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PARTISAN REVIEW
than I have a right to say he is good.
In! :
Do you have a clear notion of the good?
Mader:
No. Bur I have , if you will, I have and I submit to the force of this
word, I have a fairly well-formed cloud of intuitions about the nature of the
good, and, like a cloud , it has to a certain degree a structure, and yet the
structure is capable of altering quickly , depending on the celestial winds
blowing and the less celestial winds. A cloud changes shape quickly but it
remains a cloud. It's not just simply an unformed chaos .
In!:
You 've said that an evil person is someone who has a clear notion of the
good and operates in opposition to it.
Mader:
Therefore by my own definition I'm definitely not evil.
In! :
All right , bur are you wicked?
Mader:
Unquestionably wicked, yes.
In! :
By your own terms , which is not knowing what is good or evi l in any
situation, bur upping the ante each time.
Mader:
Upping the ante, yes. I'd say I may be one of the most wicked spirits in
American life today. Maybe . America may be changing faster than I am.
In! :
Is it fair to say that your existentialism is leading us to know the nature of
good and evil?
Mader:
It's leading us to-well, let me take a detour. People who submit to
logical positivism , and go on from there into philosophies as difficult as
Wirrgenstein's , will answer if you ask, "Why go through these incredible
disciplines in order to verify the fact that you're able to verify the wing span
of a gnat but not of an archangel? " They will answer, "Well , it isn ' t what
we are able to verify that is interesting, so much as that we go through a
discipline which enables us to think cogently. We're less likely to go in for
sloppy thinking thereafter." That's the value of it. I'd say by going in for
my variety of associational, metaphorical thinking (which is , of course, the
exact opposite) I may be able eventually to think speculatively without
feeling philosophical vertigo. You see, it doesn ' t take any more illogic to
posit that there's a god or devil than it takes to say there is none . The latter
statement is absolutely as potent an act of faith. There 's a marvelous line in
Jumpers,
the play by Tom Stoppard , to that effect. I paraphrase : "Well,
maybe atheism is that crutch people need to protect themselves against
having to face the enormity of the existence of God . " You know , once you
contemplate the notion that there is a God and this God may be embatrled ,
the terror you feel is enormous.
In!:
It 's a terror , but isn't it also paranoia?
Mailer:
No . The terror is not that some force is working on you to ruin you.
It 's another kind of terror: It's that nothing is nailed down . That we are out
there- that our lives are truly existential. That we ' re not going to end up
