Essay topic: "[In 2000 words] Discuss the work of a pre-20th century writer (or writers) whom you consider to be a precursor (or precursors) to the literay journalisms of the 20th and 21st centuries. Compare and contrast the techniques used by the precursor(s) with those used by recent literary journalist(s)."
Jose's comments: "Excellent research and background info. I liked the way you alternated b/w Mailer and Defoe - highlighting both their similarities and differences. Bringing in Coetzee was a master stroke, and I would have enjoyed more from Foe (or other sidelights). I think the essay could have improved with more exposition of the literary techniques of both Defoe and Mailer on the page."
Jose is of course correct, and was very generous. But I was so taken by the differences in approach available to the two men living, as they did, in such different social milieux.
In 1979, Norman Mailer handed The Executioner’s Song to his publishers. Howard Kaminsky of Warner Books recalled: "Norman came in and handed me four black looseleaf binders, each one containing five hundred pages of manuscript triple-spaced. I brought it home that night with great trepidation and started reading. Within half an hour all the weight of anxiety lifted off me and I knew we were home."1
Defoe would have appreciated not only the acclaim that Mailer received, but also the detail, the pregnant existence of Kaminsky’s relief.
In his 1986 novel, entitled Foe, the South African born but naturalised Australian author J. M. Coetzee coaxes up a vision of the man. Sarah Barton is the survivor of a shipwreck on the island where Robinson Crusoe lived, and is rescued and returns to England along with Friday, his companion. In contact with Foe, she tries to get him to write their story in the way she wants it told. She has many suggestions, but he is not swayed: "‘The island is not a story in itself,’ said Foe gently, laying a hand on my knee. ‘We can bring it to life only by setting it within a larger story. By itself it is no better than a waterlogged boat drifting day after day in an empty ocean till one day, humbly and without commotion, it sinks. The island lacks light and shade. It is too much the same throughout. It is like a loaf of bread. It will keep us alive, certainly, if we are starved of reading; but who will prefer it when there are tastier confections and pastries to be had?’"2
Making tastier confections than other writers was always Defoe’s main motivator. He wanted to be successful. But he was also always very concerned about his image. As John Richetti says in his biography: " … Defoe projects distinct personae … who define themselves rhetorically … by marking themselves as authors, by separating themselves specifically from the inferior competition by honesty and integrity, by an original kind of accuracy in their texts, by a self-proclaimed fullness of being and singularity in their articulations."3 Defoe certainly does this in his account of the life of Wild, deriding the hacks who preceded him and setting himself up as the true medium of Wild’s story.
In his preface, Defoe speaks directly to us, complaining that those he succeeds were not really worthy of their attention: "The several absurd and ridiculous accounts which have been published, notwithstanding early and seasonable caution given, of the life and conduct of this famous, or, if you please, infamous creature, Jonathan Wild, make a short preface to this account absolutely necessary."4
Defoe disingenuously promises to deliver to his readers a "short but exact account" stripped of the "romance" that characterised the "chimney-corner tales" that are his competition.
But the colour and drama that characterise his account go further than this promise. The True and Genuine Account of the Life and Actions of the Late Jonathan Wild goes some way toward where we want to go. It delves into the psychology of the criminal, brings to the surface his native cunning and bizarre organisation, confronts us with a master of his craft, a man in control of his destiny. Until the laws changed and everything came crashing down around his ears.
Similarly, Mailer asked his publishers to classify The Executioner’s Song as a novel -- at the time, and possibly still, the dominant literary mode. The description of this "… new literary genre which would give rise to much controversy, and much praise"5 was ‘A True Life Novel’. Critics were ebullient following publication in October 1979. A Pulitzer Prize was awarded on 14 April 1980. By then he was already at work on the enormous Ancient Evenings. Mailer was indefatigable and feisty.
Defoe was equally busy and combative even toward the end of his life. "Always alert to what his contemporaries were interested in and eager to analyze, explain, and point out the implication of social change, Defoe began to publish extensively on crime and criminals,"6 says Paula Backscheider in her biography.
With the return of soldiers and seamen from the War of the Spanish Succession -- "which began (Richetti tells us) in 1701 with Britain, Holland, and the Emperor ranged against the French. … [and which] would last until 1714 …"7 -- "urbanization and the return of military men gave a new character to crime in England,"8 continues Backscheider.
Backscheider again: "[Wild] had come to the public’s attention first as the proprietor of his ‘Office of Lost and Stolen Property’ and then as the thief-taker (proto-detective) chiefly responsible for the destruction of London’s four largest gangs. Ten years later, Wild was exposed as the monstrous lord of criminals who directed them, received their plunder, and sold it back to their victims. He decided whether his followers would live or die by turning some over to the authorities and providing witnesses against them. Moreover, he recruited thieves, hired specialists for big robberies, and made enormous profits."9
This brief account is a welcome footnote to Defoe’s even more moralistic one. His moralism works against his purpose while of course giving it the necessary space to exist.
The moralising tone was a sort of sweetener, if you like, for the medicine of his dramatic narrative. It was also an apology for the low nature of his subject. "What is most impressive about the work is the consistent moral tone," says Novak. "Defoe treats the career of Wild as an example of individual evil."10
His readers were well used to this treatment, attending church every Sunday where they would be regaled with long sermons, and reading from the many large collections of sermons -- often bestsellers -- published by the eminent divines of the age. Although attracted to the telling detail, Defoe does not resile from his position as a moral guardian of respectable sensibilities, and his snarls of disgust work against his role as the medium of a true and full account of his subject’s history.
But Defoe still manages to pack a lot of factual detail into his narrative. He introduces dialogue between Wild and one of the citizens of London he is in the process of gulling. He describes Wild’s childhood in as much detail as he is able to muster. By going into the details of the story, which I summarise in the following paragraphs, he is able to effectively frame the denouement.
"… [T]here being an Act passed in the reign of the late King William, making it felony to buy or receive any stolen goods … the receiving trade was spoiled all at once … ,"11 writes Defoe. "But Jonathan and his director [his first accomplice in crime, one Miss Milliner] soon found out a way to encourage the trade again …"12 They would locate "… proper instruments [he means go-betweens] to employ to go to the persons who had been robbed, and tell them that if they could describe what they had lost, they believed they could help them to them again; for there was a parcel of goods stopped by an honest broker …"13 "This trade, I found by his own discourse, he carried on a very great while …" until "… an Act of parliament … was passed … to make it a felony to take or receive any reward for the restoring of any stolen goods …"14 He was warned by "a certain honourable person"15 that this law was aimed at him. "But good advice to Jonathan Wild was like talking gospel to a kettle-drum, bidding a dragoon not plunder, or talking of compassion to a hussar … ,"16 gloats Defoe.
Needless to say, Wild went too far. "He now not only took rewards for returning goods stolen, but even directed the stealing of them … ,"17 but he was caught, and "… upon a full hearing he was convicted …", sums up Defoe in a single paragraph, and "… received sentence of death the 15th of May last."18 The pamphlet is 40 pages long in the Harper Perennial edition.
Norman Mailer’s work is the account of the release from prison (he was previously jailed for robbery) and subsequent recidivism, crimes, arrest, judgement, and execution on 17 January 1977 of Gary Mark Gilmore in Utah — "the first judicial homicide in the United States for ten years"19, according to Simon Petch of Sydney University. My edition runs to 1056 pages. The Gilmore trial must have attracted a lot of publicity in its time, and drawn Mailer because of its topicality and the pathos of the First-Degree Murder charge.
"So you thought of Gilmore at least initially as a commercial property?" asked the critic John W. Aldridge in a 1980 interview. "Well, as I said, yes, I think of commercial possibilities," replied Mailer. "But obviously, it’s important not to take a book on just because it promises money."20 Mailer may certainly have had an eye on the enormous success of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, published as a ‘Non-fiction Novel’ in 1966. In this concern with profit, he was, again, not unlike Defoe, but times had changed and, as a twentieth-century artist, lust for filthy lucre would not have been entirely flattering to him as a primary motivator.
Yet the method that guided Mailer was different to that which guided Defoe. In the same interview he talks about the empathy generated by reading the book. "So I was left at the end of the book with a sense of ambiguity about Gilmore that you can only feel about someone you know very well. … Gilmore was fond of saying that he was a very bad guy, and he was in a lot of ways. He had a lot of very bad, dull habits."21 But it is in the detailed imagining of these habits that we get close enough to start to come to terms with Gilmore.
The book contains exhaustive details about all those who were associated with Gilmore, from Val J. Conlin, the man he bought his cars — a Mustang and a white truck — from, to all the past boyfriends and the two husbands of his girlfriend Nicole Baker — including Jim Hampton, Jim Barrett, Kip Eberhardt, Steve Hudson, Joe Bob Sears and Tom Fong — who meets Gary when she is twenty years old.
Gilmore’s arrest is brought vividly to life. In the following extract from the middle of the book, Brenda is Gary’s cousin, who takes him in after his release from prison, which is recounted at the start of the book. Toby Bath is a police officer.
Toby Bath called Brenda. "We’ve got him," he told her. "Is he okay?" asked Brenda. "Yes," said Toby, "he’s fine." "Anybody else get hurt?" asked Brenda. "Nope, nobody got hurt. Did a good clean job." "Thank God," said Brenda. She had never been in a more shattered state. She couldn’t even cry. "Oh," she said. "Gary’s going to hate me. He’s not too happy with me anyways. But now he’s going to hate me." She was more worried about that than anything.22
Mailer would never have been satisfied with Defoe’s oblique references. The "certain honourable person" would be identified and interviewed. As would the "honest broker" and the "proper instrument". Wild’s "director" as well would be named and her role expanded.
As a novelist, Mailer had a lot of room to work in. Where Defoe only had the moral majority on his side, Mailer had art on his. Where Defoe exploited the dominant dialectic of the sermon, which judges, Mailer could avail himself of the dominant dialectic of the novel, which asks us to empathise with its subject.
Defoe’s authorial persona was circumscribed by the tenor of the time, his options narrower, his vision cramped by moral imperatives, his dish seasoned with a thick layer of righteousness. Defoe was certainly no hack, but it is certain that in his lifetime he could never aspire to be thought an artist.
References
1. Hilary Mills, Mailer: A Biography (New English Library, 1983), page unknown.
2. J. M. Coetzee, Foe (Penguin Books, 1987), p. 177.
3. John Richetti, Life of Daniel Defoe (Blackwell Publishing, 2005), p. 29.
4. Richard Holmes ed., Defoe on Sheppard and Wild (Harper Perennial, 2004), p. 71.
5. Mills, op cit.
6. Paula Backscheider, Daniel Defoe: His Life (John Hopkins University Press, 1989), p. 477.
7. Richetti, op cit, p. 14.
8. Backscheider, op cit, p. 477.
9. Backscheider, op cit, p. 490.
10. Maximillian E. Novak, Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions (Oxford University Press, 2001), page unknown.
11. Holmes, op cit, p. 83.
12. Holmes, op cit, p. 84.
13. Ibid.
14. Holmes, op cit, p. 106.
15. Holmes, op cit, p. 107.
16. Holmes, op cit, pp. 106-7.
17. Holmes, op cit, p. 108.
18. Ibid.
19. http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-March-1997/petch.html
20. J. Michael Lennon ed., Conversations with Norman Mailer (University Press of Mississippi, 1988), p. 263.
21. Lennon, op cit, p. 264.
22. Norman Mailer, The Executioner’s Song (Vintage, 1991), p. 270-71.
