Genre-Bending in the Armies of the Night (Critical Essay‪)‬

In the armies of the night, Norman Mailer recreates his participation in an anti-Vietnam War march that took place in Washington D.C. in October, 1967. Mailer subtitles Book/Part One History as a Novel, and Book/Part Two the Novel as History, but he ultimately begs the questions, what part is which, and which part is what? Are both parts both? Kathy Smith astutely observes that the "as" in Mailer's subtitles, "History as a Novel" and "the Novel as History," "denotes a metaphorical relationship between history and fiction, implying not only that history is like fiction, and vice versa, but that one always contains the other.... Mailer uses 'as' to complicate the terms, allowing them to merge into one another" (191). How does Mailer define the terms novel and history in the context of his literary journalism? Literary journalism is certainly the only generic label that completely fits. Further, if we take the text to be a work of New Journalism, then what part is journalism, as opposed to what parts are fiction and history, and how do we distinguish among the genres? Mailer bends all three to suit his purposes. In an article citing and synthesizing Mailer's many pronouncements on the distinctions among narrative forms, J. Michael Lennon concludes that Mailer sees: