Mailing it in

Norman Mailer has that Hitler book coming out.  He also has some choice words about war & imperialism.  But first, some lit talk:

NM: ...Americans need mythos, certainly, in the literary world. Nationally, we have Abraham Lincoln and George Washington and FDR and Camelot, and in some quarters I fear there is Ronald Reagan, but nonetheless, in the literary world, it is probably Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Zelda, the nearest thing to a literary mythos within living reach. People take to it.

AC: Why do you think so? Because they are good, but not necessarily the best.

NM: Hemingway and Fitzgerald? Well, they are arguably the best. Who would you call on in that period? Going back, you could certainly argue that Melville’s a greater writer or Emerson or a few others. But who would you name for now?

AC: I would put Henry Miller there with them.

NM: Yes, Henry Miller I would put there. Maybe a century from now, people will decide he was greater. But a myth doesn’t depend on who is greatest. It needs figures who are extremely well known and yet not quite understood. That lends itself to myth. Why we need mythos may be the real question. I would assume it is the counter-weight to technology.

I believe that that last bit is a nice thought (or an aggregation of a couple interesting thoughts).  Mythos-as-counter-weight explains more than a few of our recent lunacies, at least.

Comments

[David Milofsky]

Funny that no one thought to mention Bill Faulkner, probably more accomplished than either Fitz or Hem and certainly more than Miller, a lightweight in comparison. Somehow, great as he is, Faulkner tends to get lost in discussons like this. Must not be a mythic figure.