I mean 'political,' of course, in the widest sense--the sense of protest or counterprotest."
Mailer presents a special problem to anyone trying to arrive at a clear understanding of his work, for he has gained notoriety as a public figure as well as a writer. His extraliterary activities--acts of civil disobedience, running for mayor of New York, tempestuous marriages, contentious remarks on television talk shows, belligerent behavior at parties--have caused him in many quarters to be more read about than read. It might appear that his public role has been a self-aggrandizing 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.
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