Lipton’s Journal/Correspondence of Robert Lindner and Norman Mailer/June 12, 1954: Difference between revisions

Amigo, I’m afraid we’re a couple of ''alta kakes''.{{refn|I.e., old farts.}} (Lippy and Liver). Actually I appreciated your scouting around to find out about my condition which is not bad as you say, and I’ve been dieting very carefully, amazing myself with my capacity to stay off alcohol, sugar, bread, etc. All the things I love so much. I guess the idea of “severity” can be carried over to other things. I winced as you described the lip symptoms. How unpleasant that must be. You know, Bob, part of your depression—obviously large parts [ — ] are the cigarettes, and the aftermath of forty stuff (my after-thirty jag carried on for months), but I wonder if a big part isn’t the author’s equivalent of post-natal depression. I know that every time I’ve finished a novel I’ve been in a state of purposelessness and vague anger and irritability for quite a while afterward. Sometimes it takes a few months to set in, sometimes not, but it’s quite possible that a writer feels unconsciously that his works are his children—I remember you telling me that there’s embryo envy or impregnation envy or something of the sort in the male psyche, and since it takes a man with a big load of the feminine in his nature to be a serious writer, perhaps the depression has to do with some recognition that the literary foetus is finally literary and not a foetus. I don’t know, but since these games are fun, note carefully: swelling of the lip (lip equal to vulva) (vulva terminus of womb) ergo you are still carrying the symbolic pregnancy you hate to relinquish. Forgive me for the above but it was such fun I had to go through with it. Do present it to Arthur Mandey{{refn|Unknown.}} as my latest “contribution” to psychoanalysis. I’m certain it’ll get him agitated enough to chew up an extra box of Dexamyls.

The problem of the ORGY.{{refn|There are indirect references in the closing chapters of ''[[The Deer Park]]'' to the orgies Esposito takes part in with Eitel, Don Beda and his wife Zenelia. Marion Faye also becomes involved after Esposito leaves Eitel and moves in with him.}} Ugh! I ended up cutting the orgy to the bone so that all that remains is a sort of vague idea of what’s going on. And if necessary I’ll cut it completely. The reason for cutting it completely is that the chapter will actually be improved because of the sense of what happened at the orgy will come through in the subsequent Eitel-Elena dialogue, and as a matter of fact it will seem even more evocative and orgiastic that way. I’d do it before submitting to Stan except that if I do, he’s going to demand other cuts, and I need something for bargaining. You’re quite right that I feel the orgy is a failure, but Bob I’ve shot my wad on it—I cannot make it better, I even hate writing the Goddamn thing, and there are times when every author has to recognize that certain things in his book have to remain infirm because he lacks the talent or imagination to up them. Your suggestion that I write the orgy in full I just can’t follow. I don’t even know if you’re right in the abstract, but in the concrete it’s equivalent to having the book either 1) unpublishable or 2) banned upon publication. Now if I had set out to write a book which would be privately printed, that would be something else. The entire book would have been different, in style, conception, everything, and if I’d been a braver bigger writer possibly I would first have conceived it that way. Except I’m not quite sure because finally ''The Deer Park'' is about morality{{refn|Critical opinion has come around to the position that ''The Deer Park'' is not pornographic, and that {{NM}} was “a passionate moralist,” as Brendan Gill put it is his ''New Yorker'' review (October 22, 1955). Malcolm Cowley, in his review (''New York Herald Tribune Book Review'', October 23, 1955), said the novel “is a serious and recklessly honest book about art.” Later criticism of the novel has focused on the weakness of the narrator, Sergius O’Shaugnessey, and the shifting point of view.}} and what is love, what is sex, etc. rather than what is fucking. And therefore to stick in one chapter on an orgy which is written to the hilt would be out of line with the rest of the book. I’ve got a strong sense of when I chicken out, and I really don’t feel Bob that I’m compromising here. The book is going to be hated, reviled, stomped on, etc, I believe, because it’s a disturbing book as I wanted it to be, and the orgy is more a function of the plot than a part of the essential meaning. Don’t worry about my compromising with Stan. I’m prepared to walk out of Rinehart if he doesn’t see the light, because although having Ted in my corner is fine, I believe there are better houses for me. This of course is ''confidential'', ''vieux Lippé''.{{refn|Old lip.}}