Quickly (21 March 1956)
The Village Voice, 21 March 1956; transcription provided by Jerry Lucas; proofread against the source 2026-06-01.
Column Eleven
The news-box which appeared on page 1 of The Voice last week went: Who’s Norman Mailer’s candidate for President? Those readers who turn to page 5 and read “Quickly” slowly, might find some clue. In any case there’s a $10 prize for the first correct solution received at this office. (His choice, by the way, is in a sealed envelope pasted on to the center of the Village Voice window. You can see it there from the street.)
Now this was a trifle misleading, since there were no portentous clues in last week’s column. I had said to the gentleman who wrote the news-box that there might be a few hints in all my columns taken together, but this was unfortunately garbled a bit in transmission. So, as an apology for neglecting to look at the news-box in galleys, I will double the ante to $20, and give a few more pointed suggestions.
The greatest clues of course are buried in those parts of my character which have been revealed week by week. What it comes down to, is who, by God, would that megalomaniac Mailer nominate besides himself? And of course the wise man—if there is one among you—would answer: “Why, even a bigger megalomaniac.”
Clue #2. Last week I had a line in answer to Dr. Y. which went: “Sleep is wisdom for gladiators like yourself.” So your columnist demonstrated indirectly that in his cold bitter soul, he has respect for gladiators who are on their feet. Therefore, Candidate X must fulfill this condition as well.
Clue #3. Candidate X would approve of slow readers.
Clue #4. Candidate X must of course be Hip, and yet not display himself unduly as a hipster. Perhaps we can assume that he was one of the germinal influences in the birth of the hipster.
Clue #5. (And this should be enough.) My passion, as a few slow readers may have realized by now, is to destroy stereotypes, categories, and labels. So Candidate X who has never been considered (to my knowledge) as a political candidate for anything, by either party—as indeed was once true of Eisenhower—is nonetheless an important figure in American life. To a degree he has affected the style of American manners. If he were drafted as a candidate, the emanations of his personality might loosen the lugubrious rhetorical daisy-chains of liberal argument which so deaden the air about all these Demo-bureaucratic candidates.
The rest of this column I wish to give over to a little talk about politics, most of which will be, as usual, in the first person. I have not voted since 1948, and I doubt if I will vote in 1956 even if by some fantastic mischance, Candidate X would be drafted. (My sole motive in all this is to look for a good time. I want the next Presidential campaign to be an interesting circus, rather than the dreary set of opposed commercials it now promises to be.)
Still, most of you will be taking your vote seriously, and to go on like this is only to offend you further. Most people, given their massage by propaganda, believe that a man who doesn’t vote is a little lower than a man who beats his mother, or to be more psychically exact, a son who strikes his father. And perhaps even the Mailer would come off his mountain long enough to vote, if he felt any confidence that the Republican or Democratic party was relatively the least bit more effective for a given year—at going in historical directions one might think to be encouraging.
But the curious contradictions of power and party politics are such, that if I were to vote on this principle, I would be forced ever so slightly toward the Republicans. Not because I like them, mind you—I rather dislike them, they are such unconscionable hypocrites. Yet the disagreeable fact of power in these politically depressed years—like it or leave it—is that the Republican Party is a little more free to act, precisely because it does not have to be afraid of the Republicans, whereas the Democrats do.
I know this is unpleasant to all of you who believe that truth and un-truth are separate, but then I have no particular desire to bring you pleasure. The antitheses of power are such today that I believe the party in power must adopt the opposite in office of what it announced as its desires when it was out of power. It is metaphorically similar to the change in personality which you may have noticed in some of your friends who came to marriage after living together for years.