Lipton’s Journal/January 20, 1955/199

Looking at myself in the mirror, high on Lipton’s, I saw myself as follows: The left side of my face is comparatively heavy, sensual, possessor of hard masculine knowledge, strong, proud, and vain. Seen front-face I appear nervous, irresolute, tender, anxious, vulnerable, earnest, and Jewish middle-class.[1] The right side of my face is boyish, saintly, bisexual, psychopathic, and suggests the victim.



Note

  1. In The Armies of the Night (1968), Mailer states that the only part of his personality he finds to be “absolutely insupportable” is “the nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn.”