98.11b

“In Prose or in Person, Still the Tough Guy.” Interview with Susan Salter Reynolds. Los Angeles Times, 27 May, E1. Mailer discusses his mother’s “blind loyalty” to him: “There was a sense that you had to fight through her enveloping arms of love in order to do anything on your own.” Speaking of his father, he said: “I’m a huge believer in the continuation of dreams over generations, in the gene stream . . . My father used to write beautiful letters, almost Jamesian. He dreamed of being a writer but between avoiding the Feds on one hand and the mafia on the other . . . .” He also states that he is now ready, after seven years, to write the sequel to Harlot’s Ghost (91.26). “There’s no sense writing a second volume if it’s not as good; it’s like a broken promise. I think I know how to do it.”