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through life, meeting ambitious challenges or failing so completely as to succeed artistically. Mailer’s failures were akin to those Joyce spoke about: “A | through life, meeting ambitious challenges or failing so completely as to succeed artistically. Mailer’s failures were akin to those Joyce spoke about: “A | ||
man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” | man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” | ||
People always asked Norman why he didn’t write an autobiography. He | |||
answered me in an interview that was published in Provincetown Arts in 1999: | |||
“The main reason is that I don’t want to use up my crystals. What I mean is | |||
that certain experiences have an inner purity to them. They remind me of a | |||
crystal. I use the word advisedly. Your imagination can project through this | |||
experience in one direction, and you can have one piece of fiction. You can | |||
project through the same crystal in another direction and have another piece | |||
of fiction. What I call a crystal experience is not a simple one, rather a most | |||
complex one, but it has this other quality that it can be studied from many | |||
different angles to produce many results. So, whenever you write about a | |||
crystal experience, you are dynamiting one of your richest narrative sources. | |||
I don’t want to write an autobiography, because that would mean I’m done as | |||
a writer. I’ve never written about any of my wives, for just that reason.” |
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