One of the giants among mid-20th century American novelists, Norman
Mailer has been described in a recent review of his latest book, The Spooky
Art: Some Thoughts on Writing, as "Aquarius in winter," a not-so-gentle
aging of his own 1960s' sobriquet, Aquarius. Mailer's big claim to fame
came almost twenty years earlier, with publication of The Naked and the
Dead, arguably the best World War II novel written. (Jeffers, 2003) It
tells of heroism in the Pacific, and a return to the emerging fascist'
state that was the foreshadowing of the McCarthy era of the 1950s. In that
sense, Mailer wrote from experiences in his own life. Certainly, the
content of that book was influenced by his experience of the war and its
In this current non-fiction book, Mailer admits in a roundabout way
that his art depended on his life. He offers tips on how to incorporate
"real experience into the imaginary world of fiction ("For example, it's
not a good idea to try to put your wife into your novel. Not your latest
wife, anyway." (Jeffers, 2003) Mailer also incorporated his own excesses,
again in a roundabout way. He insists that writers should be on good terms
with their unconscious, something he did by getting stoned on a variety of
illegal substances plus coffee and two packs of cigarettes a day. (Jeffers,
2003) A lot at his characters in later books will show reveal much of
As an aside, however, Mailer's way of allowing life events to shape
the content of his work is not one most writers might want to emulate, at
least in Jeffers' view. Mailer himself says that his traffic with drugs
and his messy personal life, although being some fodder for his fiction
mill, impaired his rational powers. Jeffers says Mailer has no idea how
A look at a second literary gian
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