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NORMAN MAILER
still clinging to some of their toes ) and the triumph of the assertion
was in the continuing life of their put-on, their life became a put-on
where a stand would never be taken, for by a stand might they be
judged and the mask stripped; no, they galloped and growled .and huffed
and puffed (nimble all the while) and stayed alive as comedians of the
highest order, and were followed as their Establishment developed into
another, by further newer younger practitioners of the put-on, young
literary executives who would not be caught dead making a remark
with their back to the wall or the ball of their foot off the ball of
mercury, there was even a vaster anxiety to keep the put-on alive in
this younger Establishment, for it was less well-educated than the old,
less seasoned, less tempered, the young were inheritors of power they had
not gained by withstanding a siege. So they were somewhat appalled
by their power and utterly aghast at the forces which confronted them
across the gulf of America.
5.
Of course, we are a severed land. We have grown
too
fast and
never consumed our wastes. They bloat our gut, stupefy our mind, and
wash the art of communication from Right Wing to Left with the St.
Vitus Dance of the put-on.
If
the Left Establishment, now conscience
of America, sits in terror before the muscle and body of that Right Wing
which gained America with its fists (and its money), rest assured the
Right Wing sits in its own terror before judgment, listening like Lennie
to any George's speech about the rabbits, floundering
in
its own vast
rotting cabbage of sentimental mortgages, poisoned fertilizer, ideological
dustbowls, and put-ons so monumental you cannot shovel them away.
The Kingfish of the put-on speaks:
"Sad but steady - always convinced of his ca.use - he stuck it
out," Mr. Johnson said of President Abraham Lincoln. "Sad but
steady, so will we," he added.
- The New York Times,
Feb. 13, 1968
It's the tragedy of us all that the consequent moment of affirmation,
outright confession, or sheer renunciation now appears out of a mirror
whose first question becomes: Is this noble act the work of a whack or
the superbest put-on of all.
