Speaking of men being excoriated, farewell Norman Mailer.
His third book a dismal critical and commercial failure, he started the Village Voice. Yay, balls!!!
And just to show I know not all women smack down men who speak out, here's a chunk from today's Post appreciation:
...What inspired her about "Armies" was "the freedom Norman Mailer gave himself." [said feminist writer Katha Pollitt]
"He gave himself the freedom to be ridiculous...He gave himself the freedom to be egocentric, to put himself at the center of a story that he is only very peripheral at, and to make a joke out of that."
He also gave himself the freedom to be serious about the fate of America.
Mailer saw his country -- for which he sometimes felt "a sharp searing love" -- as threatened not just by the Vietnam War but by the broader dominion of what he called "corporation land," by "the subtle oppression which had come to America out of the very air" of the 20th century, with "its oppressive Faustian lusts, its technological excrement all over the conduits of nature, its entrapment of the innocence of the best . . . ."
This, in the end, is why he chose the technique he did. "Once History inhabits a crazy house," he informs readers who might be puzzled by the choice, "egotism may be the last tool left to History."
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