Two Myths Converge: NM Discovers MM

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Just so. It is futile to look for it in Guiles' biography, or in Maurice Zolotow's, or in yet another book soon to be printed: Marilyn: An Untold Story, by Novelist Norman Rosten. Mailer has cannibalized all three sources, and because he is a larger talent, he emerges with a more sensational, compulsively readable book. Yet Marilyn has eluded Marilyn too. In the end she endures where she belongs, on the screen.

And Mailer−where does he belong? As he sees it, still at the top of the heap. Even with this biographoid, he is probably right. A writer who has contributed so many substantial and influential works may be forgiven a few piques and valleys. Still, one can hope that this is the last time he dedicates so much energy and metaphor to this kind of hurried history. For as Mailer admits, "journalism never does a writer any harm until he starts repeating himself, and if you do that, then you start presiding over the dissolution of your own literary empire."

Prowling the corridors of the Ervin hearings, searching for a possible contribution to the Atlantic Monthly, Mailer moves like a welterweight looking for a challenger−or a journalist in grave danger of repetition. That unfinished novel, it appears, may have to wait. Wait for what? For Mailer to produce more superjournalism? It has been argued, of course, that nonfiction is in the saddle and rides the bestseller list−that in the scorching light of contemporary events, reportage is stronger than fiction. It is a notion aptly refuted by a passage in The Assistant. Mailer's contemporary, Bernard Malamud, writes:

He asked her what book she was reading.

"The Idiot. Do you know it?"

"No. What's it about?"

"It's a novel."

"I'd rather read the truth."

"It is the truth."

It may seem rank ingratitude for a reader to ask for that sort of exemplary "truth" when Mailer has already contributed so much of his own kind. Yet in all his books, including Marilyn, Mailer has encouraged the reader to hope for more. It may be a forlorn hope. For Mailer now considers a novel "a grace. A gift from God. Either He gives it to you or He doesn't." Perhaps. Or it may just be Mailer's way of explaining away a terrifying writer's block.

In explaining away his recent treatment of the Kennedys, Mailer reasons, "Look, we're all taken aghast by Watergate. What we lose sight of is that this is great American drama and we're either going to come of age or we're not, and if we're going to come of age, we've got to stop this piety toward our leaders."

That piety must include the homage shown to literary as well as political and film stars. Perhaps Norman Mailer has been treated too piously; maybe he has been on top too long. Yet somehow one refuses to believe it. Half a century old, the writer hovers at the peak of his powers; the blue eyes still twinkle and the vigor appears undiminished. If Norman Mailer ever produces the book he once described as "a descendant of Moby Dick," his imperial qualities can be reinforced forever. And if he continues to pour forth Marilyns? Only then will it be time for him to stop talking like a champ.

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