Tough Guys Don't Dance by Norman Mailer
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Books
PimpinAinttEasy — 9 years ago(October 13, 2016 03:37 AM)
a reread of one of my favorite books. it is sexist, homophobic and unbelievably dirty but also very entertaining and hilarious.
Think about an acclaimed writer and public intellectual taking on the crime fiction genre. Mailer had listed The Postman Always Rings Twice as one of the five best American novels of the 20th century. He had also liked The Friends of Eddie Coyle. With Tough Guys Don't Dance, Mailer bestows the genre with his grandness, his ideas, his perversions and his intellectual pollution (Mailer's own words). We get an awesome and dirty crime fiction novel of place (it is set in the seaside town of Provincetown) with a preposterous plot filled with murderous characters involved in orgiastic relationships.
A chain smoking alcoholic writer suspects that he might have murdered a few people after he wakes up from a drinking binge. When he finds the decapitated heads (!) of his wife and another woman inside the burrow on his marijuana patch, he decides to find out what is going on.
There are not one, but three femme fatales. There are two of the most hilariously over the badass characters that most crime fiction and movie writers wished they could create. And a couple of fake gays (Mailer did not think much of homosexuals) one of whom is a villain. Of course, they are all just mouthpieces for Norman Mailer to express his ideas. Every single one of them. Including the half-Irish half Jewish hero Tim Madden - the book's narrator who often goes off on a tangent with his thoughts and ideas. Fans of crime fiction looking for a tight little novel should avoid this. But Mailer created something truly unique and also stretched the boundaries of the crime fiction genre.
I thought I'd gather some of the memorable quotes from this novel in one place:
"Certain dames ought to wear a T-shirt that says: Hang around. Ill make a beep out of you.
I took my three years in the slammer without a fall. They called me Iron Jaw. I wouldnt take cock.
"Youre an old-line fanatic. Youd put all the beep in concentration camps including your own son if he ever slipped. Just cause you were lucky enough to be born with tigers balls.
I think about beep and you know what I believe? For half of them, its brave. For the wimps, it takes more guts to be queer than not. For the wimps. Otherwise they marry some little mouse
whos too timid to be a dyke and they both become psychologists and raise whiz kids to play electronic games. Turn queer, I say, if youre a wimp. Have a coming-out party. Its the others I condemn. The ones who ought to be men but couldnt show the moxie. You were supposed to be a man, Tim. You came from me. You had advantages.
"Schizophrenics in looney bins only get cancer half as often as the average population. I figure it this way: either your body goes crazy, or your mind. Cancer is the cure for schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is the cure for cancer. Most people dont know how tough it is out there. I was brought up to know. I got no excuse.
"How many times over these last few years had I come to the edge of battering Patty Lareine with my bare hands? And each time I resisted the impulse, had not a sense of oncoming illness
settled more firmly into me? Yes, like my father I had been living in a harsh environment. I thought once more of the impulse that led me to climb the tower. Had that been the night when I hoped to keep the first switch from being thrown?"
"When I started my first job as a bartender, he had given me a schedule. Son, he had said, keep this in mind. In New York, on the streets, its Peeping Toms from twelve A.M. to one A.M., fires from one to two, stickups two to three, bar fights three to four, suicides four to five, and
auto accidents from five A.M. to six A.M. I had kept it in my head like a typed schedule. It had proved useful."
Good people kill for duty, or for honor. Not for money. A sleazo kills for money. A coked-up greed bag slays for money. But not you. Do you stand to benefit from her will?
"No cop likes to work with a fellow professional who makes him uneasy. You cant give orders that are resented, or you make an enemy. A guy with a legal weapon has too many opportunities to shoot you in the back. So when cops have to put up with a crazy, they dont try to fire him. They fob him off. Make him Head-of-the- Universe in Twin Acres, Montana. Pee-town, Mass."
Whats the good of being a Mick if you cant welcome senility?
"If you want to find true lack of compassion, give me a good Christian every time.
I always thought, I said, that a man becomes a cop to be shielded from his own criminality.
Ive had all the action I wanted. Life gives a man two balls. Ive used them. Let me tell you. Its a rare day when I dont bang two women. I dont sleep well at night if I havent gotten my second bang in. Do you read me? Theres two sides to ones nature. They both got to express themselves before I can sleep.
"I glared at him. When our eyes locked, I felt like a small craft cutting too near the bow of a ship."