Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler which apparently inspired Norman Mailer to embark on a historical fiction trilogy of der Führer, has a few words of caution should Mailer take the sexual pathology route too far to explain Hitler’s unthinkable motivations. An excerpt from his piece for Slate:

Mailer has constantly toyed with the question of subjectivity, thus essential fictionality, of truth since Armies of the Night ("history as a novel, the novel as history"). I’ve come to think of The Executioner’s Song as probably his best nonfiction, and yet, I have a strong feeling that in one way or another he put his own thoughts in Gary Gilmore and Nicole Baker’s mouths. That it was a novel about Mailer talking to two badlands versions of himself—two trailer trash existential Manichaean theologians. You see a lot of them out West ... Or maybe they’d just read a lot of early Mailer.

So, if Mailer can read himself into Gary and Nicole, one wonders if he’ll do the same with Hitler and Geli. Especially given his own particular sexual predisposition. I don’t mean his own sexual preferences or positions, I mean his theory of sex, of the orgasm, his early attachment to the sexual/characterological theories of Freudian disciple and psychoanalytic black sheep Wilhelm Reich.

Norman Mailer comes to Makor for a reading of The Deer Park on March 25.

Previously: Norman Mailer: Out of the Forest and In the Park