Recently I told someone that I’ve never read any of Norman Mailer’s writing. It just so happened that the person I told had a copy of Norman Mailer’s letters on writing, which appeared in the New York Review of Books in February of last year.
I get a real kick out of reading (some) people’s correspondence. Maybe it is because I’m a bit of a voyeur. Maybe it’s because “real human drama” is something that pulls at me like gravity… Something to think about… Anyway, the few letters in the NYRB piece were a real pleasure to read.
Here is an example where Mailer is writing to the editor of The Naked and the Dead
I know we’ll disagree on this, but I don’t see what virtues will be derived from slimming the book down. True, it’ll go faster, and probably will be more easy to sell, but in my innocence I still feel that the nature of a book determines its length, and not exterior criteria. (Stinky-pinky.) I’ve cut out a great many enrichments because of the bugaboo of length. One of the most obvious ones is the development of the characters. There are at least ten of them who could be presented in some depth and complexity if it wasn’t physically impossible. Also I could improve the whole set-up of the General part of the book by establishing some of the men on his staff instead of treating him in the vacuum I’ve given him so far. I wouldn’t be working in ignorance on this either, because I was a clerk in Intelligence, specifically, a clerk in S-2 of the 112th RCT, for quite a time before I became a rifleman. That whole business of lengthening it or shortening it is a moot business but I’m open to debate on it. The slim volume, I’d like to remind you, does not contain the apotheosis of the novel; nearly all the great ones are quite long, and to quote an author I do not particularly admire, Thomas Mann did say, “Only the exhaustive is truly interesting.”
Here is another example. This is a letter that Mailer wrote to Mr. Max Gissen, a literary critic who wrote for Time Magazine who had reviewd The Naked and the Dead. The review was not positive. Read how Mailer lays into this guy…
December 17, 1951
Dear Gissen,
I suppose one has to make a start at everything. In any case this is the first letter[10] I’ve ever written to anyone associated with criticism or book reviewing. The reasons I imagine are fairly apparent to each of us.
There’s little doubt in my mind that you came off considerably better in our exchange last Thursday night, which is roughly equivalent to saying that you think better on your feet than I do. I wish I were a better speaker, for there was a point I wished to make which was more serious than mere Time -baiting.
After all, you and I do share some little common view. We are both interested primarily in fiction, we are concerned with improving taste, and we care about literary criticism. I think you will remember that a good part of your talk was concerned with precisely those things. Whether you will agree privately that your work fails to fill the prescription in certain important respects is something again.
These letters have made me very sure of two things.
- I want to read more of Mailer’s letters.
- I will be picking up a copy of a Mailer book at some point in the near feture.
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