evil. The narrator created evil on earth in a very amoral tone as if explaining directions to get to the grocery store. Norman Mailer shows banality of evil doers with the sharp style of a craftsman. The book is introspective and reflective without bogging down into sentimental fog and without ever becoming tedious.

Mailer elevates the reader outside of the comfort zone and suspends them, as if he were in mid-air, to the very end of the book. Since the perspective is introspective and reflective it would have been very easy for it to have become tedious. Yet, not one page of the book seemed redundant, unnecessary or excessive in detail.

Very little of the book is devoted to dialog. Mostly the reader is given the inner thoughts, rationalizations and motives of the characters. Yet the characters are very believable and all the more pitiful.

The central theme of the book is the question of how any human being could become pure evil. This question is answered by presenting a very gradual cultivation of otherwise normal men by an outside force. Obviously the outside force is not necessary for evil to triumph. Mailer shows that the only prerequisites that are essential are excessive pride and a dose of ignorance.

This book is provocative rather than comfortable; it opens more questions than it answers; and it can be offensive and demanding. Read it for all these reasons.

Read this book.

With the exception of THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG, which I read because I found the subject matter fascinating, I have shunned Mailer's books. No matter that SONG was brilliant; it seemed that whenever I read about Mailer, he was either a) physically fighting someone or b) being raked through the coals by some intelligent reviewer. So I figured he must be a loony and a [...] and I didn't bother.

A friend send me CASTLE IN THE FOREST, and, again, because I've read so much on Hitler, it seemed worth a try to see if Mailer had anything new to say on the subject.

Does he ever!

This is a brilliant book. Like most other people, I've been puzzled by the nature of Hitler's evil as long as I've known his name. Was he human? Was he demonic? Is there such a thing as evil? Or Satan?

However you feel about the cosmology Mailer lays out in this book, there is no question that he makes Hitler and his evil completely accesible to the modern reader. This is no easy feat. Many have tried -- some of the most learned Nazi scholars. None have succeeded -- until now, until Mailer.

He does here what great literature should do -- takes a real event and makes it emotionally felt through the power of his themes, ideas and words.

As for me, I am anxious to catch up on all the Mailer I've been missing all these years.

When I think about my previous attitudes towards Mailer and his work, the initials D.K. come to mind.