07.25

“Norman Mailer on Literary Instincts and Ambitions.” Interview by Sean Abbott, At Random, 27 April. Eleven-page omnibus interview on the occasion of the publication of The Time of Our Time (98.7). Among many other topics, Mailer notes how his standing with feminists have hurt him:

“ It was a great shock to me that women were actually able to affect how people read me, and therefore a lot of people were not reading me. Probably two-thirds to three-quarters of women who are reading novels these days won’t read me, and that means that maybe a third of the men won’t read me either because it gets to be too much of a hassle. The wife might say, ‘What are you reading him for?’ ”

Major interview by a shrewd interviewer.