Norman Mailer's Theory of Life: No Possible Happiness Without Sex

Norman Mailer '43 decided in his first two books that man could find little happiness in the world, and in his third novel, The Deer Park, he has tried to find a way for man to improve this unhappy situation His panacea is simple--sex. To Mailer, sex is the only force which can make living worthwhile, and The Deer Park explores its effect on a very selective group of characters.

In The Naked and the Dead, Mailer created an artificial island in the Pacific Ocean; similarly in The Deer Park, he has created another contrived locale--Desert D'Or, two hundred miles from Hollywood. This is a resort for the stars, directors, and other notables of the motion picture industry, and here are located the clubs, bars, and beds where they spend their days and nights. The lurid events which take place in Desert D'Or are credible only if you can accept Mailer's views on the primacy of sex.

The book itself deals principally with the sex lives of two couples--film director Charles Francis Eitel and his bed-mate Elena Esposito; and movie star Lulu Meyers and her lover Sergius O'Shaugnessy, the narrator of the book. But interwoven into the story are Marion Faye--a pimp at 21; a homosexual movie actor; and a number of other perverted characters. In Mailer's moral code, however, these latter characters are destroyed, for only those who can find companions of the opposite sex are favored by the author.

Eitel, on the industry's black list for not answering a McCarthy-type committee, is despondent, not because he has no job, but rather because he could not seduce a teenage swimmer. The narrator, who has come to Desert D'Or with fourteen thousand dollars won in an unbelievable Air Force poker game, is equally sad because he could not fulfill his sexual needs in Japan. But into their lives come Elena and Lulu, and after some near-pornographic love-making scenes, the two men are both happy again, and better able to enjoy life in Mailer's world.

Mailer has created a philosophy in this book that denies happiness without sex. There is no place in his world for ordi- nary morals or sentimentality--there is only room for what he calls "a good time." There is no religion, nor any idealism--only a desire to be free--and to be free, one must be able to choose whom he wants to sleep with. Thus Eitel in the end ultimately fails because he has married Elena out of pity and is forced to spend his nights with her. Sergius, on the other hand, escapes from Desert D'Or to find his freedom--and new mistresses--in Mexico.

Mailer has also attempted to make this book a psychological study of the leaders of the movie industry, as well as one of Congressional investigator, but the whole emphasis of the book is frankly on sex, and these other themes never achieve the impact Maller intended. By putting what seems to be unnecessary stress on the sleeping habits of his characters, Mailer has lost an excellent opportunity to write a fine moral on the mores of the movie industry