Some thoughts upon rereading Norman Mailer’s, Of a Fire on the Moon.I graduated high school in June of 1969. I barely remember my graduation day, but I will never forget the evening of July 20, 1969, watching TV at a friend’s house on a hot and sticky night in Northern New Jersey when, at 10:18 pm, six hours after touching down on the surface, Neil Armstrong stepped out of the lunar module, Eagle, and set foot on the moon. This was the culmination of a goal set by US president John F. Kennedy in 1961 when he challenged the people of the United States to rally in support of the vision to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Kennedy’s challenge came just days after Alan Shepard’s sub-orbital Mercury flight and the United States’ late entry into the Space Race. The Soviet Union had shocked America awake with the launch of Sputnik, the first satellite, in 1957, followed by Yuri Gagarin’s historic April 1961 flight as he became the first man to orbit the earth. The catalyst of the challenge was fear of the Soviet Union and it was as politically driven program as any, but from the beginning, JFK packaged it in a vision so compelling that, at least for me and most of my friends, it defined who we were as Americans during that decade.As a boy I lived through the seasons in the bucolic Finger Lakes of New York. We were isolated from the turmoil and change taking place in the urban areas of the country, but the regular space launches were certainly part of our cycle. Mercury, Gemini and then Apollo: it seemed we were always celebrating a victory or preparing for the next one. Astronauts were celebrities and heroes. Even disaster could not derail the program. The tragic fire on the launch pad of Apollo 1 that took the lives of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee seemed to motivate the country even more. Less than two years after the accident, the first manned mission, Apollo 8, was a success. Nothing could stop us. We achieved our goal with the Apollo 11 mission with time to spare on that steamy July night in 1969. Neil Armstrong, and just behind him, Buzz Aldrin, set foot on the moon while Michael Collins orbited the moon in the Command Module, waiting to take the team back to Earth. Between that night and the last Apollo mission in 1972, we placed 12 men on the moon and brought them all back safely. It has been more than 40 years since Gene Cernan became the last man to walk on the moon. Our priorities shifted and we have never been out of a low Earth orbit since. This book gave me a chance to relive those magic years and to think a bit about the significance these many years later.Of a Fire on the Moon is a description of the Apollo 11 mission and is Mailer at his journalistic best. It was during this time that Mailer was having success with books that were accounts of current events, often inserting his own character into the narrative. Books such as Armies of the Night, Miami and the Siege of Chicago and others are a kind of historical fiction, with the extremely sharp observations of the writer filtered through his own perspective of the action and even taking part in the action, attempting to steer the outcome. In Of a Fire on the Moon, Mailer is present as character Aquarius, but Aquarius takes a back seat for most of the novel. The book is mostly a remarkable description of this historical event, with analysis of every detail possible from the political environment down to the engineering specifications for the nuts and bolts of the rockets. Mailer’s prose is often lyrical as he evokes the larger images, such as the launch of the giant Saturn rockets or the significance of the back side of the Moon. Parts of this book have always reminded me of Melville: Mailer himself compares the rising Saturn rocket to Melville’s Leviathan (white as the white of Melville’s Moby Dick…slow as Melville’s Leviathan might swim). It is a beautiful and informative account of one of the milestone events of our generation. Aquarius is forced to step into the background for most of the book, since the sheer magnitude of the topic, the adventure into the unknown depths of space, dwarfs any attempt to impose his personality. He does allow Aquarius to pontificate at the beginning of the novel and again at the conclusion. These parts are vintage Mailer and add a sharp perspective to the narrative. His common themes of good versus evil, God versus the Devil, conservative versus Wasp all play out against the canvas of the launch. I found his conclusions chilling, especially considering the 45 years that have elapsed since the publication of the book. Mailer is as excited by the launch as most Americans and he tries very hard to find all the positive aspects. As he understands more about the program a sense of dark foreboding begins to appear. For Mailer, the moon has always been a powerful symbol of the mystical, the pagan and the unknown. Now that we were about to go there, to walk on the surface, doubts about the intent begin to surface. Mailer the hipster, the modern day rebel, is watching a performance choreographed by the conservative elements that he hates. He wants adventure, in the old Hemingway style, but what he finds is nothing but an endless rank of colorless technicians. He wants heroes like Huck Finn or Jake Barnes or even Ahab but the astronauts who are in the best position to be the heroes are a bland group from small town America, Boy Scouts, impersonal, efficient and sanitized to the point of preventing an emotional connection. He admires these men and their actions, but he is repelled by their life and their values, afraid of whom or what will take control of the moon and our future. He even considers that the draw of the Moon may be an evil attraction and one we are not meant to make. He sees a future controlled by banal corporations, military-industrial complex behemoths with technology and efficiency supreme but void of soul, the ultimate evil unleashed on the universe. As he is wrapping up the book, even the political landscape in the United States is changing. Vietnam is ramping up, Nixon is in charge, and the revolution has run off the tracks. Teddy Kennedy has killed a girl in a car accident at Chappaquiddick and walked away in a drunken stupor, staining the name of Camelot and the sanctity of the original vision. A battle between God and the Devil was raging, and it seemed that the Devil was winning.Almost five decades later, we have made huge leaps in technology that have allowed us to understand some of the mysteries of space. The United States built and flew the Space Shuttles on 135 missions over 30 years from 1981-2011, including two accidents that destroyed the orbiters Columbia and Challenger along with 14 lives. This program was instrumental in advancing our knowledge and technology. Without it we could not have built the space station, launched the Hubble telescope or kicked off missions such as Magellan and Galileo. Despite the success, the human scope of the shuttle program never left low Earth orbit. Humans piloted the ships, but they became little more than logistical transportation to the Space Station, a highly evolved semi-trailer. Since this program was terminated, we (the United States) must beg rides on Chinese and Russian rockets to get to the space station. We are sending drones to far corners of our galaxy, and each mission adds huge reservoirs of knowledge. They are all triumphs of technology, but lack the personal involvement, the human participation that we crave in our adventures. I think this is one reason why recent movies like Interstellar are popular: such fantasies always have a live human hero at the stick. Even more than the technology, Mailer feared the technocrats in charge. Today we see a fundamental conservative right that would have scared Mailer to death. We have allowed the growth of the huge military-industrial complex and now watch as we funnel most of our national resources into this “defense” spending, sending equipment, troops and rains of fire over every Middle Eastern Muslim tribe that goads our anger. After this excess, we have precious little resources left to fund even the most antiseptic of space exploration. The right is also caught up in fundamental religious issues. Mailer loved the existential debate about good versus evil but would have skewered the modern religious fervor that has no thought or substance, but relies on blinders and provincial tribalism. Our liberal Democratic Party, the place where Mailer felt most at home, would probably not please him either. They are trying to stay focused on the traditional social values but are also drawn into the vacuum created in the traditional conservative platform as the conservatives move to the extreme ends of their doctrine. Because of this, the Democrats continue to support the wars and defense spending while pushing health, social security and better schooling. Nowhere in their vision is a human adventure that would excite the spirit of Norman Mailer.I am happy to have reread this book. It allowed a dreamy remembrance of the good old days as it also served as a reminder that as a nation we are dangerously out of balance. We are in desperate need of a leadership who will focus on identifying a common rally point, a national vision, one in which we may all be proud. Another audacious space challenge would qualify in my opinion, but it must certainly provide for the possibility of human heroes if it is to be successful.As a footnote, I purchased a limited edition of Moonfire from Taschen Books. This was released on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. It is a compilation of wonderful photos of the Apollo 11 mission from NASA, Life, and other magazines with the haunting prose of Of a Fire on the Moon reprinted in full. Find a way to check out a copy of this amazing book.
I've had no involvement with Norman Mailer though I'm aware of his name. I got this on a whim as the blurb made it seem exactly the kind of book I'd like. I sometimes wonder if my generation will ever have anything to equal the universal heights of the Moon landings. 9/11 probably comes closest yet that was a negative event (and I actually missed it as it happened - I was flying to Italy and didn't find out until the next day and didn't get to watch the coverage for another few days). Anyway.I very nearly gave up on this and the fact it's taken almost a month to read gives an indication of how I struggled.Part One (Aquarius) is a long rambling and dense section of quasi-philosophical tangents, conjecture on god and the devil, his personal failings as a politician/husband/reporter, anecdotes about dinners and drinking and you name it. Is there actually anything about the moon landings? Only obtusely. A bit too beat for my liking.I read onto Part Two (Apollo) and was on the verge of giving up when half way through the initially ridiculous Psychology of Machines opening chapter he completely reverts his style, narrows in his focus and for the rest of the book (bar the last few short chapters) provides a fascinating in-depth and technical portrayal of the events. It's jarring and feels like 2 separate books but I actually enjoyed it far more.I think ultimately it comes down to a style issue. As stated, I have no personal opinion on Mailer. I understand The Fight is a much tighter and ?better read though after this I'm not sure I could face trying it. Maybe someone out there can let me know whether it's worth it?The intro by Geoff Dyer goes so far to say that this isn't the book to turn to first off if you want to get a sense of the occasion. Perhaps I should have read the intro first.Hmmm.A mixed bag and crying out for a ruthless editor. Onto something more lighthearted I feel.
What do You think about Of A Fire On The Moon (1985)?
I don't know if I like Mailer, having tried one of his novels (An American Dream, which had one awesome bit about the protagonist storming a hostile foxhole in WW2, but otherwise was pretty disappointing) but I wanted to read some of his non-fiction because I'd heard The Fight was good, and anyway, he was actually there the day Apollo 11 took off, he actually saw it take off, he actually attended the press conferences before hand, actually talked to Neil Armstrong before he became the most famous man in history. The problem is, Mailer was going through a messy divorce at the time and took the work to get some money. He is utterly bemused by the astronaut's lack of ego (thrown into stark relief by his own gargantuan one), and seems to miss the beauty and wonder of this grand endeavour (he pretty much misses the launch as he's thirsty and is queueing up for a drink). He does inadvertently say some fascinating stuff about how the world projected themselves onto those three astronauts by virtue of the fact that they presented themselves as blanks. But ultimately this book is a missed opportunity.
—Coxy
Took me a couple starts to get into this, but I'm really enjoying it. Was recommended to me by a favorite author (Alain de Botton), and it's proving a really fantastic read. A detailed and introspective account of the first Moon landing. ... and let me emphasize detailed. I did get a bit bogged down in how detailed everything about the book was. It's strength and weakness really. But very much enjoyed the details of nearly every aspect and moment and uncertainty in the daring endeavor of hubris and/or divine accomplishment. The other thing I didn't love about this book was the concurrent breakdown of his marriage. It's where the book ends and is certainly anti climactic, but the dissatisfaction it lends the overall taste of the book goes beyond that. For me anyway. Still, a pretty awesome and in-depth exploration of the lofty mission and what it might mean.
—Spencer
I read Mailer just once before (Barbary Shore) and wasn’t very impressed, but a lot of people said that was a bad starting point for Mailer, and then I came across this book – his coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landings – and thought I’d give him another try. After 50 pages, I’ve had enough. Mailer’s prose is so flowery and self-absorbed that it detracts away from the actual subject matter. It doesn’t help that he insists on referring to himself in the third person (the better to explore at length the blurred lines between journalists and novelists), which just makes him seem pretentious. I realize Mailer is heralded as one of the pioneers of New Journalism, but to me there’s a difference between being a subjective part of the story and hijacking it altogether – especially when it's a story of this significance. It’s the equivalent of trying to watch an Apollo 11 documentary while Mailer is standing in front of the screen telling you what he thinks about it and going off on rambling tangents. Sorry, but it’s not for me.
—John Defrog
