Country: USA
Genre: Literary
Pages: 375
In 1955, The Deer Park struggled to find a publisher. In fact, editors were rebuking the manuscript questioning the decadent nature of its characters. They were right, Norman Mailer's novel has everything to frighten the McCarthy-era good family editor that has been raised reading Walt Whitman. It was the beginning of something new, finally a fiction writer stepped up to the task of exposing thoroughly the true nature of the American Dream.
Sergius O'Shaughnessy is a young Air Force pilot, decomissioned for health reason (we'll soon learn it was for psychological reasons), who lands in the Desert D'Or in search for a new beginning as a writer. Over there leisure famous and not so famous Hollywood actors, directors and executive, away from the fury of work, in search for a time off and a revelation. Sergius will meet and form a friendship with director Charles Eitel, once a glorious talent, looking for a new start to his career after being hurt by accusations of communism and staying deliberately ambiguous at his court hearing. The Deer Park is the story of Sergius and Charley and how the relationships they developed at the Desert D'Or reshaped their lives.
Norman Mailer takes an elegant swing at the glamorous lifestyle called "American Dream" with this novel. Having worked himself in Hollywood, the world he portrays has nothing to do with the image that moves American stardom even nowadays. The characters of The Deer Park are troubled at the hollowness created by their lifestyle of abundance. With nothing left to dream about, Charley, Lulu, Elena and even to a certain point Sergius are scrambling to give meaning to their lives through love, but the radically different perception each one of them have of this feeling will put the protagonists through even more pain and push them in a deeper state of crisis from which they will end up changed.
The main idea that drives The Deer Park is to put in question the values we've been told to live for, the main path to success and fulfillment if you will. None of the characters are happy or satisfied with their status despite the fact that there is no major crisis (hence no major drive to the plot) throughout the novel. The Deer Park portrait the dark side of wealth, fame and leisure. Through the demented Desert D'Or, the characters will change the landscapes they have within and try to break the boundaries of their upbringing, which Mailer explores with a close look.
A weird streak of minor technical issues plague The Deer Park and prevent him from being "almost perfect". For example, Mailer is adverb crazy. You will find many adverb by chapters, which will hit the reader in the face like a hammer. Also, Sergius is a first person point-of-view narrator, but he narrates chapters where he's present...and where he's not, giving no explanations of why he knows about the very details of his friends relationship. They are unsettling anomalies, but they don't keep The Deer Park from being the best novel I have read so far this year. Norman Mailer is the first writer that took a violent swing at the American Dream...and what a swing it was!
