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Norman Mailer: Works and Days/Preface: Difference between revisions
Norman Mailer: Works and Days/Preface (view source)
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{{byline|last=Mailer|first=Norman | {{dc|dc=S|ometimes I think that [[J. Michael Lennon|Michael Lennon]] and I were as designed}} for each other as some species of American Yin and Yang, as hot dogs, perhaps, and mustard. His talents, his discipline, and his ambition form a complement to all the slacks, voids, and indolences of my nature. Which is not to say that I see myself as untalented, unambitious and without discipline, no, it is rather that what I am good at, I am pretty good at, yes, but my interest in what I have written has a short half-life. Once I finish a piece of work, my interest moves to other matters, and all is left to my filing system. In truth, I have no system other than to throw old manuscripts and letters into manila envelopes and deposit them in cartons. | ||
[[File:NM and JML Munich 1980.jpg|thumb|400px|Norman Mailer and Mike Lennon in Munich, 1980.]] | |||
Without the participation of my good friend Mike as a pro bono archivist, my literary estate would have long ago become a dumping ground of moldering unlabelled cardboard boxes. By his efforts, however, which go back over more than two decades, my literary artifacts have since become well-organized, indeed, so well-organized by his passion for precision and documentation that the result could appear obscene to me in its perfection, if it were not for the fact that I need and use it like a bone with its marrow. Should the gods who look after posthumous literary life choose to decide in my favor — an assumption that no writer can make with confidence what with literary history flinging many a good dead writer off the road — then, for certain, if a reasonable denouement does come to my work, the materials to support this scribbler have been put in place. And should I end by occupying no larger place than a footnote in literary history, it will not be the fault of Michael Lennon. Those historic tides that carry a few authors' boats to the golden islands of posthumous investiture will have felt his hand on the tiller. So let these words serve to express the size of my debt. | Without the participation of my good friend Mike as a pro bono archivist, my literary estate would have long ago become a dumping ground of moldering unlabelled cardboard boxes. By his efforts, however, which go back over more than two decades, my literary artifacts have since become well-organized, indeed, so well-organized by his passion for precision and documentation that the result could appear obscene to me in its perfection, if it were not for the fact that I need and use it like a bone with its marrow. Should the gods who look after posthumous literary life choose to decide in my favor — an assumption that no writer can make with confidence what with literary history flinging many a good dead writer off the road — then, for certain, if a reasonable denouement does come to my work, the materials to support this scribbler have been put in place. And should I end by occupying no larger place than a footnote in literary history, it will not be the fault of Michael Lennon. Those historic tides that carry a few authors' boats to the golden islands of posthumous investiture will have felt his hand on the tiller. So let these words serve to express the size of my debt. | ||