It might appear that his public role has been a selfaggrandizing one, that since the publication of
Advertisements for Myself (1959), he has been huckstering himself into fame, but this view is predicated on the false assumption that his public performances are strategies designed to promote his books. Actually, Mailer's escapades are crucial to the creation of his work, not to its promotion. He behaves as he does the better to write. He tries to realize in his life the beliefs, hopes, and imaginings that he expresses in his work. "Till people see where their ideas lead, they know nothing," he has said. As one would expect, the process becomes cyclical, for what Mailer discovers by testing his fictional ideas in the world is the need to modify or enlarge upon those ideas by writing more books. The important point is this: there exists in the case of Norman Mailer a symbiotic relationship between life and art. To do in one's life what one has said in one's art is an assertion of creative individuality.
By involving himself in the major crises of our time, Mailer has endeavored to reanimate for modern man a belief in the struggle between God and the Devil.
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