The Deer Park

by Norman Mailer

Amid the cactus wilds some two hundred miles from Hollywood lies a privileged oasis called Desert D'Or. It is a place for starlets and would-be starlets, directors, studio execs, and the well-groomed lowlifes who cater to them. And, as imagined by Norman Mailer in this blistering classic of 1950s Hollywood, Desert D'Or is a moral proving ground, where men and women discover what they really want--and how far the are willing to go to get it.
"The Deer Park" is the story of two interlacing love affairs. Sergius O'Shaugnessy is a young ex-Air Force pilot whose good looks and air of indifference launch him into the orbit of the radiant actress Lulu Meyers. Charles Eitel is a brilliant director wounded by accusations of communism--and whose liaison with the volatile Elena Esposito may supply the coup de grace to his career. As Mailer traces their couplings and uncouplings, their uneasy flirtation with success and self-extinction, he creates a legendary portrait of America's machinery of desire.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, 20th Century, Literature, American Fiction, Novels, American

398 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.

Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, but which covers the essay to the nonfiction novel. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award once. In 1955, Mailer, together with Ed Fancher and Dan Wolf, first published The Village Voice, which began as an arts- and politics-oriented weekly newspaper initially distributed in Greenwich Village. In 2005, he won the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from The National Book Foundation.

Reviews

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Flaws and Applause

For all its flaws (and they are both numerous and substantial), "The Deer Park" is still one of my favourite novels of the 1950's.

It deals with two personal interests and obsessions: radical Left-wing politics in the United States from the 1930’s to the 1950’s (including the House Un-American Activities Committee) and Hollywood (the two of which coincided in the Hollywood Blacklist of 1947).

I should also mention that it deals with the relationship between the sexes in as explicit a way as literature was permitted in 1955, when the novel was first published, even though it was rejected by just about every publisher in town because of obscenity and defamation concerns (some of which were dressed up as concerns about literary merit).

One Fake-Irish, the Other Eitel

The narrator is Sergius O’Shaugnessy, an orphan who despite his name comes from mongrel sailor blood: Welsh, English, Russian and Slovene, with perhaps a touch of Irish as an afterthought. To add to the sense of fake-Irish, he’s six foot one inch, blonde and good-looking: not much of Norman Mailer in that description, perhaps a little more in the vanity that follows: “I was good looking and I knew it; I had studied the mirror long enough.”

Sergius has returned from the war in Asia, feeling guilty about both the burning flesh caused by his bombing flights and the sexual orgy that occurred on the ground.

He decides to ease himself back into society with a $14,000 gambling win, by spending a year in Desert D’Or (a resort town modeled on Palm Springs), which is the playground of the Hollywood film industry based in “the capital”. Hence its resemblance to the French Deer Park of the title:

“…that gorge of innocence and virtue in which were engulfed so many victims who when they returned to society brought with them depravity, debauchery and all the vices they naturally acquired from the infamous officials of such a place.”

Soon, Sergius meets Charles Eitel, a well-known film director who has, for the moment, declined to name names in front of the Committee and has therefore been blacklisted in Hollywood.

Eitel is trying to revive his career by writing a screenplay. Sergius is trying his first hand at writing fiction. Both have a similar taste in women, though strangely, they never seem to conflict, partly because in every case, Eitel has “been there before”.

Both men work or play within the orbit of Herman Teppis (the head of Supreme Studios) and his son-in-law, the producer, Collie Munshin. It’s their duty to enforce the blacklist, but they also represent a career opportunity for both protagonists if either of them will accept their terms.

Sergius has to decide that he wants to be an actor. Eitel, like the real life Elia Kazan, has to name names (and be ostracised by his former friends on the Left).

A third man and rival is Marion Faye, a rebellious hipster who pimps call girls for visitors from the capital.

From Pillow to Post-Modernist

This ensemble of sexually active males is the beginning of the novel’s problems. You can almost sense that Mailer, the author, the person, the egotist, identified with all of these characters, that he couldn’t work out which one he preferred, probably because he wanted to join in all of the love action of his characters.

Ultimately, he chooses Sergius to write in the first person. He admires and writes about Eitel in the same, almost fawning and obsequious manner that Nick Carraway documents the life of Jay Gatsby. Yet, in irregularly alternating chapters, Sergius has a psychic insight into the minds of not just Eitel, but Munshin and Faye as well.

Occasionally, Sergius tells us that these characters have confided their stories to him, but there is just too much omniscience and verisimilitude for this to be credible.

Elsewhere, he discloses that he has sat down to write a novel, and that it is the novel that we are reading. The reader is left to question whether the events and internal dialogue are real or imagined, which is disconcerting. It's an anomaly that lingers awkwardly.

I can’t make a convincing case for this narrative aspect of the novel being Post-Modernist. OK, Mailer includes a poem that seems to be a pastiche of something out of “Finnegan’s Wake” and towards the end there is a letter from Eitel’s wife that some argue resembles Molly’s soliloquy from the end of “Ulysses”. But the novel is otherwise too realistic. Besides, it takes itself too seriously. You can tell that Mailer really cared about the people (well, at least the males), their predicaments and their ideas.

Ultimately, I think Mailer was just too ambitious in the subject matter of his third novel. For all of the problems he had with rejection, requests for re-writes and censorship, he hoped that the ambition of his project would get it across the line.

The quality of writing is consistently high, and it's a relatively easy to read. However, if Mailer had managed the narration more realistically and perhaps harnessed some of his subject matter better, the work could have rivalled Saul Bellow's "The Adventures of Augie March" (my favourite novel from this period of American literature) in greatness.

Mailer received an excessive amount of advice on how to write his novel in the course of trying to get it published in a hostile environment. Ultimately, we can only judge it as it appears on the printed page.

Lulu and Elena

The critical reception in 1955 wasn’t particularly positive. Now, sixty years later (is it really that long?), two criticisms are warranted.

Firstly, if the novel had been written now, it probably would have been much less sexually restrained, and more explicit. As it stands, it’s almost modest and quaint. There's a sex scene in a car, where the only way I know there was sex is that Sergius says it was a "success".

Secondly, the role of the women, in particular, Lulu and Elena, could or would have been substantially revised and strengthened.

Neither woman is presented as a strong, competent woman in the sense that 1960’s feminism would suggest. There is an inordinate amount of crying in the novel (not just by the women).

Lulu has the greater public profile. She’s a successful actress with bargaining power. Yet, she is vulnerable and is constantly compromised in her sexual and personal relationships by the expectations, demands and machinations of her studio.

Earlier in her career, she was married to Eitel, but they have since divorced, even though the mutual attraction hasn’t dissipated. Needless to say, she encounters Sergius, which means that both guises of Mailer’s authorial presence get to bed her.

Equally needless to say, there are some suggestions that Lulu was based on Marilyn Monroe, even though it seems that Mailer had hoped that Monroe would play Elena in the stage play he wrote based on the novel.

It's almost as if Lulu was a vehicle to meet and have sex with Monroe in real life.

So, to Elena Esposito. She is a relative innocent, and is tossed around from male to male (if not Sergius), yet she seems to be the most likely candidate to be dropped into contemporary society and successfully survive.

She is sexually attractive, experienced, assertive, caring and generous, yet the males constantly relate to her as if she is stupid. They put her down, much to her detriment. It’s clear that in an age of education and opportunity, she might even have been able to perform a role in the film industry in her own right.

The males have an aversion for marriage. Yet Elena seems to be the person most capable of making and keeping a commitment, if only a male would reciprocate.

Sexual appetite and desire, at least in the eyes of the males, is an end in itself. It’s not something that is expected to survive a marriage or parenthood. For all the power and influence that appears on the printed page, hardly anybody seems to have a child (Bobby, the single mother of two children, is relegated to a role as the purveyor of a blow-job for Herman Teppis).

Machismo

Mailer has been criticized for a long time for his apparent chauvinism, and the criticism might be warranted, particularly in retrospect.

However, I think it’s worthwhile examining the issues that he was trying to deal with, because they are still important issues.

Sergius is a relatively passive character, who admires Eitel, so it is often in Eitel’s dialogue that we can appreciate Mailer’s concerns.

What Sergius admires is Eitel’s “ability to talk about himself with considerable masculinity of mind”.

There’s no mention of the gender of the audience. Just a suggestion that thinking and talking, at least in a male, are more effective or impressive, the more masculine the speaker and the content.

Later, Munshin remembers Eitel saying that, “when you were a kid you always wondered how to get a woman, and now you wonder how to get rid of one.”

Commitment to a woman, to a relationship, is transitory, if not totally illusory. There is little warmth or tenderness with the opposite sex, except so much as is necessary to have sex. Man values availability above chastity or friendship:

"She had a naïve chastity which coaxed a man to find its opposite."

Even Sergius says:

"Women who have come to know me well have always accused me sooner or later of being very cold at heart, and while that is a woman's view of it, and a woman can rarely know the things that go on inside a man, I suppose there is a sort of truth to what they say."

Eitel, again:

"To be a good lover, one should be incapable of falling in love…I don’t love anybody at all."

It’s almost as if the physical performance, as in a boxing ring or a bull fight, is the real determinant of conjugal or passionate success.

A man must not reveal vulnerability. Sergius asks:

"How can there be love without some weakness?"

The choice is between love and strength.

Still, Eitel comes across as the most sympathetic of the men:

"Eitel always felt that the way a woman made love was as good a guide to understanding her character as any other way, and from the distance of an inch, Elena was a woman of exceptional beauty…When she was timid with people, she was bold with him; where crude in her manners, subtle with intuition. So it went, her energy almost ruthless in its call on him. When at last they were done and Eitel could glow from a show of skill more valuable to him than the pleasure itself, they lay side by side smiling at each other."

Try A Little Tenderness

Is this truly sympathetic? Is it necessary to sleep with a woman to know her character? Is a woman more than an object upon which to demonstrate one’s sexual prowess? Another man envies his lover’s “touch of bawd and lots of energy”.

Does a man seek in a woman only a [D.H.] Laurentian “blossoming of the flesh” during intercourse? Is he inevitably jealous if he suspects another man might achieve (or might have achieved) the same blossom?

What is missing is a little tenderness, a little genuine sensitivity to a woman’s character and needs.

Mailer's men, at least supposedly creative men, are driven by vanity, a self-regard, a sense of achievement, and therefore hamstrung by “the sense of shame, of sickness, and of loathing for any work which was not his best.”

This self-loathing imposes a burden, not just on the Self, but on the Other:

"Under such a burden, he was growing critical of Elena’s faults. He would wince as he watched her eat, for she waved her fork, her mouth often full as she spoke."

The men can't be happy in their relationships, because they aren't happy in themselves. The greatest unhappiness derives from a misguided sense of personal freedom.

Eitel observes of the progress of all love affairs:

"One began with the notion that life had found its flavour, and ended with the familiar distaste of no adventure and no novelty. It was one of the paradoxes he had cherished. The unspoken purpose of freedom was to find love, yet when love was found one could only desire freedom again."

Man seeks liberation, but love, apparently, puts him in chains. It's just too easy and convenient to infer that women are witches who cast a spell on America's vulnerable men (who Mailer would later argue had become "feminised", as if this implies weakness, rather than tenderness).

Noble Humans for More Than One Night

Mailer implies that sex is a momentary experience of a performance, of magic, of “mummery”.

It’s difficult to translate this energy into other aspects of life, for example, in the artistic or political sphere. However, it’s in these spheres that mankind becomes truly noble (a word also used a lot by Bellow in "The Adventures of Augie March").

As Eitel loses energy and nobility over the course of the novel, we are supposed to infer that it will transfer to Sergius. As one man falls, the other rises.

Mailer, the author, doesn’t have to choose between the protagonists. He can identify with both.

The Small Trumpet of Your Defiance

Ultimately, Eitel loses his self-respect artistically and politically, even if he ends up married to Elena. He confesses to Sergius:

"I have lost the final desire of the artist, the desire which tells us that when all else is lost, when love is lost and adventure, pride of self, and pity, there still remains that world we may create, more real to us, more real to others, than the mummery of what happens, passes, and is gone.

"So, do try, Sergius, try for that other world, the real world, where orphans burn orphans and nothing is more difficult to discover than a simple fact.

"And with the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists, the small trumpet of your defiance."

And with this counsel, Sergius finishes his novel, a tribute to Eitel, if not also to the women in their lives.



SOUNDTRACK:

Otis Redding - "Try A Little Tenderness"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXmLj...

[Bram De Vriese · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure what to think of it. Certainly did not dislike reading this book. But I also have little recollection of what it is really about. I would say : read it and make up your own mind.

[SeanT_C2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book up when I asked Ms. Lynch for American literature book suggestions, and was instantly hooked when I read the blurb, especially the phrase "...their uneasy flirtation with success and self-extinction creating a legendary portrait of America's machinery of desire." and how it linked back to the time when Mr. Errico talked about "The American Dream" in class. The thing that struck me the most about this book was how the human mind and actions react when living a lifestyle of an abundance of materialized pleasure, and how when there is nothing left to dream and fantasize about in a person's world, pain and suffering can actually come from trying to get meaning through a radical perception of love or, trying too hard to live in other words.

For whatever unknown reason, this paragraph left me in tears:

"Then for a moment in that cold Irish soul of mine, a glimmer of the joy of flesh came toward me, rare as the eye of the rarest tear of compassion, and we laughed together after all, because to have heard that sex was time and time was the connection of new circuits was a part of the poor odd dialogues which give hope to us noble humans for more than one night."

[Matt · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read it a long time ago, it worked reasonably enough as a novel but there were way too many moments in which I felt stormin' norman's sweaty, heavy hands all over F Scott Fitzgerald's delicate and subversively limpid material. I mean when FSF was (in his mind) slutting himself out for working in Hollywood instead of being, you know, a real writer. My, how times have changed.

This is coming off the sagging failure of "Barbary Shore" and Norm's trying to talk himself out of his gloom, paranoia, and wife-shanking by trying to tell himself he can "do" Hollywood. He can't. Not really. He gets the booze, a little bit of the desert, the sex-as-power-as-money-as-existential-loneliness-and-risk thing, but when they write another history of tinseltown he won't be one of the chroniclers or sages.

Fitzgerald on the other hand was pretty much exactly the camera eye you want. Disillusioned but full of dreams, middle class but pretending to be rich, sexy but fading and not funny any more. THAT'S how you approach the American dream factory, with one hand on your heart and the other on your shredded, fading ticket.

And Mailer's ending is basically a formula (his mind was way more infused with the instructions of his aeronautical engineering degree from Harvard than most people- including himself at this stage- really knew) for the kind of existential (that's right, I mean it, too) hijinks which would unfurl over the next decade.

[Makis Dionis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ο Mailer είναι μετρ της ψυχοσύνθεσης μέσω των διαλόγων, και αγαπημένο του φόντο, η ,so called, πρόοδος του Αμερικανικού πνεύματος , που βρίθει όμως συντηρητισμού , γαντζωμενο στη ματαιοδοξία του χρήματος και της δόξας

Και η εξουσία του σεξ.

Θα συμφωνουσες ότι το σεξ είναι το σημείο απ'όπου αρχίζει η φιλοσοφία?

Ο Θεός, ο παλαιότερος φιλόσοφος όλων θα απαντούσε:
Σκέψου καλύτερα το σεξ σαν χρόνο, και τον χρόνο σαν το σύνδεσμο καινούργιων κυκλωμάτων

Το να πέφτεις πάνω σε κάτι τέτοιο σε κάνει να βρίσκεις τη χαρά της απόλαυσης, ως ένα μέρος εκείνων των ταλαίπωρων διαλόγων που δίνουν ελπίδα στους ευγενικούς ανθρώπους για περισσότερες από μία νύχτες.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I have been reading his nonfiction for decades, this is the first time I've read any of Norman Mailer's fiction. Fortunately, the experience was mostly positive. The Deer Park breaks some rules: Part of the novel is written in the first person from the point of view of a character named Sergius O'Shaugnessy, who for the most part doesn't really work out. The main third person characters are a blacklisted film director, his Italian-American mistress (later wife), and a Hollywood actress named Lulu.

Most of the action takes place in Desert d'Or, a fictionalized Palm Springs; and most of the characters are involved in some way with the film industry.

What I liked about the novel were its mostly wise observations on love. One of the most interesting statements comes near the end:

There are hours when I would have the arrogance to reply to the Lord Himself, and so I ask, "Would You agree that sex is where philosophy begins?"

But God, who is the oldest of the philosophers, answers in His weary cryptic way, "Rather think of Sex as Time, and Time as the connection of new circuits."

I will try to read some of Mailer's other fiction in future, while continuing to read his excellent essays.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sum it up in one quote:

There is a no man's land between sex and love, and it alters in the night. We go to sleep convinced we are in one state, we awaken in the other, and murderous emotions patrol the ever-changing border.

Setting:
Palm Springs(y) area of California [Desert D'Or] in the era of the House Un-American Activities Committee; sort of a classy but trashy refuge for the amoral Hollywood set to get out of town [the Capital] and do what those with no real personality, but plenty of money do.

Primary Characters:
(1) Sergius O'Shaughnessy, a fighter pilot fresh out of the Air Force with an sudden influx of cash and no real direction crash lands (figuratively) in this resort town of drinks and debauchery. Maybe he'll write??? [portions of book are written from his first-person perspective]
(2) Charles "Charley" Eitle, a blacklisted major director that refused to name names who has his standards, his pride, a last refuge at his vacation home, and a budding screenplay. Likable enough, but perhaps willing to knuckle under to get his career back.
(3) Women, don't worry about them, none have much personality or depth, mostly needy, dependent and willing to participate in musical chairs of physical coupling. (yes, this book is rather misogynistic - product of the time? maybe. Still reads gross and degrading? yes.)

Final Impressions:
An evisceration of the Hollywood culture at the time written by a clearly great writer, but I don't know if it sticks, because I find even the best of characters to be somewhat amorphous, unlikable drifters just trying to get theirs. A big sweaty, sticky train-wreck of a bleh. Perhaps if it had a little more of a sense-of-humor and little less of a liquor-drenched cleverness. Falls into the category of I can appreciate it more than like it.

[Corey · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's quite rare that I don't finish a book. Usually, once I start reading something, I have a kind of compulsive urge to finish it, no matter how bad or how dull. Occasionally, however, there comes along a book that overpowers me with its banality and mediocrity, a tome that forces me to set it aside and move on.

The Deer Park, for me, is one such book. At the urging of a professor who is helping me with something I'm writing, I sought out a copy and started to read it. After all, I thought, it's only about 300 pages. I'll finish it in no time. Right? Wrong.

The Deer Park is a sort of 1950s retelling of The Great Gatsby. Our Nick-Carraway-type figure is replaced by Sergius O'Shaughnessy, a former air force pilot who wins big at a casino and proceeds to blow his money by spending some time in a hotel in a thinly-disguised Palm Springs. Our Gatsby is Charles Eitel, a wealthy screenwriter hoping to make a comeback after his career is destroyed by his unwillingness to cooperate with the Unamerican Activities Committee.

The characters that populate this novel indulge in all sorts of hedonism. Mainly, though, that hedonism manifests in the form of sex. As I understand it, there was some sort of bruh-ha-ha concerning the book's risqué content when it first came out, but by modern standards, everything in here is pretty tame. There are no actual sex scenes in Mailer's novel (at least in the first of it), instead there are only vague, after-the-fact details, which I'm pretty sure Mailer wrote mostly by looking in a thesaurus for synonyms for "passion."

Boring, chauvinistic, and plainly written, there didn't seem to be anything to see here. Maybe I'll go back to it one day, but probably not.

[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exquisite portrait of the relations between pride and desire. Also a great commentary on the artist's condition and a reference point for the jaded, the morally corrupt, the promiscuous and the unsure.

[Paul Gleason · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Deer Park was probably a better read when it was first published in 1955. Its exploration of sex and violence - and the way in which these two forces are at the heart of the "American Dream" - is fearless. It must have been very shocking back in 1955, before the world had been exposed to Burroughs and Selby, and Lady Chatterley and Tropic of Cancer were still banned.

The book is plotless because it has to be. Mailer creates a social milieu - Desert D'Or - which reminds one of Palm Springs, and he deals with Hollywood types: actors, directors, etc. The characters sleep with each other, commit acts of violence, etc. In Dante mode, Mailer reveals the "underside" or Hell of the American Dream - the Hollywood types that, he assumes, Americans aspire to be.

But, the thing is, Mailer creates an Inferno in which the characters are trapped and no movement can occur. In other words, once characters reach Hollywood, they can't escape the primal desires and drives that exist despite their imprisonment in a Hell of endless parties, meaningless sex, meaningless art...

So what do they do? They philosophize. Or - better said - the narrator Sergius philosophizes for them (Mailer runs into a narrative perspective problem early on, so he includes a clunky section that makes the book into something that Sergius has written, which allows him to be omniscient. But let's be honest - this isn't a metafictional book).

The result is a book in which Mailer sacrifices character (always his greatest strength: see The Naked and the Dead, The Executioner's Song, and An American Dream) for philosophical didacticism. Sergius, an aspiring writer, is Mailer's mouthpiece - a self-proclaimed antagonist to the herd, much like Mailer himself.

When coupled with the plotlessness and the lame, Hemingway-influenced ending (bullfighting in Mexico?), the lack of true characters makes for one slog of a read.

As far as Mailer's career is concerned, The Deer Park led him to a realization that for the time being at least, he should give up fiction (the structural and perspectival problems in the novel are all too apparent) and focus on writing non-fiction. Essays like "The White Negro" and books like Advertisements for Myself allowed him to develop and articulate his philosophy so that he could write strong novels like An American Dream and Why Are We in Vietnam?, as well perfect the new form of fiction that Capote called the nonfiction novel.

Yes, the masterpieces The Armies of the Night, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, The Fight, and Of a Fire on the Moon soon followed - all of which blurred the lines of fiction and nonfiction. The culmination was - obviously - The Executioner's Song, which is one of the strongest novels of the 20th century and the apex of Mailer's career.

The Deer Park is only for Mailer completists or those interested in what was considered obscene and radical in 1955. Mailer completists (like me) will find a failure of a book that years later paid off because it led to some of the greatest writing of the 20th century.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

A real teeth-gritter, this may be the longest 375-page novel I have ever read. And I am a Mailer fan.

The novel is initially somewhat interesting. It is set in a thinly disguised Palm Springs that is populated with characters out of early fifties Hollywood. These folks are coping with the fallout from House Un-American Activities hearings (most significantly a character who seems to be modeled on Elia Kazan); with having too much money and time and no real moral compass to guide them as they dispense with both; with the need to be in control of their publicity and image while indulging in the worst behaviors.

I suppose my biggest problem (among many) is that the characters never become more interesting. This despite frequently hopping from one bed to another, or engaging the services of a drunken high-end pimp, or selling out their integrity to Hollywood's schlock machine, or what-have-you. Somehow, despite all the ostensibly shocking goings on in the book, it only ever feels politely sordid. Yes, there may be dirty things taking place, but the novel remains at a sterile distance.

And that's because of a kind of overwriting Mailer commits. The characters' every consideration about any issue is exhaustively considered in a way that feels false because it is so overdeliberated. He may have been trying for some sort of verisimilitude with how we experience moral complication, but I don't know that I believe. Instead, I think he was trying to freight the tawdry material with a higher purpose, a philosophical dimension that he perhaps figured might elevate the novel. But at this stage in his career, he didn't have the chops to pull it off. (Indeed, even later he wobbled on those bits of his novels. The more "philosophical" passages of The Executioner's Song and Harlot's Ghost are the weakest, most embarrassing parts of those terrific books.)

Maybe he was forced into such contortions by the mores of the time. His first publisher canceled the novel in galleys, calling it "obscene," though from today's perspective it is very tame at best. Even from the perspective of ten years and Mailer's fourth novel, the reveling-in-obscenity An American Dream, this earlier book is weirdly prudish and judgmental.

Finally, as is abundantly clear from much of Mailer's work but is especially foregrounded by this book: He doesn't understand women whatsoever and is unable to see them outside of the sexual roles he wants them to play. The portrayal of women in this book is offensive, but because the book is such an overworked, dated mess, it's hard to care very much or for very long.

[Ke · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this book was almost considered obscene when it was published, I would say that it is quite mild according to our contemporary tastes. Despite its beautiful language, I found the plot and organization a bit shoddy.

[Nicole Iovino · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm glad I read this, because now I will never, ever feel obligated to read anything by Norman Mailer ever again.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a surprise, Hollywood is a cesspit of the compromised and the corrupt. Except that this was both known and part of American mythos sine at least the 1921 and the Fatty Arbuckle murder scandal, not to mention the notoriety of Charlie Chaplin and Errol Flynn. So in Deer Park, The once and future great Norman Mailer uses the tell all expose to give us an almost literary take on the Tinseltown land Lotus Eaters. Not intended for the younger children. If it helps pretty boring for those old enough.

I started this book with the sense I was in the hands of a superior story teller. Then I was thinking that Mailer was the top of a generation of storytellers all doing some version of this kind of story. Ultimately, I was chewing my nails hoping this fool book would end. It consists of many pages of muddled, storyline, sometimes shifting time and place just because the writer could and then a few pages of crisp wonderful writing. It did not help that as I was reading this book, I got to see an interview with Norman Mailer. Arrogant, defensive gasbag. It also does not help that my edition included a long essay by NM apologizing for, explaining and defending Deer Park. Even he knew his novel was a problem

The literary pretense. If there is a higher purpose to Deer Park it the problem actual feelings of love among the compromised, the users of people and the rest of the Hollywood’s central casting clichés. We have pretty much the entire check list from pimps to the black listed. No doubt there was some fun to be had giving names to the characters, but the generation best able to do that is almost past.

Basic plot: Our narrator is a recently resigned Air Force pilot. His plan is to live off of a very large poker pot he won on his way out of the Pacific. He settles in one of the major resort town much favored by the Hollywood set and quickly mixes in and among them. Never quite being one of them. This gives us his jaded, innocent view of this world without our narrator ever having to exactly become one of them.

Historic note. What made this book such a scandal and nearly banned was that lot of people have sex. None of this sex is one the page. The descriptors are pretty much limited to the simple statement that this or that couple had sex that night. The real tease was the suggestion that one or the other of the pairing knew some special secret that made that particular coupling superior to that which normal people might experience. The terrible thing was that none of this magical, non-explicit sex was within the bonds of marriage.

Personal note. Many will complain about the use of and abuse of women. The men of this book are pretty much louses and consistently treat women with off handed disrespect. Wives are most often the overlooked, incidental victims. That said more than one of the women are just as cold blooded and strategic in their use of men. In the end the sex with the most power is male and those at the top are the least likely to be concerned with mere human values.

If you are not an avid fan of Norman Mailer and determined to read them all. Do not bother with Deer Park.

[Slanted · Rating 1 out of 5]

Basically a boring book by a very talented writer. At the beginning there are all of these Nick Carraway-esque opinions which is great, but after that nothing much happens. People have sex, people get depressed, depressed people have sex, sex makes people less depressed, people sell out, sell-outs have sex, sell-outs bail on their friends. And that is pretty much the book. Plot need not count for everything, but if your characters are bland and there is no digression then all you have left is pretty writing. Sorry, Norman.

[Michal Mironov · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t give a shit about Hollywood at all, this subject has never fascinated me. But now, I must reluctantly admit, that this crafty bastard Mailer surely can write about any chosen topic. Hollywood included. Especially when it's that rough, greedy, and sexist Hollywood from the early '50s. And Mailer is great at digging in dirt. He shows the legendary „dream factory“ as a rotten, fake business full of psychopaths and manipulators. A business, that will grind and change everyone, regardless of their original ideals.

Moreover, all characters in Deer Park are three-dimensional and perfectly believable. No one is an explicitly positive hero or a negative villain. A talented and bright director can act like a coward scumbag. Not every beautiful actress has to be necessarily dumb at the same time. And even a pimp can have greater sense of morality and justice than the others. There is only one thing they have all in common: all of them are trapped and deformed by Hollywood (and thus in life - as the Hollywood appears as a world for itself).

The Deer Park is definitely not an easy read but if not for anything else, I recommend it for the great dialogues.

[Donna Grayson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Norman Mailer classic

This is the first book by Norman Mailer I have read. It is really slow in many places. I admit I skimmed though about 30% of the book, mainly the dysfunctional interactions between the couples. I was hoping there would be a stronger plot and ending. Originally written in 1955 there were also several parts where slang of that era is used, making it difficult to understand. The strong points for me were the parts that dealt with the Hollywood celebrity system from that era. I wish he would have focused more on that, and less of the long drawn out negative interactions in the relationships.

[Mike Roper · Rating 1 out of 5]

Had the odd moment, but was mainly tedious, conceited, tawdry and chauvinistic, perhaps even bordering on misogynistic.

Plot was thin and characters one dimensional. While the writing was good in places, I always pictured it with the writer stroking his chin at his own genius.

[Artsalnov · Rating 1 out of 5]

Как всегда с американской классикой (за редким исключением): сумбурная, не близкая, отторгающая картина чужой, далекой и идиотской жизни неких американских «небожителей».
Короче, мимо… откровенно читал «на перемотке», невероятная мутотень, жаль потраченного времени.

[Inna Katkova · Rating 1 out of 5]

My first and last time reading Mailer. Absolutely unbearable reading him. Got 100 pages in before i gave up.

[Alaina McManus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting take on Hollywood & Palm Springs in the 1950s. A little too long and disjointed for me. I think it would have been better without "Part 6"- most of the novel takes place over the course of a single year, and then it does the "many years later" thing with Part 6 which feels unnecessary and indulgent.

A very well written account of what I understand are mostly truths concerning the way the film industry worked (and still does to some extent.) The female characters were unfortunately 1 dimensional and poorly written, but I suppose that's to be expected from a white male author in 1955. It was my first time reading Mailer, and I enjoyed it enough to want to read a few more of his books, but not good enough for me to want to read his entire body of work.

[Ted Burke · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mailer's third novel, The Deer Park, finds the author searching for a style suitable to his ambitions of being the literary genius who finally sets the world straight on matters of love, destiny, masculinity, sex, betrayal, all that good stuff.

Mailer failed with the ambition, of course, but we have to love him for trying to swing the bat so that it crack the loudest and result in the the ball not just leaving the park, but the planet as well. Many great books were written him, most of them a brilliant species of journalistic novels, non fictions written in a narrative style that showed that history could be faithfully and heroically recounted like a good yarn. His novels are another matter, fantastic and questing and experimental in form and content, novels long and very long and short, even brief, none of them perfect,many of them brilliant and commanding all the same.

Yes, this man should have won the Nobel Prize for literature based solely on the originality and brilliance of his work; Mailer, though, was not the politically acceptable sort to be given the award by a governing body that prized only the most pristine of authors who had political views that didn't rock the rafters. Mailer rocked the rafters, he questioned,he probed,he outraged, he said things that Blacks, gays, women and an army of others have understandable problems with.He was the necessary man to have around at the time when the counter culture and the left had this soft headed notion that bad things and armies and guns and bad wars and poverty would just fade away; Mailer, an existentialist of his own devising and a religious mystic of at least an impressive amateur standing (Mailer's writings gave even his most naive or outrageous utterances a poetic urgency that forced you to admire the power of their expression) was not convinced we were advancing to a higher evolution, a higher consciousness where the state and its contradictions would wither away. We were merely headed for something darker, starker, less reliant on imagination and passion and self-determination and more so on technology, corporate need, and the erosion of people's attention spans. As I said, Mailer was seeking a new style of prose and approach when The Deer Park appeared. It is a good yarn, not a great one. I would not recommend this book. I say that with some reservation, as Mailer has been my favorite novelist for decades. But his real genius still lay before him.

[Lisabet Sarai · Rating 3 out of 5]

This early novel by Norman Mailer takes place in a fictional desert resort a few hours from Los Angeles, probably modeled after Palm Springs. Mailer chronicles the follies, excesses, affairs and schemes of a group of individuals tied to the movie industry. The book is dark to the point of despair, a painstaking exposition of the ways we lie to one another and ourselves, especially about sex and love. I can't say I really enjoyed it, but I felt compelled to read it to the end, almost the way one is drawn to stare at a car wreck.

The prose did not impress me. With a flat, affectless tone, the author peers into the minds of the lost souls perambulating around Desert D'Or. On the other hand, the tale offers an original point of view that might be termed "imaginary omnicient". The narrator, Sergius OShaunessy, is a virile ex-soldier with secrets to hide and pretensions to being an author. He admits that he can't know what the other characters see, feel or experience, but he claims that his imagination still allows him to paint pictures of what goes on behind their closed doors. Thus, the action alternates between first person accounts of the narrator's thoughts and experiences and the actions and feelings of the other characters - including their sexual activities - as envisioned by Sergius. It's a strange approach, but it actually does work.

Looking back, I recognized that almost the entire novel may be meta-fictional. It's really all a set of different perspectives on the narrator Sergius: what interests him, what he believes or wants to believe, what he fears and desires. And Sergius does manage to stir up a bit of sympathy for at least a few of the characters, especially movie director Charley Eitel - whose life and career is ravaged by his refusal to cooperate with the McCarthy commission - and the sexy, insecure dancer Elena. Eitel is in some sense his alter ego, a sign of what Sergius may become. And with the self-absorption characteristic of young men, Sergius imagines Eitel feels the same sense of connection to him.

I find as I look back, I appreciate the artistry more than when I was reading. THE DEER PARK is not really entertainment. But it might be Art. I'm certain the author very self-consciously intended it to be.

[L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5 za pewne cytaty, które wświdrowały mi się w mózg i gorączkowo przepisywałam je piórem w trzęsącym się metrze. Nieustannie do nich wracam.

EDIT 29.08.2015: Jednak pełne 4. Za często myślę o tej książce.

Mailer miał być moim Literackim Objawieniem. Mam spore wymagania wobec tego chłystka. Jest na bardzo dobrej drodze, by tak właśnie się stało, na pewno mu nie odpuszczę, bo mimo - chwilami - zbyt naiwnych, zbyt szowinistycznych, zbyt pustych fragmentów Jeleniego parku, nie mogłam się od tej książki oderwać, przepadłam dla Desert D'Or.
Podobieństwa między tą powieścią a Wielkim Gatsbym nie dostrzegam; ponoć można je wyczuć. Z tym, że Gatsby to dla mnie literacka pomyłka.

[Hillery · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mailer's satiric take on the corruption and shallowness of post WWII Hollywood. Set in a fictionalized Palm Springs in the late '40s, it tells a story (his?) of an Air Force pilot just out of the war who winds up in the town to try to write a book and to decide what he wants to do with his life. He falls in with the Hollywood crowd that comes there frequently. The subject matter and the premise interest me. However, not much happens; none of the characters are likable; Mailer's writing style is a bit self-conscious and pretentious. Felt like I needed to give at least one of Mailer's novels a try. I've done it. Check it off my list.

[Gordon Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Could have been as good as The Great Gatsby, with which it has many similarities. But Mailer's ego got in the way - his narrator character doesn't stay in the background like Nick Carraway, and as a proxy for Mailer is very unbelievable. This also leads to problems with narrative continuity, as the novel switches from first person, to third person through the lens of the first person, to straight omniscient narrative. But the novel has great set pieces, such as a party near the beginning that echoes the party in The Great Gatsby, and a chapter devoted to the machinations of a Louis Mayer-esque studio mogul in his office. And the Hollywood-Palm Springs characters are memorable.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

پارک گوزن، یک رمان کلیدی استعاری از پارکی ست که در واقع در منطقه ی هالیوود در پالم اسپرینگ، وجود دارد و خاصان هالیوود در آنجا به سرگرمی و استراحت می پردازند. قهرمان رمان، سرگیوس اوشاونسی، افسر تازه بازنشسته ی نیروی هوایی، که میل دارد نویسنده بشود، تباهی شرورانه ی اخلاقیات هالیوودی را مشاهده و تجربه می کند. عنوان کتاب از پارک گوزن ها، که لویی پانزدهم برای سرگرمی و لذت شخصی با زن هایش درست کرده بود، وام گرفته شده است.


مطلبی کوتاه در مورد نورمن می لر، در جایی دیگر
http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_...

[Daniel Cunha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book for its realistic, gritty yet almost loving and longing portrait of post-WWII hollywood in all its glamour, hyprocrisy, and ability to create and consume dreams and lives. Each character is facing life changing choices, temptations, corruption, in its most seducing - the way they meet them, and how they play off each other assuming different roles at every juncture is what caught me in this book. Great read.

[Jason Hillenburg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mailer's "Hollywood" novel. It's a much more involving reading experience than the underrated Barbary Coast, but it does fall prey to overheated prose during some critical points in the novel. Mailer is aiming high here, as always, and achieves memorable results when he connects with readers. The kerfuffle he endured attempting to publish the novel seems absolutely hysterical now - it is quite tame by today's standards. It has dated as well, though still well worth reading.

[Brian Fagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keeping in the context that it was written in the mid-50s, the book is a fascinating curiosity for it's depiction of sex. Kind of like Peyton Place in Hollywood...with those red commie bastards. Great for any fans of Norman Mailer. You can see an author experimenting to find his voice. That's pretty much what the book is, an experiment.