The Castle in the Forest [Hardcover]

Norman Mailer (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 23, 2007

No career in modern American letters is at once so brilliant, varied, and controversial as that of Norman Mailer. In a span of more than six decades, Mailer has searched into subjects ranging from World War II to Ancient Egypt, from the march on the Pentagon to Marilyn Monroe, from Henry Miller and Mohammad Ali to Jesus Christ. Now, in The Castle in the Forest, his first major work of fiction in more than a decade, Mailer offers what may be his consummate literary endeavor: He has set out to explore the evil of Adolf Hitler.

The narrator, a mysterious SS man who is later revealed to be an exceptional presence, gives us young Adolf from birth, as well as Hitler’s father and mother, his sisters and brothers, and the intimate details of his childhood and adolescence.

A tapestry of unforgettable characters, The Castle in the Forest delivers its playful twists and surprises with astonishing insight into the nature of the struggle between good and evil that exists in us all. At its core is a hypothesis that propels this novel and makes it a work of stunning originality. Now, on the eve of his eighty-fourth birthday, Norman Mailer may well be saying more than he ever has before.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Mailer did Jesus in The Gospel According to the Son; now he plumbs the psyche of history's most demonic figure in this chilling fictional chronicle of Hitler's boyhood. Mailer tells the story through the eyes of Dieter, a devil tasked by Satan (usually called the Maestro) with fostering Hitler's nascent evil, but in this study of a dysfunctional 19th-century middle-class Austrian household, the real presiding spirit is Freud. Young Adolph (often called Adi) is the offspring of an incestuous marriage between a coarse, domineering civil servant and a lasciviously indulgent mom. The boy duly develops an obsession with feces, a fascination with power, a grandiose self-image and a sexually charged yen for mass slaughter (the sight of gassed or burning beehives thrills him). Dieter frets over Hitler's ego-formation while marveling at the future dictator's burning gaze, his ability to sway weak minds and the instinctive führerprinzip that emerges when he plays war with neighborhood boys—talents furthered by Central Europe's ambient romantic nationalism. Mailer's view of evil embraces religions and metaphysics, but it's rooted in the squalid soil of toilet-training travails and perverted sexual urges. The novel sometimes feels like a psychoanalytic version of The Screwtape Letters, but Mailer arrives at a somber, compelling portrait of a monstrous soul. (Jan. 23)
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From Booklist

In his first novel in more than a decade, Mailer continues to provoke. Only a writer with his temerity would attempt a novel interpreting perhaps the most notorious figure in modern history, Adolf Hitler. Obviously, this is not your usual historical novel (neither was the author's fictional foray into pharaonic Egypt, Ancient Evenings, 1983). Here the focus is on Hitler's childhood and youth and immediate forebears. This is less a psychological study of evil than a fanciful one: the story is narrated by a devil, one of the corps of devils working under Satan, who has chosen Hitler personally to do his "work." Mailer has worked out a whole system for (pardon the rhyme) levels of devils, which will strike the reader as corresponding to theological theories concerning the degrees of angels, and, like angels, the devils struggle within their "family" as family members do--that is, they struggle not only among themselves but also with Satan. Mailer is never an easy read; in this novel, as in all his fiction, subject matter, themes, and prose style make demands on readers' willingness or even ability to stay focused. Here he cannot be faulted for inadequate knowledge of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century central European history, but many readers will find the Satan-and-army-of-devils conceit a gimmick, perhaps even an offensive one, in trying to reach an understanding of evil. Other readers will be, as always, excited by Mailer's intelligence and creativity. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 477 pages
• Publisher: Random House; First Edition edition (January 23, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394536495
• ISBN-13: 978-0394536491
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (89 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #568,085 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

88 of 93 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Insight on Good and Evil November 29, 2007

By Stephen Williams

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

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.

104 of 125 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliance, clumsiness, audacity, dullness, excitement January 23, 2007

By Wild Bill Jones VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

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.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Insight on Good and Evil August 31, 2008

By Stephen Williams

Format:Leather Bound

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.