Tom Wolfe's writing, which avoids both such a self conscious use of this kind of persona and the risks it can produce, points up the importance of ethos in this genre. In particular, although Wolfe's dispersion of the author's presence into different voices avoids many of the rhetorical difficulties created by sages such as Ruskin and Mailer who thrust themselves into our notice, it frequently creates other major problems, not all of which he manages to solve. His floating point of view and multiple voices succeed in conveying the attitudes and experience of many of his subjects, but nevertheless, the impression of sympathy his techniques convey creates serious, sometimes insoluble, rhetorical difficulties in his satirical pieces. Because these sketches, which are essentially latter day versions of Carlyle's Latter-Day Pamphlets, always take a particularly mordant view of their subjects, whether mod office boys in "The Noonday Underground" or rising executives in "The Mid-Atlantic Man," Wolfe's reliance upon entering the satirized figure's imaginative world often strikes the reader -- at least this reader -- as betrayal of these figures and hence morally suspect. Wolfe's turning to attack a character on whom he has lavished so much sympathy comes across as cruel and inhumane -- and hence does much to undermine his credibility.

Another related source of rhetorical (and moral) difficulties lies in Wolfe's emphasis upon problems of status throughout many of these satirical pieces, for after taking his reader into what he terms the "statusphere" of his characters, he always ends up demonstrating how the subcultures they inhabit never truly function as independently as they seem to do to their inhabitants, and as they first seemed to do when Wolfe showed them to us. In every case society, the establishment, or whatever one wishes to call it has the final word, and the English adolescents in their noonday underground, the American ones at a California beach, and all of his other specimens always turn out to be poor, deluded, powerless fools. Despite their novelty and often original vantage points, these satiric pieces turn out to be conservative, even reactionary, because they all imply that the old social order still is not only dominant but the only correct standard. Such a conclusion coming after such apparently daring sympathy with the weird and novel, particularly when combined with Wolfe's entrance into these figures' imaginative worlds, strikes the reader as unsavory because dishonest. Two kinds of work, however, do not fall prey to these problems, those rare pieces, such as "The Truest Sport," in which the tone is not primarily satirical, and those, such as "The Put-Together Girl," in which the target of satire is not the focus of the work.

"A Loss of Ego," the chapter that opens Of a Fire on the Moon, repeatedly presents Mailer at his most annoying, and if we can understand how his various statements, admissions, and verbal gestures are intended to act upon the reader, we can better understand and evaluate the work. To begin with, he certainly opens on an odd note. This purported study of the Apollo-Saturn project first presents, not some cultural, technological, or other historical background, but the occasion upon which Mailer heard of Hemingway's death some eight years before, something that the reader might well take at first to be completely irrelevant, a mere bit of self-indulgent rambling. But of course, like Ruskin's initial announcements in "Traffic" that he cannot meet his audience's needs and expectations, it proves to be nothing of the sort. First of all, it permits Mailer to warn the reader about his strengths and weaknesses as a reporter and as one who reacts to contemporary events. Mailer admits ( in the book's second paragraph): "Of course, he finally gave a statement. His fury that the world was not run so well as he could run it encouraged him to speak. The world could always learn from what he had to say -- his confidence was built on just so hard a diamond" (3). His willing admissions of such egotism and his following admissions of "gracelessly" inveighing "how the death would put secret cheer in every bureaucrat's heart" (4) suggest how frankly he will treat his reader, and he soon explains the relevance of Hemingway's death to the Apollo-Saturn project:

Hemingway constituted the walls of the fort: Hemingway had given the power to believe you could still shout down the corridor of the hospital, live next to the breath of the beast, accept your portion of dread each day. Now the greatest living romantic was dead.... Technology would fill the pause. [4].

Hemingway's conception of masculine romance and masculine heroism had provided a spiritual center for Mailer, and when he died it seemed that modem technologies, which permitted no place for the human and no place for heroism, would empty the world of meaning and value. The moon project, the incarnation of the feared technology, forces Mailer to confront that central question, Can heroism, can true humanity, exist within such a technologically oriented endeavor? Or, as he states it much later in the book -- "Heroism cohabited with technology. Was the Space Program admirable or abominable? Did God voyage out for NASA, or was the Devil our line of sight to the stars?" (80). "Was the voyage of Apollo 11 the noblest expression of a technological age, or the best evidence of its utter insanity?" (382). Again, like the aggressive opening of Ruskin's "Traffic," Mailer's initial denial of audience expectations turns out to be simultaneously a correction of them and an answer to them.

In the course of announcing his own interpretative project, which is "to comprehend the astronauts" (4), he both explains why he, Norman Mailer, has undertaken such a project and sets forth the strengths and weaknesses that will assist or hinder his succeeding with it. His first strength, says Mailer, is that "he is a detective of sorts, and different in spirit from eight years ago. He has learned to live with questions" (4). Claiming no particular brilliance or even expertise, he characterizes himself as an outsider who is little more than a mediocre reporter. Before long each of these self-criticisms turns out to be an authentication, a certification for his interpretative project. Thus, although he "feels in fact little more than a decent spirit, somewhat shunted to the side," it is the "best possible position for detective work" (4). Similarly, his quixotically unsuccessful campaign for the office of mayor of New York left him "with a huge boredom about himself. He was weary of his own voice, own face, person, persona, will, ideas, speeches, and general sense of importance. He felt not unhappy, mildly depressed, somewhat used up, wise, tolerant, sad, void of vanity, even had a hint of humility" (5-6), and although this self appraisal, which includes a large dose of self-mockery, obviously presents a markedly unimpressive, rather ordinary, middle-aged version of Mailer, it effectively separates him from his well-known abrasively egotistical, assertive self while suggesting that "detached this season from the imperial demands of his ego" (6), he found himself in the perfect position for such a task as he has proposed.

Even Mailer's denials that he possesses the requirements of a first-rate journalist are intended to elevate him in the reader's estimation. "People he had never met were forever declaring in print that he was the best journalist in America. He thought it was the superb irony of his professional life, for he knew he was not even a good journalist and possibly could not hold a top job if he had to turn in a story every day" (7). He admits, further, that he does not have the consistency, the enormous curiosity, or the drive necessary to be a really good journalist. Such denials obviously permit him to mention the status he has in the eyes of others, thereby providing him with a kind of credential for his enterprise. More important, he is finally able to prove to himself (and to the audience that is always watching his struggles) that orthodox journalism remains inadequate to embrace such phenomena as he e encounters. A new method becomes necessary, and he can offer it.

However crucial his possession of certain basic techniques and attitudes necessary to his monumental task, he nonetheless continually strives to create ethos by admitting -- indeed by emphasizing -- his own flaws and mistakes. He successfully dramatizes his experience of slowly comprehending the nature of the entire project by willingly admitting his errors and narrowness of sympathy. For example, entering the gigantic Vehicle Assembly Building with its forty-story doors, he finds his preconceptions about the joylessness of working with technology incorrect.

He was now forced to recognize the ruddy good cheer and sense of extraordinary morale of the workers in the VAB. As they passed him in the elevators, or as he went by them in the halls and the aisles, a sense of cooperative effort, of absorption in work at hand, and anticipation of the launch was in the pleasure of their faces. He had never seen an army of factory workers who looked so happy.... Trade-union geezers, age of fifty, with round faces and silver-rimmed spectacles strutted like first sergeants at the gate for a three-day pass. [56]

The result of such recognition, Mailer informs us, is that he began to live "without his ego, a modest quiet observer who went on trips through the Space Center and took in interviews, and read pieces of literature connected to the subject, and spent lonely nights not drinking in his air-conditioned motel room, and thought -- not of himself but of the size of the feat and the project before him.... He was there now merely to observe, to witness" (56-57). As we encounter Mailer making erroneous judgments and then correcting them, admitting them to be little more than the prejudices of the modem liberal intelligentsia and the cultural establishment, we are supposed to credit him with many things: a flexibility of intellect that permits him to abandon false judgments, no matter how long or firmly held; a courage to admit his errors and prejudices even though such admission might make him appear foolish; a commitment to the truth that makes that truth appear more important than any need to gain credit for himself. And, of course, as he changes his opinion, he changes ours as well.

Throughout Of a Fire on the Moon Mailer makes major use of this confessional mode. For example, before brilliantly narrating the liftoff, he admits not only to the difficulty he is having getting any sense of the events about which he plans to write but also to sheer, banal envy. Thus he explains that he "felt somehow deprived that he could feel so little.... The damn astronauts weren't even real to him" (96), and then he realizes why he finds himself so out of sorts and so annoyed by every little thing and why he could feel so small. "It was simple masculine envy. He too wanted to go up in the bird" (97). And when the launch comes, as we have seen, he has worked hard to become a perfect reporter, who has earned our credence by admitting so many flaws and shortcomings. His maneuvering to create this effect of trustworthiness appears again in his admission of mixed motives, some good and some not, when he considers taking a closer look at all the celebrities and politicians who have come to observe the liftoff but then decides that

his liver will simply not permit it. He is here to see the rocket go up, not to stand and look at Very Important People and take notes in a notebook while he sweats in the heat. No, some sense of his own desire to dwell near the rocket, to contemplate its existence as it ascends, and certainly some sense of his own privacy, some demand of his vanity -- aware of how grubby he looks and feels -- now bids him stay with his own sweaty grubs, the Press and photographers. [90-91]

After claiming that he, unlike some other reporters, knows where the important truths of this story lie, Mailer characteristically admits his own vanity as well, as if to reassure us once again that he will tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, no matter how embarrassing to him.

All these admissions of his own shortcomings, like his brilliant technical analyses and experiential narratives, build toward the ideological climax of the book, which demonstrates that the highest heroism still exists in the midst of the machine. The chief source of Mailer's original fear of technology lay in his suspicion that it removed all risk and opportunity for decision from important endeavors, such as this flight to the moon. The machine, he feared, destroyed individual responsibility by taking away the human capacity to make choices and thereby determine one's fate. In looking into the technology involved in getting men to the moon and returning them safely, he quickly discovers that all those redundancies and redoubled safety systems still cannot remove risk.

No matter how many precautions the engineers take, the astronauts' ride on a forty-story bomb involves enormous risk and requires courage, skill, and trust. Moreover, no matter how powerful the computers that their designers produce to assist this lunar and perhaps lunatic enterprise, the men who peer at their screens have to make the crucial decisions. As Mailer reveals in a superbly narrated chapter, "The Ride Down," human beings always need more than the machine can provide, and having stretched it to its capacities, indeed to its breaking point, they must leap into darkness. In fact, the more Mailer looks into the details of the intricate technology, the more he discovers that he has encountered an enterprise he likes, an enterprise at the edge, one that pushes human capacities and demands accepting responsibility for oneself and others.

The descent of the lunar module to the moon's surface exemplifies the difficulties of the entire mission. The tiny space ship carries little fuel, and those who fly it down to the lunar surface must survive two opposing difficulties: If in the attempt to save fuel they descend too quickly, they will crash the module and die on the surface; if they descend too cautiously, they will use up so much fuel that they will be unable to return to space and will hence also die on the surface. To reduce risk of either eventuality, computers monitor the rate at which fuel is consumed and report the results to Mission Control back on earth. The only problem is that computers cannot always handle their job, and then people have to step in and make quick decisions that determine the survival of two human beings and the fate of a multibillion dollar project. The crisis occurs at the worst possible moment -- as the tiny module descends toward the surface. Aldrin radios to Mission Control, "1202," a code that indicates the on-board computer has found itself overloaded and unable to carry out its functions. "In such a case the computer stops, then starts over again. It has recalculated its resources. Now it will take on only the most important functions, drop off the others" (376). Those at Mission Control immediately recognize the gravity of the crisis, because they realize "that if 1202 keeps blinking, the activities of the computer will soon deteriorate. The automatic pilot will first be lost, then control over the thrust of the engine, then Navigation and Guidance -- the pilots will have to abort. In fifteen seconds it can all happen" (376-77). Lying upon his back a few feet above the rocket flames as he and his companion hurtle toward the moon's surface, Aldrin asks men a quarter of a million miles away to gauge the seriousness of the problem. Thirty seconds later, after conferring with his staff, Duke Kranz, the Flight Director, decides that the risk indicated by that 1202 is low enough to permit the men to risk landing on the moon.

Kranz has been quizzing his Guidance officers and his Flight Dynamics officers. It is a ten-second roll call, and each one he queries says GO. The words come in, "GO. GO. GO. GO." The key word is from Guidance Officer Stephen G. Bales. It is on his console that the 1202 is also blinking. But they have been over the permissible rate of alarm on which they can continue to fly a mission, and the 1202 is not coming in that fast -- the Executive Overflow is not constant. So Bales' voice rings out GO. Listening to it on a tape recorder later, there is something like fear in the voice, it pitched, but it rings out. In the thirty seconds between Aldrin's request for a reading and the reply that they were GO, the decision has been taken. (377)

A capacity for major heroism turns out to exist not only in the astronauts, in whom one naturally might expect to find it, but also in those computer jockeys with their crew cuts and short whitesleeved shirts whom Mailer and his friends in the liberal intelligentsia hold in such low regard. Earlier in Of a Fire on the Moon he admits that he had trained as an engineer but abandoned engineering to become a writer. The book opens with a Mailer overtly hostile to technology and those who serve it. A confirmed humanist, he fears the destructive effects of technology upon our lives and spirits, and he particularly distrusts scientists, engineers, technocrats, and all other acolytes of the machine. Therefore his climactic recognition that such men have both the capacity and the opportunity to achieve heroism equal to that of Hemingway's bullfighters represents a powerful affirmation to all his questions about the triumph of the human over the mechanical. It further represents Mailer's reconciliation with the ghosts of his own past and his gracious admission that some of those men whom he had long scorned engage in the same endeavors that concern him and concerned Hemingway.

Essentially, Mailer demonstrates the role of the machine in culture, as he understands that Arnoldian term. Mailer's Of a Fire on the Moon proves a fitting work with which to end our consideration of this genre, to which he is a late and often brilliant contributor. Like its Victorian antecedents, Of a Fire on the Moon emphasizes the sage's definitions and his interpretations of often trivial grotesque phenomena, and like them, it also relies upon an episodic structure that incorporates segments that alternate between satirical attack and positive vision. Like the works of Ruskin, Lawrence, and Wolfe, it presents its author as a master of experience who lends us his feelings and imagination so we can fully perceive some physical fact. Like works of Ruskin, Didion, and others, Of a Fire on the Moon also presents its author narrating the experience of interpretation or understanding physical and other facts. Finally, like those of all other works in this genre, its techniques contribute to the creation of authorial ethos, for we finally understand and accept what Mailer has to say because he repeatedly shows us that his methods, his poses, his ideas are necessary.