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of this aim. No other writers, nominally committed to the same ideals
of courage and regenerated manliness, would today launch themselves
with so little reserve. Mailer keeps none of his shots in the locker. He
observes, for example, none of the usual shyness in bringing out some
of those pompous personal philosophies which all of us secretly enter–
tain but never dare to reveal. He openly admits, for instance, that he
has for years run for president in the privacy of his mind: and there is,
after all, something quite disarming about such humorless honesty.
The very tastelessness of his total style with all its self-advertisement,
clotted jargon and so on add up to a certain barbarous bulk to be set
against the general fastidiousness of all-around.
And yet. Perhaps this is too generous an appraisal. Under cover
of the assault as advertised one feels that Mailer is pushing for another
settlement. A more personal claim for unquestioned greatness. He has
been running, not just in the privacy of his mind, not just for Presi–
dent of the United States; he has also been running for President of
everything else, President of the World, President of Beefcake and
President of Contemporary Sensibility. And in this campaign he has
made a fatal confusion between ends and means, jumping over himself
to achieve the desired reputation before his actual talents have ac–
cumulated the necessary credentials. In other words, he is in a hurry
to establish his claims to greatness without having to wait upon the
natural season of his own supposed genius. Since art is long and life
today seems impossibly short he feels pressed to set up the hollow
shell of an heroic reputation which can stand proxy in the pantheon
until his actual achievements have caught up with his ambitions. The
reason for this, reflecting though it may upon Mailer's own dizzy' ar–
rogance, says something too about the hectic vanity of the modern
life with which he finds himself so angrily at odds. Modern society,
greedy and vain as it is, is impatient of the due process of literary
evaluation. In a spirit of corrupt and premature generosity it likes to
celebrate "greatness" too long in advance of the necessary tests of
time. Mailer has conspired with this social eagerness for instant heroes
and
by running a line of preposterous copy on himself he has establish–
ed
his candidacy for future high office ; and by means of the ad–
vertisements for himself he has constructed an estimation which is by
rights the elected property of the future.
It
shows in him the same
indecently hasty vanity as Arnold Bennett's hero who fakes his own
death just in order to peek in on and dishonestly enjoy his own
posthumous honors.
