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it's hard not to admire [norman mailer's] ambitions for the art form of the novel, his dream that someone might some day write a great tolstoyan novel about america, connecting the social and the personal, the public and the private. it's a dream that has been defeated so far, he suggests in the final and most substantial entry in this book, by the sheer multiplicity and clangor of american society, where "the accelerated rate, the awful rate, of growth and anomaly" overwhelms all efforts to lasso it.
novelists like himself, he admits, have also failed out of laziness and self-absorption. "writers aren't taken seriously anymore, and a large part of the blame must go to the writers of my generation, most certainly including myself. we haven't written the books that should have been written. we've spent too much time exploring ourselves. we haven't done the imaginative work that could have helped define america, and as a result, our average citizen does not grow in self-understanding. we just expand all over the place, and this spread is about as attractive as collapsed and flabby dough on a stainless steel table."
- michiko kakutani, "quoting himself on his lofty dream: norman mailer's the spooky art: some thoughts on writing," new york times january 22, 2003
posted December 11, 2003 in print. 2001