Misshapen Image

THE PRESIDENTIAL PAPERS by Norman Mailer. 310 pages. Putnam. $5.

Those who sometimes wonder what happened to the American left, which disappeared in a cloud of vapidity round about the start of the Eisenhower years, should consider the case of Norman Mailer.

In this collection of speeches, magazine articles, free verse that should never have been given its liberty, manifestoes, taped interviews and reminiscence, Mailer presents to the world all the familiar stigmata of the left temperament--indignation, generosity of spirit and critical courage. But the one big fact that emerges from the welter is that--unlike the U.S. left of two previous generations--no Brave New World is promised. Socialism is no longer an issue. Utopia is out. The best the left can offer is seats for all in the same unbrave old world. Racial equality is the one issue on which the U.S. left--and a good section of U.S. conservatism--is united.

Two Twists. To this issue Mailer adds two individual twists of his own. He rages against those prosperous Negroes who elect to imitate the culture of the white bourgeoisie (though why this right should be denied them is not explained). He is willing to enter the taboo field of racial intermarriage, and here goes on record as having personally invited James Baldwin to marry his (Mailer's) sister.

Mailer has a major case of megalomania. In his "Third Presidential Paper" he writes as if--on the basis of one impressionistic magazine piece on the Democratic Convention--he had become a maker of Presidents. "I had created an archetype of Jack Kennedy in the public mind which might or might not be true, but which would induce people to vote for him, and so would tend to move him into the direction I had created . . . The night Kennedy was elected, I felt a sense of woe, as if I had made a terrible error, as if somehow I had betrayed the Left and myself. It was a spooky emotion . . . as if I were responsible and guilty for all which was bad, dangerous or potentially totalitarian within the Kennedy Administration."

Talent for Shape. A clue to the minor mystery of Mailer may be found in what he calls the "Twelfth Presidential Paper," wherein he remarks, apropos of Hemingway, "The first art work in an artist is the shaping of his own personality." This really has the Mailer hallmark; it is neither superficial nor true. Mailer himself may be said to have put his best talents into the shaping of his own latter-day personality in a series of public appearances (he once hired Carnegie Hall for himself) in which he could be heard advocating better boxing, better orgasms, bullfights in Central Park, and other items of surrealistic irresponsibility. But he is a fearless performer, a lively controversialist and handles heavy cultural names like King Lear, Dostoevsky, Freud, Sartre like a demented, butter-fingered juggler.

Intellectuals are rare enough in U.S politics for madcap Mailer to be welcome, even as a candidate for Mayor of New York City. But he should know by now that you don't win votes by going round talking about "the corroded vaults of my ambitious and yellow jaundiced soul."

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