10,114
edits
The Mailer Review/Volume 8, 2014/An Excerpt from Mailer’s Last Interview: The Village Voice: Difference between revisions
The Mailer Review/Volume 8, 2014/An Excerpt from Mailer’s Last Interview: The Village Voice (view source)
Revision as of 10:08, 24 May 2019
, 24 May 2019Fixed typo.
m (Updated byline box.) |
m (Fixed typo.) |
||
| Line 27: | Line 27: | ||
'''NM''': Right. Every time we see each other, we’re friendly, casual friendly. At any event, he was the proofreader and typos kept happening in my column whether he wanted them or not. Finally, I just quit the paper. | '''NM''': Right. Every time we see each other, we’re friendly, casual friendly. At any event, he was the proofreader and typos kept happening in my column whether he wanted them or not. Finally, I just quit the paper. | ||
'''JML''': | '''JML''': “[T]he nuisances of growth” instead of “the nuances of growth” was the straw that broke . . . | ||
'''NM''': Yes. So once I quit, a phenomenon occurred, a social phenomenon that I never forgot. Which was: I was missed. The paper was shocked. They received mail that up to that point had always been unfriendly — you know, “Who’s this spoil-sport Mailer? Who’s this smartass Mailer? He’s a loser.” | '''NM''': Yes. So once I quit, a phenomenon occurred, a social phenomenon that I never forgot. Which was: I was missed. The paper was shocked. They received mail that up to that point had always been unfriendly — you know, “Who’s this spoil-sport Mailer? Who’s this smartass Mailer? He’s a loser.” | ||
| Line 33: | Line 33: | ||
'''JML''': Joe Jensen from Bank Street. | '''JML''': Joe Jensen from Bank Street. | ||
'''NM''': Yeah, that’s him. And then Jensen writes, “We’re going to miss you.” They suddenly realized that they were going to miss me. There had been something there, the paper had been exciting; it hadn’t been before. Before that it had been like a glib, a nicely developed version of ''The Villager'', which was all but a newspaper, you know, a truly fine shopper. Now they suddenly saw that there was a daring newspaper possible. And they went in that direction, although it was against the grain. They had the local genius . . . you see, they had been going in the wrong direction and then they reversed and it opened up the paper. And then along came [Jules] Feiffer and his cartoons and Feiffer made the ''Voice''. People would buy the ''Voice'' to see his cartoons. They were extraordinary. What I failed to do with the column, Feiffer succeeded in doing each week with his panel. Then the articles got wilder, the insights got stronger, the attitude became bigger, and the ''Voice'' grew, and the ''Voice'' grew, and it grew and I was out of it. In a way, I didn’t care because I felt I was going to drown in it if I’d won. You see my feeling was that if I’d win, I’d lose because when would I write novels. It takes all your time . . . and this thing, losing and winning was very satisfying, and so we became friends again, in a manner of speaking. Not for a long time and not closely, never as close again, but the gap was closed to a degree. | '''NM''': Yeah, that’s him. And then Jensen writes, “We’re going to miss you.” They suddenly realized that they were going to miss me. There had been something there, the paper had been exciting; it hadn’t been before. Before that it had been like a glib, a nicely developed version of ''The Villager'', which was ''all but'' a newspaper, you know, a truly fine shopper. Now they suddenly saw that there was a daring newspaper possible. And they went in that direction, although it was against the grain. They had the local genius . . . you see, they had been going in the wrong direction and then they reversed and it opened up the paper. And then along came [Jules] Feiffer and his cartoons and Feiffer made the ''Voice''. People would buy the ''Voice'' to see his cartoons. They were extraordinary. What I failed to do with the column, Feiffer succeeded in doing each week with his panel. Then the articles got wilder, the insights got stronger, the attitude became bigger, and the ''Voice'' grew, and the ''Voice'' grew, and it grew and I was out of it. In a way, I didn’t care because I felt I was going to drown in it if I’d won. You see my feeling was that if I’d win, I’d lose because when would I write novels. It takes all your time . . . and this thing, losing and winning was very satisfying, and so we became friends again, in a manner of speaking. Not for a long time and not closely, never as close again, but the gap was closed to a degree. | ||
'''JML''': And you wrote a series of pieces for them over the years. | '''JML''': And you wrote a series of pieces for them over the years. | ||