BOOKS
BLACK-MAILER
THE PRESIDENTIAL PAPERS.
By
Normen MGiler. PutnGm. $5.00.
The question of Norman Mailer's real quality still appears to
be
open; kept open, by Mailer himself, in such a way that an unduly
privileged appraisal seems to be called for each time he appears in
print. He deliberately keeps the issue in doubt, provocatively unknitting
his own reputation even as he makes it, gaining in the long run by
forcing the public to attend to the promiscuously unpredictable drama
which he has made out of his own development. He is not, it would
seem, content simply to go along with his own talent as it stands,
prodigious though it be. Determined "to settle for nothing less
than
a major revolution in the consciousness in our time" he beefs up the
already rich, regenerative violence of his challenge with every con–
ceivable stunt and self-advertisement in the book. For a start he
employs himself without mercy, recruiting his public and even his
private personality to the service of the campaign. He pushes his way,
like a less modest Hitchcock, into the center of his own productions,
often completely upstaging his best literary creations. Following the
Patterson-Liston fight, for example, he felt moved (during what seems
to
have been an almost religious trance induced by a party in the
house of Hugh Hefner) to gate-crash events and put on a press con–
ference, during the course of which he would explain why his pre–
viously advertised prophesies on the outcome of the fight had gone
so strangely awry. Before he had a chance, however, to make with
these metaphysical hindsights, he was removed by the officials. The
rumpus which this created gained him admission to the presence of
the "champ" himself--dose enough even to exchange some ruggedly
amiable threats yet. Close enough, he will one day think, to make
changes
(be
they never so subtle) in Liston's brain; enough to influ–
ence and perhaps even determine the outcome of some of his future
bouts. For Mailer strongly believes, in a magical way almost, in the
potency of his own presence; bringing changes, not just in the
COD–
sciousness, but more hopefully, in the actual events of our time. He
