THE CASTLE IN THE FOREST
Norman Mailer
Random House Trade Paperbacks
Historical Fiction
Hardcover: 0394536495
Paperback: 9780812978490

• Read an Excerpt
• Author Talk -- February 23, 2007

The old saying that "you can't tell a book by its cover" is partially challenged by the dust jacket of Norman Mailer's latest tome, THE CASTLE IN THE FOREST. The title is set in big letters, while the author's name looms in huge ones. Enigma answered by reputation! But if you've encountered even the slightest buzz about this book and its seemingly bizarre subject matter --- the formative years of young Adolf Hitler --- the in-between phrase "a novel by" is the most telling.

Those three diffident little words proclaim the vast creative liberties of a veteran bestselling (and often controversial) author who is telling more story than history here; a deftly woven and embroidered fiction that required some 100 bibliographic nonfiction sources to hold it all together.

The flavor of those clinical, speculative, reportorial, doctrinal, biographical and anecdotal sources penetrates every layered nuance of THE CASTLE IN THE FOREST like the deep mood of a Mahler symphony. And its prose moves that way as well, with an absorbing consistency that is strangely irresistible, never rising above the weight of its sustained minor key. That alone is something of a tour de force, drawing one on through winding trails of gloom and foreboding, briefly interrupted by scattered fragments of joy.

To set the record straight, however, Mailer spends nearly 500 pages not explaining the monstrosity of the adult Hitler whose iconic image comes so easily to mind. Even in our post-9/11 world, the evils inspired or perpetrated by the megalomaniac Nazi leader remain too extreme to contemplate for long. We tend to place him behind an impenetrable "never again" wall with the same zeal as concrete was dumped into the Chernobyl nuclear reactors. In both cases, the effects are still being felt.

The question then becomes: Just who is Mailer writing about? There are plenty of surface answers in the copious connections --- personal, genealogical, historical and geographical --- that percolate through the narrative. We learn about some of the many names branching out of and into the humble Schicklegruber-Heidler-Hitler family dynasty, including the convoluted parentage and sibling relationships of young Adolf himself. We are presented with added speculations concerning incest, inbreeding, sexual abuse and other perversions.

Perhaps the better question to pose in considering the enormity of THE CASTLE IN THE FOREST is not just who it is about, but what. Running through Mailer's devilish flow of events (the first-person narrator is none other than a disaffected minion of Satan himself!) are sustained commentaries on religion, politics, family dynamics, class-consciousness, psychoanalysis, sexuality, eugenics, economics, art, agriculture, apiculture (bee-keeping), education, ethnicity, social welfare, vengeance and love. The list of Mailer's interests is diverse, almost overwhelming, but riding the crest of all these turbulent currents is a relentless fascination with the cosmic tension between good and evil.

If one must pin down the essence of this hybrid, sometimes maddening, sometimes saddening and always feverishly driven book, it would have to be at the contorted point where those archetypal forces --- good and evil, light and dark, life and death --- meet and battle endlessly for supremacy, not only in society at large but in every human psyche.

In THE CASTLE IN THE FOREST, it may well be the Devil who has the last laugh.

   --- Reviewed by Pauline Finch (paulinefinch@rogers.com)

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