Via the Norman Mailer Society.
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At the 2010 Norman Mailer Society Conference.
Norman Mailer, one of the most prolific, outspoken and accomplished writers of the second half of the 20th century, published over 40 books in virtually every literary genre, including some he invented. He was also a leading public intellectual who spoke out on a broad range of issues, from the dangers of plastic and the deadening effects of television to the Women’s Liberation Movement and the Iraq War.
Among our major living writers, Norman Mailer is perhaps the most well-known, both in the United States and internationally. No career in our literature has been at once so brilliant, varied, controversial, public, prolific and misunderstood. Few American writers have had their careers on the anvil of public inspection for such a lengthy period; none (excepting Edgar Allan Poe) has been so regularly and simultaneously celebrated and reviled.
Norman Mailer’s God, not surprisingly, is a great artist, who created mankind and all the plants and other animals, and could reincarnate them according to his whim. But he was not all-powerful. Because there was the Devil—and the Devil had technology. And lately, the Devil seems to be winning……
The following interview is from The Mailer Review, 2008.
J. Michael Lennon, who is at work on an authorized biography of Norman Mailer, speaks with Sasha Weiss about Mailer’s letters and what they reveal about his ambitions, his relationships with other writers, and his enduring obsessions.
Edited by J. Michael Lennon.