Jason Epstein, March 25, 1965

NORMAN MAILER’s Letters

142 Columbia Heights

Brooklyn 1, New York

March 25, 1965

Dear Jason,
Your letter was fine, and I’m glad you wrote it to me, for it was clear as well, and so helps to explain why many people don’t like the book. I’ll not try to answer it here except to say that Rojack is neither mad nor sane, but in that extreme state of fatigue and emotional exhaustion where the senses are crystal clear and paranoia substitutes its vertical salience for the horizontal measure of daily reason, and everything takes place somewhere between a fever and a dream. If the action is big enough, one could even feel clear-headed and purposeful in the midst of all this. I think I may have made the error of not emphasizing this condition, of even not writing a small essay about what it was like. It is, after all, not insanity but an existential state, but I may have been wrong in assuming that people would recognize it as equivalent to some kind of a crisis in their own lives. Philip [Rahv], after all, and Stanley [Edgar] Hyman, seem to give no sense at all of knowing what it is like to be on a three-day bat with something awful behind you and something fearful coming up. One thing is certain so far. This novel has not two bits worth of attraction for intellectuals, our kind of intellectuals, which leads me to suspect that it is either considerably better or considerably less good than I think it is.

Sincerely,

Norman

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An American Dream Expanded.