58.6

Statement for class record. In Harvard College, Class of 1943: Fifteenth Anniversary Report, 148. Cambridge: Harvard University. Mailer’s 157-word statement summarizes his publishing activities from 1953 to 1958. In the first half of the statement, Mailer speaks of his ambition and “the slapping [sic] of one’s creative rage by our most subtle and clear totalitarian time, politely called the time of conformity.” In the “First Advertisement for Myself,” the opening essay of Advertisements for Myself (59.13), Mailer notes that “slapping” should have been “sapping” and concludes that “what I was trying to say was simply, ‘The shits are killing us.’” See 49.4, 53.5, 83.59.