84.24

“Thoughts of a Tough Guy.” Article-interview by Dermot Purgavie. Mail On Sunday Magazine, 14 October, 78. In this interview, conducted partly in Brooklyn and partly in London, where Mailer traveled for the 15 October publication of Tough Guys Don’t Dance (84.17), Mailer explains how he came to write it:

“ I was truly in debt and I owed my publisher a great deal of money. And then the day of reckoning came and I realised I damn well had to write a book. It had been a book I had been trying to start all year and I hadn’t been able to get near it. And it was if suddenly my mind cleared. It was one of those joke situations where they give Popeye the can of spinach. It took 61 days. ” — Mailer, 84.24

See 84.23.