Quote of the Day II

I have just finished the Mailer letters excerpts in the most recent New Yorker and I must say they were fascinating. I have not previously read much of his work, but his writing, even in this casual form, is wonderful. There is an honesty to it, a self-doubt, a willingness to question ideology under the weight of the world's immense complexity--these are rare things to come across in writing these days. I must read more of Mailer...

To William F. Buckley, Jr.

January, 1966

Dear Bill,

I send you the enclosed not because I love National Review so much, for I don’t—it’s not so good as it ought to be, and often it’s tiresome, especially when one knows in advance what your trusted old line contributors are going to say—but as a personal mark of respect to you. Your letter was the best letter I ever read by an editor asking for funds. . . .

One request. Please keep my contribution in the secret crypts. It is not that I fear public opinion so much as ceaseless repetition. Repetition kills the soul and I would not wish to spend one hundred evenings in succession explaining to various outraged and somewhat stupid people in calm clear fashion my complex motives for giving a gift to a magazine for which I feel no affection and to an editor with whom on ninety of a hundred points I must rush to disagree. They would not understand that good writing is good writing, and occasionally carries the day.

Yours,

Norman