BOOKS
A QUEST FOR PERIL
ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF.
By
Normon Moiler. Putnom.
$5.00.
Norman Mailer's new book is a miscellany of stories,
excerpts from novels, essays, musings and conundrums, all packed
together with an italicized running commentary which forms a por–
trait of the artist as young Seeker, Rebel and Outside Dopester. It
is a rowdy, intense and exciting book; and since it systematically
sets out to assault the decorums of liberal moderation, it is certain
to stir up bitter hostility. Let it: almost any response is better than
what Mailer calls the "false sweetness" of our culture.
The running commentary, done with bravado and good
humor, as at times with an utter willingness to risk full exposure,
contains some of Mailer's best writing. It is post-depressive Mailer,
bouncy and high in rhythm, and full of a passionate belief that "I
am imprisoned with a perception which will settle for nothing less
than making a revolution in the consciousness of our time." Mailer
is one of the few younger writers who has made his public self-his
personality, his ideas, his claims-into a matter of legitimate inter–
est, in the way a writer like Hemingway once did. In both the best
and weakest sections of the book, one is also struck by Mailer's ab–
solute unwillingness to settle into his achievement,
his
impatience
with a style as soon as he comes close to mastering it, his devotion
to restlessness as a principle of both life and work.
Beware of the
death called maturity--so
runs a recurrent motif, or really a string
of brotherly tips, in this rasp against adjustment.
Whether Mailer will become the great writer he candidly ad–
mits he is ambitious to become, no one can yet say. For all of
his
chest-thumping and bugle-tooting, he has a sharply realistic sense
of the odds: he knows that a writer who sets out on a deliberate