71.31

Introduction to Deaths for the Ladies (and Other Disasters). 5 pp., unnumbered. New York: New American Library, December, softcover. Mailer ends his introduction with a reprinting of the 30 March 1962 Time review of the first edition of Deaths for the Ladies (62.3), and his poetic response to it (62.8), followed by this concluding sentence:

“ Instead, the review in Time put iron into my heart again, and rage, and the feeling that the enemy was more alive than ever, and dirtier in the alley, and so one had to mend, and put on the armor, and go to war, go out to war again, and try to hew huge strokes with the only broadsword God ever gave you, a glimpse of something like Almighty prose. ” — Mailer, 71.31