“Hitler … was a hero, the hero-as-monster, embodying what had become the monstrous fantasy of a people, but the horror upon which the radical mind and liberal temperament foundered was that he gave outlet to the energies of the Germans and so presented the twentieth century with an index of how horrible had become the secret heart of its desire.”

— Norman Mailer

Superman Comes to the Supermarket (1960)

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Norman Mailer 165

American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film m… 1923–2007

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“The way that Adolf Hitler chose to follow to rescue the German people was an inner and outer one. Inwards he overcame the Jewish power by destroying Marxism and the secret lodges. Thereby he removed the hindrances which prevented building a German people's community. Outwards he broke the slave chains of Versailles by rebuilding the People's Army, bringing home those of the German people that had been ripped out, defeating Jewry's vassals and laying the foundation for a Europe that is liberated from Jewish financial power.”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Der Weg, den Adolf Hitler zur Rettung des deutschen Volkes zu gehen sich entschlossen hatte, führte nach innen und nach außen. Nach innen überwand er die Machtpositionen des Juden durch Ausrottung des Marxismus und durch die Vernichtung der Geheimbünde. Damit wurden die Hemmnisse weggeräumt, die der Schaffung einer deutschen Volksgemeinschaft entgegenstanden. Nach außen zerbrach er die Sklavenketten von Versailles durch Wiederherstellung des Volksheeres, Heimholung der aus dem Reichsverband gerissenen Volksteile, Niederzwingung der Großvasallen des Weltjuden und Grundsteinlegung eines von der jüdischen Geldmacht befreiten Europas.
Stürmer, August 22, 1940

“Treasure! That word, which had always been so exciting, meant something different now. Fafnir had taken the treasure and turned from man into monster because of his greed for it. Mimir, who had been Sigurd’s master and good friend—when the treasure had lain before him, he, too, became a monster, in another way. Then Sigurd had made his choice, to leave the evil, and so he had gone away a hero.”

Andre Norton (1912–2005) American writer of science fiction and fantasy

Source: Dragon Magic (1972), Chapter 3, “Sirrush-Lau” (p. 64)

“The Homeric hero becomes a split-man as he assumes an individual ego.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 58

“How simply the fictive hero becomes the real;
How gladly with proper words the solider dies,
If he must, or lives on the bread of faithful speech.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Give Pleasure
Context: His petty syllabi, the sounds that stick,
Inevitably modulating, in the blood.
And war for war, each has its gallant kind. How simply the fictive hero becomes the real;
How gladly with proper words the solider dies,
If he must, or lives on the bread of faithful speech.

“The country is so beautiful, where so many heroes had devoted their lives into it. Sorry that the Qin Emperor or the Han Wu Emperor lacks a sense for literacy; while the founders of the Tang and Song dynasties came short in style. The great man, Genghis Khan, only knew how to shoot eagles with an arrow. The past is past. To see real heroes, look around you.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Qinyuanchun ["Snow"] (沁园春•雪) (1936; first published in late 1945). Variant translation of the last stanza: "All are past and gone! / For truly great men / Look to this age alone."

“The horror of the Twentieth Century was the size of each new event, and the paucity of its reverberation.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

A Fire on the Moon (1970), Pt. 1, Ch. 1

“A hero can capture the secret imagination of a people, and so be good for the vitality of his nation;”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Superman Comes to the Supermarket (1960)
Context: A hero can capture the secret imagination of a people, and so be good for the vitality of his nation; a hero embodies the fantasy and so allows each private mind the liberty to consider its fantasy and find a way to grow. Each mind can become more conscious of its desire and waste less strength in hiding from itself.

“Every hero becomes a bore at last.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Uses of Great Men
1850s, Representative Men (1850)

“Perhaps,
The man-hero is not the exceptional monster,
But he that of repetition is most master.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Give Pleasure

“I had a quick grasp of the secret to sanity — it had become the ability to hold the maximum of impossible combinations in one's mind.”

Norman Mailer book An American Dream

Stephen Rojack, in Ch. 5
An American Dream (1965)

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Norman Mailer 165

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