Status Updates From The Spooky Art: Thoughts on...

Who will go looking for the “new, soft, heavy, hot flow,” or the “urgent softness from the volcanic deeps” when the air of cities smells of lava and the mood of the streets is like the bowels turned inside out?

Mailer, Norman. The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing (p. 281). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

To measure the media magnetism of such an act, ask yourself how many hundreds of miles you might drive to hear Richard Nixon speak a line like “We’re just taking a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut,” or, “I went to the University of the Congo; studied whale fucking.”

Mailer, Norman. The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing (p. 222). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Is it possible that at the heart of Divinity, Irony is well installed? Carnage walks the aisles of history hand in hand with philosophy. If there is no afterworld where the contest continues, then existence is indeed absurd.

Mailer, Norman. The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing (pp. 147-148). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Hemingway’s death was cautionary to me. His suicide was as wounding as if one’s own parent had taken his life. I keep thinking of John Gardner’s unforgettable remark that when a father commits suicide, he condemns his son to the same end.

Mailer, Norman. The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing (p. 120). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

We live in and out of ongoing plots every day of our lives, but they are discontinuous. Nothing can be more difficult to encounter than a life story that accompanies us through a beginning, middle, and end.

Mailer, Norman. The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing (p. 89). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

It is an achievement that comes from having thought about one’s life right to the point where one is living it. Everything that happens seems capable of offering its own addition to one’s knowledge.

Mailer, Norman. The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing (p. 75). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Editing tends to make best-sellers read more like each other. As one instance, few best-sellers don’t suffer from a spate of adjectives. For when a writer can’t find the nuance of an experience, he usually loads up with adjectives.

Mailer, Norman. The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing (p. 51). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Editing tends to make best-sellers read more like each other. As one instance, few best-sellers don’t suffer from a spate of adjectives. For when a writer can’t find the nuance of an experience, he usually loads up with adjectives.

Mailer, Norman. The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing (p. 51). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I would argue that your material becomes valuable only when it is existential, by which I mean an experience you do not control.

Mailer, Norman. The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing (p. 12). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.