While I had never been a big fan of Mailer's work previously, this dove-tailed nicely with Operation: Paperclip's discussion of the importation of German scientists with which to power the American space program. And I'm glad it did. It's a fascinating book, with literally dozens of things I did not know anything about (though I previously thought I had a decent amount of knowledge about the Apollo missions), a fair number of things about which to think about during Mailer's long digressions, and a surprising amount of humor.

Those digressions do become a bit of a problem though. They tend to drag a bit, and while there are interesting overlapping ideas with the idea of the 70's dying being linked to the completion of Kennedy's promise, it still doesn't quite dovetail as neatly as would be required to justify all of the pages devoted to the thoughts.

Then again, as mentioned, they allow for aforementioned thinking and so one can contemplate the truly interesting prospect of how difficult it would be to land something of the approximate adjusted size and weight of a Ford Truck on a rock-covered surface using only a small window and a dodgy computer. And it feels like something of a miracle that the moon landing ever happened at all. Which the sense of wonder that accompanies that is something that is mostly lost for those born after that took place.

This leaves me thankful I read it even if only for that. That it was originally serialized in Life Magazine makes me deeply sad for the modern state of the majority of periodical journalism. ( )

On topic, off topic, Mailer is a literary live wire. This is much more than sheer reportage, it's rumination, philosophy, history, egomania, and stylistic pyrotechnics. Sometimes, Mailer goes so far afield that you wonder if he will ever return to the topic. But even in these digressions, he's brilliant, provocative, and sometimes even wise. It's a roller coaster ride.

Do not come to this book simply for history. Come to it to be involved in the mind of Mailer as much as the Apollo project. ( )

Norman Mailer's version of the Apollo 11 moon landing is interesting, though rather self-absorbed. It began as magazine coverage, but Norman made it into another of his studies of the effects of media and technology on American Life. ( )

Not bad as a history of the Apollo moon-landing, but if you read this the likelihood is that you're more interested in Mailer than in astronauts. On that level, Mailer as "New Journalist," the book ranks quite highly — though definitely not comparable to The Executioner's Song and perhaps not quite even on the level of The Armies of the Night or Miami and the Siege of Chicago. Still, it's quite good.

Look, Mailer is probably love-him-or-hate-him for most readers. Personally, The Naked and the Dead is my favorite war novel and I think The Executioner's Song may be an even better book — and I think both of them, and in any event The Naked and the Dead, should be "must reads" for everyone. But if you're not the admirer of Mailer that I am, then Of a Fire on the Moon may be more of a book to skip over. ( )

Mailer's account of Apollo 11 begins with the death of Ernest Hemingway. It ends with his unsettling realization that he is about to divorce his wife. In between is an ambitious, scary, daring, edge-of-bombastic, utterly unexpected and urgent blast of prose that taught me more about the moon launch and that year and those times than any book I've read before. Mailer is always trying to get past the obvious thought. His power to observe and his ability to see significance in the smallest gesture or fact or event makes this an extraordinary book. I'm really upended by it. Some of the sentences were perfect. Others left me thinking, ok, this guy tried to wrench something amazing from this string of words and didn't make it...but even so I was stunned and grateful to know that he had tried at all, instead of staying in the safe borders of the expected. I don't understand why this book is a somewhat neglected work of a somewhat neglected writer. I can't recommend it enough, for anyone interested in understanding this decade of American history. ( )