68.8b

“A Writer’s Diary: Mailer Sees Mailer as Book Character for his ‘Armies.’’’ Article-interview by John Barkham. Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin, 11 May, front page of “Books.” Note: date is estimated, but since Barkham’s reviews appeared close to publication date, this date is not more than a week or two off, at most. Mailer begins by telling him: “I’m getting tired of the Mailer legend, which has me as a cross between Ernest Hemingway and a dinosaur. I’m not.” He goes on to say that he had a technical problem because there were no figures in the March on the Pentagon equivalent to those in his earlier political piece—JFK, Goldwater, or Rockefeller—so he tried various approaches, “none of which worked. Then I tried the third person, wrote a few pages quickly, read it over, and had a great revulsion.” A week later he looked at what he had written and “it looked more of less possible, so I kept going in this vein.”