104
JONATHAN MILLER
suggests for example, with tentative self-mockery, that his articles on
Kennedy possibly determined the result of the election. The narrow
margin makes this an entertaining, even if somewhat remote possi–
bility. Few writers however would nakedly brave the scorn of such a
claim. And unless he is merely gaga and actually out of his skull, one
is forced to concede a harshly qualified admiration for his challenging
and idiotically ambitious self-exposure. For unless he
is
insane there
is a certain ludicrous magnificence in coming on like a pompous
bloody fool in the service of a passionate evangelical commitment. And
in fact, when confronted with
The Presidential Papers,
one
is
tempted,
to put the whole thing down to madness and gratefully concede the
flashing dotty brilliance of some of its better parts. The rest of the
text does resonate with paranoid effects-the turgid philosophical
terms, the delusions of grandeur, the distorted ideas of reference, the
pedantic self-annotations and so on are all bag and · baggage
of
literate autism. However, there is something repulsive in making a
clinical judgement of this sort. And because, when the chips are down,
one must, to a significant degree, seriously endorse the program which
is embedded in the midst of all his rococo nonsense, it is necessary
to judge Mailer as sane; and to assess him, whether favorably or not,
at least
in the terms
of his own self-evaluation.
Without this plea of insanity Mailer stands accused of monstrous
uncouthness and although this is to some extent exonerated by the
intermittent brilliance of his performance, he surely deserves to be
deported for committing such a boorish public nuisance. And yet, at
the same time, if one looks at the actual substance of those extenuating
passages one can see that they are more than just isolated virtues, to
be offset against the prevailing villainy. They are part of the vil–
lainy and even a justification of it. In other words the_ boorish ex–
hibitionism cannot simply be dismissed, with its general ugliness mere–
ly diminished by the excellence of the rest. Mailer clearly insists that
both be taken into consideration. Not simply as credit and debit from
which a final balance can be derived ; but as one, integrated assault
on modern sensibility. The bullying and the brilliance are the yin and
yan of Mailer's reforming effort and one is forced, I think, to
recognize a daring capacity for absurd self-exposure which is all of
~
piece with the author's preference for life as an ."existential" ordeal ot
testing challenges.
He has settled for nothing less than the unconditional surrender
of the entrenched values of modern American culture. The uncouth
self-importance of his attack must at least be considered
in
the light
