Norman Mailer
ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF
ON THE WAY OUT
Prologue to a Long Novel
1.
To be forced to admire what one instinctively hates, and
to hate all which one would naturally love
is
the condition of our
lives
in
these bad years, and so is the cause beneath other causes
for our sickness and our death.
If
some of you will understand imme–
diately what I mean, I still must think of the others who are to take
the journey with me: that mob of readers whose experience of life
is
as narrow as it is poor, and worse if the truth be told-they are
picking up this book because they have heard it is good for the bath–
room and so may palliate their depression; this book! my tale of
heroes and villains, murderers and suicide, orgy-masters, perverts, and
passionate lovers, yes my lust to capture Time.
For those readers courage
is
required. My passion is to destroy
innocence, and any of you who wish to hold to some part of that
warm,
almost fleshly tissue of lies, sentimentality, affectation and ig–
norance which the innocent consider love must be prepared instead
for a dissection of the extreme, the obscene and the unsayable.
The mark of a philosopher is that he puts his name to his work,
he wants his ideas to carry the connotation of the syllables (those
primitive sounds) which make up the armature of his character.
So,
properly, I should introduce myself here, and indeed I would,
if
I were able, but my name eludes me and at present would slip
by
without meaning to you-I am virtually married to Time unless
she has already divorced me (of which indigestible statement, more
explanation later) and so my name alters as Time turns away from
me, and it
is
not
all
that natural to explain who I am. Let
it
go.
Only a dreary mind cannot bear mystery.
