Word: mailer
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...surprise, he had agreed to come to Cambridge to talk about Rabbit Redux, and whatever else struck him to speak of. It was one week after he'd been hailed by the Times as one of the great contemporary American authors...right up there with Roth, Bellow, Malamud and Mailer. (No longer would he be the fall goy for all of New York's literary establishment...
...find it difficult to keep writing in a cultural context where--as you said once--"Homegrown cabbages" like Mailer and Jones are "mistaken for roses"? Do you still stand by that sentence, and is there any tradition you do feel a part...
...Since I wrote that sentence Jones' stock has gone down whereas Mailer's has risen. I think that considering Mailer's position at the time it is an apt enough remark. I think Mailer's subsequent career as far as I've kept up with it is a kind of self-resurrection to be admired. I do admire--not without reservation--Armies of the Night; there's a shrillness, and a willingness to accept your personal experience as an artist as metaphor for national experience...
That little bothers me in a sense--all writers do that to some extent. Harry Angstrom is supposed to be some kind of an American. But at least there's tact when you do it as a novel, whereas Mailer's is the sublime conviction that whatever happens to him happens to Them--it's like what's good for General Motors is good for the nation. Still, Armies of the Night was made wonderful by the richness, the ironic complexity of Mailer's view. He does have a very complicated mind at times. I quite like Prisoner...
...excessively; that his basic emotional reaction to a political situation is so personal, and his intellectual impulse so morally abstract, that the modesty of the man for once restrains his criticism's impact. He has none of the ability to grasp the mass psychosis that a man like Mailer has. (It should be noted that he recognizes the usefulness of Mailer's talent, but sticks to his own game...