03.9

“The Author as Celebrity.” Article-interview by Dan Cryer. 3 February, Newsday.com (subscription required). Mailer talks at some length about the matter of literary celebrity: “You develop a perverse appetite for it, even though you hate it. I can’t pretend to be pure that way.” He continued: “It may be that a part of me had to show off in order to get out some serious work. The truth is, we are very often at cross-purposes with ourselves.” Of his contemporaries, he says: “I was dead wrong on Updike. I was dead wrong on Roth. I was pretty mean on them, and they’ve been doing excellent work for years.”