The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History

The Armies of the Night chronicles the famed October 1967 March on the Pentagon, in which all of the old and new Left—hippies, yuppies, Weathermen, Quakers, Christians, feminists, and intellectuals—came together to protest the Vietnam War. Alongside his contemporaries, Mailer went, witnessed, participated, suffered, and then wrote one of the most stark and intelligent appraisals of the 1960s: its myths, heroes, and demons. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and a cornerstone of New Journalism, The Armies of the Night is not only a fascinating foray into that mysterious terrain between novel and history, fiction and nonfiction, but also a key chapter in the autobiography of Norman Mailer—who, in this nonfiction novel, becomes his own great character, letting history in all its complexity speak through him.

© 1968 by Norman Mailer. ℗ 2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. “A Shaky Start,” on pages 3 and 4, reprinted by permission from Time, The Weekly Newsmagazine; © Time Inc. 1967. Material on pages 45, 46, and 124 from Hear the Ocean by Robert Lowell. Reprinted with permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. © 1967 by Robert Lowell. Article quoted on pages 282-284 reprinted by permission. © 1967 by The Washington Star.