MASSCULT AND MIDCULT
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it is not, from Davy Crockett to Picasso. Once a writer becomes
a Name, that is, once he writes a book that for good or bad
reasons catches on, the Masscult (or Midcult) mechanism begins
to "build him up," to package him into something that can be
sold in identical units in quantity. He can coast along the rest of
his
life on momentum; publishers will pay him big advances
just to get his Name on their list; his charisma becomes such that
people
will
pay
him
$250 up to address them (really just to
see
him); editors will reward him handsomely for articles on sub–
jects he knows nothing about. Artists and writers have always
had a tendency to repeat themselves, but Masscult (and Mid–
cult) make it highly profitable to do so and in fact penalize
those who don't. Some years ago, I'm told, a leading abstract
artist complained to a friend that he was tired of the genre that
had made him famous and wanted to try something else; but his
gallery insisted such a shift would be commercially disastrous
and, since he had children to send through college, he felt
obliged to comply. Or compare the careers of J.ames T. Farrell
and Norman Mailer. The former made a reputation with the
Studs Lanigan
trilogy in the early 'thirties and his many books
since then have gone on repeating the mixture as before; al–
though
his
later books have won small critical esteem, he is
still
considered a major American writer and still gathers all the
perquisites and emoluments thereof; Farrell is a standard and
marketable commodity, like Jello. Although Mailer is still a
Name, with plenty of p. and e., he has crossed up his public and
his
publishers by refusing to repeat himself. His reputation was
made with
his
first novel,
The Naked and the Dead,
in 1948,
but he has insisted on developing, or at least changing, since
then, and his three subsequent books have little in common, in
either style or content, with
his
first great success. From the
Masscult (or Midcult) point of view, he has jeopardized a
sound investment in order to gratify
his
personal interests.
"When a writer gets hold of a sure thing," Somerset Maugham,
who should know, once observed, "you may expect him to hang
