Lipton’s Journal/December 29, 1954/86
My feeling about semantics may be correct. Arguing last night with Jean Malaquais[1] I asked him if semantics are opposed to mysticism, and he said absolutely. Certainly as he presents it, they are.
Note
- ↑ A Polish Jew (real name Vladimir Malacki) whose parents perished in the Holocaust, Malaquais (1909-98) was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War. Mailer has often said that Malaquais influenced him intellectually more than anyone else. They met in Paris in 1947 and became close friends a year later when Malaquais was translating The Naked and the Dead into French. Malaquais and his first wife Galy lived with the Mailers when they spent a year in Hollywood, 1949-50. During their time together, Malaquais, who wrote several novels, informally tutored NM on leftist thought and the history of the Russian Revolution. See NM’s “My Friend, Jean Malaquais,” an introduction to Malaquais’s 1954 novel, The Joker, rpt., Pieces and Pontifications.
