Customer Reviews

The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing

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Mailer does not discuss technique or craft in detail. He offers insights of an inspirational, philosophic nature on writing. He's interesting even when he rambles, and the book is full of aphorisms that are encouraging and incisive. The book is worthwhile. It's the thinking and advice of one of the Twentieth Century's literary masters about his field of expertise. There's also plenty of advice about fields beyond his expertise, but Mailer eventually makes it all relevant to writing and, more important, to living the kind of life he feels necessary to produce great or very good writing. Mailer is like a great coach in this book, inciting the reader to be braver, to work harder, to want more, to cultivate appetite and a certain recklessness that is an antidote to what he calls the "paranoid perfection" imbued by writing programs. I think Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird is a kinder, gentler counterbalance to Stormin' Norman's inspiring hectoring to step up to the plate--in life and in writing--and is also an excellent book on writing. Where Lamott is compassionate, gentle, a chamomile tea-offering, hand-holding tutor, Mailer is a grizzled veteran exhorting us to throw ourselves into the mix, to take chances, to aspire to more than we may ever achieve. Good advice from someone who's lived it, and produced some of the most influential writing of the last century.

It has been many years since I have read Norman Mailer. He made a sensational literary debut with the publication of his World War II novel, The Naked and the Dead in 1948. Since then he has been among the most celebrated writers, and by his own estimation one of America's greatest novelists, although I believe he still realizes that he has yet to fulfill his life-long ambition to write the so-called Great American Novel. (Actually I think Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mark Twain preceded his efforts here with respectively, The Scarlet Letter and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.)

This is not the first time Mailer has written on the art of writing. During a period beginning after the publication of his third novel, The Deer Park in 1954 until he returned to the form in 1965 with An American Dream, Mailer wrote nonfiction almost exclusively, and in my opinion became a literary star because of the transition. I recall his first book-length nonfiction venture, Advertisements for Myself (1959), in which in addition to shamelessly tooting his own horn, Mailer also gave advice on how to write effectively, and of course on how to be a literary lion. I thought at the time it was his best work. In a sense he is like others of his time--Gore Vidal comes to mind--literary men who made the transition from novelists (a dying male breed because of a dying male readership) to interpreters and critics of the mass culture even while remaining true to their first love.

Mailer followed up his successes with dozens of books, including more novels along with the various nonfiction works about people (Marilyn Monroe, Picasso, Lee Harvey Oswald, etc.), things and events (Of a Fire on the Moon; The Executioner's Song), especially political events, Miami and the Siege of Chicago; The Armies of the Night, etc. As always his work is characterized by a terrific energy and an obsessive devotion to Words on Paper. I seem to recall reading somewhere that he only felt really comfortable with himself as a writer when he had written 10,000 words that day. I can tell you from personal experience it is very difficult to write ten thousand words in one day; but the really hard part is to do it on consecutive days or indeed to keep up with anything close to that production for any length of time. Yet, for the real writer who cannot help but write--and Mailer was and is such a writer--the meditative euphoria that comes with being lost in one's work so completely is wonderful and quite addictive.

Here Mailer writes about writing of course, concerning himself with things like writer's block, and how to build character and whether to use the first person or the third, or how to use real people in your fiction. He gives tips to young writers, as a writer in his eighties might, and certainly he is a writer to be listened to. He advises on how to use your subconscious in writing. He notes that if you declare that you are going to be at your desk the next morning to write, your subconscious will take note and help you out by preparing in advance. If however you should "wake up in the morning with a hangover and cannot get to literary work, your unconscious, after a few such failures to appear, will withdraw." (p. 142)

The two-fisted machismo for which the short of stature Mailer became famous (or infamous) comes out in places in this work (e.g., he likes to compare writing with being an athlete and on page 104 he even talks of keeping in shape). Thoughts on his lifelong preoccupation with sex, narcissism, masturbation and such also appear. There is a chapter on film, one of Mailer's many intense interests.

But there is sound advice on The Literary Career and what he calls the "Lit Biz." (Of course some of this is passé, since the literary world has changed quite a bit since he had to worry about such things.) There is his reaction to sudden fame after the publication of The Naked and the Dead, which he reminds us was "number one on the best-seller list for several months." (p. 115) In fact, this is such a terrific book on the writer's life and craft (he doesn't especially like the word "craft") that I sorely wish it had been available when I was a young man. Make no mistake about it. What Norman Mailer doesn't know about writing and making a success of writing is probably not much. But of course his success came mainly through hard work and an almost maniacal belief in himself over many decades and through many trials and tribulations, some of them of his own making.

This book is also about life in the twentieth century by a man who lived it full speed ahead, and about other writers and other celebrities he has known or read. In the final analysis, this is a personal book by a man given to writing personal books, a book by a man who is among our finest writers, and a book--like almost all of his work--to inform, to entertain, and to admire.

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Mailer's latest is, as some reviews have charged, a bit scattershot, but that's part of the attraction: you can open it anywhere and enjoy, based on length, based on interest at the moment, or, using the well considered index (a very nice touch to an anthology of essays), based on the question around which you may be currently dabbling.

I do not find Mailer at all arrogant, forward yes, but not arrogant; and the forward personality, aside from having been so often prophetic, seems just that, a character aspect - defect or quality - a function of the overwound compulsion, naked, chin forward, almost looking for a roundhouse on his own choppers: it is honest. A rare commodity these days, either in politics or literature.

Mailer has survived the postmodernist internecine cannibalism, actually says decent things about the competition (eg Vidal, Bellow), and wrings true on his regrets about today's literature failing to set the milieu in the larger sense as did the great novelists in the past. He does not ascribe the shortcoming to the distractions and seduction of electronic media alone, but looks instead at the most likely candidates for having achieved that larger representation, critically, but respectfully. And when one begins to survey the variety and grandness of Mailer's own various projects over the years, and set that against his sharing of self doubts and confessions of both modest beginnings and premature celebrity, a deeper respect for the larger sense of the whole to which the man has, in retrospect, evolved becomes, cumulatively, unavoidable in the fair-minded eye.

If nothing else, you feel the sense of world-concerned angst, acceptance of a "writer's responsibility," and inevitable sleeve-worn values and self-exposing vulnerability. You feel the paradoxical solitariness of a steaming writer holed away to write while vividly invested in the world around him. He makes you feel in his own temperature the danger and excitement and doubts and frustrations of his brand of wrestling with his metier. Elsewhere as he talks about the writer-reader relationship, you discover for your first time that this headlong writer, this runaway pace of his voice, actually rides often better for the reader at slower, more deliberate speeds: that his stylistic and logical structures wring then more considerately taken, wear more deeply and thicker woven.

No, Mailer won't go away. Despite the hopeful assessments of many. For one thing, his driven tone, its urgency, is too contemporary. He wields an unexpected quasi confirmation as he indulges historic referents in consideration of the American literary past, almost refreshingly earnestly childlike in its respect in this day of now. But more, the sheer volumetric range of his esthetic, cultural, and political scans is too large, and the socially grounded roots of his positions too perceptively and morally deep-set.

In the closing pages of "Spooky Art" Mailer muses further whether one can think of this or that age without that or this writer and offers his defensible candidates from the past, a Stendahl here, a Tolstoy there. But he fears it is doubtful that any such "necessary" ligature of time and place and author could be confidently asserted for some single figure in ours. Still, thinking over the possible list of publicly known candidates, perhaps one could find no better argument for these last 50-plus USA years than in Mailer's nomination, however futile the gesture in itself may or may not be.

Mailer has truly accomplished something valuable in the first half of The Spooky Art. He provides examples of the real world lessons and passions of a successful author. The book is essentially a collection of previous published articles that are edited and jointed together with contemporary transitions. Many passages take the reader into the writing process as Mailer describes the creation of several of his famous works.

He makes palpable the level of persistence (what he calls stamina) that is needed to finish a book. Every author I know has come to the point in writing a book where the mountain seems too high to climb. Mailer's description of this agonizing moment (or day or week...) can help you understand and work through this period. While most writers feel that the work comes easier to others, Mailer makes it clear that this is not so.

I think the chapter on journalism is a must-read for fiction and non-fiction writers alike. He does an excellent job of describing how a novelist's eye can present a more accurate account of an event than a journalist. His way of seeing things can very helpful if you're writing non-fiction. Just as interesting are Mailer's views on critics and criticism -- they are surprisingly sanguine. He clearly thinks that you have to read reviews despite the pain they may inflict to understand how you might improve.

Despite how good the beginning of the book may be, the last third (especially his discussion of television and film) is long winded, dated, and seems like filler. Some of the later chapters (particularly "The Argument Reinvigorated") are dense but not especially enlightening.

This is not so much a book on writing as it is in being a writer. Through a series of essays, interviews and other texts, Mailer reflects on his experiences. Mailer's life is like no other writer's, so it's hard to imagine that this will help budding authors, but there is something reassuring about his questioning the quality of some of his works, his sudden rise to fame after the Naked and the Dead became a bestseller.

You won't get much concrete advice on writing, but it's a wonderful ride, reading these interesting words by one of America's greatest wordsmiths.

Best sentence this reviewer read in this book is in the last chapter. Some might find the previous 306 pages somewhat gloomy, but here's what he says on page 307. "If this is prodigously gloomy, I can only add that I am not able to believe in my own pessimism too thoroughly or why would I have bothered to put together this book?"...This reviewer knows a man who has written about as many books as Mr. Mailer who in his lectures describes himself as a "moderate pessimist." Now that's a good area to be moderate in. And in Mr. Mailer a light of optimism is still there, and is passed on, particularly to new novelists, but to everyone.

Like Bill Clinton, Mailer is admired and despised by great numbers in this country. There is no question that at least a few of his books will survive (or ultimately be revived) as long as there is American literature. The only question is which ones? Armies Of The Night? The Executioner's Song? Barbary Shore? Marilyn? The Naked and The Dead? The Presidential Papers?

The Spooky Art is a provocative book for young writers under 25 or older readers who are just warming to the thought of possibly writing a novel. I would recommend reading Mailer's Advertisements For Myself first. While this new volume reflects the author's long and distinguished career and is almost always engaging, his earlier Advertisements is more in-depth. For example, his account of writing the many drafts of The Deer Park is fascinating and remarkable because of its youthful candor.

The Spooky Art is a continuation of Mailer's long exploration of the many themes that he has found interesting since the post World War Two period. It certainly can stand alone, but I found that the excerpts had the effect of making me want to go back and take another look at his earlier work.

I applaud Mailer for his frankness--the passages on drug use and illness do shed light on the unsavory side of a writer's life. His advice is sound and direct, much like an old soldier who's been through battle and neither glamourizes nor minces words when telling his tale.
However, it is hard to believe that modern readers won't stumble over the thinly-veiled sexism that permeates practically every chapter. Yes, it is understandable that he eschews the politically correct pronoun "they" in favor of "he." Still, in the year 2003, Mailer doubts the ability of women to both understand and write about war, and this is just one glaring example.
According to Mailer, a woman must have an "immense talent" to write about bravery, while men seem to inherently master this abstract concept. (Taken to mean that the woman's immense talent lies in her imagination, for she is obviously dreaming up something beyond her scope of reference).

The Spooky Art does instruct and inspire. However, its author seems lost in a golden age where men did the writing and women served as cruel, untouchable muses (his favorite metaphor for novel writing is bedding the "Bitch.")

As a last note, it's amusing that Mailer dogs King, equating his works to "fast food." As a whole, King's "On Writing" is a better structured, more elucidating antidote to Mailer's ponderous, rambling "The Spooky Art."

Rather than a book in its own right, "The Spooky Art" is a compilation of over 190 different interviews, essays, and unpublished thoughts on writing. Well, the first half is about writing--the second half delves into television and film before settling on criticisms of specific authors (Tolstoy, Hemingway, Lawrence). While the parts about Mailer's career are fascinating, the diversions in the Part II will test the reader's patience. Are you ready to read 15 pages devoted to Mailer's thoughts on "Last Tango in Paris"?

...So don't feel obligated to say if you found it helpful or not.

Five years ago I read Mailer's "Barbary Shore," believing it had been a well-received "important" book of its time. For that, I wrote a snide review of it here on Amazon. Back then I was so deluded I thought only I had caught on to what a misfire that book was.

Yeah. I know. Kind of lame, some kid in the Midwest taking potshots at Norm.

The annoying thing is that Amazon won't remove that old review, no matter how many times I ask tech support. It has something to do with the fact that I wrote it using a different user account, which I've since closed.

So Amazon, take the review down already, huh?

As for "The Spooky Art?" It's a fine collection. Order a copy and read it on the train. Good stuff. Don't take it too seriously, either. We all know Norm's ego was big in the 50s & 60s, and we all know he did some dastardly things for publicity. You would too if you were an author and wanted to sell your books -- no need to crucify him about it in our little reviews, and no need to deny his talent any longer (except for Barbary Shore, of course).

One more time -- Amazon, take down that old review!