Letters to the Editor
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mailer
Writers have the same obligations to be decent humans as other people do. Time will not and should not, Auden to the contrary, "forgive [them] for writing well."
That said, as a writer who never met Mailer, my primary evaluation of him stems from his writing. I found The Naked and the Dead clumsy and dull, American Dream frighteningly unhinged, and Tough Guys Don't Dance preposterous. I read the self-promotion about his participation in the 1968 Washington protests, and while we agreed about the war, I wondered why I was reading about Mailer in the bathroom. After that I quit reading him because I felt he had little to offer.
Have always found it amusing that the people who love the sound of their own voices thought he was such a big talent. Just goes to show how far bluster will carry you among the insecure.
I admire a good deal of what he did, though not his macho posturing and his writing. I enjoyed his theatrical "pot-stirring" (as another poster called it).
Courage, however, has little to do with belligerence.