Imperial Mailer: Ancient evenings

This essay offers a Jungian reading of Ancient Evenings. Inspiring it is the fact that the novel’s central character, Menenhetet, corresponds to Jung’s description of the aimlessly peripatetic heroes of Egyptian mythology, who figuratively resemble “the wandering sun” (Aspects 22), a symbol of the ego, moving in repetitive cycles toward and away from the dark, primordial waters of the unconscious. Specifically, the tendencies and traits definitive of the ego inhabiting the second of three stages of the Hero archetype are similar to the features of Ancient Evenings that have resulted in its main critiques. Literalism, egotism, projection, narcissism, and sadomasochistic violence - interestingly, these terms itemize both the “unfortunate results” (Beebe, Aspects 14) of the ego’s “rejection of the unconscious” in the second stage of heroic-archetypal development, and the reasons that Ancient Evenings is commonly disparaged. For instance, the result of Mailer’s intention “to treat mythology as if it were real” (Whalen-Bridge, “Karma” 4) is its “outrageous literalism” (Bloom 33). Another criticism centers on the fact that the novel is set in ancient Egypt and based on the Egyptian Book of the Dead, but patently reflects the author’s fascination with his own ego (De Mott 3). A third involves the ways in which Ancient Evenings blurs distinctions between Egypt’s ancient culture and concepts about the United States that can be found throughout Mailer’s oeuvre (Olster 63). --From publisher description.