In the Red Light: A History of the Republican Convention of 1964

by Norman Mailer

There was entertainment at the Republican Gala on Sunday night. The climax was a full marching band of bagpipers. They must have been hired for the week since one kept hearing them on the following days, and at all odd times, heard them even in my hotel room at four a.m. for a few were marching in the streets of San Francisco, sounding through the night, giving off the barbaric evocation of the Scots, all valor, wrath, firmitude, and treachery—the wild complete treachery of the Scots finding its way into the sound of the pipes. They were a warning of the fever in the heart of the Wasp.In the summer of 1964, Esquire sent celebrated writer Norman Mailer to San Francisco to cover the Republican National Convention, where ultra-conservative Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona was expected to take the Presidential nomination. Acerbic, unrelenting, and as sweeping in scope as it is deep in examination, In the Red Light firmly establishes Mailer as the leading literary social critic of his time—and, perhaps, of any time. In the Red Light was originally published in Esquire, November 1964. Cover design by Adil Dara.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Essays, Presidents

51 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 18, 2016

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

[Bob · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly drivel, well written drivel.

[Parker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mailer is such a crazed hyperbolic writer who can say so little with so many words. The beginning of this is interesting, but it seems like he wasn't as involved in the action of this event as he was with the Liston/Patterson fight in "Ten Thousand Words a Minute," and that makes for much less interesting fare. He is forced to pontificate broadly and pretentiously on the state of America as a whole, revealing ultimately, that he has nothing to say.

Listened to the audiobook while working.

[Alexander McAuliffe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as impressive as Mailer’s work four years later, but this work clearly informed that later reporting. There is an apocalyptic flair which suits Mailer and his writing style, but also suits the times. I was arrested by the following passage, psychoanalyzing the nation and the times he lived in, between the War and the triumph of late-century corporate republicanism:

“There was nothing in our growth which was organic. We had never solved our depression, we had merely gone to war, and going to war had never won it, not in our own minds, not as men, no, we had won it but as mothers, sources of supply; we did not know that we were equal to the Russians. We had won a war but we had not really won it, not in the secret of our sleep. So we had not really had a prosperity, we had had fever.”

[Tania · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historical perspective

Mailer covers the 1964 Republican Convention in 3 parts: background regarding the candidates, the actual event and its outcome, and his opinion on the results and what it meant for the U.S. The background made a case for the stronger candidate, Goldwater, and examined the efforts of the other candidate and what would be required of him to beat the odds. The coverage of the event bemoans its anticlimactic outcome, so sure was the author of his predictions. The conclusion compares the Republican candidate to communists, so there should be no mistaking the author’s opinion regarding the same.

It's a flowery piece, filled with imagery and metaphors. Mailer paints a picture, though it is not a happy one. Modern readers must read this as a historical writing, since some of the language and turns of phrase are no longer acceptable in mainstream media. Overall it's interesting to see what has changed and more importantly what has not in the intervening years.

[Travis · Rating 2 out of 5]

This author writes as if he is very clever. I think he is too clever for me, and I'm OK with that. There is actually some good information about the politics of the age, and even some thoughtful commentary, but the entire article is written in an ongoing series of metaphors and similes, drenched with disdain and denigration for Republicans. Once, the author actually admits that he is digressing, but once doesn't nearly cover it. Maybe I would have found this article quite entertaining, and appropriately worrisome, if I were a liberal in the 1960s. I suppose it gives an interesting look at the politics and culture of the era, but there were some parts that were pretty hard to slog through.

[Brian Pangburn · Rating 1 out of 5]

A difficult read

One of the worst "books" I have ever read in my life. Wordy... to the point of being incomprehensible. Mailer seems to have written this while indulging in psychedelics. Not recommended... at all.

[Downward · Rating 3 out of 5]

most of the dna here has been done better in other mailer works, but here we have one of the premier essayists of the 20th century commenting on the '64 republican national convention, which ended up being a real battle for the souls of conservative (hint: they lost those souls). so mailer is recording a breakdown, a flight from moderation recorded in Goldwater's famous words: extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue. sure. normal mailer warnings apply: his obsession with race tacks to the ugly and his weird response to Baldwin's suggestion that whites collect their own edges toward, um, yeah. The gross stuff.

[DOUGLAS J BERRY · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, Norman Mailer could write his ass off.

Prime freebie. Suitable for teens and adults. This was written when political insight was about complex art, not dull witted pseudo science. This was not written to generate content but provoke thought. Award winning Norman Mailer at his peak.

[Dale Jennings · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know in the film version of Amadeus, there’s a line about Mozart using ‘too many notes?’ The same could be said about this book, it seems more like a standardized test vocabulary reading exercise than a book.

[Gary · Rating 1 out of 5]

Insulting to say the least

Thank goodness this was short read. I finished it, because I wanted to hear what he had to say, but I'm sorry that I did. Crazy to think that people admire him.

[howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reads like Prophecy

Mailer brings his sharp insights to the convention tat nominated Barry Goldwater for president. It led the party to disaster. Apparently the GOP
has leaned nothing in the intervening decades.

[Andy Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's well written and Mailer obvious has some insightful descriptions of Goldwater, Scranton, Eisenhower but it is not what you would call a very in depth analysis of any of them or what the Republican party was going through in '64.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the neater books about American presidential campaigns and political culture. I've admittedly only read one other book by Norman Mailer. This book made me want to go deeper into Mailer's ouvre.

[Martin Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like the author, the writing is over the top. Nevertheless, there are some amazing insights, that if you changed the pronouns, would apply to our situation today.

[Simon Sweetman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Mailer’s anger and urgency. It’s outmoded now but you aren’t meant to view this through today’s lens. At his best he’s virtuosic - and there are hints of his best reporting here.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mailer as New Journalist. He does have a way with words; at times, though, I think he lost his train of thought. But an interesting report of a convention I knew little about.

[Vel Veeter]

Sometimes you want a nice excoriating essay about Republicans, who of course, sometimes really deserve it. The essay here is a little artifact, too, of reportage given how different not only the media landscape has become, but also how different the nominating process is. This is the 1964 Republican convention in Daly City California, and it comes across here in Norman Mailer's viewpoint and language as just the dorkiest evil that ever happened. I'll save the criticism of Democrats for essays about Democrats, but here you witness a real identity crisis that began under Eisenhower, where the rich, but waspy Republicanism of the 1950s, where common sense finance conservatism was pitted against the rise of the welfare state. But as other writers, particularly Richard Hofstadter have suggested, that just wasn't good enough. There needed a narrative attached to fight against the clearly much better story of the welfare state, as well as the loss of whatever vitality the country supposedly was supposed to feel from generational wars and foreign conquests. Rationality was no longer going to work, so the moving toward Barry Goldwater seemed like a perfectly good thing. Another Mailer essay gets into what he feels about why Nixon came next. What's going to be further lost about essays like this as we move toward the future of course is that the Republicans (and possibly the Democrats) are going to become much more closed off to media in the future (as already seen in state nominating conventions coming this summer).

[Kent Winward · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Goldwater convention is intriguing to read about fifty years later in light of the Trump convention. These are old battle grounds that have been around for a long time.