198
PARTISAN REVIEW
that old French movie, " God Needs Men." (Of course you couldn't use
such a title today. You 'd have to say "God Needs
Persons.
")
Here's what
I'm trying to say : To the degree I have any intense religious notion it's that
when we fail God we are not merely disappointing some mightily benign
paterfamilias who'd hoped we might turn out well and didn't. We are
literally bleeding God, we 're leeching Him, depriving Him of
His
vision.
You see , I start with the idea that the explanation for our situation on earth
may be that we are part of a divine vision which is not, necessarily , all
loving , but on the contrary is a vision which wishes to take us out across the
stars-a vision of existence at war with other varieties of existence in the
cosmos . Flying saucers may be, or may represent, at least, a certain
unconscious human awareness that there is this possibility in the universe,
that there are other forms of intelligence which have nothing to do with us .
Nothing even to do with our divinities .
Int :
Do you know the Arthur
C.
Clarke novel ,
Chzldhood's End?
Mader :
No.
Int:
In it the human race mutates into an essence , a form of energy, that
unites with a kind of benevolent Oversoul which , interestingly, has used
another race of benevolent beings in the form of devils to prepare the way
for the human mutants .
It
appears that our fear of devils was based on a
premonition that they would have something to do with the dissolution of
our race . The unconscious awareness you spoke of reminded me of this. But
isn't this notion that, as D .]. expressed it in
Why Are We in Vietnam ?,
, 'You never know what vision has been humping you through the night ,"
contradictory to the perception of good and evil in
An Amen'can Dream?
There it seemed that good and evil were for the most part clearly
demarcated, known to Rojack . Deborah and Barney Kelly were evil; Cherry
was good.
Mader:
That was his view of it.
Int :
His view of it?
Mailer:
That was all it was- Rojack's view of it. To the degree a reader
sympathizes with Rojack , that would be the reader's view of it. To the
degree a reader decides that Rojack is an absurd heto , he won't go along
with that view. But even assuming that Rojack's view had something to do
with
my
view of the characters, I was certainly attempting to make Deborah
more complex on any spectrum of good and evil than Barney Kelly. Barney
Kelly was supposed to be the focus of evil in the book.
Int :
The Devil personified.
Mader :
Well, the Devil apptoached, anyway. Whereas Deborah was someone
who was , in quotes , "in thrall " to the Devil. But a woman of complexity,
not altogether unacquainted with goodness .
