Book Review: Ancient Evenings by Norman Mailer
Talking about a novel that deals with many issues surrounding the human reaction to nostalgia.
I have been waiting to get into something a little more intellectually challenging for a while now. No shade to the puzzle games or the retellings of historical events, but thematic analysis is one of those itches that need to be regularly scratched. The last essay to really get that done for me was On Shelley back in November so, hey, glad to be back. Just as a quick heads-up, this blog tends to keep things family-friendly most of the time, but this book is certainly not for everybody for reasons we’ll get into. I briefly mentioned some themes upfront with The Wolf Den and I alluded to The First Man in Rome as maybe being more appropriate to read in private, but this is one to be prepared for.
It’s hard to read Ancient Evenings even skimming through and not see the pure cynicism towards any sort of reverence towards religion and spirituality. The type of attitude that Menenhetet II condemns as “obscene” or “sacrilegious” is certainly far-fetched to the ears of the average contemporary WASP, but these ideas are not so foreign to the ancient world. I wouldn’t say that this novel mirrors Aristophanes’ Frogs by any stretch of the imagination, but the irreverence is certainly familiar to any who have read that play. Certainly, it plays into the overarching theme of nostalgia and how rose-tinted glasses can distort our perception of events. Egyptian philosophers believed the soul to be a multifaceted entity. The Ka is, to my understanding, most like what we would traditionally call a ghost: some ethereal object that floats about endlessly. It doesn’t possess the components that would make it more malevolent like a poltergeist or a vengeful spirit because it has no memory. In this case, the details of Menenhetet II’s life are filled in by a (mostly) reliable narrator.1 To have the protagonist as an observer of their own memories, filling in the emotive details where necessary for the author to build the subtext, is a truly brilliant literary device. Menenhetet I never seems to sway Meni’s perception; usually, things are framed as the Ka of Meni still having misconceptions about the events he observed in life, especially in his childhood. If I’d had the time or the space, I would have liked to pull on this thread a little further, but having read a 700 page novel for a newsletter with a weekly output, such a task would prove to be impossible.
Some may find this novel incredibly boring. On the one hand, I could easily see the epithet of “rambling” being used to put down this work, but I would put forward the word “lingering” as a more accurate descriptor. For example, an early chapter details each step of mummification2 and how a mind inhabiting the body might feel undergoing such a process. Later in the same chapter, that same spirit marvels at the burial customs that had not been fulfilled in their own tomb. Though this goes on for quite a while, neither passage ought to be seen as truly boring the reader. I haven’t gotten the chance to write anything about Melville for this newsletter yet, but these passages serve the same purpose as the knot-tying and the whale-identifying chapters.3 As a secondary bonus, much like the mummies of early horror films, the individual scenes move at an incredibly slow pace; so much so that modern editors will not allow novels to replicate the practiced and deliberate prose of this work. It’s also worth noting that anyone familiar with the Egyptian pantheon on a basic level (like myself) may encounter some initial confusion with the names. As good students of the classics,4 we all understand that transliteration is a very fickle aspect of the transmission of language. The “Ramses II” here is Ramesses the Great, or Ozymandias to all the Shelley-heads out there. For the most part, though, Mailer leans towards the Greek versions of the Gods: Ma’at appears without her apostrophe, Khepri is Khepera, the Duat is Duad, Wadj-wet is Buto, etc.. Some of these took me more than a second to pick up on, but it’s not a huge deal.
All this being said, even though I thoroughly enjoy this book, I cannot in good conscience recommend it to a wider audience. The scenes of sexual assault that should come as expected from any stories that involve real portrayals of ancient life are ratcheted up by Mailer’s beautiful, horrible prose. Not only does it happen among gods and goddesses, but among men and women, men and men, great-grandfathers and their progeny, with both violent and passive reactions from the victims. One of the questions I had lined up for this article before I began the book was whether Gore Vidal’s criticism of Mailer as a misogynist could be analyzed through the latter author’s fiction. There is certainly a case to be made here, but the problem becomes sorting through what parts specifically target women and what is historically accurate abuse.
This novel runs the gamut of emotions that one can observe while under that sort of trauma, and it can afford to because there are many scenes where it happens. The past did suck for women and children; “strong” men took advantage of those they could physically dominate, and those aforementioned categories were often the victims of horrible treatment. Though they are not strongly condemned in the course of the narrative, there is an element of how the proverbial sins of the father trickle down from generation to generation in the later chapters as well. I would consider the content almost on par with Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God, which we discussed briefly in a paywalled article. It’s not enough to disgust me out of reading, but I can’t rightly give this a numbered rating or put it under the book review section of the blog for public consumption. If you are able to look past these acts as a necessary element of storytelling, it’s worth seeking out.
Menenhetet II is often referred to as Meni to distinguish him from his great-grandfather, Menenhetet I.
The YouTube channel "The Thought Emporium" recently put out a 40 minute video with a similar attention to detail on the subject.
I don’t want to say too much about it because I hope to get to Melville soon. For those who know, you know. For those who don’t, be patient.
Shoutout to the publishers of the Egyptology series, by the way.