Thank you for this. Your writing is engaging, it always is.
Christopher Hilton
2 years ago
‘How many people under 40 still read his work today?’
It’s their loss if they don’t. I regard his best writing (there are reams of bad stuff) as the most impressive and thought provoking of the last century or this. But the moronic MSM is even thicker than its general readers, so we hear little of him.
He is an aquired taste, and I have never acquired it – not for want of trying. Most of his writing is aimed at men, and I don’t think that the quality of his writing is so high that it warrants my time, but that’s my choice. Having said that, cancelling his work is an abomination.
Snapper AG
2 years ago
I’ve never understood the popularity of all the post-War neurotic, sex-obsessed, vainglorious, American male writers; Mailer, Updike, Roth, and several more I’m sure I’ve happily forgotten. Navel-gazing by aging, self-important lechers is about the least appealing subject matter I can imagine.
*sigh * those were the days.
The Internet has destroyed obscenity by making it ubiquitous 24/7. You can have it in any size, gender, colour, persuasion or kink that you fancy. So why bother ?
You can make it not ubiquitous by not looking at it.
Ted Burke
1 year ago
As a writer, it’s always been the odd combination plate with Mailer, genius, fool, asshole, usually in the confines of the same book. Mailer is a product of his times and his temperment as an artist has obvious origins–D.H.Lawrence, Henry Miller, Hemingway–but all artists are creations of their times. As much as I believe in the idea of Free Will and the ability of the individual to map out their own course and have a say in their destiny, the best and worst decisions they can make are molded by the best and worst thinking history provides up to their particular moments. Most writers become relics, no matter good the reviews, while a few produce books that survive an individual’s bad choices, foul words and general stupidity and last decades beyond a writer’s lifetime. Mailer, I believe, is one of these few, and it would be a safe wager that more than a few of his books will be read and parsed for some time to come. Great writers are great inspite for their most earnest efforts to be great. Mailer was a brilliant novelist, but that is an issue subject to further research among the academics; Mailer is lucky to have lived in such convulsive times, an era readymade for a bright young man with a facile mind to riff upon.
Thank you for this. Your writing is engaging, it always is.
‘How many people under 40 still read his work today?’
It’s their loss if they don’t. I regard his best writing (there are reams of bad stuff) as the most impressive and thought provoking of the last century or this. But the moronic MSM is even thicker than its general readers, so we hear little of him.
He is an aquired taste, and I have never acquired it – not for want of trying. Most of his writing is aimed at men, and I don’t think that the quality of his writing is so high that it warrants my time, but that’s my choice. Having said that, cancelling his work is an abomination.
I’ve never understood the popularity of all the post-War neurotic, sex-obsessed, vainglorious, American male writers; Mailer, Updike, Roth, and several more I’m sure I’ve happily forgotten. Navel-gazing by aging, self-important lechers is about the least appealing subject matter I can imagine.
My feeling exactly.
*sigh * those were the days.
The Internet has destroyed obscenity by making it ubiquitous 24/7. You can have it in any size, gender, colour, persuasion or kink that you fancy. So why bother ?
You can make it not ubiquitous by not looking at it.
As a writer, it’s always been the odd combination plate with Mailer, genius, fool, asshole, usually in the confines of the same book. Mailer is a product of his times and his temperment as an artist has obvious origins–D.H.Lawrence, Henry Miller, Hemingway–but all artists are creations of their times. As much as I believe in the idea of Free Will and the ability of the individual to map out their own course and have a say in their destiny, the best and worst decisions they can make are molded by the best and worst thinking history provides up to their particular moments. Most writers become relics, no matter good the reviews, while a few produce books that survive an individual’s bad choices, foul words and general stupidity and last decades beyond a writer’s lifetime. Mailer, I believe, is one of these few, and it would be a safe wager that more than a few of his books will be read and parsed for some time to come. Great writers are great inspite for their most earnest efforts to be great. Mailer was a brilliant novelist, but that is an issue subject to further research among the academics; Mailer is lucky to have lived in such convulsive times, an era readymade for a bright young man with a facile mind to riff upon.