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For years my brain was most alive when I was incapable of taking a note, or trapping the thought. And in my novels like ''[[Barbary Shore|Barbary]]'' and ''[[The Deer Park|Deer Park]]'' where I had comparatively few ideas, I could reach them only through great pain, and the most stubborn depression and writing blocks. Yet I broke sociostatic things in myself. I have lost weight and with it depression. I am manic, alive, filled every day with the excitement and revelation of everything I see.  
For years my brain was most alive when I was incapable of taking a note, or trapping the thought. And in my novels like ''[[Barbary Shore|Barbary]]'' and ''[[The Deer Park|Deer Park]]'' where I had comparatively few ideas, I could reach them only through great pain, and the most stubborn depression and writing blocks. Yet I broke sociostatic things in myself. I have lost weight and with it depression. I am manic, alive, filled every day with the excitement and revelation of everything I see.  


[[w:Edmund Bergler|Bergler]], who has homeodynamic impulses so vast that he has to smother them in the most violent reactionary sociostasis, too violent even for his confreres, reveals great truths by the absurdity of his dictums. And once in a while he is magnificently right, despite himself. So I understand that he wrote that the writer writes away the defense in the course of writing. And that is so true. There is that wonderful line in ''The Deer Park'' which goes: “There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, which demanded that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.” So the writer has to grow and the more his talent the more he has to grow.  
Bergler,{{LJ:Bergler}} who has homeodynamic impulses so vast that he has to smother them in the most violent reactionary sociostasis, too violent even for his confreres, reveals great truths by the absurdity of his dictums. And once in a while he is magnificently right, despite himself. So I understand that he wrote that the writer writes away the defense in the course of writing. And that is so true. There is that wonderful line in ''The Deer Park'' which goes: “There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, which demanded that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.”{{refn|One of the most quoted lines from Mailer’s works, it is inscribed on his gravestone.}} So the writer has to grow and the more his talent the more he has to grow.  


Which is why it is so awful and so exciting to be a novelist. Of all the art forms it is the one where one can hide the least, and in this country where growth is the most accelerated there is small wonder that American novelists die artistically very young. To be a great American novelist demands a superman. That is why great writers in America are not able to turn out work after work of equal value—the moment they do not continue to grow, the sociostatic defenses chase them back in a rout, as indeed they have to for the great American writer is living very dangerously.
Which is why it is so awful and so exciting to be a novelist. Of all the art forms it is the one where one can hide the least, and in this country where growth is the most accelerated there is small wonder that American novelists die artistically very young. To be a great American novelist demands a superman. That is why great writers in America are not able to turn out work after work of equal value—the moment they do not continue to grow, the sociostatic defenses chase them back in a rout, as indeed they have to for the great American writer is living very dangerously.
{{Notes}}


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[[Category:January 24, 1955]]
[[Category:January 24, 1955]]
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