Laura Adams
EXISTENTIAL AESTH ETleS :
An Interview with Norman Mailer
Int:
Since the late 1950s you ' ve had a vision ofGod and the Devil
at war for possession of the universe , a vision that has been the metaphysical
and moral center of your work . Has that vision changed appreciably over
the years?
Mazier:
I don ' t know the answer. When you deal with cosmology, the
question becomes on one hand enormous-do God and the Devil war in
the galaxies?-yet is intimate on the other. Since we all have our own idea
of God and the Devil , it's hard for the idea not to change , even fluctuate .
I'd say that over the last ten or fifteen years I've kept going back and forth in
my mind over a notion that 's hard to formulate, and I don't know that I
should try- it 's the sort of thing that sounds silly unless you can write a
book about it-but for the purpose of this answer , just let me say that if
there is a war continuing between God and the Devil for humankind , for
the
future
of humankind , then this war is much more complex than a
simple confrontation . We have to ask ourselves what the role of technology
is in all this , and I've had years when I've believed technology is an
instrument of the Devil , other years in which I've seen God in a Faustian
contract with technology . Technology is perhaps some third force, some
element that 's come into our universe from other universes . Now all this is
so endlessly and chronically paranoid, that it's hopeless , I think, to try
to
talk about it in the form of an interview . I think you can dramatize these
notions in a major novel , but only a major novel. You would wreck a minor
novel by introducing such ideas . Therefore to talk about it in an interview is
hopeless . It leads to people saying you have a windmill for a brain . Still I can
see by the look in your eye that you 're hardly ready to give up.
In!:
Isn ' t it an obsession , a form of paranoia, or even atavistic to think that
there are cosmic forces manipulating us for their own ends?
Maller:
Well, I've never felt we are the simple creatures of these forces. On the
contrary , I think they are fighting for our allegiance or even our unwitting
cooperation .
It
isn't only that man needs God , but recall us to the title of
