Intertextuality In The Armies

Literary journalistic discourse is “perhaps the most intertextual of all texts, referring to other texts” in terms of transforming prior historical stories and restructuring conventional literary and journalistic genres and discourses in an attempt to generate a new one, that is, literary journalism (Mills 65-66). Thus, the journalistic discourse cannot be but dialogic and intertextual because its raw material is a news story that can be manipulated, adapted, and adopted by the literary journalist in order to compete other versions of the story. It “assimilates a variety of discourses” that “always to some extent question and relativize each other’s authority” (Waugh 6). Literary journalists, thus, are actively engaged in interpreting and scrutinizing the discursive practices of intertextuality in order to generate their distinctive but hybrid discourse. This hybrid discourse can be conceptualized using Edward Said’s notion of the “contrapuntal”. As the adjective “contrapuntal” implies, the literary journalist discourse exhibits a counterpoint among diverse stories that “play off one another, with only a provisional privilege being given

The story of the Time gives a picture of Mailer as an “unscheduled scatological solo” protagonist (The Armies 13). The Time endows its version of the story with a thorough depiction of Mailer and of the incidents and scenes of the Pentagon March. Mailer is depicted as a poseur and phony protagonist of the Pentagon March; his major pre-occupation in life is “[s]lurping liquor from a coffee mug” and “[m]umbling and spewing obscenities” (The Armies 13). The argument of the Time is supported by the evidence that “By the time the action shifted to the Pentagon, Mailer was perky enough to get himself arrested by two Marshals” (The Armies