Lipton’s Journal/January 26, 1955/285

I have to face something. Just as the pompous man encourages rebellion, so I wonder if I as the enfant terrible, the pint-sized Hitler, the outrageous radical, am not encouraging conformity. I take out the Lipton’s, and people who were previously drawn to me flee the house. Possibly, my mother planted her deep conservative seeds. Certainly, there is a vast conservative echo in me,[1] and the expression of my S may be that I am now stating my thought in its most outrageous terms in order that other people conform. I think this is true, but I do believe in the predominance of the H. All the S can do now is hurt me, waste me, make me do foolhardy things. But since I am expressing things which have to do with life and with man’s goodness so people who flee come back again. The only thing is that if I keep on the way I’m going, they’ll have to come to visit me during jail hours.



note

  1. Another prescient statement; from the late 1960s on Mailer described himself as a left-conservative.