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Mailer entitled his journal “Lipton’s” (tea, marijuana) because cannabis, “which destroys the sense of time also destroys the sense of society and opens the soul,” was his aid to deeper self-explorations and growth.{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/December 17, 1954/63|#63]]}} He is speaking here not of intimate personal relations, which cannabis can of course enhance, but of the oppressive Collective Society and its “war upon each individual.” He then gives the example of modern advertising as one means by which society “reaches deep into each man’s soul and converts a piece of it to society.” Advertising coopts the soul’s longing for “love and power, the two things the soul seeks for in life, legitimately, finely,” by attaching that longing to commodities, which tempt the soul to “enter its contract with society.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/December 17, 1954/64|#64]]}} Modern advertising becomes, for Mailer, but one soul-trapping tool of Emerson’s 20th-century joint-stock company.
Mailer entitled his journal “Lipton’s” (tea, marijuana) because cannabis, “which destroys the sense of time also destroys the sense of society and opens the soul,” was his aid to deeper self-explorations and growth.{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/December 17, 1954/63|#63]]}} He is speaking here not of intimate personal relations, which cannabis can of course enhance, but of the oppressive Collective Society and its “war upon each individual.” He then gives the example of modern advertising as one means by which society “reaches deep into each man’s soul and converts a piece of it to society.” Advertising coopts the soul’s longing for “love and power, the two things the soul seeks for in life, legitimately, finely,” by attaching that longing to commodities, which tempt the soul to “enter its contract with society.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/December 17, 1954/64|#64]]}} Modern advertising becomes, for Mailer, but one soul-trapping tool of Emerson’s 20th-century joint-stock company.


For a novelist who, by 1954, is wondering whether he might be a failed artist, who is fighting depression and felt suicidal,{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/December 31, 1954/157|#157]]}} Mailer’s evolving theories of homeostasis/dynamism in conflict with sociostasis become of central importance to his whole project of psychic and artistic renewal. He now finds himself disappointed with the derivative ''Naked and the Dead'' (“an imposter”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/December 31, 1954/159|#159]]}}), the abortive ''Barbary Shore'', and the “enormous lie” and “failure” of ''The Deer Park''.{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/February 7, 1955/460|#460]]}} By “imposter” Mailer is referring to his recognition that he was imitating his literary heroes in his most successful novel so far, a literary procedure Emerson often warned against. Emerson’s broader argument throughout ''Nature'' is for the individual to create an original relation to the universe; in “Self-Reliance” he proclaimed that “imitation is suicide”{{sfn|Emerson|1960|p=65}} and “insist on yourself; never imitate”;{{sfn|Emerson|1960|p=148}} in “The American Scholar” Emerson warns, “in a degenerate state, when the victim of society, he [the scholar] tends to become a mere thinker, or still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.”{{sfn|Emerson|1960|p=165}} Imitation, for Emerson as for Mailer by the 1950s, becomes a type of literary failure.
For a novelist who, by 1954, is wondering whether he might be a failed artist, who is fighting depression and felt suicidal,{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/December 31, 1954/157|#157]]}} Mailer’s evolving theories of homeostasis/dynamism in conflict with sociostasis become of central importance to his whole project of psychic and artistic renewal. He now finds himself disappointed with the derivative ''Naked and the Dead'' (“an imposture”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/December 31, 1954/159|#159]]}}), the abortive ''Barbary Shore'', and the “enormous lie” and “failure” of ''The Deer Park''.{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/February 7, 1955/460|#460]]}} By “imposture” Mailer is referring to his recognition that he was imitating his literary heroes in his most successful novel so far, a literary procedure Emerson often warned against. Emerson’s broader argument throughout ''Nature'' is for the individual to create an original relation to the universe; in “Self-Reliance” he proclaimed that “imitation is suicide”{{sfn|Emerson|1960|p=65}} and “insist on yourself; never imitate”;{{sfn|Emerson|1960|p=148}} in “The American Scholar” Emerson warns, “in a degenerate state, when the victim of society, he [the scholar] tends to become a mere thinker, or still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.”{{sfn|Emerson|1960|p=165}} Imitation, for Emerson as for Mailer by the 1950s, becomes a type of literary failure.


By questioning his previous work, Mailer is also questioning the success or failure of his rebellious soul. “A novel is the record of a sociostatic retreat if it is a great or good novel. A bad novel is the record of a sociostatic advance.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/January 24, 1955/243
By questioning his previous work, Mailer is also questioning the success or failure of his rebellious soul. “A novel is the record of a sociostatic retreat if it is a great or good novel. A bad novel is the record of a sociostatic advance.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|loc=[[Lipton’s Journal/January 24, 1955/243
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