Infinite MonkeysThe pretentious, overrated American novelist and "provocateur" is dead at 84. I've never been able to get more than 50 pages into a Mailer novel, and at 36, I am too young to recall what the hell the hubbub was all about.
Thankfully, Roger Kimball provides the definitive obituary, 100 percent free of cant or hagiography.
Mailer, Kimball writes, "promised his readers what they longed to hear: that ultimate, self-centered ecstasy was theirs for the taking. Mailer once said that he would 'settle for nothing less than making a revolution in the consciousness of our time.' He did not make the revolution, but he assuredly became one of its most egregious abettors."
Posted by Ben at November 10, 2007 11:36 AM