Interview with Norman Mailer: Difference between revisions

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~~{{byline|last=Busa|first=Christopher}}~~

{{notice|This interview was originally published in ''[https://archive.org/details/provincetownarts1999unse Provincetown Arts]'', Volume 14, 1999: 24–32. Re-printed with the permission of ''Provincetown Arts'' magazine and Christopher Busa.}}

{{notice|This interview was originally published in ''Provincetown Arts'', Volume 14, 1999: 24–32. Re-printed with the permission of ''Provincetown Arts'' magazine and Christopher Busa.}}

Fourteen years ago, [[Norman Mailer]] appeared on the cover of ''Provincetown Arts''. If most cells in the human body change completely every seven years, then Mailer has changed twice since we last looked deeply into his face. Mailer appears now as the author of books unwritten in 1987 — ''Harlot’s Ghost'', ''Oswald’s Tale'', ''Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man'', ''The Gospel According to the Son'', and ''The Time of Our Time'', an anthology of the author’s writings that proves he is his own best editor. Awesome in their range, depth, and ambition, these books may be the finest of an extraordinary career. The author of ''The Naked and the Dead'' — Mailer’s first novel, begun in North Truro in 1946 — became a major writer at the age of 26. Now, on the high seas of his 70s, he looks back and calls the widely acclaimed book “the work of an amateur.”

Mailer and his wife, [[Norris Church Mailer|Norris]], a painter and novelist whose first book will soon be published, have lived year round in Provincetown in recent years. Mailer writes at a desk under the apex of his brick house on the waterfront in the East End. A picture window looks west along the shoreline to the wharf and Monument, and when the late afternoon sun is bright, he is obliged to cover the view with a curtain. On one side of his desk, a ping-pong table supports stacks of research materials. On the other is a simple mattress on the floor, where the author rests his eyes while working. One senses from the arrangement that the author is the ego who manages the sleep/work cycle between the researcher and the dreamer.

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'''CB''': What was her attraction to it?

'''NM''': She’d heard it was interesting and fun. Of course, in those days, we were always looking for something that was agreeable to the eye. You know the way kids are. We wanted to see a place that had charm, and was, ideally, perhaps European, because the war was on and there was no question of going to Europe unless you were in the Army. If I recall properly, we took a train from Boston, all the way to P’town, a four-hour trip. It used to end up parallel to Harry Kemp Way, and then came in behind the gas station on Standish Street. At one time, it ran all the way out to the pier, to pick up the fish, but by this time it stopped on Standish. The last part was very slow indeed, from Hyannis on But then we saw the town — incredible. I’d never seen a town like that.

'''NM''': She’d heard it was interesting and fun. Of course, in those days, we were always looking for something that was agreeable to the eye. You know the way kids are. We wanted to see a place that had charm, and was, ideally, perhaps European, because the war was on and there was no question of going to Europe unless you were in the Army. If I recall properly, we took a train from Boston, all the way to P’town, a four-hour trip. It used to end up parallel to Harry Kemp Way, and then came in behind the gas station on Standish Street. At one time, it ran all the way out to the pier, to pick up the fish, but by this time it stopped on Standish. The last part was very slow indeed, from Hyannis on. But then we saw the town — incredible. I’d never seen a town like that.

'''CB''': How long did you stay?

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'''CB''': Economy?

'''NM''': Economy. In other words, in Tough Guys one of the happiest moments I had — I didn’t write the book here but I edited it here — was when the father, Dougy Madden, was talking to the son about pro football and handicappers. The father says, “Listen, if God handicapped the football spread, He’d be right 80 percent of the time.” The son asks how he arrived at that. The father says, “Well, the best handicappers, for a little while, can be up to 75 percent for a few weeks, not more. So I figure if they do 75 percent, God can be 80 percent, no trouble at all.” Madden’s son asks why God can’t do 99 percent or 100 percent. He just passes over the teams at night and He sees what their energy is and He says the Giants are up and the Steelers are down. I’m going to pick the Giants. And He’s right 80 percent of the time.” So Madden’s son says, “Yeah, but why can’t He do it 100 percent of the time?” And the father looks at him sternly and says, “Because footballs take funny bounces.”

'''NM''': Economy. In other words, in ''Tough Guys'' one of the happiest moments I had — I didn’t write the book here but I edited it here — was when the father, Dougy Madden, was talking to the son about pro football and handicappers. The father says, “Listen, if God handicapped the football spread, He’d be right 80 percent of the time.” The son asks how he arrived at that. The father says, “Well, the best handicappers, for a little while, can be up to 75 percent for a few weeks, not more. So I figure if they do 75 percent, God can be 80 percent, no trouble at all.” Madden’s son asks why God can’t do 99 percent or 100 percent. He just passes over the teams at night and He sees what their energy is and He says the Giants are up and the Steelers are down. I’m going to pick the Giants. And He’s right 80 percent of the time.” So Madden’s son says, “Yeah, but why can’t He do it 100 percent of the time?” And the father looks at him sternly and says, “Because footballs take funny bounces.”

'''CB''': Oh, God that is funny!

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'''CB''': So the ethical is limited by a need to balance sacred energy on the fulcrum of divine purpose? My belief is that God didn’t create us, we created Him, but that may sound like blasphemy to you.

'''NM''': Well, that is beyond my purchase, and I don’t want to get into it. What I will say is that if we take the notion that God is capable of doing everything and anything at any given moment, it takes away the last of our human dignity. I much perfer the notion that God is just doing the best that He or She can do, or that it’s a marriage that They can do. I’ve never believed, for one moment, that God intervenes at every moment and takes care of everything. So my god is an existential god, a god that does the best that can be done under the circumstances. A tired general will not always prevail. I wanted to get across the Gospel that when Jesus removed demons from people, He didn’t do it for nothing. It cost Him a great deal. He was as exhausted as a magician after a long night of performance.

'''NM''': Well, that is beyond my purchase, and I don’t want to get into it. What I will say is that if we take the notion that God is capable of doing everything and anything at any given moment, it takes away the last of our human dignity. I much perfer the notion that God is just doing the best that He or She can do, or that it’s a marriage that They can do. I’ve never believed, for one moment, that God intervenes at every moment and takes care of everything. So my god is an existential god, a god that does the best that can be done under the circumstances. A tired general will not always prevail. I wanted to get across in the Gospel that when Jesus removed demons from people, He didn’t do it for nothing. It cost Him a great deal. He was as exhausted as a magician after a long night of performance.

'''CB''': Speaking of performance, the 1996 cover subject of ''Provincetown Arts'', Karen Finley, told me she decided to become a performance artist when, as a teenager, she witnessed speeches at the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968, when people like Abbie Hoffman and Allen Ginsberg were giving these emotional rallies before larger audiences. She saw them as an art form. The whole concept of performance art started in this political realm. In other words, there was a perception about politics as theater. In your book, ''Of A Fire on the Moon'', about the Apollo moon shot, you have a concluding section called “A Burial by the Sea” A broken-down car is buried in a P’town backyard.

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'''CB''': The lawyers have a term, “excited utterance,” to describe statements said under the compulsion of an emotional moment. The astronauts had no quotable excited utterances — no surprise of the heart.

'''NM''': Nothing but “a small step for man and a mighty step for mankind.” It’s not that good a quote, nothing remarkable. It doesn’t reach. But a requirement of NASA was to be deadly dull. These astronauts, however, had a double life. They all had Corvettes in those days and they would drive at 100 miles an hour down those Texas highways, one foot away from each other. When they cut up, they cut up. I’m not talking about Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins, who were on Apollo 11, because they were probably the purest of the pure, looking back on it. They took the three most dependable guys for that shot. Let’s say they took the six or nine guys out of the pool of 25, or whatever they had, and said, “Among these nine are the guys we can count on.” And when they had those three, they said, “This is a very good ~~threee~~. Let’s go with them.”

'''NM''': Nothing but “a small step for man and a mighty step for mankind.” It’s not that good a quote, nothing remarkable. It doesn’t reach. But a requirement of NASA was to be deadly dull. These astronauts, however, had a double life. They all had Corvettes in those days and they would drive at 100 miles an hour down those Texas highways, one foot away from each other. When they cut up, they cut up. I’m not talking about Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins, who were on Apollo 11, because they were probably the purest of the pure, looking back on it. They took the three most dependable guys for that shot. Let’s say they took the six or nine guys out of the pool of 25, or whatever they had, and said, “Among these nine are the guys we can count on.” And when they had those three, they said, “This is a very good three. Let’s go with them.”

'''CB''': To be conscious of the excitement would have been a distraction from working.

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'''CB''': So much of your knowledge of the body comes from an interest in sports, especially the dynamic balance of a performing athlete. Your characters, both within themselves and with others, are moving through complicated turns, where they are at once off balance and in balance, yet the center of gravity is maintained in evolving alignments.

'''NM''': The turn for me came in the ’60s. In the first half of the ’60s I was doing my best to give up smoking, and my style changed, starting with ''An American Dream''. I smoked two packs a day for years and was addicted for 20 years when I started to give it up at the age of 33, in 1956. It took me the next 10 years to give it up totally. It was very hard to write when I was giving up cigarettes. Smoking enables you to cerebrate at a high, almost feverish rate. Your brain is faster when you smoke cigarettes, which is why working intellectuals, particularly, do hate giving up their addiction. I discovered, yes, I had much more trouble finding the word I wanted, but the rhythms were now better. Before I had been writing more like a computer, if you will, imparting direct information, stating things. Gradually I learned a more roundabout way of discovering the meaning of a sentence, rather than knowing it before I started. Also I began to write in longhand, rather than with a typewriter, Writing became more of a physical act, with more flow to it, but with less celebration in each sentence. I attribute the development of a second style to giving up smoking.

'''NM''': The turn for me came in the ’60s. In the first half of the ’60s I was doing my best to give up smoking, and my style changed, starting with ''An American Dream''. I smoked two packs a day for years and was addicted for 20 years when I started to give it up at the age of 33, in 1956. It took me the next 10 years to give it up totally. It was very hard to write when I was giving up cigarettes. Smoking enables you to cerebrate at a high, almost feverish rate. Your brain is faster when you smoke cigarettes, which is why working intellectuals, particularly, do hate giving up their addiction. I discovered, yes, I had much more trouble finding the word I wanted, but the rhythms were now better. Before I had been writing more like a computer, if you will, imparting direct information, stating things. Gradually I learned a more roundabout way of discovering the meaning of a sentence, rather than knowing it before I started. Also I began to write in longhand, rather than with a typewriter. Writing became more of a physical act, with more flow to it, but with less celebration in each sentence. I attribute the development of a second style to giving up smoking.

'''CB''': Out of necessity. It took you a full decade to get comfortable writing without smoking?

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'''CB''': The right to write about another’s consciousness is what’s at stake.

'''NM''': If we can’t do it, we may be doomed as a species. That is a large remark. But unless we are truly able to comprehend cultures that are initially alien to us, I don’t know if we are going to make it. This applies to all sorts of things. If we can’t begin to imagine the anxiety and pain and disorder that is caused in all parts of the cosmos by birds dying in the oil of the Exxon disaster, or if only a third of us can recognize that, then worse things will happen. What terrifies me about human nature is our stupidity at the highest levels. For example, all the Y2K crap going on now — what was going on in those guys’ heads that they couldn’t look 50 years ahead? And now we are going to go into cloning, fooling with the gene stream? If we can make an error like Y2K and not be able to see in advance what the mistake will do, in the very system these guys developed and invented, then I am terrified. As an extension, the idea that you can’t write about things you haven’t ~~immmediately~~ experienced is odious to me. There is much too much journalism in our lives now. I remember when I did the biography of Marilyn Monroe; the first question everyone asked me was “Did you know her?” I’d say no. Immediately the shades would come down on interview shows. In effect, if you didn’t know her, what you wrote about her was not worth reading.

'''NM''': If we can’t do it, we may be doomed as a species. That is a large remark. But unless we are truly able to comprehend cultures that are initially alien to us, I don’t know if we are going to make it. This applies to all sorts of things. If we can’t begin to imagine the anxiety and pain and disorder that is caused in all parts of the cosmos by birds dying in the oil of the Exxon disaster, or if only a third of us can recognize that, then worse things will happen. What terrifies me about human nature is our stupidity at the highest levels. For example, all the Y2K crap going on now — what was going on in those guys’ heads that they couldn’t look 50 years ahead? And now we are going to go into cloning, fooling with the gene stream? If we can make an error like Y2K and not be able to see in advance what the mistake will do, in the very system these guys developed and invented, then I am terrified. As an extension, the idea that you can’t write about things you haven’t immediately experienced is odious to me. There is much too much journalism in our lives now. I remember when I did the biography of Marilyn Monroe; the first question everyone asked me was “Did you know her?” I’d say no. Immediately the shades would come down on interview shows. In effect, if you didn’t know her, what you wrote about her was not worth reading.

'''CB''': There you said what I was trying to hear.

'''NM''': I believe it. You need an awful amount of luck to be a novelist, and I have had a lot in my life. I didn’t have to spend half of my 50 years of writing earning a living at things I didn’t want to do, which is killing to talent. This ability to reinvent cultures, to make imaginative works of them that are more real than any pieces of journalism, is crucial to our continuation. For many years I felt we were just scribblers and it didn’t mean a damn thing. What I was recognizing was that what we write doesn’t change anything. Everything I detest has gotten stronger in the last 30 or 40 years; plastic, airplane interiors, modern architecture, and suburban sprawl. One of the things I like about Provincetown is that it hasn’t changed that much, it hasn’t been poisoned the way cities like Hyannis have been ruined. I’ve come around to feeling that what we do as writers is essential and important. Consciousness is enlarged gently and ~~deliciately~~, yet powerfully, and it takes great literature, like great music, painting, and dance, to make that happen. I’ve come to believe that the function of the novelist is more important now than ever, precisely because the serious novel is in danger of becoming extinct.

'''NM''': I believe it. You need an awful amount of luck to be a novelist, and I have had a lot in my life. I didn’t have to spend half of my 50 years of writing earning a living at things I didn’t want to do, which is killing to talent. This ability to reinvent cultures, to make imaginative works of them that are more real than any pieces of journalism, is crucial to our continuation. For many years I felt we were just scribblers and it didn’t mean a damn thing. What I was recognizing was that what we write doesn’t change anything. Everything I detest has gotten stronger in the last 30 or 40 years; plastic, airplane interiors, modern architecture, and suburban sprawl. One of the things I like about Provincetown is that it hasn’t changed that much, it hasn’t been poisoned the way cities like Hyannis have been ruined. I’ve come around to feeling that what we do as writers is essential and important. Consciousness is enlarged gently and delicately, yet powerfully, and it takes great literature, like great music, painting, and dance, to make that happen. I’ve come to believe that the function of the novelist is more important now than ever, precisely because the serious novel is in danger of becoming extinct.

'''CB''': If we connect these remarks to your novel about Jesus we see that the source of His wisdom resides in the parabolic language that He uses even more skillfully than the Devil.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-{{byline|last=Busa|first=Christopher}}
+{{notice|This interview was originally published in ''[https://archive.org/details/provincetownarts1999unse Provincetown Arts]'', Volume 14, 1999: 24–32. Re-printed with the permission of ''Provincetown Arts'' magazine and Christopher Busa.}}
-{{notice|This interview was originally published in ''Provincetown Arts'', Volume 14, 1999: 24–32. Re-printed with the permission of ''Provincetown Arts'' magazine and Christopher Busa.}}
 Fourteen years ago, [[Norman Mailer]] appeared on the cover of ''Provincetown Arts''. If most cells in the human body change completely every seven years, then Mailer has changed twice since we last looked deeply into his face. Mailer appears now as the author of books unwritten in 1987 — ''Harlot’s Ghost'', ''Oswald’s Tale'', ''Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man'', ''The Gospel According to the Son'', and ''The Time of Our Time'', an anthology of the author’s writings that proves he is his own best editor. Awesome in their range, depth, and ambition, these books may be the finest of an extraordinary career. The author of ''The Naked and the Dead'' — Mailer’s first novel, begun in North Truro in 1946 — became a major writer at the age of 26. Now, on the high seas of his 70s, he looks back and calls the widely acclaimed book “the work of an amateur.”
+{{byline|last=Busa|first=Christopher}}
 Mailer and his wife, [[Norris Church Mailer|Norris]], a painter and novelist whose first book will soon be published, have lived year round in Provincetown in recent years. Mailer writes at a desk under the apex of his brick house on the waterfront in the East End. A picture window looks west along the shoreline to the wharf and Monument, and when the late afternoon sun is bright, he is obliged to cover the view with a curtain. On one side of his desk, a ping-pong table supports stacks of research materials. On the other is a simple mattress on the floor, where the author rests his eyes while working. One senses from the arrangement that the author is the ego who manages the sleep/work cycle between the researcher and the dreamer.
@@ Line 21: / Line 19: @@
 '''CB''': What was her attraction to it?
-'''NM''': She’d heard it was interesting and fun. Of course, in those days, we were always looking for something that was agreeable to the eye. You know the way kids are. We wanted to see a place that had charm, and was, ideally, perhaps European, because the war was on and there was no question of going to Europe unless you were in the Army. If I recall properly, we took a train from Boston, all the way to P’town, a four-hour trip. It used to end up parallel to Harry Kemp Way, and then came in behind the gas station on Standish Street. At one time, it ran all the way out to the pier, to pick up the fish, but by this time it stopped on Standish. The last part was very slow indeed, from Hyannis on But then we saw the town — incredible. I’d never seen a town like that.
+'''NM''': She’d heard it was interesting and fun. Of course, in those days, we were always looking for something that was agreeable to the eye. You know the way kids are. We wanted to see a place that had charm, and was, ideally, perhaps European, because the war was on and there was no question of going to Europe unless you were in the Army. If I recall properly, we took a train from Boston, all the way to P’town, a four-hour trip. It used to end up parallel to Harry Kemp Way, and then came in behind the gas station on Standish Street. At one time, it ran all the way out to the pier, to pick up the fish, but by this time it stopped on Standish. The last part was very slow indeed, from Hyannis on. But then we saw the town — incredible. I’d never seen a town like that.
 '''CB''': How long did you stay?
@@ Line 157: / Line 155: @@
 '''CB''': Economy?
-'''NM''': Economy. In other words, in Tough Guys one of the happiest moments I had — I didn’t write the book here but I edited it here — was when the father, Dougy Madden, was talking to the son about pro football and handicappers. The father says, “Listen, if God handicapped the football spread, He’d be right 80 percent of the time.” The son asks how he arrived at that. The father says, “Well, the best handicappers, for a little while, can be up to 75 percent for a few weeks, not more. So I figure if they do 75 percent, God can be 80 percent, no trouble at all.” Madden’s son asks why God can’t do 99 percent or 100 percent. He just passes over the teams at night and He sees what their energy is and He says the Giants are up and the Steelers are down. I’m going to pick the Giants. And He’s right 80 percent of the time.” So Madden’s son says, “Yeah, but why can’t He do it 100 percent of the time?” And the father looks at him sternly and says, “Because footballs take funny bounces.”
+'''NM''': Economy. In other words, in ''Tough Guys'' one of the happiest moments I had — I didn’t write the book here but I edited it here — was when the father, Dougy Madden, was talking to the son about pro football and handicappers. The father says, “Listen, if God handicapped the football spread, He’d be right 80 percent of the time.” The son asks how he arrived at that. The father says, “Well, the best handicappers, for a little while, can be up to 75 percent for a few weeks, not more. So I figure if they do 75 percent, God can be 80 percent, no trouble at all.” Madden’s son asks why God can’t do 99 percent or 100 percent. He just passes over the teams at night and He sees what their energy is and He says the Giants are up and the Steelers are down. I’m going to pick the Giants. And He’s right 80 percent of the time.” So Madden’s son says, “Yeah, but why can’t He do it 100 percent of the time?” And the father looks at him sternly and says, “Because footballs take funny bounces.”
 '''CB''': Oh, God that is funny!
@@ Line 165: / Line 163: @@
 '''CB''': So the ethical is limited by a need to balance sacred energy on the fulcrum of divine purpose? My belief is that God didn’t create us, we created Him, but that may sound like blasphemy to you.
-'''NM''': Well, that is beyond my purchase, and I don’t want to get into it. What I will say is that if we take the notion that God is capable of doing everything and anything at any given moment, it takes away the last of our human dignity. I much perfer the notion that God is just doing the best that He or She can do, or that it’s a marriage that They can do. I’ve never believed, for one moment, that God intervenes at every moment and takes care of everything. So my god is an existential god, a god that does the best that can be done under the circumstances. A tired general will not always prevail. I wanted to get across the Gospel that when Jesus removed demons from people, He didn’t do it for nothing. It cost Him a great deal. He was as exhausted as a magician after a long night of performance.
+'''NM''': Well, that is beyond my purchase, and I don’t want to get into it. What I will say is that if we take the notion that God is capable of doing everything and anything at any given moment, it takes away the last of our human dignity. I much perfer the notion that God is just doing the best that He or She can do, or that it’s a marriage that They can do. I’ve never believed, for one moment, that God intervenes at every moment and takes care of everything. So my god is an existential god, a god that does the best that can be done under the circumstances. A tired general will not always prevail. I wanted to get across in the Gospel that when Jesus removed demons from people, He didn’t do it for nothing. It cost Him a great deal. He was as exhausted as a magician after a long night of performance.
 '''CB''': Speaking of performance, the 1996 cover subject of ''Provincetown Arts'', Karen Finley, told me she decided to become a performance artist when, as a teenager, she witnessed speeches at the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968, when people like Abbie Hoffman and Allen Ginsberg were giving these emotional rallies before larger audiences. She saw them as an art form. The whole concept of performance art started in this political realm. In other words, there was a perception about politics as theater. In your book, ''Of A Fire on the Moon'', about the Apollo moon shot, you have a concluding section called “A Burial by the Sea” A broken-down car is buried in a P’town backyard.
@@ Line 195: / Line 193: @@
 '''CB''': The lawyers have a term, “excited utterance,” to describe statements said under the compulsion of an emotional moment. The astronauts had no quotable excited utterances — no surprise of the heart.
-'''NM''': Nothing but “a small step for man and a mighty step for mankind.” It’s not that good a quote, nothing remarkable. It doesn’t reach. But a requirement of NASA was to be deadly dull. These astronauts, however, had a double life. They all had Corvettes in those days and they would drive at 100 miles an hour down those Texas highways, one foot away from each other. When they cut up, they cut up. I’m not talking about Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins, who were on Apollo 11, because they were probably the purest of the pure, looking back on it. They took the three most dependable guys for that shot. Let’s say they took the six or nine guys out of the pool of 25, or whatever they had, and said, “Among these nine are the guys we can count on.” And when they had those three, they said, “This is a very good threee. Let’s go with them.”
+'''NM''': Nothing but “a small step for man and a mighty step for mankind.” It’s not that good a quote, nothing remarkable. It doesn’t reach. But a requirement of NASA was to be deadly dull. These astronauts, however, had a double life. They all had Corvettes in those days and they would drive at 100 miles an hour down those Texas highways, one foot away from each other. When they cut up, they cut up. I’m not talking about Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins, who were on Apollo 11, because they were probably the purest of the pure, looking back on it. They took the three most dependable guys for that shot. Let’s say they took the six or nine guys out of the pool of 25, or whatever they had, and said, “Among these nine are the guys we can count on.” And when they had those three, they said, “This is a very good three. Let’s go with them.”
 '''CB''': To be conscious of the excitement would have been a distraction from working.
@@ Line 257: / Line 255: @@
 '''CB''': So much of your knowledge of the body comes from an interest in sports, especially the dynamic balance of a performing athlete. Your characters, both within themselves and with others, are moving through complicated turns, where they are at once off balance and in balance, yet the center of gravity is maintained in evolving alignments.
-'''NM''': The turn for me came in the ’60s. In the first half of the ’60s I was doing my best to give up smoking, and my style changed, starting with ''An American Dream''. I smoked two packs a day for years and was addicted for 20 years when I started to give it up at the age of 33, in 1956. It took me the next 10 years to give it up totally. It was very hard to write when I was giving up cigarettes. Smoking enables you to cerebrate at a high, almost feverish rate. Your brain is faster when you smoke cigarettes, which is why working intellectuals, particularly, do hate giving up their addiction. I discovered, yes, I had much more trouble finding the word I wanted, but the rhythms were now better. Before I had been writing more like a computer, if you will, imparting direct information, stating things. Gradually I learned a more roundabout way of discovering the meaning of a sentence, rather than knowing it before I started. Also I began to write in longhand, rather than with a typewriter, Writing became more of a physical act, with more flow to it, but with less celebration in each sentence. I attribute the development of a second style to giving up smoking.
+'''NM''': The turn for me came in the ’60s. In the first half of the ’60s I was doing my best to give up smoking, and my style changed, starting with ''An American Dream''. I smoked two packs a day for years and was addicted for 20 years when I started to give it up at the age of 33, in 1956. It took me the next 10 years to give it up totally. It was very hard to write when I was giving up cigarettes. Smoking enables you to cerebrate at a high, almost feverish rate. Your brain is faster when you smoke cigarettes, which is why working intellectuals, particularly, do hate giving up their addiction. I discovered, yes, I had much more trouble finding the word I wanted, but the rhythms were now better. Before I had been writing more like a computer, if you will, imparting direct information, stating things. Gradually I learned a more roundabout way of discovering the meaning of a sentence, rather than knowing it before I started. Also I began to write in longhand, rather than with a typewriter. Writing became more of a physical act, with more flow to it, but with less celebration in each sentence. I attribute the development of a second style to giving up smoking.
 '''CB''': Out of necessity. It took you a full decade to get comfortable writing without smoking?
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 '''CB''': The right to write about another’s consciousness is what’s at stake.
-'''NM''': If we can’t do it, we may be doomed as a species. That is a large remark. But unless we are truly able to comprehend cultures that are initially alien to us, I don’t know if we are going to make it. This applies to all sorts of things. If we can’t begin to imagine the anxiety and pain and disorder that is caused in all parts of the cosmos by birds dying in the oil of the Exxon disaster, or if only a third of us can recognize that, then worse things will happen. What terrifies me about human nature is our stupidity at the highest levels. For example, all the Y2K crap going on now — what was going on in those guys’ heads that they couldn’t look 50 years ahead? And now we are going to go into cloning, fooling with the gene stream? If we can make an error like Y2K and not be able to see in advance what the mistake will do, in the very system these guys developed and invented, then I am terrified. As an extension, the idea that you can’t write about things you haven’t immmediately experienced is odious to me. There is much too much journalism in our lives now. I remember when I did the biography of Marilyn Monroe; the first question everyone asked me was “Did you know her?” I’d say no. Immediately the shades would come down on interview shows. In effect, if you didn’t know her, what you wrote about her was not worth reading.
+'''NM''': If we can’t do it, we may be doomed as a species. That is a large remark. But unless we are truly able to comprehend cultures that are initially alien to us, I don’t know if we are going to make it. This applies to all sorts of things. If we can’t begin to imagine the anxiety and pain and disorder that is caused in all parts of the cosmos by birds dying in the oil of the Exxon disaster, or if only a third of us can recognize that, then worse things will happen. What terrifies me about human nature is our stupidity at the highest levels. For example, all the Y2K crap going on now — what was going on in those guys’ heads that they couldn’t look 50 years ahead? And now we are going to go into cloning, fooling with the gene stream? If we can make an error like Y2K and not be able to see in advance what the mistake will do, in the very system these guys developed and invented, then I am terrified. As an extension, the idea that you can’t write about things you haven’t immediately experienced is odious to me. There is much too much journalism in our lives now. I remember when I did the biography of Marilyn Monroe; the first question everyone asked me was “Did you know her?” I’d say no. Immediately the shades would come down on interview shows. In effect, if you didn’t know her, what you wrote about her was not worth reading.
 '''CB''': There you said what I was trying to hear.
-'''NM''': I believe it. You need an awful amount of luck to be a novelist, and I have had a lot in my life. I didn’t have to spend half of my 50 years of writing earning a living at things I didn’t want to do, which is killing to talent. This ability to reinvent cultures, to make imaginative works of them that are more real than any pieces of journalism, is crucial to our continuation. For many years I felt we were just scribblers and it didn’t mean a damn thing. What I was recognizing was that what we write doesn’t change anything. Everything I detest has gotten stronger in the last 30 or 40 years; plastic, airplane interiors, modern architecture, and suburban sprawl. One of the things I like about Provincetown is that it hasn’t changed that much, it hasn’t been poisoned the way cities like Hyannis have been ruined. I’ve come around to feeling that what we do as writers is essential and important. Consciousness is enlarged gently and deliciately, yet powerfully, and it takes great literature, like great music, painting, and dance, to make that happen. I’ve come to believe that the function of the novelist is more important now than ever, precisely because the serious novel is in danger of becoming extinct.
+'''NM''': I believe it. You need an awful amount of luck to be a novelist, and I have had a lot in my life. I didn’t have to spend half of my 50 years of writing earning a living at things I didn’t want to do, which is killing to talent. This ability to reinvent cultures, to make imaginative works of them that are more real than any pieces of journalism, is crucial to our continuation. For many years I felt we were just scribblers and it didn’t mean a damn thing. What I was recognizing was that what we write doesn’t change anything. Everything I detest has gotten stronger in the last 30 or 40 years; plastic, airplane interiors, modern architecture, and suburban sprawl. One of the things I like about Provincetown is that it hasn’t changed that much, it hasn’t been poisoned the way cities like Hyannis have been ruined. I’ve come around to feeling that what we do as writers is essential and important. Consciousness is enlarged gently and delicately, yet powerfully, and it takes great literature, like great music, painting, and dance, to make that happen. I’ve come to believe that the function of the novelist is more important now than ever, precisely because the serious novel is in danger of becoming extinct.
 '''CB''': If we connect these remarks to your novel about Jesus we see that the source of His wisdom resides in the parabolic language that He uses even more skillfully than the Devil.