I adored Mailer's Naked and the Dead, but I just ditched Harlot's Ghost without finishing it. For starters, Mailer was so ignorant that he wrote that schizophrenia was the name for multiple personality syndrome. In reality, those psychiatric conditions have nothing to do with each other, something Mailer would have learned if he had cared to create believable characters. Instead, he exploited his lazy ideas about schizophrenia to fashion a series of Deux ex machina events. The resulting plot is tiresomely simple: all his characters work for the CIA, they each have two personalities, therefore they can do anything whatsoever BECAUSE THEY ARE CRAZY, and this explains why the CIA sucks. Yawn...

I'm not usually a big fan of war stories that are mostly based in combat, but this was definitely the exception. I guess it's partly because of Mailer's incredible descriptive style, and partly because the combat is woven in with the characters' thoughts and flashbacks. I'm seriously at a loss as how to fully describe this book. If you haven't read it, I totally recommend you at least look into this.

It truly is the best war fiction regarding WWII if you have never read ANY other fiction regarding WWII. I love war fiction and non-fiction and beside parroting the Time Magazine blurb prominently displayed in the novel I can not even come close to understanding why anyone, let alone review after review, would even come close to that stupefying conclusion. To me it is the best example of intellectual snobbery that critics like to pat themselves on the back with. Only they understand and you lesser intellects are not capable of appreciating. What it is, is a bloated, narcisstic, misogynistic waste of time.

Of course any piece of literature is subjective, but to me, this critically acclaimed work fails on every level that a novel should, regardless of genre. Unless you love James Joyce (another bad writer lorded over us by the critically elite), I think most readers expect some sort of plot development. Don't expect that here. How about engaging characters that develop and grow throughout the novel? You better pick up something else. It seems to me the reader should at least be invested in one of the character's outcome. Far too pedestrian a thought if you "get" this art. If I can't have any of that how about writing a character that is even remotely likable? Forget it non-ivy leaguer! I was rooting for the Japanese to kill them all, so at least their "loved" ones at home would be spared of these nearly universally despicable human beings. The only thing that propelled me to finish was to get to the ending that would perhaps tie together the painful experience of reading these soldier's hateful ruminations while, oh by the way, a war was being fought around them. Nope, no big ending either. It just ends.

Yes, I have heard that the plodding ugliness and pointlessness of the entire book is to symbolize war itself. Give me a break. While this may be bad news for us common folk duped into reading it, it certainly is good news for Tom Clancy. His last two decades of literature are just misunderstood genius depicting the banality of human existence and not bad writing at all.

While the title of this book may be The Naked And The Dead, there's very little nudity yet a substantial amount of death. This is to be expected, however, as the book takes place in a war zone during World War II. The story, by Norman Mailer, tells of a group of American soldiers invading the Japanese island of Anopopei. Rather than single out a certain character as a protagonist, the story shifts perspectives between a vast array of characters to give the reader a view from many aspects of the war. Tellingly, with so many characters to remember, this is not a book you want to spend long intervals away from between readings.
Mailer's is a simple and direct, yet powerful writing style. His precise attention to detail gives The Naked And The Dead the feel of a sort of literary documentary. Such is the reason Mailer is often heralded as one of the pioneers of "journalistic fiction", a highly realistic account of fictional happenings, almost as if reported by a journalist who was present. It's doubtful you can remember the last time you were substantially involved emotionally with a documentary, but there's no need to fear in this instance as Mailer imbues his characters with a very empathetic human quality. However, in order to come across these traits in the characters, one must venture deeply into the novel. You can define "deeply" however you'd like, as the novel weighs in at a sizable 721 pages.
One device Mailer uses to help readers get to understand his characters better is to intersperse "time machines" throughout the story. The time machines show things that happened to the men before they were sent to war and gives insight as to what shaped the characters into who they are now. If not for the flashbacks, the book would come dangerously close to lapsing into the sort of soulless informative prose that a novelization of a documentary would suggest. Whether showing the intense rush a soldier feels while in the midst of gunfire, the guilt of capturing an enemy only to find out he's a human being much like everyone else, to the alienation a lower-class troop feels amongst his peers when the general shows favoritism towards him, Mailer never loses sight of what's most important to a reader: feeling what the characters feel and having a sense of being right there with them, bullets whirring past your head or hungering for battle in the still tension of the night. I would actually give this book 4.5 stars, if Amazon would let me do such a thing.