The Structured Vision of Norman Mailer/6. Deaths for the Ladies and Other Disasters: Difference between revisions

Similarly, Mailer has made periodic excursions into other genres, and here, too, his failures glare garishly enough to obscure his successes. Within the province of fiction, he has accomplished little with the short story, that traditional laboratory and financial supplement of the novelist.<ref>All of Mailer’s short fiction to date has been issued in a recent paperback collection: ''The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer''. This edition offers almost nothing that has not already been published in the three nonfiction collections, but the short introduction by Mailer is of some interest. In it, among other things, he reiterates his feeling that the short story is a form inferior to the novel: “The short story bores him [Mailer] a little . . . . he rarely reads them. He is, in secret, not fond of writers who work at short stories . . . he thinks the short story is relatively easy to write. You only have to be good for a day or a week . . . .” ({{harvnb|Mailer|1967|p=9}})</ref> In the drama, on the other hand, he has been relatively successful. The play version of ''The Deer Park'' (which I saw on March 3, 1967) is not great literature, but it is substantial, entertaining theater; and it earned a reasonably sympathetic critical reception. Lately, Mailer has turned his hand to making movies. His first film, ''Wild 90'', is embarrassingly bad. It is a tedious story of three criminals in a hideout, which I found difficult to sit through. The second movie, ''Beyond the Law'', which I have not yet seen, has been better received by some critics, and cannot help but be an improvement over ''Wild 90''. Mailer’s third movie, ''Maidstone'', which has not yet been released at the time of this writing, has already attracted considerable attention because of the bizarre, party-like circumstances under which it was shot.<ref>For a sense of those circumstances, see {{harvnb|Toback|1967|pp=150–155}}.</ref> Since each of these movies features Mailer as star, as well as producer and director, his cinematic efforts increase still further the considerable influence which his flamboyant personality exerts upon the public’s conception of him. (The relation between this public image and the critical reception of his books will be discussed in my next chapter.) Whether or not Mailer’s later movies achieve any real artistic stature, they do represent some sense of serious experimentation on his part, one which is underlined by the substantial investment (both in finances and reputation) which he has made in them.