The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [0]
Norman Mailer
New York, N.Y. : Picador/H. Holt, 1998. (1948)
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From Library Journal
This 50th-anniversary edition of Mailer's World War II epic contains a new introduction by the author. If your current copy is falling apart, now is the time to replace it.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"The best novel to come out of the . . . war, perhaps the best book to come out of any war."—San Francisco Chronicle
"Best novel yet about World War II."—Time
"Brutal, agonizing, astonishingly thoughtful."—Newsweek
"Nightmarish masterpiece of realism."—Cleveland News
"Vibrant with life, abundant with real people, full of memorable scenes. To call it merely a great book about the war would be to minimize its total achievement."—The Philadelphia Inquirer
"The most important American novel since Moby-Dick."—Providence Journal
-- Review
The Naked and the Dead
NORMAN MAILER
Bookflap:
A Word from the Publisher to the Reader. . . Twenty-seven years ago I was fortunate enough to be associated with the publication of John Dos Passos' Three Soldiers. In no year since have I felt the same surge of excitement for a war novel -- not until the manuscript of Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead was readied for publication.
There is no direct parallel between the two books. The world has changed and toughened since Dos Passos wrote. The Naked and the Dead is a tougher book, one that reflects the variables that time and change have introduced. But, like its distinguished predecessor, Norman Mailer's book is essentially the story of men themselves rather than of their sometimes purposeless fighting. These men who tear their hearts out trying to capture an island from the Japanese are the product of the years they have lived. They have been formed by their wives, their sweethearts, their farms, their jobs, their colleges. To each, war has been an activating agent.
I believe you will never forget these men -- frightened men, sometimes obscene, humorous, sick, scabrous, full of yearning for home as it was, or home as it seems in memory. They are men in war, but like most of us, they do not know where they are going; they know only their own past.
Because I believe The Naked and the Dead is a great novel I can say that if you have read Thomas Boyd's Through the Wheat, Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Hemingway's Farewell to Arms, or Three Soldiers, you cannot afford to pass by this astonishing performance by a young man who at twenty-five knows more about the core of man than many a writer of twice his years.
Stanley W. Rinehart Jr.
Rinehart & Company, Inc.
New York Toronto
Grateful thanks are expressed to the publishers and copyright owners for permission to reprint lyrics from the following songs:
Betty Co-ed, by Paul Fogarty and Rudy Vallee.
Copyright © 1930, by Carl Fischer, Inc., New York, and used with their permission.
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? Words by E. Y. Harburg, music by Jay Gorney.
Copyright © 1932, by Harms, Inc., and used with the permission of Music Publishers Holding Corporation.
Faded Summer Love, words and music by Phil Baxter.
Copyright © 1931, by Leo Feist, Inc., and used with their permission.
I Love a Parade, words by Ted Koehler, music by Harold Arlen.
Copyright © 1931, by Harms, Inc., and used with the permission of Music Publishers Holding Corporation.
Show Me the Way to Go Home, words and music by Irving King.
Copyright © 1925, by Harms, Inc., and used with the permission of Music Publishers Holding Corporation.
These Foolish Things Remind Me of You, by Jack Strachey, Hold Marvel and Harry Link.
Copyright © 1935, by Bourne, Inc., and used with their permission.
All characters and incidents in this novel are fictional, and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 1948, BY NORMAN MAILER
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY THE HADDON CRAFTSMEN, INC., SCRANTON, PA.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
I would like to thank William Raney, Theodore S. Amussen,