Mailer
To the Editor:
Joseph Epstein’s “Mailer Hits Bottom” [July] is one of the funniest pieces I have ever read. I laughed so hard I cried. “He is, that is to say, a serious writer except when he is thinking,” says Mr. Epstein. “In Ancient Evenings, unfortunately, Mailer is thinking nearly full time.”
Very funny indeed.
Janice Wijnen
Rego Park, New York
_____________
To the Editor:
. . . Why get so excited about Norman Mailer? His new work, Ancient Evenings, is a New York-type book, emphasizing ambition, sex, and telepathy. Clearly it is about New York City not ancient Egypt, and, very logically, it was written amid the pyramids of the 20th century. . . .
It should be recognized that Mailer is interesting because he is so bad, because of his charming, boyish naiveté in the face of disaster, and because his miscalculations are truly American in their enormity. It’s not every day you see someone struggling so mightily against his own limitations—and losing ever so tragically while hope yet remains.
Poor Norman Mailer. He will surely be remembered as the American writer who was skinned by the critics more often than any other.
Risto Marttinen
Falls Church, Virginia
