92.11c

“Mailer’s Older, But Still Breathing Fire.” Article-interview by George Smith. Times-Leader (Wilkes-Barre, Penn.), 20 November, 1A, 12A. A third report on Mailer’s Wilkes University speech, where he was introduced by J. Michael Lennon, who called him “the most prolific writer since Henry James.” Mailer spoke about his recent trip to Russia and said he found the country to have poor technology and was not a military threat, adding that the U.S. “has been fighting a Cold War for 40 years. And it should have been over long ago.” Asked in the Q-and-A period if he would retract any of the millions of words he’d written, he said, “When Picasso was asked if he had ever painted any bad pictures, he said, ‘Some are better than others, but there are no bad Picassos.’ That’s how I feel about it.” He also spoke about his novel, Harlot’s Ghost (91.26), published a year earlier. It ends with the words, “To be continued.” Asked if he would finish it, he said, “I’m working on it, but I’m not writing just yet.”