University of Bucharest

Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures

3rd year-English minor
Lecturer: Mr. Nae
Student: Angelique Lewis
The Man Who Studied Yoga: ( Lecture 3 Slide 25)
{1950s cultural norm: fight communism, glorify family life, acquire technology and material
possessions}. Lecture 3.Slide 10. Testimony of the spirit of the age The end of Ideology: The
Man who Studied Yoga 1952. (Bell, Daniel .The End of Ideology. On the Exhaustion of Political
Ideas in the Fifties, 1960)

I would introduce myself if it were not useless. The name I had last night will
not be the same as the name I have tonight. For the moment, then, let me say that I am thinking of
Sam Slovoda. Obligatorily, I study him, Sam Slovoda, who is neither ordinary nor extraordinary
[.] May I state that I do not dislike Sam Slovoda; it is just that I am disappointed in him. He has tried
too many things and never with a whole heart.

Thesis Statements:
1. Norman. Mailer is Sam Slovoda.
Common feature of Postmodernist literary genre = deformation of traditional (modern)
forms
Narrational Technique used: indicate the constructedness / artificiality of the text. a
traditional, omniscient narrator speaks in the first person thus identifying himself
with the author. Omniscience deconstructed (Mindra Mihai, Lecture 3, Slide 25, bullet
point nr.2. Introduction to 1950s American fiction)

The main theme [] of Mailers work is the craving for omnipotence and the fear of is
inevitable corollary, total impotence. (Gordon, 87 )

Mailer's Emersonianism is a prescription for his generation: an exhortation to his contemporaries

"to create a new nervous system for themselves," rejecting the "antiquated nervous circuits" of
society, parents, and the past.
The Man Who Studied Yoga" is a phase in the development of the artist as tough guy: Mailer follows a
severely damaged version of himself, a 1950s victim of false consciousness, through a purgatorial Sunday
in Queens.
Mailer skewers him [Sam Slovoda] for his timorousness; without the courage to live, to defy -- especially
to defy his smug psychoanalyst -- Sam will never quite be a man.

(Castronovo, New England Review)

Mailer has always been writing his autobiography i.e one part of himself carries
on a discussion with another part of himself ( he considers himself and aesthetic

object/character in his novels) and the reader is allowed to eavesdrop[] Whereas

Sam clings to thing he does not need ( wife,analyst,jargon etc) the narrator has let
go of everything, including his name. ( Gordon 93-94) {echo of last line in the essay
used to revive Sams depressed spirit. Destroy time and chaos may be ordered}
2.

Sam Slovoda= emasculate hipster hero

(hipster :seizer of the moment, creature of impulse, disbeliever in "the socially monolithic ideas of the
single mate, the solid family and the respectable love life" -- is a kind of psychopath, which is to say an
adventurer who refuses to sublimate his sexual and aggressive instincts. )

portrait of the liberal, middle class soul -- Godless, emptied of high purpose and
courage--- of the 1950s
Sam is used to seeking approval from Dr.Sergius (psychotherapist portrayed as the
social regulator and educated ball shrinker and his wife Eleanor (mannish
haircut, strong teeth, androgynous. ( Gordon,91)
. His friends are a group who get their kicks by watching porn and discharging resentful
platitudes about what's wrong with American society; the characters are leftovers from
the radical 1930s and failed bohemians.
Sam wants to write on the condition of the American working man in the 1950s -the failure of nerve, the sellouts to commercialism-- but hasn't the guts to argue his
points. He believes in Marxist action, but writes an article that talks about the
working man's anxiety. Sam is someone who thinks of himself as a rebel, but when
given half a chance, he opts for disengagement.
. He also wants to write a work which would "lift him in a bound from the impasse in
which he stifles, whose dozens of characters would develop a vision of life in bountiful
complexity but instead he creates a "hero less, formless wreck" which lies foundered,
rotting on a beach of purposeless effort."
He seems incapable of seizing manly pleasures -- later in the evening he circles his
wife like "a sad hound" -- and powerless to express manly aggression.
(Castronovo, New England Review)

*** All bullet points are taken from the New England Review with the exception of
the second point. ***

Works cited

Castronovo, David. "Norman Mailer As Midcentury Advertisement." New England

Review. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2016
Drake, Tom. "Modernism vs Postmodernism." Modernism vs Postmodernism. N.p., n.d.
Web. 27 Mar. 2016.
Gordon, Andrew. ""The Man Who Studied Yoga:" The Womb of Middle-Class Life." An
American Dreamer: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Fiction of Norman Mailer. N.p.:
Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1980. 87-94. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.