Perspective

The perspective of the book changes in the middle of the book. In the first half of the book, the perspective is third-person limited, with Mailer as the narrator. The perspective is odd because it feels like first-person limited, but the author refers to himself in the third person. The reason it feels like first person limited is because there are many digressions in which the author either explains his opinion on a subject or shares a memory that relates to the subject. Some of these digressions follow a stream-of-consciousness model and are difficult to follow.

The second half of the book is written from a historian's more detached point of view. The feel is more journalistic and non-fiction with fewer asides and little dialogue. There are also large excerpts from outside sources such as magazine and newspaper articles. In the second half of the book, the author...