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Lipton’s Journal/Editors’ Note: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|collection of ruminations and meditations on societal repression, postscripts to his first three novels, a brutally honest self-analysis, and candid portraits of family members and friends that comprise a web of carefully considered calibrations of his relationships with people, events and ideas, set down in preparation for his forthcoming artistic mission. We can in fairness call the journal an examination of conscience and consciousness, but perhaps more than anything else it is an urgent summoning of his powers. He termed it a “great adventure,” adding “I don’t think I have ever been so frightened in my life.”<ref>{{cite book |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |date=2013 |title=Norman Mailer: A Double Life |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |page=187 |access-date= |ref=harv }}</ref>}} | {{quote|collection of ruminations and meditations on societal repression, postscripts to his first three novels, a brutally honest self-analysis, and candid portraits of family members and friends that comprise a web of carefully considered calibrations of his relationships with people, events and ideas, set down in preparation for his forthcoming artistic mission. We can in fairness call the journal an examination of conscience and consciousness, but perhaps more than anything else it is an urgent summoning of his powers. He termed it a “great adventure,” adding “I don’t think I have ever been so frightened in my life.”<ref>{{cite book |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |date=2013 |title=Norman Mailer: A Double Life |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |page=187 |access-date= |ref=harv }}</ref>}} | ||
The journal is also a wellspring of ideas and stances that Mailer drew on—without ever quoting directly from it—for the rest of his life, and the closest thing to a genuine psychoanalysis he ever undertook. He made his final entries on March 4, 1955. Estimated total length: 112,000 words. | |||
Like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mailer was nothing if not intellectually ambitious and similarly desired to find a way to reconcile the demands and insights of science, religion and politics. He failed of course, not only because the quest has not advanced very far since Aristotle, but also because he insisted on an oppositional thrust to all he did. He sought to make one out of two, but not until he was sure that he was not abandoning his critique of a repressive society too quickly, too easily. The grand synthesis might take a lifetime, or several, and he feared declaring a premature victory until he had explored all aspects of human existence. He had a voracious curiosity. | Like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mailer was nothing if not intellectually ambitious and similarly desired to find a way to reconcile the demands and insights of science, religion and politics. He failed of course, not only because the quest has not advanced very far since Aristotle, but also because he insisted on an oppositional thrust to all he did. He sought to make one out of two, but not until he was sure that he was not abandoning his critique of a repressive society too quickly, too easily. The grand synthesis might take a lifetime, or several, and he feared declaring a premature victory until he had explored all aspects of human existence. He had a voracious curiosity. | ||
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